eged members of the Taleban and Al-Qaeda who had been captured.

The major thrust of the memo is that the president's power to wage war is virtually unchecked, and that neither the judicial nor the legislative branches of government, let alone international law, can interfere.

What makes this memo disturbing is how it uses law and legal reasoning in a dishonest fashion to undermine core principles of the American legal and political systems. This includes the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, the Fifth Amendment's protection of due process, and the system of checks and balances built into the constitution to prevent any one branch of government from becoming dominant.

The Pentagon memo. For example, the document asserts that the only persons who can benefit from Eighth Amendment protections are those who have already been convicted, because "cruel and unusual" refers to the punishment received after conviction. Therefore, according to the memo, cruel and unusual behavior has to be inflicted as punishment (not for example as an interrogation technique) to involve the Eighth Amendment.

The lengthy draft report outlines the relevant international and domestic laws forbidding torture and deconstructing legal issues regarding interrogations and imprisonment, such as definitions of pain, punishment and suffering.

The memo also considers whether torture is an acceptable interrogation method because of necessity; particularly in the case of a "ticking time bomb" scenario, where a captured individual might possesses information that could defuse a plot to kill many. This is, of course, the most emotionally persuasive argument and indeed the one resonating most with Americans, including myself.

But, the fact remains that those held in custody both in Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay have been held there for months, if not years. They, arguably, no longer possess information on imminent threats.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/062304B.shtml

It's the Big Lie technique - never flinch in the face of truth. That's why Bush will never admit that he got it wrong when he told the nation on the eve of going to war:

There's a saying that "a lie can get halfway around the world before truth gets its pants on."

On 18 June 04, Mr. Cheney said that the "evidence is overwhelming" of an Iraq-Qaeda axis and that there had been a "whole series of high-level contacts" between them.

Late last week, commission leaders invited Cheney to provide intelligence reports that would buttress the White House's insistence that there were close ties between Hussein and al Qaeda, a commission member said. Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton told the New York Times they wanted to see any additional information in the administration's possession after Cheney said Thursday in a television interview that he "probably" knew things about Iraq's ties to terrorists that the commission did not.

VP Cheney, on CNBC, said the media had been irresponsible in reporting the commission's findings. "What they [the commission] were addressing was whether or not they [Iraq] were involved in 9/11," he said. "They did not address the broader question of a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in other areas, in other ways."

In fact, commission spokesman Al Felzenberg on Friday confirmed that the commission was addressing the broader relationship. "We found no evidence of joint operations or joint work or common operations between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government, and that's beyond 9/11," he said.

Advisers to the White House said Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney would continue to be aggressive in countering the commission's conclusions - or in the White House's official view, the misinterpretation by the news media of the commission's conclusions - because failing to do so would undermine their credibility and their rationale for taking the country to war.

The Bush campaign and the Republican National Committee sent e-mail messages to supporters suggesting that they saw no big gulf between the White House's position and the commission. "We'll continue to talk about how Saddam Hussein was a threat, and his ties to terrorism, and we will not give an inch on what we've said in the past," Mr. Bartlett said.

Comment: I bet this is email is an act of the Office of Strategic Information (aka Disinformation).

If it's not part of the war on terror, then what is it - some cockeyed adventure on the part of George W. Bush ?

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/062104C.shtml

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/062304F.shtml

But if you were watching the Fox News Channel, you saw something very different, as the conservative cable network eagerly defended the Bush administration and criticized the rest of the media for mishandling the story.

http://www.fair.org/activism/fox-commission.html

Comment: Fox is also part of the OSI.

Tim Russert called attention Sunday to reports that the White House had been allowed to review the staff reports just made public, and asked if that was appropriate. Ben-Veniste indicated that the purpose of reviewing the reports is supposed to be to find and eliminate any classified information. He also said, though, that the White House "went somewhat beyond that and took issue with some of what the staff had concluded."

Indeed, an early draft of one draft report was changed, according to Newsweek. A passage expressing skepticism about the account of Cheney getting Bush's approval for the shoot-down order was reportedly removed after the White House objected.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/062304A.shtml

One of the E-voting machines companies "hard-wired" an administrative password into their machines that is on everyone of their machines and this password was said to be "1111".

Source: C-SPAN, 21 June 04, and during a panel discussion at American Enterprise Institute.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. MY NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is MY NEWSLETTER endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

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