White House Refused to Allow Still Photography at Bush Speech

 

Daryl Lang

PDN Online

Friday, January 12, 2007

 

NEW YORK The White House broke with tradition Wednesday night and refused to let photojournalists shoot still pictures of the president at the podium after his prime-time address on the Iraq war.

 

As a result, newspapers and wire services had little choice but to run low-quality frame grabs from the video of the speech. An official handout photo from the White House, which most news outlets rejected, was the only other option. Caught in a bind on deadline, some newspapers ran the official White House photo with no disclosure that it was provided by the government.

 

The Associated Press and Reuters, who refused to accept the handout photo, sent their members notices explaining that frame grabs from the White House video pool would be their only photo coverage of the speech.

 

"Reuters News Pictures regrets that due to restrictions imposed by the White House, Reuters will not be able to provide still photographs from President Bush's White House address on Iraq," the Reuters bulletin said.

 

Normally after the president gives a televised address, a pool of news photographers takes pictures of the commander-in-chief standing behind the podium. The press was notified late Wednesday that photographers would not be allowed in after the Iraq address, says J. David Ake, assistant chief of bureau for photos at the AP in Washington. Ake says no reason was given for the limited access.

 

Ake says the AP always transmits video stills of a presidential address, and many outlets choose to run them because they are an accurate portrayal of the speech. "The difference [Wednesday] was there was no alternative," Ake says.

 

Dennis Brack, a longtime White House photographer and president of the White House News Photographers Association (WHNPA), calls the limited access "unacceptable" and says it is very unusual for a presidential address to be closed to photographers.

 

"It's not the first time I'm sure, but it's very infrequent, and I've been around since LBJ's time," Brack says. "The speech was a very historic speech of news value, and they elected to manage it as a public relations function."

 

The Los Angeles Times and USA Today were among the papers that published a blurry video still of the president on their front pages Thursday. The New York Times ran a video still -- complete with the C-SPAN logo -- as its lead art.

 

Other papers ran the handout photo, which was taken by official White House photographer Eric Draper. The Washington Post ran it on the front page credited to "ERIC DRAPER – THE WHITE HOUSE." Like many papers, the Post also illustrated its story with a photo of troops in Iraq.

 

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran the handout photo as its lead art and crediting it to "ERIC DRAPER/McClatchy Tribune," citing a news service that transmitted the photograph. The Journal-Constitution's front page ran no disclosure that Draper is employed by the White House.

 

Chris Stanfield, director of photography for the Journal-Constitution, says the paper does not normally run White House handout photos. Since this handout photo was almost identical to what people saw on TV, "It didn't bother me as much last night." Still, Stanfield says he would have preferred to run a shot from a different angle, such as a wide shot of the room the president was in, if such a picture had been available.

 

Last year the WHNPA complained that the Bush administration was too often closing events to photographers and asking the press to rely on official photographs instead. The WHNPA says the practice allows the White House to only show the images it wants people to see. Additionally, official White House photos tend to be posed and of little news value, the WHNPA says.

 

Of course, controlling the photo coverage isn't the same as controlling the story. Thursday's New York Daily News dutifully reproduced the official handout photo of the president's speech on its front page – underneath the headline "SORRY ... BUT I'M SENDING 21,500 MORE OF YOU OFF TO WAR."

Video: Military analyst believes recent US actions could signal Iran conflict soon

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEHXrs9o1vw&eurl=

 

Raw Story

Friday, January 12, 2007

 

US forces raided a facility that Iran claimed was being used for diplomatic purposes, alleging that Iranians were funneling weapons to the enemy. Six Iranians were captured in the raid at the consulate, with one being released earlier today.

 

Several analysts consider parts of President Bush's latest speech as an obvious threat to Iran. One, John Pike of GlobalSecurity, notes that U.S. actions could signal a conflict in the near future.

 

"It's really unclear what the President was saying," Pike said. "It's a little more clear what the United States is actually doing, [President Bush] was basically calling on Iran not to interfere with Iraq, not to further interfere with Iraq."

 

Pike added, "But, also, look at what he said the United States is going to do. As previously reported, several weeks ago, the aircraft carrier, John Stennis, is being dispatched to the Persian Gulf. That gives the United States two aircraft carriers in the Gulf. Round the clock operations. He also, surprisingly, announced that the United States was going to be deploying Patriot anti-missile interceptors to the region. It's difficult to imagine whose missiles those would be shooting down other than Iran. It's looks to me like the United States is, at least, raising its capabilities in preparation for possible military confrontation with Iran."

 

Pike provides a time frame in which the U.S. or Israel might first strike Iran, explaining, "I think the month of February is certainly a time of heightened probability. It's very difficult to understand exactly what the thinking is at the White House and in the Israeli government but for sometime now we've been saying that 2007 is probably the time, if there's going to be military action, it's probably going to come this year. Possible as soon as next month. Probably no later that August of this year."

 

Nearly a year ago, Pike warned about a "cycle of escalation."

 

"When the Americans or Israelis are thinking about [military force], I hope they will sit down and think about everything the ayatollahs could do to make our lives miserable and what we will do to discourage them," John Pike said in Feb. 2006.

 

"There could be a cycle of escalation," Pike added.

Olbermann: Bush's 'dangerous, even Messianic certitude' helped create 'a presidency of Cliff Notes'

 

Raw Story

Friday, January 12, 2007

 

One night after Bush's address to the nation, MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann blasted the president's "dangerous, even Messianic certitude."

 

"Only this President could extol the 'thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group,' and then take its most far-sighted recommendation — 'engage Syria and Iran' - and transform it into 'threaten Syria and Iran' — when Al-Qaeda would like nothing better than for us to threaten Syria, and when President Ahmmadinejad would like nothing better than to be threatened by us," Olberman said.

 

The MSNBC anchor added, "This is diplomacy by skimming; it is internationalism by drawing pictures of Superman in the margins of the text books; it is a presidency of Cliff Notes."

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J46RGzcxzMg&eurl=

 

Excerpts from Olbermann's special comment:

 

#

And lastly, as promised, a Special Comment about the President's address last night.

 

Only this President, only in this time, only with this dangerous, even Messianic certitude, could answer a country demanding an exit strategy from Iraq, by offering an entrance strategy for Iran.

 

Only this President, could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834 wounded in Iraq, and finally say "where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me" — only to follow that, by proposing to repeat the identical mistake in Iran.

 

Only this President could extol the "thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group," and then take its most far-sighted recommendation — "engage Syria and Iran" - and transform it into "threaten Syria and Iran" — when Al-Qaeda would like nothing better than for us to threaten Syria, and when President Ahmmadinejad would like nothing better than to be threatened by us.

 

This is diplomacy by skimming; it is internationalism by drawing pictures of Superman in the margins of the text books; it is a presidency of Cliff Notes.

 

Iran Is Target Of Military Build Up

Huge Military deployment in Gulf is ominous, neocon propaganda is mounting

 

Steve W

Infowars.net

Monday, January 15, 2007

 

The Defense Secretary Robert Gates today announced that the massive increase in military power in the Persian Gulf is directly aimed at Iran. Gates' comments follow a weekend of intense and heavy loaded rhetoric on the part of many neocon figureheads, signaling that the faintest spark could ignite a huge escalation of conflict in the middle east.

 

Speaking in Brussels after meeting Nato officials, Mr Gates said: "We are simply reaffirming that statement of the importance of the Gulf region to the United States and our determination to be an ongoing strong presence in that area for a long time into the future."

 

Gates said that Patriot anti-missile missiles, aircraft carriers, and cruise-missile-firing ships have been deployed in order to show Iran that the US means business and will not be distracted by the turmoil in Iraq. The build up has now been going on for weeks and shows no sign of being purely a warning.

 

The Patriot missiles are intended to shoot down Iranian missiles. The naval forces are there to pre-empt Iranian interference with oil shipments, which would be immediate retaliations to any strike.

 

A former commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Eduard Baltin, has today revealed that he believes a missile attack on the Iranians is imminent, while Republican Congressman and 2008 Presidential candidate Ron Paul fears a staged Gulf of Tonkin style incident may be used to provoke air strikes on Iran.

 

Indeed, the Fars news agency reported yesterday that there have already been rumours of nonexistent clashes between Iranian and American battleships in the Persian Gulf waters. A senior Iranian official viewed the rumor as "a part of the enemies' psychological war on Iran".

 

 

Last week US-led forces in northern Iraq arrested five Iranians who the US military says were connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard faction that funds and arms insurgents in Iraq - a claim Iran has also rejected.

 

This sudden assertion is comical.Why would Iranian Shi’ites want to arm Iraqi Sunnis, who want to kill Iraqi Shi’ites allied with Iran? A few appearances on the US propaganda outlets by the neocons are supposed to convince us that this is now the case however.

 

Dick Cheney appeared on Fox news and, between denouncing critics of the Iraq war, accused Iran of "fishing in troubled waters inside Iraq". Meanwhile the national security adviser, arch neocon Stephen Hadley, said the US was "going to need to deal with what Iran is doing inside Iraq", at the same time not ruling out a skirmish inside Iran.

 

In reality what the neocons have dubbed as 'evidence' of Iranian meddling, including the presence of Iranian officials, in Iraq, is not troubling to Iraq's Shia political parties, many of whose senior figures fled Saddam and lived for over twenty years in exile in Iran. Such figures see a powerful Shia neighbour in Iran, a friend and a religious and political exemplar in the midst of crisis.

 

And while the Iraqi government is actually talking to Iran, comfortably resolving security issues and praising Iranian cooperation, the neocons in the White House are running around foaming at the mouth, refusing to engage in talks and deploying war ships.

 

As the London Guardian has reported, Donald Rumsfeld and the AEI have developed a strategy for regime change in Iran that does not involve a ground invasion. Weapons of mass destruction will provide the rationale for military action, though it won't be limited to attacks on a few weapons factories. It will include limiting Iranian retaliatory capability, using bombers to destroy up to 10,000 targets in the first day of any war, and special forces flying in to destroy anything that's left.

 

The neocons would then be able to install another puppet regime and further control the region, plundering it's wealth and resources, while provoking the Muslim and Arab world to fight amongst themselves and hopefully, in the words of Henry Kissinger, kill each other off.

 

In other developments, Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich stated:

 

"if Bush attacks Iran, all bets[regarding impeachment] are off." Later he added, "We need to safeguard our Constitution." If the President takes steps towards another war, Kucinich warned, Congress could make "an active effort" toward impeachment.

 

"The President is clearly trying to provoke Iran," he said, adding that the Bush administration is "treading on the thinnest ice it has ever been on."

 

Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts has asserted that the only way to stop the impending attack on Iran is to press for immediate impeachment:

 

"Americans don’t have much time to realize this and to act before it is too late. Bush’s “surge” speech last Wednesday night makes it completely clear that his real purpose is to start wars with Iran and Syria before failure in Iraq brings an end to the neoconservative/Israeli plan to establish hegemony over the Middle East."

Toll Road Giant Buys Newspapers to Silence Critics

Critics charge that the Macquarie purchase of American Consolidated Media is designed to silence critics of a Texas toll road project

 

The Newspaper

Sunday, January 28, 2007

 

Australian toll road giant Macquarie agreed Wednesday to purchase forty local newspapers, primarily in Texas and Oklahoma, for $80 million. Macquarie Bank is Australia's largest capital raising firm and has invested billions in purchasing roads in the US, Canada and UK. Most recently the company joined with Cintra Concesiones of Spain in a controversial 75-year lease of the 157-mile Indiana Toll Road.

 

Sal Costello, the leading opponent of toll road projects as head of the Texas Toll Party, says the move is directly related to a 4000-mile toll road project known as the Trans-Texas Corridor. It will cost between $145 and $183 billion to construct the road, expected to be up to 1200 feet wide, requiring the acquisition of 9000 square miles of land in the areas through which it will pass.

"The newspapers are the main communication tool for many of the rural Texan communities, with many citizens at risk of losing their homes and farms through eminent domain," Costello wrote.

Many of the small papers purchased, most have a circulation of 5000 or less, have been critical of the Trans-Texas Corridor. An article in the Bonham Journal for example, states, "The toll roads will be under control of foreign investors, which more than frustrates Texans."

No Law To Mandate Dangerous, Untested HPV Vaccine

Media hoax fools parents into thinking Merck shots are mandatory, big pharma laughs as obscene profits roll in

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

 

A media hoax has fooled parents in Texas and other areas of the country that the HPV vaccine, which experts have slammed as untested and has already been linked to dangerous side-effects, is now the law and young girls must take it. Merck Pharmaceuticals are set to capitalize on this fraud by making obscene profits from a crony deal with Governor Rick Perry, while children are put at risk.

 

Perry issued an executive order Friday requiring girls to be vaccinated against the sexually transmitted HPV, or human pappilomavirus. Doctors, scientists and experts were not consulted before the sweeping mandate was put in place. Several Texas lawmakers, including Sen. Jane Nelson, have petitioned for a reversal of the decision but the

 

Legislature has no authority to repeal Perry's executive order.

 

According to the

Associated Press, Perry has close ties to Merck, having received money from them for his re-election campaign .

 

"He also has ties to Women in Government, a Merck-funded advocacy group made up of female state legislators around the country. His current chief of staff's mother-in-law, Texas Republican state Rep. Dianne White Delisi, is a state director for the group," reports the AP.

 

Perry's former chief of staff Mike Toomey is on the Merck payroll as a lobbyist.

 

Almost immediately following Perry's announcement, newspapers and TV stations began to report that it was "the law" that parents had to have their child vaccinated. This reflects a national and international hoax that is repeatedly being perpetrated shortly before school terms begin each year.

 

There is no law in America, aside from those applying to medical workers, that says you or your child has to take any vaccine whatsoever, no matter what any executive order, requirement, mandate or policy dictates, there is no situation where you can go to prison for refusing a government vaccine under the U.S. constitution and the law of the land.

 

As in the case of all other vaccines, Perry's executive order merely states that the vaccine is "recommended," yet the mass media drumbeat constantly conditions people to believe that if they don't take their shots they will be kicked out of school, arrested and thrown in jail.

This trick will continue to hoodwink Americans into taking all manner of dangerous and untested vaccines, the number of which rises every year, until they realize that there is no law that forces them to take any vaccine.

 

This issue is of vital importance not just to Texans but to everyone across the country, because all fifty states have been the target of Merck Pharmaceutical's biggest lobbying effort ever to get this vaccine mandated throughout the nation, by paying off Governors and other officials to curry favor.

Merck were unable to sell the "benefits" of the vaccine to make enough profit out of it, so instead they turned to state legislature to force eleven year old girls (and in other states children as young as eight) who aren't even sexually active to take the shot.

 

A lot of states have rejected Merck's advances outright but Texas could provoke a chain reaction that would influence other areas to submit to big pharma's agenda.

What is actually in the vaccine? Live genetically engineered cancer virus. As the vaccine spreads in use, reports of horrible side effects are already starting to proliferate.

 

"Negative side effects of Gardasil, a new Merck vaccine to prevent the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer, are being reported in the District of Columbia and 20 states, including Virginia. The reactions range from loss of consciousness to seizures," reports the

Washington Times.

 

"Young girls are experiencing severe headaches, dizziness, temporary loss of vision and some girls have lost consciousness during what appear to be seizures," said Vicky Debold, health policy analyst for the National Vaccine Information Center, a nonprofit watchdog organization that was created in the early 1980s to prevent vaccine injuries."

 

The report quotes physicians who debunk the claim that the HPV vaccine even prevents cervical cancer, as is claimed by Merck and the FDA.

 

"There is no proof Gardasil will stop cervical cancer," said Clayton Young, an obstetrician/gynecologist in Texas, "They haven't been studying it long enough to make that claim."

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1x8gs735is&eurl=

CLIP: Alex welcomes the President of the Texas Eagle Forum, Cathy Adams, to discuss Perry's executive order and the HPV vaccine.

 

Merck makes 360 dollars per shot, equaling billions of dollars in fat profits from bullying or paying off legislatures to mandate the vaccine.

 

Media spin has succeeded in turning the debate into a partisan issue, putting liberals to sleep, aided by deluded conservatives who are only against the executive order because it seemingly encourages teenagers to have pre-marital sex.

 

The core of the issue has nothing to with partisan bickering about abstinence, it's about the fundamental human right to not have your body meddled with on the order of a government mandate which isn't even a law. Liberals will whine all day about their right to kill babies in the womb, arguing that the government shouldn't interfere with what a woman chooses to do with her body, but when it comes to mandatory vaccines, they're all for it!

 

As an example, check out this commentary from the liberal

Crooks and Liars website.

"Seriously, this is such a no-brainer that I'm surprised other states haven't jumped on the bandwagon. The whole wingnut argument that this encourages girls to have sex is a bit bizarre to me. As a mom, I truly hope that my daughter will have a fulfilling sex life when she's an adult. I don't see how a shot in the sixth grade will make her more likely to have sex at a younger age. But if I can do something to prevent her from getting cancer in her 40s, what's the problem with that?"

 

The problem is that men in black uniforms holding your child down and sticking a needle in their arm by executive order whether you like it or not is un-American. Liberals will cry Roe vs. Wade all day long when it comes to aborting babies but when it comes to the "choice" of letting the government inject their child with whatever they like by force, the pro-choicers are eager to comply.

 

Vaccines and drugs that are not stringently tested and are instead foisted upon populations for the purposes of making obscene profits have a clear history of deadly consequences.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS3mhjt7TrY&eurl=

 

Consider the case of Bayer Pharmaceuticals, who deliberately dumped a vaccine that was known to be contaminated with AIDS virus on the European and Latin American market after it killed people in America. Thousands died from an action that the U.S. government allowed to happen through the FDA.

 

Peruse

the plethora of examples where vaccines containing mercury, live HIV virus, live cancer and other horrors have wrought misery after victims were bullied into taking them by government mandates that they were deluded into thinking was the law.

 

The history alone, a legacy that led former director of the National Institute of Health Dr. James R. Shannon to state, "The only safe vaccine is one that is never used," implores us to stand up and fight Perry's collusion with Merck and ensure that similar executive orders are not passed elsewhere in the country as a result of cynical greed driven lobbying and corporate crony payoffs.

 

Parents across the country should rally to denounce this development, which sets the pretext for the state to dictate the health of their children, as well as moving us closer to legislation which would allow Americans to be forcibly vaccinated at gunpoint against their will during a time of manufactured crisis, such as in the case of a human to human bird flu pandemic.

Brzezinski Suggests False Flag Event Could Kick-Start Iran War

Top globalist warns Congress of provocation or terrorist attack inside U.S.

 

Former National Security Advisor and founding member of the Trilateral Commission Zbigniew Brzezinski tacitly warned a Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that an attack on Iran could be launched following a staged provocation in Iraq or a false flag terror attack within the U.S.

 

Brzezinski alluded to the potential for the Bush administration to manufacture a false flag Gulf of Tonkin type incident in describing a "plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran," which would revolve around "some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

 

Brzezinski was careful to highlight the word "defensive" as if to discount its credibility, suggesting that the Bush White House itself would be behind the attack or provocation and subsequently use it as a pretext for war.

 

"That a man such as Brzezinski, with decades of experience in the top echelons of the US foreign policy establishment, a man who has the closest links to the military and to intelligence agencies, should issue such a warning at an open hearing of the US Senate has immense and grave significance,"

argues WSWS.org.

After Senators asked Brzezinski for clarification of exactly what he meant, the Polish-

 

American political scientist referenced the

infamous White House memo in which Bush and Blair discussed staging a provocation for an invasion of Iraq following the absence of weapons of mass destruction. Brzezinski cited how Bush "described the several ways in which this could be done," but refused to elaborate, stating only, "the ways were quite sensational, at least one of them."

 

Brzezinski is of course referring to the plan to fly a U2 spy plane painted with UN colors over Iraq and goading Saddam to order the aircraft shot down, resulting in widespread international support for the war. Bush and Blair openly discussed the possibility of staging this provocation along with others during their January 31 2003 meeting.

 

"If one is of the view that one is dealing with an implacable enemy that has to be removed, that course of action may under certain circumstances be appealing. I’m afraid that if this situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, and if Iran is perceived as in some fashion involved or responsible, or a potential beneficiary, that temptation could arise," said Brzezinski.

 

 

Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski arrives to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, February 1, 2007. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES)

 

After his testimony, journalist Barry Grey tried to pin down Brzezinski and get specifics on the warning, asking, "Are you suggesting there is a possibility it could originate within the US government itself?"

 

"I’m saying the whole situation can get out of hand and all sorts of calculations can produce a circumstance that would be very difficult to trace," responded Brzezinski.

Should an attack occur within the U.S. as Brzezinski forecasted could happen, Dick Cheney's USSTRATCOM contingency plancalls for attacking Iran in the immediate aftermath of a 'second 9/11' - no matter who is behind it - which of course is going to be the cabal Dick Cheney fronts for itself and the same pack of murderers that are actively seeking to initiate global ethic cleansing and genocide to bring about world war three.

 

During his testimony, Brzezinski lamented that the invasion of Iraq represented "a historic, strategic and moral calamity."

 

Brzezinski's words and his desire to see the exercse of a "moral" foreign policy ring hollow, especially when it is understood that it was the former National Security Advisor to Carter himself who was responsible for drawing up the plan to arm and train the Islamic fundamentalist mujahideen at the end of the 70's and groom Osama bin Laden as a client of the U.S.

 

In addition, in his 1997 book

The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives, Brzezinski calls for the U.S. to install itself as the world's only superpower by taking over the Middle East and using it as a lever to control what he terms the Eurasian Balkans.

 

Similar to the PNAC yearning for a "new Pearl Harbor," Brzezinski concludes that the realization of such an agenda will only be accomplished with the aid of "a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat," which was helpfully provided by the events of 9/11.

 

So for Brzezinski to win plaudits for being critical of what's happening in Iraq is not only the height of hypocrisy, it's a myopic leap of logic that omits the past history of Brzezinski's rampant warmongering.

 

Whatever the reason for Brzezinski's apparent sudden change of heart, be it a pang or consciousness of simple political maneuvering, judging from his previous writings one feels it's more appropriate to take his reference to a false flag attack as a threat rather than a warning.

61% of Americans are against the new resolution of the goverment of sending more troops (21000 effectives) to Iraq...

 

Good, 21000 is a waste to make even a tiny bit of change it would take more then 100,000

Military action on Iran is needed. But Bush would be a fool to do it. If you want the problem solved and nipped in the bud a few nations attacking Iran would create another Iraq and be a huge mistake. What is needed is the UN and many nations to use military force. Sadly that will never happen and either america will go it alone and cause a bigger mess or the world will wait til the problem is too huge to ignore and it will be 100x harder. Either way war is going to happen, be it the USA now or many nations in the future.

 

But i hope bush isnt going to attack Iran, we cant even get Iraq and afghanistan under control, add Iran into it and we'd waste trillions more dollars and alot more would be dead without solving anything. So as of nowi would not support military action unless many nations were going to do it...

Why must Iran be subject to military action again?

Obama to announce 2008 plans in Illinois

 

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - The Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill. — where Abraham Lincoln held office before running for president — is the setting for the latest milestone in Sen. Barack Obama's remarkable rise to prominence. The first-term U.S. senator planned to formally announce his candidacy for president Saturday in the city where he began his political career just 10 years ago.

 

Obama is a newcomer to the national scene, having served just two years in the Senate, but he already is considered Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief rival among many vying for the Democratic nomination. He brings a wealth of political skills but a thin elective resume — the very reason he chose to stage his official campaign launch from the steps of the Old State Capitol.

 

Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president if elected, was tying his bid to the legacy of Lincoln — who served eight years in the Illinois Legislature — while using Springfield to tout his own eight-year record as a state senator.

 

In a video message on his Web site Friday, Obama said he was launching "a journey to take our country back and change the fundamental nature of our politics."

 

"I know a lot of you are cynical about the possibilities of that change," Obama said. "Sometimes it seems as if the game is fixed and it only works for the few and the powerful, but I fundamentally believe there is another brand of politics.

 

"Let's go get to work," he said.

 

Obama planned to travel throughout Iowa on Saturday and Sunday before returning to Chicago for a rally Sunday night. He planned to visit New Hampshire on Monday on the heels of Clinton, whose first visit to the state as a presidential candidate over the weekend provided some early competition for attention from Obama's announcement.

 

Obama, 45, gained national recognition with the publication of two best-selling books, "Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope," and by delivering the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. His optimistic message and his compelling biography immediately sparked talk of his White House potential.

 

Initially he said he would not run for president, but he revealed last fall that he was considering it after receiving so much encouragement. He formed a presidential exploratory committee last month.

 

Since then, Obama has hired some of the Democratic Party's top talent to work on a campaign headquartered in his hometown of Chicago, and he has offered some proposals.

 

He introduced a bill to prevent President Bush from increasing troop levels in Iraq and to remove U.S. combat forces from the country by March 31, 2008 — legislation that has virtually no chance of becoming law while Bush is president.

 

Obama was not yet elected to the U.S. Senate when Congress voted to give Bush the authority to go to war, but he gave a speech in 2002 opposing the war. He said Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the United States and predicted the invasion would lead to an occupation with undetermined costs and consequences.

 

His vision of what was to come in Iraq and his opposition to the invasion have helped build his support among the anti-war crowd.

Documents show new secretive US prison program isolating Muslim, Middle Eastern prisoners

Jennifer Van Bergen

Raw Story

Friday, February 16, 2007

 

The US Department of Justice has implemented a secretive new prison program segregating "high-security-risk" Muslim and Middle Eastern prisoners and tightly restricting their communications with the outside world in apparent violation of federal law, according to documents obtained by RAW STORY.

 

Quietly implemented in December, the special "Communications Management Unit" (CMU) at a federal penitentiary in Indiana targeting Muslim and Middle-Eastern inmates was not implemented through the process required by federal law, which stipulates the public be notified of any new changes to prison programs and be given the opportunity to voice objections. Instead, the program appears to have been ordered and implemented by a senior official at the Department of Justice.

 

In April of last year, the US Federal Bureau of Prisons -- part of the Department of Justice -- proposed a set of strict new regulations and, as required, there was a period of public comment. Human rights and civil liberties groups voiced strong concerns about the constitutionality of the proposed program.

 

The program originally proposed was said to be applicable only to terrorists and terrorist-related criminals. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), however, along with a coalition of other civil liberties groups, objected to the language of the regulation as too broad, and potentially applicable to non-terrorists and even to those not convicted of a crime but merely being held as "witnesses, detainees, or otherwise."

 

After pushback from civil rights groups, the program appeared to have been dropped by the Prisons Bureau, with coalition groups believing that they had made their case regarding Constitutional rights. Yet documents obtained by RAW STORY show that a similar program, the CMU, was surreptitiously implemented in December 2006.

 

Executive Director Howard Kieffer of Federal Defense Associates, a legal group based in California that assists inmates and lawyers of inmates on post-conviction defense matters, says the order for the program must have been issued by one of the offices which oversee the US Federal Bureau of Prisons.

 

Only three government offices have the authority to issue such changes in federal prison operations, and they all fall within the senior management of the Justice Department: the office of Harley Lappin, the Director of Prisons Bureau, the Office of Legal Counsel, or directly from the office of the US Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales.

 

The Public Affairs offices of the Department of Justice and the Attorney General referred all requests for comment to the Prisons Bureau. As of press time, Felice Ponce, an officer in the Prisons Bureau Office of Information, was unable to answer requests to confirm the existence of the program, provide details about it, or comment on it at all.

 

Those who had such information at the Bureau were all "out of pocket," Ponce said.

Documents obtained by RAW STORY show that the CMU program, instituted Dec. 11, 2006 -- shortly after the mid-term elections in which Democrats won both chambers of Congress -- is being implemented at Terre Haute Federal Correctional Institution in Indiana.

 

Under the CMU program, telephone communications must be conducted using monitored phone lines, be live-monitored by staff, are subject to recording, and must be in English only. All letters must be reviewed by staff prior to delivery or sending. Visits must be non-contact only, live-monitored, and subject to recording in English.

 

Keiffer asserts that the program, which purports to house high-risk inmates for the purpose of better monitoring their communications, "is not related to inmate security" at all.

 

The program "doesn't affect the highest security inmates who are still being kept in other high security prisons, where some may be allowed greater freedom in communications than the CMU inmates," he says. "It affects a class of inmates who would not garner as much sympathy as others and who have diminished support in the US."

"It is just like the detentions after 9/11," he adds. "It's profiling."

 

Calls placed to the FBI were not returned.

 

The CMU is in apparent violation of the Federal Administrative Procedures Act, which explicitly requires that all prison regulations be promulgated under that law. Courts have overturned programs that have violated this law "half a dozen times over the past ten years," Keiffer says.

 

One of the documents obtained by RAW STORY, titled "Institution Supplement," was issued by the Terre Haute facility and given to prisoners transferred into this new program. The document states that "all contact" between the inmates and "persons in the community" may only occur "according to national policy, with necessary adjustments indicated herein," indicating that the new program's contact rules are the same as normal prison rules except where "adjusted" in the Supplement.

 

Attorney Peter Goldberger, a Philadelphia-area specialist in criminal appeals and former law professor who has 30 years experience dealing with federal prisons and inmates, told RAW STORY that the Terre Haute Institution Supplement is officially a supplement to the Prison Bureau's national Program Statement on Inmate Discipline and Special Housing Units, published in the Code of Federal Regulations and last amended in 2003.

 

Keiffer explains that an Institution Supplement cannot exist by itself without specific authorization. The CMU Institution Supplement states that it is "according to national policy." But Keiffer notes that the national Program Statement does not in fact authorize the CMU program. In order for the program to be properly authorized, it would have to address the particular program parameters, locations, specify the inmates to whom it applied, and would have to take into account the specific and unique features of that program. The already existing national Program Statement does not address the CMU program and thus does not authorize it.

 

Goldberger notes that "what's different" about the program, "is limitation of contact with friends, family and outsiders -- instead of 300 minutes of telephone time per month, it's one 15 minute call per week, which can be reduced in the Warden's discretion to a mere three minutes once a month."

 

"Instead of all-day visiting every week or every other week, it's only two hours at a time, twice a month, with no physical contact, presumably sitting on opposite sides of a plexiglas window," Goldberger continued.

 

"And all letters, except to lawyers, courts, and Congress, will be read and copied, with weeks of delay, instead of cursorily inspected and sent right on," he adds. "It's a totally new and different program."

 

Director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, D.C. Kate Martin told RAW STORY that restrictions of inmate communications must be narrowly tailored to serve a specific identifiable need of the government. Martin said that there was a clear rationale for restricting communications of those who had previously handled classified information -- for example a former CIA agent who had passed secrets to a foreign government. But with individuals who never possessed classified information, she said, that rationale doesn't exist.

 

The government must show that the inmates had been plotting terrorist crimes from their cells or some similar scenario, Martin said. Without that, the restriction of communication of a group of prisoners raises a suspicion that it is actually an effort by the government to deny information to the press and public about what it is doing.

 

Who's in the program?

The federal penitentiary where the most dangerous criminals are held, including the Unabomber and the Millennium Bomber, is the maximum security prison known as ADMax at Florence, Colorado. The CMU is not being implemented there, however; instead it is being implemented in Terre Haute Federal Correctional Institution in Indiana.

 

The CMU is said to be targeting terrorists or suspected terrorists, but many being held are not considered high risk or even convicted of violent crimes.

 

According to a letter obtained by RAW STORY, sent by CMU inmate Dr. Rafil Dhafir to one of his supporters, the current unit has at present only 16 prisoners, but is expected to have 60-70 more added soon. Dhafir writes that the CMU "is still not fully understood. The staff here is struggling to make sense of the whole situation," and says that the prisoners are "so far treated with great respect and good accommodation" but "with the new system we will have absolutely no privacy." The letter has been posted on a support site for Dhafir.

 

Dr. Dhafir was convicted for violating US sanctions against Iraq, because he had sent humanitarian aid to the country during the restricted period. Dhafir was not charged with any terrorism related activities or a violent offense.

 

Also in CMU detention are also five of the "Lackawanna Six," a group of six American citizens who traveled to Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2001 and were indicted for giving material support to Al Qaeda. Yahya Goba, one of the group's members -- who turns up as a government witness in numerous cases -- is not in the system, although he was sentenced to ten years along with the other Lackawanna defendants.

 

Unconstitutional?

 

Howard Keiffer believes that the program not only violates federal law but the Constitution as well, saying it abridges the prisoners' right to freedom of expression and association. These inmates are "not able to communicate like other inmates," he said.

 

James Landrith, Jr., who heads "The Multiracial Activist," an on-line journal that covers social and civil liberties issues relating to multi-racialism, says the new program sets a "very, very bad precedent."

 

Landrith says it's "interesting that this administration is trying to push these things through covertly" -- things he views as unconstitutional restrictions -- "while you have a sitting Vice President who could be charged in the short-term future with having been involved in outing a CIA agent."

 

He added that the program "makes it very very hard for someone to mount a real defense or appeal when they can't talk to anyone on the outside."

 

Some say the program smacks of racial or religious profiling.

 

Paul Wright, the editor of Prison Legal News, told RAW STORY that "segregating prisoners based on their race, national origin or language directly contradicts the recent US supreme court ruling in Johnson v. California which held that the racial segregation of prisoners was illegal."

 

Johnson v. California, a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision, involved the segregation of African-American inmates. While the Court noted in its decision that it did not decide whether the segregation violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution, it nonetheless "explicitly reaffirm[ed] that the 'necessities of prison security and discipline,' are a compelling government interest justifying only those uses of race that are narrowly tailored to address those necessities."

 

Race, national or ethnic origin, one's status as an alien, or any innate or immutable characteristic that a person has no power to change must be scrutinized by courts under the same standard: only a compelling government interest and a narrowly tailored program is held to be constitutional.

 

Religious discrimination is prohibited by Prison Bureau regulations. The regulation states that Bureau "staff shall not discriminate against inmates on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or political belief. This includes the making of administrative decisions and providing access to work, housing and programs."

 

Director of the Human and Civil Rights Division of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation Ibrahim Ramey says his group is "deeply concerned about the violation of civil rights of incarcerated Muslims" who are targeted by the program.

 

"The removal and concentration of Muslims" Ramey says, is a "violation of the concept of innocent until proven guilty."

 

Though the inmates have been convicted, Ramey believes the CMU appears to be "a precursor to a program of segregation of people by religion in federal detention facilities."

"You don't segregate all Jews or all Christians," he adds.

 

Most of RAW STORY's calls and emails to inmates' attorneys or former attorneys were not returned. Several refused to comment. One attorney who represented one of the inmates at trial commented that "the new facility creates hardships for the family because of the distance and restrictions on visitation and phone use, but overall the staff are treating the inmates very well; they are very professional in their handling of the inmates."

 

Jennifer Van Bergen is the author of The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America, dubbed a "primer for citizenship." Her book Archetypes for Writers: Using the

 

Power of Your Subconscious will be out in March 2007.

 

Muriel Kane provided research assistance for this article.

Cheney: Now is the Time to Attack “Apocalyptic” Iran

 

Kurt Nimmo

Friday, February 23, 2007

 

Dick Cheney “has endorsed Republican senator John McCain’s proposition that the only thing worse than a military confrontation with Iran would be a nuclear-armed Iran,” reports the Herald Sun. “The visiting Vice-President said that he had no doubt Iran was striving to enrich uranium to the point where they could make nuclear weapons.”

 

Recall, back in 2002 and early 2003, there was nothing worse than an Iraq with weapons of mass destruction. Of course, no such weapons existed, nor do they in Iran, although it appears Cheney and McCain are careful to say a “nuclear-armed Iran” may exist in the future.

 

Cheney “accused Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of espousing an ‘apocalyptic philosophy’ and making ‘threatening noises about Israel and the US and others,’” the Herald Sun continues. “He also said Iran was a sponsor of terrorism, especially through Hezbollah. However, the US did not believe Iran possessed any nuclear weapons as yet,” as there is, once again, no evidence of this, not that such has stopped the neocons in the past.

 

As for Ahmadinejad’s supposed “apocalyptic philosophy,” recall last August a bevy of hysterical neocons, led by the grand daddy of Islamophobia, Bernard Lewis, warning that August 22 “might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world,” based on the Shi’a religious belief in the return of the Mahdi, also known as the “Hidden Imam.” Bill Kristol, prominent neocon and Straussian Machiavellian, declared August 22 “an important symbolic day for jihadists. And I’m curious to see what happens… [Ahmadinejad] may just say no or he may do something a little more dramatic, launch a missile or something” (see Neoconservatives Predict The Apocalypse Starts Tomorrow).

 

Of course, nothing of the sort happened, as it would be stupid to believe Ahmadinejad is akin to Jim Jones, prescribing mass suicide for a nation numbering around 70 million people.

 

As for “threatening noises about Israel and the US and other,” this should be considered a natural reaction, as Israel has plotted against Iran for decades and Bush’s neocon handlers, in sync with Zionists in Israel, have assigned the country a leading position on the “axis of evil” roster and as such have repeatedly suggested imposing crippling sanctions, tantamount to a declaration of war, and fantasize about leaving “on the table” the prospect of nuclear war. Normally, faced with magnificent threats, the threatened will make a bit of noise in response. In Bushzarro world and Likudland, such talk of self-defense is considered evidence of maleficient intent.

 

“You get various estimates of where the point of no return is,” said Cheney, citing Iran’s supposed desire to build nukes. “Is it when they possess weapons or does it come sooner, when they have mastered the technology but perhaps not yet produced fissile material for weapons?”

 

Interestingly, this is an admission by Cheney that Iran does not possess nuclear weapons.

 

Instead, Cheney suggests attacking Iran because, some day down the road, the country may have the capability to produce a nuke or two. As we know, of course, Israel and the neocons are anxious to attack Iran not because of any nuclear potential, now or in ten or fifteen years (as the CIA suggests), but because, for Israel, the Islamic nation is too big for its britches. “An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran,” the neocons wrote in the Clean Break document, drafted for Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996. Dissolving Iran, Iraq, Syria, indeed the entire Arab and Muslim Middle East, into “ethnically or religiously unique areas,” as suggested earlier by Oded Yinon, is the objective.

 

“In the long term when we look back on this period of time that will be a remarkable achievement,” said Cheney, reflecting, as Marquis de Sade, or rather Pol Pot might have, on the carnage and massive suffering and misery he has wrought. “We’re not there yet. We’ve still got a lot to do.”

 

Indeed, there is a “lot to do,” especially in regard to Iran.

Dems fault Bush over Iraq in 1st debate

 

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

ORANGEBURG, S.C. - Democratic presidential hopefuls flashed their anti-war credentials Thursday night, heaping criticism on President Bush's Iraq policy in the first debate of the 2008 campaign.

 

"The first day I would get us out of Iraq by diplomacy," said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, one of eight rivals on the debate stage.

 

"If this president does not get us out of Iraq, when I am president, I will," pledged Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

 

But Clinton found herself on the receiving end of criticism moments later when former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards said she or anyone else who voted to authorize the war should "search their conscience."

 

Edwards, in the Senate at the time, also cast his vote for the invasion, but he has since apologized for it.

 

Of the eight foes participating in the debate at South Carolina State University, four voted earlier in the day to support legislation that cleared Congress and requires the beginning of a troop withdrawal by Oct. 1. The legislation sets a goal of a complete withdrawal by April 1, 2008.

 

"We are one signature away from ending this war," said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. He said if Bush won't change his mind about vetoing the bill, Democrats need to work on rounding up enough Republican votes to override him.

 

In addition to Obama and Clinton, Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware and Chris Dodd of Connecticut also cast votes in favor of the legislation.

 

Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio also participated in the debate, lesser-funded contenders who seemed most eager to challenge their rivals.

 

Bush is barred by the Constitution from running for re-election next fall, and the result is an extraordinarily early start to the campaign to succeed him.

 

The debate — nine months before the kickoff Iowa caucuses — was 90 minutes long without opening or closing statements from the candidates. A similar format awaits GOP candidate next Thursday.

 

A ground rule limiting answers to 60 seconds made for a rapid-fire debate but prevented follow-up questions when any of the eight sidestepped — as when Clinton and Biden avoided saying whether they agreed with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's assessment that the Iraq war is lost.

Republicans rebutted from a distance.

 

"On every issue, from the war on terror to keeping our taxes low and our economy strong, Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, and others are out of touch with the values of the people of South Carolina and all of America," GOP chairman Robert Duncan said in a statement issued moments after the debate ended.

 

While Iraq dominated the debate's early moments, Edwards was asked about having paid for a $400 haircut from campaign donations rather than from his

own wallet.

 

"That was a mistake, which we remedied," he said. A wealthy former trial lawyer, he recalled once having gone to dinner at a restaurant as a young child and having to leave because his father could not afford the prices.

 

"I've not forgotten where I came from," he said.

 

 

Five of the eight — Gravel, Biden, Dodd, Kucinich and Richardson — raised their hands when moderator Brian Williams of NBC News asked whether they had ever had a gun in their home.

 

Asked about a recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld a ban on so-called partial birth abortions, several of the contenders replied they would not impose a litmus test on their own nominees to the high court.

 

At the same time, they stressed their support for abortion rights, and said their appointees to the bench would reflect that. "Any of my appointments to the high court would necessarily reflect my thinking," said Kucinich, who did not mention that he opposed abortion rights until switching positions before he ran for the White House in 2004.

 

There were moments of levity, as when Williams referred to Biden's reputation for "verbosity" and asked whether he had the discipline to be a player on the world stage.

 

"Yes," the Delaware lawmaker replied with uncharacteristic brevity.

Perhaps because the campaign is still in its early stages, there was little cross-stage criticism.

 

Kucinich challenged Obama at one point for once having said all options were on the table with respect to Iran. "You're setting the stage for another war," the Ohio lawmaker said.

 

"I think it would be a profound mistake for us to initiate a war with Iran," Obama replied. "But have no doubt, Iran possessing nuclear weapons will be a major threat to us and to the region."

 

The debate was about 40 minutes old when Clinton made the first mention of her husband, the former president. Responding to a question about the recent shooting spree at Virginia Tech, she began by saying, "I remember very well when I accompanied Bill to Columbine" — the Colorado high school that was the scene of another shooting spree a decade ago.

 

On another issue, several of the contenders talked of the need to expand health care coverage, and Obama sketched a few details of a plan that critics have said is light on specifics.

 

He said he would allow the uninsured to buy into a plan like federal employees have, improve technology to cut costs, and provide government-funded catastrophic insurance.

 

Not surprisingly, Bush's Iraq war policy found no supporters on the debate stage.

 

"I am proud that I opposed this war from the start," said Obama — a jab at those on the stage who voted to authorize the invasion.

 

"The president has a fundamentally flawed policy," said Biden. "The president should start off by not vetoing the legislation he says he will veto."

Dodd said Bush was pursuing a "failed policy."

Kucinich jabbed at the senators on stage, saying it made no sense to oppose the war and then turn around and vote for more money as they did. The Ohio lawmaker voted against the legislation that cleared Congress earlier in the day.

COME ON RON PAUL!!

 

Ron Paul Rides High In Polls After GOP Debate

Friday, May 4, 2007

Ron Paul is currently riding high in the polls after last night's GOP Presidential debate, jockeying for first position with Mitt Romney and ahead of both Rudy Giuliani and John McCain.

 

 

A major MSNBC poll currently has Paul at 30% approval, compared to Romney at 31%. McCain and Giuliani are at 21% and 27% respectively.

 

Here's a link to an earlier screenshot of the poll, showing Ron Paul at 47%.

 

Several readers tell us that Paul shot ahead in the early stages of the poll, and this is verified from an MSNBC news clip last night in which Keith Olbermann states Paul has received 39% of the vote.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEWlKT9obPY

 

Fox News claims that John McCain won the debate and that Romney also did well because he is "handsome" and spouted rhetoric about "God and country." Ron Paul is the only real candidate talking about real issues and he is also the only contender who is not completely bought and paid for by Neo-Con warmongers.

 

Click here to vote for Ron Paul.

Corporate Media Censor Ron Paul's Debate Success

Establishment press ignore massive popular approval for Texas Congressman in every poll, ABC only add Paul to poll list after furious complaints

 

Paul Joseph Watson

Monday, May 7, 2007

 

Ron Paul won the debate hands down - all the polls show it - but the establishment media are loathe to report it, because if a tree falls in the forest and the corporate press choose not to report on it then it doesn't make a sound.

 

After several days of voting, the online MSNBC poll has Ron Paul leading in every single positive category, proving that the vast majority think he won the debate. In an ABC News poll, well over 7,000 voted for the Congressman with Giuliani and Romney receiving a paltry 100 votes each. In a CSPAN poll, 69% voted for Ron Paul, with his nearest contender garnering just 9% of the vote.

 

Many would attribute this to be a reflection of focused online activism rather than overall national opinion, but the fact is that Paul was way ahead of the other candidates in the hours after the debate ended and before the polls had been widely publicized by websites supportive of the Texas Congressman.

 

This tells us that the American people are crying out for a real conservative and Ron Paul would be a serious contender for the White House if the media afforded him equal coverage with the likes of Romney, McCain and Giuliani.

 

However, as Alex Wallenwein points out in his OpEdNews.com article, the establishment media completely ignored public sentiment and handed the victory to either McCain or Romney, barely even mentioning Ron Paul's sterling performance and popular approval.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hfa7vT02lA

Highlights package of all Ron Paul's answers from Thursday night's debate.

 

 

 

 

 

"Unsurprisingly, not a single report of the actual political news story of the decade, namely, that a virtually unknown “dark horse” beats even the media favorite Romney handily - and utterly crushes the rest of the field," writes Wallenwein.

The headlines seen from a Google News search using the keyword “debate”, at the time of this writing show only this:

“John McCain Wins First GOP Debate” (Fox News)

“Who Won the First GOP Presidential Debate? (Answer provided in article: “Mitt Romney” - National Review Online)

"Republican Presidential Debate Gives No Clue on GOP Leader in Race” (Axcess News)

Apparently the Axcess News editors don't have a clue - unlike actual debate viewers.

A news search for the keywords “won debate” reveals this:

“Noonan, Pundits: Romney Won Debate” (NewsMax)

"Giuliani Wary of Repeal of Roe” (Washington Times)

 

Readers tell us that ABC didn't even include Ron Paul on their original list and his name was only added to the poll after furious calls to ABC's head office.

This website also claims that comments on ABC's message boards expressing outrage at the fact that Paul had been censored were soon deleted.

 

 

Even the usually much vaunted Keith Olbermann and his MSNBC co-host Chris Matthews

ignored Ron Paul's clear anti-war stance in claiming that none of the Republican candidates opposed the occupation of Iraq.

 

 

VOTE RON PAUL, SERIOUSLY. IF YOU ARE AMERICAN THEN I HOPE YOU PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT RON PAUL IS SAYING.

VOTE RON PAUL IF YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING GREAT

 

Now Yahoo! Censor Popular Support For Ron Paul

ABC forced to address Texas Congressman's campaign, but remain silent on why they scrubbed him from online poll

 

May 8, 2007

Paul Joseph Watson

 

Yahoo! News have become the latest establishment media outlet to ignore and censor Ron Paul's presidential campaign, despite the fact that he won Thursday night's GOP debate hands down, according to an overwhelming majority that voted for him in online polls.

 

Yahoo! News' 2008 Presidential election coverage page features a list of candidates from both Democrat and Republican parties, but fails to list Ron Paul, despite the fact that he easily trounced the likes of Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee and Duncan Hunter - who are featured, in every online poll since Thursday's debate.

 

 

No room for Ron Paul at Yahoo! Only establishment shill Republicrats and Democons allowed.

 

MySpace users are also claiming that bulletins expressing support for Ron Paul are being blocked and that prominent supporters of Paul's campaign are having their accounts suspended.

 

ABC News were swamped with furious e mails and calls over the weekend after they deliberately scrubbed Ron Paul from their online poll , ensuring no one could vote for him. After he was reinstated, the Congressman received thousands of votes and won the poll at a canter.

 

In a simpering puff piece released last night , ABC News correspondent Rick Klein claims that Paul's popularity is not reflected nationwide and is merely the result of "viral marketing" on behalf of the Congressman's online supporters.

 

Apologists for the establishment press have tried to argue that popular support for Ron Paul is skewed by activist voting, but the fact remains that Paul had topped the MSNBC online vote before it had even been widely publicized, as Keith Olbermann stated during live coverage of the debate.

 

If we accept this to be the case are we to then assume that Giuliani, Romney and the other gaggle of shill candidates don't have any online support? If so, who is going to vote for them? Do Giuliani and McCain supporters not have access to the Internet?

 

 

Klein also erroneously claims that Paul's online votes in the MSNBC poll were artificially inflated because users were voting multiple times. This isn't possible, since the website only affords one vote to one IP address - there is no option to vote again if you have already voted. Klein obviously didn't even bother to check whether his statement was correct before including it in the article.

 

The fact that ABC deliberately tried to censor Paul by not including him in the original poll is not addressed in the article.

 

What we are witnessing is a deliberate effort to poo-poo Ron Paul's chances to ensure that he has no chance - this is a chicken and egg scenario. If Ron Paul was afforded as much coverage as Giuliani and Romney he would have a real shot of becoming President - but the military-industrial complex that owns the media are loathe to allow that because Paul is a true anti-war Jeffersonian paleoconservative and he represents the people.

 

We couldn't possibly have a President that represented the people now could we! Only a compromised slimeball shill pre-approved and selected by the anointed ones and their mouthpiece hacks in the corporate media.

 

 

**The Globalists really don't wan't Ron Paul to win and are pulling out all the stops to trick the American people into thinking he doesn't even exist. He's doing really well in Polls and I guess it's scaring the shit right out of them....Support Ron Paul, listen to him, he really shows all the other fakes how it should be done. I'm English but I know the huge and fantastic effect it will have on the world if Ron Paul wins.

Ron Paul: Total Victory, Yet Censorship Continues

Texas Congressman trounces rivals in all polls but is deliberately pushed to margins by terrified corporate media

 

 

Ron Paul emerged from last week's GOP debate as completely victorious according to every available benchmark and yet there is still a deliberate ploy to push the Texas Congressman to the sidelines on behalf of a terrified corporate media.

 

Every single major online poll shows conclusively that Ron Paul won the debate by a mammoth margin, trouncing the bought and paid-for shill Neo-Con candidates that the establishment press are sworn to uphold.

 

 

After just over 18,000 votes, the ABC News poll shows Ron Paul with 15,568 compared with nearest rival Mitt Romney who is on a paltry 245. After initially scrubbing Paul from the poll altogether, ABC were forced to add his name after a deluge of furious calls and e mails.

 

 

Ron Paul led MSNBC's poll right from the start and before it had even been widely circulated. ABC News claims that activist voting and multiple voting by individuals artificially inflated Paul's numbers, but both claims are demonstrably false. Keith Olbermann reported that Paul was ahead before the link was spread around message boards and blogs and to vote multiple times is impossible - the poll only allows one vote per IP address.

 

At time of press, Paul currently has 40% approval and 25% disapproval, compared with 43% disapproval and only 22% approval for Giuliani.

 

 

Capital News, an arm of CSPAN, had Paul leading his nearest rival Mitt Romney by 60% shortly before voting closed. Rudy Giuliani garnered just 6% of the vote.

 

Yahoo! News is still censoring Ron Paul by not including him in the list of candidates on their 2008 presidential coverage page, despite the fact that he is wildly popular and has trounced every other Republican candidate in ever online poll.

 

 

After receiving a flood of angry complaints, Yahoo promised to review the situation, but 24 hours later their page is still absent any mention of Ron Paul.

 

This whole fiasco underscores the reality that the President of the United States is not elected by the popular will of the people, but instead is selected from a highly restricted gaggle of pre-approved establishment lackeys.

 

The corporate media offer the excuse that Ron Paul is not a mainstream candidate and has little chance of winning, therefore their decision to afford him little coverage is justified. But this is a chicken and egg scenario - if the media routinely ignore so-called marginal candidates then they are never going to attain the exposure of a Giuliani or a Romney, thus the media bias becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

If Ron Paul was afforded equal media coverage at every step of the way before the Republican nomination, and if America was still a free country with a democratic process that actually worked, then Ron Paul would be a shoe-in for the Oval Office.

 

But the fact remains, as is painfully underscored by the media's treatment of Ron Paul, that America is a banana republic where the president is not elected by popular will but selected by the corporate and military-industrial kingpins that for whom, upon inauguration, he becomes the puppet.

Police: More victims in submerged cars

 

By JON KRAWCZYNSKI, Associated Press Writers

 

MINNEAPOLIS - Divers checked submerged cars in the Mississippi River Thursday for a count of victims still trapped beneath the concrete slabs of a collapsed bridge. As many as 30 people were reported missing as the rescue effort shifted to recovery.

 

Gov. Tim Pawlenty also ordered an immediate inspection of all bridges in the state with similar designs.

 

The official death count from Wednesday evening's collapse stood at four Thursday morning, but Police Chief Tim Dolan said more bodies were in the water. Hospitals officials said 79 others were injured.

 

"We have a number of vehicles that are underneath big pieces of concrete, and we do know we have some people in those vehicles," Dolan said, though he said he did not have a number. "We know we do have more casualties at the scene."

 

The eight-lane Interstate 35W bridge, a major Minneapolis artery, was in the midst of repairs when the bridge buckled during the evening rush hour Wednesday. Dozens of cars plummeted more than 60 feet into the Mississippi River, some falling on top one of another. A school bus sat on the angled concrete.

 

In the river, divers were checking for bodies and taking down license plate numbers for authorities to track down the vehicles' owners. Getting the vehicles out was expected to take several days and involve moving around very large, heavy pieces of bridge.

 

"The bridge is still shifting," Dolan said. "We're dealing with the Mississippi River. We're dealing with currents. We're going to have to do it slowly and safely."

 

He said police estimate that 20 to 30 people were unaccounted for, though he stressed that it was just an estimate.

 

At Hennepin County Medical Center, patients had arrived in a steady stream after the collapse, some unconscious or moaning, some barely breathing, others with serious head and back injuries, Dr. William Heegaard said.

 

"There was blood everywhere," he said.

 

Relatives who couldn't find their loved ones at hospitals gathered in a hotel ballroom Thursday morning for any news, hoping for the best.

 

"I've never wanted to see my brother so much in my life," said Kristi Foster, who went to an information center set up at a Holiday Inn looking for her brother Kirk. She hadn't had contact with her brother or his girlfriend, Krystle Webb, since the previous night.

 

Authorities initially said at least seven people had died, but Police Lt. Amelia Huffman lowered that number Thursday morning, saying, "The medical examiner's office only has four sets of remains." She said the initial reports were based on the best estimates authorities had.

 

As many as 50 vehicles tumbled into the river when the bridge collapsed, leaving those who could escape to scramble to shore. Some survivors carried the injured up the riverbank, while emergency workers tended to others on the ground and some jumped into the water to look for survivors. Fire and black smoke rose from the wreckage.

 

The Homeland Security Department said the collapse did not appear to be terrorism-related, but Hennepin County Sheriff Richard Stanek said Thursday that the cause was still unknown.

 

"All indications are that it was a collapse, not an act of someone doing it," Stanek said.

 

The first step of the federal investigation will be to recover pieces of the bridge and reassemble them, kind of like a jigsaw puzzle, to try and determine what happened, NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker said.

 

 

Investigators also want to review video of the collapse, and were setting up a phone number for witnesses to call with information.

 

"It is clearly much too early in the initial stages of this investigation to have any idea what happened," Rosenker said.

 

The bridge was crowded with traffic, and a train had been passing beneath the roadway at the time it fell.

 

As the divers worked their way around at least a dozen submerged vehicles, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters announced a $5 million grant to help pay for rerouting traffic patterns around the disaster site.

 

"We fully understand what happened and we will take every step possible to ensure something like this will not happen again," Peters said.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said up to $100 million in federal funds will also be available for rebuilding and recovery.

 

"A bridge in America just shouldn't fall down," Klobuchar said. "That's why we have called for this investigation."

 

In 2005, the 40-year-old bridge had been rated as "structurally deficient" and possibly in need of replacement, according to a federal database. The span rated 50 on a scale of 120 for structural stability in that review, White House press secretary Tony Snow said.

 

The U.S. Department of Transportation's inspector general last year criticized the Federal Highway Administration's oversight of interstate bridges, saying investigators found incorrect or outdated maximum weight limit calculations and weight limit postings in the National Bridge Inventory and in states' bridge databases.

 

Incorrect load ratings could endanger bridges by allowing heavier vehicles to cross than should be allowed, the inspector general said. The audit didn't identify any Minnesota bridges beyond noting that 3 percent of the state's bridges were structurally deficient, placing it at the low end among states.

 

Pawlenty said Thursday that there was no indication from that and other reviews that the bridge should be shut down. Peters added that "none of those ratings indicated there was any kind of danger."

 

This week, road crews had been working on the bridge's joints, guardrails and lights, with lane closures overnight on Tuesday and Wednesday. In 2001, the bridge had been fitted with a computerized anti-icing system that sprayed chemicals on the surface during winter weather, according to documents posted on the Minnesota Department of Transportation's Web site.

 

Wednesday evening, 18 construction workers were on the bridge when it collapsed, said Tom Sloan, head of the bridge division for Progressive Contractors Inc., in St. Michael.

 

The crew was placing concrete finish on the bridge for what he called a routine resurfacing project. "It was the final item on this phase of the project. Suddenly the bridge gave way," he said.

 

"They said they basically rode the bridge down to the water. They were sliding into cars and cars were sliding into them," he said. One of the workers was unaccounted for, he said.

 

The school bus had just crossed the bridge when the entire span of Interstate 35W crumpled into the river below. The bus stayed on concrete, and the children were able to escape unharmed out the back door.

 

Christine Swift's 10-year-old daughter, Kaleigh, was on the bus, returning from a field trip to Bunker Hills in Blaine. She said her daughter called her about 6:10 p.m.

 

"She was screaming, 'The bridge collapsed,'" Swift said. All the kids got off the bus safely, but about 10 of the children were injured, officials said.

 

The collapsed bridge is just blocks from the heart of Minneapolis, near tourist attractions like the new Guthrie Theater and the Stone Arch Bridge. As the steamy night progressed massive crowds of onlookers circulated in the area on foot or bicycle, some of them wearing Twins T-shirts and caps after departing Wednesday night's game at the nearby Metrodome early.

 

Thursday's game between the Twins and Kansas City Royals was called off, but the Twins decided to go ahead with Wednesday's rather than sending about 25,000 fans back out onto the congested highways. Inside the stadium, there was a moment of silence to honor victims.

 

The steel-arched bridge, built in 1967, rose 64 feet above the river and stretched 1,900 feet across the water. It was built with a single 458-foot-long steel arch to avoid the need for piers that might interfere with river navigation.

The river's depth at the bridge was not immediately available, but the U.S.

 

Army Corps of Engineers maintains a channel depth of at least 9 feet in the Upper Mississippi to allow for barge traffic.

A Visit To The Mall, Then Gunshots

 

Victim Describes Being Struck In The Hand And Arm By Omaha Mall Teen Shooter

 

Jeff Schaffart, shown here speaking with The Early Show was one of the people wounded in the mall shooting in Omaha, Nebraska, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2007. He says he was there to buy his two-year-old daughter a dress for her visit with Santa. (CBS)

 

CBS/AP) Jeff Schaffart did not realize right away that the bangs he heard at Westroads Mall were gunshots.

 

Then he saw the blood streaming down his left arm and felt a stinging pain there.

 

"I could hear my wife, Carrie, yell, 'Get down! Get down!"' he said, "but I didn't."

 

Schaffart, 34, an Omaha attorney, and wife Carrie were on the third floor of the Von Maur department store Wednesday when a man began shooting, forcing holiday shoppers to flee and barricade themselves in dressing rooms.

 

Robert A. Hawkins, 19, killed eight people before turning his gun on himself, in a shooting rampage at an Omaha shopping mall, police said.

 

"I thought they were balloons or, you know, some kind of construction going on," Schaffert told CBS' The Early Show.

 

He and his wife eventually made their way into the women's restroom up there on the third floor.

 

The 34-year-old attorney used a necktie as a tourniquet to staunch the bleeding.

 

"The bleeding, thankfully, was not that bad, he told The Early Show.

 

Medical center representatives said they treated two other victims from the mall shooting: Fred Wilson, 61, who suffered a bullet wound to his chest. He had been in surgery for about six hours and was in critical condition in the intensive care unit Wednesday night. Wilson is a retired English teacher and was working as a customer service manager at Von Maur, a spokesman said.

 

Also hurt, a 55-year-old male who cut his face when he ran into a clothing rack. He was discharged.

 

Creighton University Medical Center spokeswoman Lisa Stites said one victim was dead upon arrival there, another died sometime after arriving, and a third, a woman, was in critical condition late Wednesday.

 

"I feel exceedingly lucky and fortunate to have made it through today," said Schaffart. "My heart goes out to those that didn't, and the families of those that weren't so lucky."

Omaha Gunman's Note: "Now I'll Be Famous"

 

8 Killed, 5 Hurt In Mall Slaying; 19-Year-Old Shooter Kills Self, Left Suicide Letter

 

(CBS/AP) The teenager carried his rifle into the mall, passing shoppers and decorations.

 

A department store employee was pressing a suit for a customer. A woman was making a quick stop to buy Christmas presents before picking up her son from school. Christmas music played.

 

The gunman stopped on the third floor and cut through the sounds with gunfire. Shoppers and employees at the Westroads Mall scrambled for cover in dressing rooms, clothing racks, offices and storage areas.

 

He appeared to fire without apparent motive or specific targets, reports CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds.

 

Eight people were killed and five wounded before the shooter ended the horror by taking his own life. He left behind a note that read, in part, "Now I'll be famous."

 

The victims' names were given at a press conference Thursday by Omaha Police Chief Thomas Warren. The victims are aged 24 to 66, employees as well as customers, 5 females and four males deceased, including the suspect, Robert Hawkins.

 

The deceased include Gary Sharp of Lincoln, Neb, a customer, John McDonald of Council Bluffs, Iowa, a customer, Angie Schuster, an employee, Maggie Webb, an employee, Janet Jorgenen, an employee, Diane Print, an employee, Gary Joy, an employee and Becky Flynn, an employee.

 

Omaha mayor Mike Fahey offered his condolences to the families of the victims.

 

"There are no words to adequately express our feelings this morning," Fahey said.

 

"I saw employees taking a bunch of people into the dressing room, but I didn't want to go," shopper Jennifer Kramer told CBS' The Early Show. "I didn't know if this guy was going to come looking for people in dressing rooms, so we hid in a pants rack towards the back of the men's department."

 

Robert A. Hawkins, 19, had a criminal record and had been kicked out of his parents' house. Police have not said anything about the motive, but Hawkins had suffered a string of setbacks over the past year.

 

A family friend said he recently broke up with a girlfriend and got fired, and a source told CBS News affiliate KMTV-TV he tried, but failed, to get into the Army.

 

Police Chief Thomas Warren said the shooting appeared to be random. He would not release the victims' identities Wednesday night and gave no motive for the attack, but promised more details in a news conference scheduled for Thursday morning.

 

Hawkins was kicked out by his family about a year ago. He moved in with a friend's family, and Debora Maruca-Kovac and her husband welcomed him into their home and tried to help him.

 

"He came to us like a little lost puppy. He was always very sensitive and caring, always wanting to know how everybody was doing," Maruca-Kovac told The Early Show. "He just needed a chance to get on his feet."

 

"We never saw violence in him," she said.

 

She told the Omaha World-Herald that the night before the shooting, Hawkins and her sons showed her an SKS semiautomatic Russian military rifle - the same type used in the shooting. She said she thought the gun belonged to a member of Hawkins' family. She said she didn't think much of it - the gun looked too old to work.

 

Records in Sarpy and Washington counties showed Hawkins had a felony drug conviction and several misdemeanor cases filed against him, including an arrest 11 days before the shooting for having alcohol as a minor. He was due in court in two weeks.

 

Maruca-Kovac said Hawkins was fired from his job at a McDonald's this week and had recently broken up with a girlfriend. She said he phoned her at about 1 p.m. Wednesday, telling her he had left a note. She tried to get him to explain.

 

"He said, 'It's too late,"' and hung up, she told CNN. She then called Hawkins' mother.

 

 

(CBS)

 

In the note, which was turned over to authorities, Hawkins wrote that he was "sorry for everything" and would not be a burden on his family anymore.

 

Maruca-Kovac went to her job as a nurse at the Nebraska Medical Center, where victims of the shooting soon began to arrive.

 

"I was fearful that he was going to try to commit suicide," she told The Early Show. "But I had no idea that he would involve so many other families."

 

"I feel so sorry for him, that he was so lost and alone that he had to resort to this."

 

 

 

The first 911 call came in at 1:42 p.m., and the shooting was already over when police arrived six minutes later, authorities said.

 

"We sent every available officer in the city of Omaha," Sgt. Teresa Negron said. "They came to the mall in lights and sirens."

 

The World-Herald reported that the gunman had a military-style haircut and a black backpack, and wore a camouflage vest.

 

Hawkins opened fire in a Von Maur store, part of a Midwestern chain.

 

Mickey Vickory, who worked in the store's third-floor service department, said she heard shots and went with coworkers and customers into a back closet, emerging about a half-hour later when police shouted to come out with their hands up. As police led them to another part of the mall for safety, they saw the victims.

 

"We saw the bodies and we saw the blood," she said.

 

Keith Fidler, another Von Maur employee, said he heard a burst of five to six shots followed by 15 to 20 more rounds. Fidler said he huddled in the corner of the men's clothing department with about a dozen other employees until police yelled to get out of the store.

 

Witness Shawn Vidlak said the shots sounded like a nail gun. At first he thought it was noise from construction work at the mall.

 

"People started screaming about gunshots," Vidlak said. "I grabbed my wife and kids. We got out of there as fast as we could."

 

A Von Maur store executive told KMTV it has a policy in place for such emergencies and employees, within the past year, had gone through training on how to handle similar situations.

 

Nebraska Medical Center spokeswoman Andrea McMaster said the hospital had three victims from the mall shooting, including Fred Wilson, 61, who was in critical condition early Thursday with a bullet wound to his chest.

 

Another critically wounded victim was at Creighton University Medical Center, spokeswoman Lisa Stites said.

 

On Wednesday night, police used a bomb robot to access a Jeep Cherokee left in the mall parking lot that authorities believe belonged to Hawkins. Officers had seen some wires under some clothing, but no bomb was found.

 

President Bush was in Omaha on Wednesday for a fundraiser, but left about an hour before the shooting.

 

"Having just visited with so many members of the community in Omaha today, the president is confident that they will pull together to comfort one another," White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

 

Governor Dave Heineman has issued an order for all U.S. and state flags to be flown at half-staff effectivelt immediately in honor of those killed.

 

The flags will remain at half-staff until Sunday.

 

The sprawling, three-level mall has more than 135 stores and restaurants. It gets 14.5 million visitors every year, according to its Web site.

 

This was the second mass shooting at a mall this year. In February, nine people were shot, five of them fatally, at Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City. The gunman, 18-year-old Sulejman Talovic, was shot and killed by police.

CIA discloses news that it destroyed interrogation video tapes

 

CIA director Hayden says the agency did not want to compromise agents' security.

 

By David Monteroposted December 07, 2007 at 11:45 am EST

 

The CIA disclosed Thursday that it destroyed two videotapes that showed agents using highly controversial interrogation techniques such as waterboarding. The revelation is certain to heat up the debate over the treatment of terrorism suspects as well as the CIA's decisionmaking in the case.

The CIA, though asked for evidence taken from interrogations, had never disclosed the existence of the tapes, The New York Times says.

 

The recordings were not provided to a federal court hearing the case of the terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui or to the Sept. 11 commission, which had made formal requests to the C.I.A. for transcripts and any other documentary evidence taken from interrogations of agency prisoners.

 

C.I.A. lawyers told federal prosecutors in 2003 and 2005, who relayed the information to a federal court in the Moussaoui case, that the C.I.A. did not possess recordings of interrogations sought by the judge in the case.

 

The CIA decided to make the destruction of the tapes public after The New York Times informed the agency it was preparing a story on Friday, the paper reports. It adds:

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques.

 

The destruction of the tapes raises questions about whether agency officials withheld information from Congress, the courts and the Sept. 11 commission about aspects of the program.

 

The CIA says it destroyed the tapes to safeguard the identity of undercover employees. The Washington Post reports these comments from CIA director Michael V. Hayden to agency employees:

"Beyond their lack of intelligence value – as the interrogation sessions had already been exhaustively detailed in written channels – and the absence of any legal or internal reason to keep them, the tapes posed a security risk," Hayden said. "Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them to and their families to retaliation from al-Qaeda and it sympathizers."

 

Although the CIA says it was acting to protect its employees, Reuters reports, by destroying the tapes, the organization has increased concerns about its already controversial interrogation program, according to some observers.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said the tapes' destruction was another troubling aspect of the interrogation program. "The damage is compounded when such actions are hidden away from accountability," he said in a statement.

 

 

Several lawmakers responded to Mr. Hayden's assertions that leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees

were earlier told of the existence of the tapes

and the CIA's intention to destroy them, according to

The Seattle Times

.

California Rep. Jane Harman, then the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was one of four lawmakers informed in 2003 of the tapes' existence and the CIA's intention to ultimately destroy them.

 

"I told the CIA that destroying videotapes of interrogations was a bad idea and urged them in writing not to do it," Harman said.

 

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said through a spokesman that he doesn't remember being informed of the videotaping.

 

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the panel didn't learn of the tapes' destruction until November 2006, one year after the fact.

 

The American Civil Liberties Union immediately condemned the CIA's actions,

Reuters

also reports.

"The destruction of these tapes suggests an utter disregard for the rule of law. It was plainly a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence that could have been used to hold CIA agents accountable for the torture of prisoners," ACLU National Security Project Director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement.

 

According to

The Washington Post

, the

timing of the tape incident is highly significant

.

The startling disclosures came on the same day that House and Senate negotiators reached an agreement on legislation that would prohibit the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics by the CIA and bring intelligence agencies in line with rules followed by the U.S. military.

 

The measure, which needs approval from the full House and Senate, would effectively set a government-wide standard for legal interrogations by explicitly outlawing the use of simulated drowning, forced nudity, hooding, military dogs and other harsh tactics against prisoners by any U.S. intelligence agency.

 

This week's incident comes just weeks after a similar CIA tape incident.

Reuters

reported on

Nov. 13

that:

The CIA erred in twice telling a court in the case of September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui that it did not have any recordings of interrogations of "enemy combatants," when in fact it had three video or audio tapes, according to a letter released on Tuesday.

 

Prosecutors only recently learned of the tapes from the CIA, they said in the letter to the judge who presided over the case and to a U.S. appeals court that considered the Moussaoui case.

 

And Andrew Sullivan, writing for The Atlantic Online, points out that tapes documenting Jose Padilla's interrogation

disappeared under controversial circumstances

in 2005. He quotes

an assessment

from Newsweek:

The missing DVD dates from March 2, 2004. It contains a video of the last interrogation session of Padilla, then a declared 'enemy combatant' under an order from President Bush, while he was being held in military custody at a U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. But in recent days, in the course of an unusual court hearing about Padilla's mental condition, a government lawyer disclosed to a surprised courtroom that the Defense Intelligence Agency — which had custody of the evidence — was no longer able to locate the DVD. As a result, it was not included in a packet of classified DVDs that was recently turned over to defense lawyers under orders from Judge Cooke.