Bush-Cheney Official Armitage on Torture: "Maybe I Should Have Quit"

Richard Armitage is neither a lefty nor a softie. He has served in the CIA, military special forces, and Department of Defense, and in the Bush White House, he was Deputy Secretary of State to Colin Powell. On the day after 9-11, he personally laid out the seven-point ultimatum to the head of the Pakistani intelligence services: comply with our campaign or the US is coming after your country.

So when Armitage tells Al Jazeera that he should have resigned over the Bush Administration's treatment of prisoners of war, this is not the regret of an official who was opposed to the campaign against Al Qa'eda and international terrorism. And when he says for the record that, yes, detainees were tortured by waterboarding, this is a statement for the record rather than party-politics criticism.

This short clip is another sad far-from-footnote in the record of how a US Government tore up international law such as the Geneva Conventions and any meaningful ethical standards in the name of a "War on Terror". Armitage and Powell were out-manoeuvred by a Vice President's office and Department of Defense intent on claiming an unchallenged Executive authority beyond law or public accountability. (What Armitage does not mention in this clip is the awful irony that those same officials would walk away from the battle with Al Qa'eda to pursue war in Iraq.)

Yet, lest anyone make out Richard Armitage to be a valiant hero in a sordid saga, it should be noted that he is eager to avoid any culpability in torture --- as he did not know about waterboarding --- and equally happy to throw blame on members of Congress.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hEvvUBkYDk[/youtube]

Enduring America: Your #1 Site for Republican Teabagging (with Updates!)

Latest Post: Tea Parties, Violence, and Politics (And, Yes, This is a Serious Post)

Related Post: A Grand Republican Teabagging - The Day After
Related Post: Republican Teabagging - What It REALLY Means
Related Post: Republican Teabagging Revolution Begins

LIBERAL TEABAGGING SABOTAGE UPDATE (10 p.m. British Teabag Time): Enduring America regrets to confirm that liberal saboteurs have out-Teabagged our Republican friends, forcing the end of the Washington DC protest:

Secret Service officers were scurrying to close the North Lawn of the White House Wednesday afternoon because of a suspicious package and it appeared that trouble was brewing.

But it turned out that nothing more was brewing than an innocent little box of, yes, tea bags.

Journalists were quickly banned from moving outside of the press briefing room, and hundreds of protesters gathered for a "Tax Day Tea Party" were quickly shooed out of Lafayette Park as a security robot inspected the package closely.

After about a half hour of high alert, a Secret Service official told CNN the "suspicious package" was merely some tea bags. So the threat was over, and so was the anti-Obama protest.

We fear that we may have may have misunderestimated our liberal/radical/taxifying opponents' expertise and experience with Teabagging. Next time we must ensure that we, and not they, are the ones who "Teabag Obama".

TERRORIST TEABAGGER UPDATE (7:20 p.m.): Police have cleared Lafayette Park after a liberal/radical/taxifying agent provocateur threw teabags over the White House fence.

It is clear that the Terrorist Teabagger is an infiltrator, since Republicans would never try Teabagging through wire mesh.


NOT A DOUBLE-ENTENDRE UPDATE (6:30 p.m. British Teabag Time): "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, reporting for Pajamas TV, gets a scoop: a protestor asks if "he would like to waterboard Obama".

We do hope that this is a genuine Teabagger advocating torture of the President, and not a devious liberal trying to slip in a sexual allusion.


MEGA-URGENT UPDATE (6:05 p.m. British Teabag Time): And we're off! More than 300 Teabagging Parties have begun across the United States. The biggest mass Teabagging is in Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. with a million teabags involved.

But we assure you that sutiable Teabagging precautions are being taken: "Organisers promised to put the bags on tarps and clean up afterward so as not to make a mess."

SUPER-URGENT UPDATE (15 April in Teabagging Britain): We're #2! Enduring America has vanquished the villainous Rachel Maddow, despatching her to Google limbo. Now to topple "The Young Turks" to claim our rightful status as Top Republican Teabagging Party Site....

URGENT UPDATE (7:25 p.m. British Teabag Time): For you first-time Teabaggers, Republican National Committee Michael Steele is ready to help. Half-politician, all-man, Steele has not two but four virtual teabags you can lay on your Teabag-ee of choice: President Obama, Vice President Biden, Senate Leader Harry Reid, or Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Actually we're #3 on Google for "Republican teabagging" behind the YouTube videos of "The Young Turks" and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, but we're hoping to become the #1 legitimate site by the time of the Teabagging Parties on Tax Day tomorrow. This is because:

1. We do not think the Young Turk and Ms Maddow are Republicans.
2. We are certain that the Young Turk is not from America, which of course is where Teabagging protest was established.
3. There is a possibility that Ms Maddow is a lesbian, which should disqualify her from any comment on the morality and good sense behind Teabagging.

Indeed, the latest video from Ms Maddow is a shameful slur on Teabagging Parties:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNXuSJwDwco[/youtube]

We are horrified by Ms Maddow's claim that Teabagging is a creation of FreedomWorks, funded by right-wing billionaires and led by the former Republican Senator Dick Armey, when our protest is that Teabagging is for everyone.

And Ms Maddow is clearly trying to tarnish us when she (and her guest Anamarie Cox, who we also think might be suspect) implies that we have naively claimed Teabagging --- in contrast to the non-Teabag legitimacy of the libertarians behind Representative Ron Paul --- as a shallow political swipe at President Obama.

We dissent. There is nothing naive about Enduring America's promotion of Teabagging. We do not believe it should be shallow: our Teabagging protest is full-throated.

This is our battle cry: when you Teabag tomorrow, do it for and with Enduring America.

Torture News: CIA Director Shipped to Kabul in Hazing Ritual

New York Times: The Central Intelligence Agency said Thursday that it would decommission the secret overseas prisons where it subjected Al Qaeda prisoners to brutal interrogation methods, bringing to a symbolic close the most controversial counterterrorism program of the Bush administration.

However, according to our colleagues at The Onion, before the secret prisons were put out of business, they were sent one more very special "guest":

Blindfolded Panetta Shipped To Kabul In Hilarious CIA Hazing Ritual

WASHINGTON—As part of the agency's decades-long tradition of initiation, rookie CIA director Leon Panetta was gagged, blindfolded, and placed inside a large storage container bound for the war-torn capital of Afghanistan Friday. "You should have seen him—he was all, 'Guys, this isn't funny! Guys?'" outgoing director Michael Hayden said. "I can't wait to see the satellite photos of his face after they make him eat six goldfish, spin him around, and subject him to the aggressive interrogation techniques of Jalaluddin Haqqani. Plus, we wrote 'I Hate Arabs' all over his face in permanent marker." Although the 10 masked men who kidnapped Panetta from his Langley, Virginia office reportedly stripped him down before packing him into the cargo hold, sources said they did give him $10,000 cash and a 9 mm pistol.

Video and Transcript: Guantánamo Lawyers Facing US Jail Time?

Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour, lawyers for a number of Guantánamo Bay detainees, have been summoned to court over a letter they sent to President Obama detailing the torture their client Binyam Mohamed claims he faced. Stafford Smith and Ghappour face charges of 'unprofessional conduct' and revealing classified evidence, and will attend a hearing in Washington, DC on May 11. Stafford Smith has called the charges "frivolous", pointing out that all information in the letter, classified or otherwise, had been redacted by censors, leaving only the subject line "In re: torture of Binyam Mohamed". Like Stafford Smith I'd also question the sanity a law that makes revealing classified information about Guantántamo Bay to the President of the United States a crime.



AMY GOODMAN: This last story, an unusual development in the case of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident recently released after seven years in US custody, where he claims he was repeatedly tortured, first in a secret CIA prison, later at Guantanamo. Binyam Mohamed’s lawyers, Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour, could face six months in a US prison, The Guardian newspaper revealed last week, because of a letter they sent to President Obama explaining their client’s allegations of torture by US agents.

Officials from the Department of Defense who monitor and censor communication between Guantanamo prisoners and their lawyers filed a complaint against Mohamed’s lawyers for “unprofessional conduct” and for revealing classified evidence to the President. The memo the lawyers sent to Obama was completely redacted except for the title. It had urged the President to release evidence of Mohamed’s alleged torture into the public domain. Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour have been summoned before a D.C. court on May 11th.

I’m joined now in these last few minutes by Clive Stafford Smith, director of the British legal charity Reprieve.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Clive Stafford Smith, you’re afraid of being arrested if you come into this country?

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: No, I’m going to come to the country, because I want to face the charges. I mean, the charges are, to my mind, frivolous, because—it may be confusing to your listeners when you say that we supposedly revealed classified evidence and then say it was all censored—it was all censored. There wasn’t one iota of classified evidence revealed. So the real question, I guess, here is why the government continues to cover up the evidence of Binyam Mohamed’s torture.

AMY GOODMAN: But please explain, because I think this can be very confusing, what it is they said you did in this letter to President Obama. You are Binyam Mohamed’s lawyer.

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Well, I wrote a letter to President Obama and attached to it a memorandum that was going to originally be the evidence that showed that Binyam was tortured. But that evidence we had to submit through the classification review process. So, ultimately, the two-page memo of evidence that Binyam had been tortured was all redacted, as you mentioned, so it was all blacked out. I mean, even to the President it was blacked out. And the only thing left in it was, you know, “In re: torture of Binyam Mohamed.”

What we were trying to do was get President Obama the information he needs to make a judgment as to whether the US should continue to cover up this evidence of torture. And it’s paradoxical that the President of the United States is not being permitted to make that judgment in a meaningful way.

AMY GOODMAN: So you will come to the United States for this May 11th hearing?

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Oh, my goodness, yes. I mean, I am, I will say, offended by this process, but nothing would keep me away. I want to clear both mine and Ahmad’s name. And I want the real issue to be why the government continues to cover up the evidence of Binyam’s torture, because how can it be that we, as Americans, are not allowed to know when our government officials have committed criminal offenses against people like Binyam Mohamed? That just makes no sense at all. And if, indeed, someone should be on trial here, it should be the people who tortured Binyam.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there. Clive Stafford Smith, thank you very much for this update.

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Thank you.
Video of the exchange on Democracy Now! as well as the transcript are available here.