Fox News Karl Rove Criticize Obama's Response

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Once again The Fox News Channel calls upon former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove to offer a selective memory analsys about President Barack Obama's response to the failed bombing abord an airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day. Most laughable was that Rove's outrage that Obama waited 72 hours before making his first public statement regarding the incident. Rove's spin might garner high-fives around the trailer parks where Fox Viewers gather around their bootleg satallite hookups, he seems to have forgotten that on December 22, 2001 during Bush's watch, Richard Reid who is infamously known as the show bomber - failed in his attempt to blow up a Miama bound jet with explosives hidden in his shoe. This was just 4 months after the Bush Administration ignored credible intelligance that became a gree light for the September 11th Trade Center attact. Nevertheless, President Bush did not directly address the foiled plot for 6 days and you can't help wondering that if Rove thinks that 72 hours was too long for Obama to respond. What in the hell were Rove and Bush doing all God Damn day that it took nearly a frickin' week before Bush got around to making a public statment on the foiled shoe bomber incident.



With Fox News trying to high-jack Time-Warner Cable by seeking an increace in fees of up to 300% - The lack of other cable networks asking for anything close to that, it's obvious that these fee increases are a direct result of the damage that Glenn Beck has done by driving advertisers away from his bi-polar, racist, hate speech. I've written Time Warner a letter authorizing them to increase my single cable bill by 300% if they'll just drop Fox Cable Network and their local affiliets. I would gladly pay
$267 per month to see that happen. Hopefully I'm not alone.

Investigators Examining Interrogations, Legal Advice

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Yesterday, the Washington Post published an article on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Bush-era interrogation techniques. Greg Sargent flagged two paragraphs of the story revealing that the White House intends to release a 2004 CIA report that casts serious doubt on the effectiveness of Bush’s torture program:

When the Justice Department said seven years ago that CIA interrogators at a secret prison in Thailand could make a suspected al-Qaeda leader fear he was drowning, it prescribed precise limits: Water could be poured from a cup or small watering can onto a saturated cloth covering his mouth and nose, inhibiting breathing for up to 40 seconds. It could be repeated, after allowing three or four full breaths, for up to 20 minutes.

But when the technique was employed on Abu Zubaida and later on 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and al-Qaeda planner Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the interrogators in several cases applied what the CIA's Office of Inspector General described in a secret 2004 report as "large volumes of water" to the cloths, explaining that their aim was to be more "poignant and convincing," according to a recently declassified Justice Department account.

To assess whether interrogators complied with the department's guidance, Senate intelligence committee investigators are interviewing those involved, examining hundreds of CIA e-mails and reviewing a classified 2005 study by the agency's lawyers of dozens of interrogation videotapes, according to government officials who said they were not authorized to be quoted by name. Officials familiar with the Justice Department's inquiries into policymaking on detainees during the Bush administration said Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has not ruled out conducting a similar investigation.

The issue has attracted scrutiny because of President Obama's statement April 22 that those involved would be immune from prosecution if they "carried out some of these operations within the four corners of legal opinions or guidance that had been provided from the White House."

Portions of the CIA inspector general report that have been made public and an account of detainees' experiences by the International Committee of the Red Cross highlight other potential excesses: the punching and beating of at least nine detainees in ways that appeared to go beyond authorized abdominal and facial "slaps"; the extended confinement of at least one detainee in a box so small that he had to crouch despite approval only for seated confinement; the slamming of detainees into firm walls, instead of the authorized pushing into a "false" wall that gave way; and the shackling of detainees' arms to overhead hooks or pipes, requiring that the prisoners stand for days at a time, despite the apparent absence of clear, written authorization by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for such shackling before 2005

The videotape study, which the Senate intelligence committee demanded to see in 2005 but did not receive until last year, assessed the legality of interrogations that occurred between April and December 2002. Its conclusions have not been disclosed, and the CIA destroyed the videotapes in late 2005. As early as October 2002, a lawyer for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, Jonathan Fredman, told officers at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that "the videotaping of even totally legal techniques will look 'ugly,' " a recent report by the Senate Armed Services Committee said.

Government officials familiar with the CIA's early interrogations say the most powerful evidence of apparent excesses is contained in the "top secret" May 7, 2004, inspector general report, based on more than 100 interviews, a review of the videotapes and 38,000 pages of documents. The full report remains closely held, although White House officials have told political allies that they intend to declassify it for public release when the debate quiets over last month's release of the Justice Department's interrogation memos.

According to excerpts included in those memos, the inspector general's report concluded that interrogators initially used harsh techniques against some detainees who were not withholding information. Officials familiar with its contents said it also concluded that some of the techniques appeared to violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified by the United States in 1994.

Although some useful information was produced, the report concluded that "it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks," according to the Justice Department's declassified summary of it. The threat of such an imminent attack was cited by the department as an element in its 2002 and later written authorization for using harsh techniques.
When the report was finished, CIA official Constance Rea told a New York court in January 2008, the inspector general "notified DOJ and other relevant oversight authorities of the review's findings." But two Bush administration officials privy to its conclusions said it did not provoke a specific CIA "referral" to the department suggesting an investigation of potential criminal liability, and no such investigation was undertaken at the time.

A U.S. intelligence official, asked for comment Friday, said that at the time of the inspector general report, the agency's general counsel "took issue with the interpretations of law put forward" in that report. "The bar for criminal referrals is low -- basically the possibility that a crime may have been committed. If it was all as clear-cut as the IG narrative suggests, why were no referrals made?"

The report's conclusions nonetheless prompted CIA general counsel John A. Rizzo to request fresh statements by the Justice Department that what the agency had been doing was indeed legal. Steven G. Bradbury, then deputy assistant attorney general, responded in May 2005 by issuing three opinions explaining why the interrogations did not violate the Convention Against Torture.

Legal experts say that bringing criminal charges against the CIA interrogators or those who ordered harsh methods would be akin to prosecuting police officers for brutality, but it could require also proving that the interrogators acted in bad faith.
David Kaye, a former State Department lawyer who runs UCLA's International Human Rights Program, said, "I don't think we know . . . the mechanics of how OLC legal advice made its way to people in the field, and it's the mechanics that will help investigators know whether there was bad faith in the interrogation program on the ground."

He added that U.S. anti-torture laws bar even "the conspiracy to commit torture," and those are the provisions that "should cause concern for [any] senior-level officials" who sanctioned improper interrogations, even from a distance.

Karl Rove Takes Staged Questions From The Audiance.

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Listen to Karl Rove respond to an obviously staged question from a member of the audience by saying that he is bothered by bias media outlets and how they effect the electorate as well as our democracy.
I swear! - He really said this! - Watch The Video.

Karl Rove On Meet The Press - CIA Leak

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Chico Brisbane to all unsophistocated criminals: Keep you frickin cake hole shut!

Watch Video:
Karl Rove obviously says more than he intends to during a sit-with David Gregory on Meet The Press.

FOX NEWS: Fair & Balanced.....NOT!

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Just a reminder as to the hidden agenda of the Fox News Channel.

Mike Connell Whacked By Rove?

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'Karl Rove's IT guru' Mike Connell dies in plane crash

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UPDATE AT THIS LINK: GOP consultant killed in plane crash was warned of sabotage

A top level Republican IT consultant who was set to testify in a case alleging GOP election tampering in Ohio died in a plane crash late Friday night.

Michael Connell -- founder of Ohio-based New Media Communications, which created campaign Web sites for George W. Bush and John McCain -- died instantly after his single-prop, private aircraft smashed into a vacant home in suburban Lake Township, Ohio.

"The plane was attempting to land around 6 p.m. Friday at Akron-Canton Airport when it crashed about three miles short of the runway," reports the Akron Beacon Journal.

Connell's exploits as a top GOP IT 'guru' have been well documented by RAW STORY's investigative team.

The interest in Mike Connell stems from his association with a firm called GovTech, which he had spun off from his own New Media Communications under his wife Heather Connell’s name. GovTech was hired by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to set up an official election website at election.sos.state.oh.us to presented the 2004 presidential returns as they came in.

Connell is a long-time GOP operative, whose New Media Communications provided web services for the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Republican National Committee and many Republican candidates. This in itself might have raised questions about his involvement in creating Ohio’s official state election website.

However, the alternative media group ePlubibus Media further discovered in November 2006 that election.sos.state.oh.us was hosted on the servers of a company in Chattanooga, TN called SmarTech, which also provided hosting for a long list of Republican Internet domains.

“Since early this decade, top Internet ‘gurus’ in Ohio have been coordinating web services with their GOP counterparts in Chattanooga, wiring up a major hub that in 2004, first served as a conduit for Ohio's live election night results,” researchers at ePluribus Media wrote.

A few months after this revelation, when a scandal erupted surrounding the firing of US Attorneys for reasons of White House policy, other researchers found that the gwb43 domain used by members of the White House staff to evade freedom of information laws by sending emails outside of official White House channels was hosted on those same SmarTech servers.

Given that the Bush White House used SmarTech servers to send and receive email, the use of one of those servers in tabulating Ohio’s election returns has raised eyebrows. Ohio gave Bush the decisive margin in the Electoral College to secure his reelection in 2004.

IT expert Stephen Spoonamore says the SmartTech server could have functioned as a routing point for malicious activity and remains a weakness in electronic voting tabulation."...I have reason to believe that the alternate accounts were used to communicate with US Attorneys involved in political prosecutions, like that of Don Siegelman," said RAW STORY's Investigative News Editor, Larisa Alexandrovna, on her personal blog Saturday morning. "This is what I have been working on to prove for over a year. In fact, it was through following the Siegelman-Rove trail that I found evidence leading to Connell. That is how I became aware of him. Mike was getting ready to talk. He was frightened.

"He has flown his private plane for years without incident. I know he was going to DC last night, but I don't know why. He apparently ran out of gas, something I find hard to believe. I am not saying that this was a hit nor am I resigned to this being simply an accident either. I am no expert on aviation and cannot provide an opinion on the matter. What I am saying, however, is that given the context, this event needs to be examined carefully."

"Mr. Connell has confided that he was being threatened, something that his attorneys also told the judge in the Ohio election fraud case," concluded Alexandrovna.

An FAA investigation into the causes of Connell's plane crash is underway, but no results are expected for several weeks.UPDATE AT THIS LINK: GOP consultant killed in plane crash was warned of sabotage