Another amazing story of survival and miracles from today in Haiti. CNN’s AC360 reports:
A five-year-old boy named Monley was found alive in the rubble of his home today. His mother was killed and his father is missing. Monley was taken to a hospital where doctors say he has no broken bones, but he is suffering from severe dehydration.
Anderson was at the hospital when Monley arrived this afternoon. He got details on the rescue from his family.
“The uncle was actually searching through the rubble, looking for the dead body of his brother, this boy’s father. The uncle, with four of his friends, not some international search and rescue team, pulled out the little boy,” Anderson reported earlier today.
Further to this morning’s blog about former Vice President Cheney’s bold if faintly ludicrous manoeuvre on Fox News to call for the declassification of Government memoranda that prove torture worked, there are two notable pieces in The Washington Post.
First, the ridiculous. Marc Thiessen, who was a speechwriter for President Bush but has somehow transformed into a “senior” Adminstration official in recent weeks, claims, “The CIA’s Questioning Worked“. He tries to prove this through one of the four declassified memoranda from last week, the July 2005 “finding” by Government lawyer Stephen Bradbury that rationalised torture.
It doesn’t seem to worry Thiessen that the same memorandum constructing an argument for illegal interrogation might just exaggerate or even lie about the benefits of those interrogations. For example, Thiessen writes, “Interrogations of [Abu] Zubaydah — again, once enhanced techniques were employed — furnished detailed information regarding al Qaeda’s ‘organizational structure, key operatives, and modus operandi’ and identified KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammad] as the mastermind of the September 11 attacks.”
In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida’s tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida — chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates — was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.
Now, the sublime. Dan Froomkin once again takes apart the “torture works” argument of Cheney, Thiessen, and other former Government officials. Today’s analysis is so well-documented that it should be available as a rebuttal to anyone who tries to evade the full extent of the Bush Administration’s criminal activity: Read the rest of this entry »
The George W. Bush Presidential Center has launched its website with a biography of the 43rd President of the United States, who “took unprecedented steps to protect our homeland and create a world free from terror”. It seems, however, that some information has been lost in posting. Can you help repair the website?
Quick Clue 1: Four letters, starts with “I”. Quick Clue 2: Seven letters, starts with “K”.
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George W. Bush served as the 43rd President of the United States. He was sworn into office on January 20, 2001, re-elected on November 2, 2004, and sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2005. Prior to his Presidency, President Bush served for 6 years as the 46th Governor of the State of Texas, where he earned a reputation for bipartisanship and as a compassionate conservative who shaped public policy based on the principles of limited government, personal responsibility, strong families, and local control. Read the rest of this entry »
So what went wrong for Jindal on Tuesday? And if this speech doesn’t kill his career will his lie- about helping a now-dead Sheriff fight bureacracy to save lives during Katrina – do so?
In the run-up to the 44th President of the USA, there was a good deal of black comedy in the desperation of some to prevent the 43rd from taking his place in oblivion. From Karl Rove, who may just have been trying to sweep up around his own place in our memories, to Charles Krauthammer, who helped sell the notion of the “unipolar moment” that assisted the Bush Administration in its failed ambitions, to Andrew Roberts, who clung to dreams of American Empire, to Bruce Anderson, who bellowed, “History Will Vindicate Bush”, to former Dubya speechwriters, the chant went up: One Day You’ll Be Grateful for All He Did.
So, in that spirit, we’re pleased to re-print, from AlterNet, Bernie Horn’s Top10 Reasons to Remember Dubya.
So Long Worst President Ever; 10 Reasons History Will Hang You
5 p.m. Well, that’s Day 2 (so far) of the Great Obama Foreign Policy Journey. Tomorrow, we’ll attempt an assessment of the ups, downs, and in-betweens of the initial meetings and decisions.
The President’s moves not only on Guantanamo Bay but on CIA black sites were encouraging, even if they cannot be implemented soon. Less encouraging, despite all the fanfare at the State Department were the Mitchell and Holbrooke appointments, as it is not clear the Administration has really thought through its diplomatic approach. It is a blessing, at least, that Obama and Hillary Clinton did not make the situation worse by naming Dennis Ross as envoy on Iranian matters, a move only slightly less provocative than appointing Mike Tyson to keep the peace.
The emerging conflict and muddle over Iraq and Afghanistan, brought out by the Robert Gates statement and the military-White House competing briefings on Iraq, is not encouraging.
Gates, unintentionally, points to the conflict that has already broken out over troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, stating that “no decision on troop deployments to Afghanistan has been made”. What is even more disconcerting, however, is his explanation that the Obama Administration’s new war plan will focus on “very concrete things” such as establishing control in parts of the country, going after al Qaeda, and delivering services and security for the Afghan people.
Hmm….isn’t that what the Bush Administration was doing? Apparently not: “The goals we did have for Afghanistan [were] too broad and too far into the future, [were] too future-oriented, and [were] we need more concrete goals that can be achieved realistically within three to five years.”
That, to be blunt, is gobbledy-gook. One can only hope it is not reflective of the thinking in the NSC-military meeting yesterday.
0255 GMT
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Further to this morning’s blog about former Vice President Cheney’s bold if faintly ludicrous manoeuvre on Fox News to call for the declassification of Government memoranda that prove torture worked, there are two notable pieces in The Washington Post.
George W. Bush served as the 43rd President of the United States. He was sworn into office on January 20, 2001, re-elected on November 2, 2004, and sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2005. Prior to his Presidency, President Bush served for 6 years as the 46th Governor of the State of Texas, where he earned a reputation for bipartisanship and as a compassionate conservative who shaped public policy based on the principles of limited government, personal responsibility, strong families, and local control.
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