The perpetrators continue to defend their crimes and their former boss

i don't know about yoo you but i'm getting sick and tired of the parade of self-righteous, former bush administration criminals trying to shake off accountability... for instance...

from an article on john yoo in today's wapo...

Yoo has been traveling across the country to give speeches and counter critics who dispute his bold view of the president's authority. Now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, he engages in polite but firm exchanges with legal scholars over conclusions in their academic work. This month, he wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal defending his actions and labeling critics' arguments as "absurd" and "foolhardy" responses to "the media-stoked politics of recrimination."

michael hayden trying to cover his butt in an op-ed in today's nyt...

The recent report of inspectors general on the President’s Surveillance Program operated by the National Security Agency has led some to make hasty and deeply flawed judgments about the value and legality of what was a critical part of protecting America from further attack after Sept. 11.

The program was crucial in addressing one of the most stinging criticisms of the 9/11 commission — the need to reduce the gap between foreign intelligence and domestic security. This was an especially difficult task, which helps explain both the program’s importance and its sensitivity. The program was lawful, effective and necessary.

The reflexive judgments to the contrary seem hasty at best.

there's only one way to settle this... appoint a special prosecutor, someone with unimpeachable credentials, and let's dig our way to the bottom where i suspect we will find obfuscation, outright lying, illegality, criminality, and legions of victims of state-sponsored terrorism... however, whatever emerges, even if it's complete exoneration, will be better than the mess of unfinished business we have now...

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"Western-looking" Al Qaeda operatives sneaking into the U.S.? Keeping them fear ovens stoked...

lemme tell ya, reading "news" like this feels just a little bit different when i'm sitting here less than a few hundred miles from the afghan-pakistani border... different HOW, you may ask...? funnier... sadder... more pathetic...

Al Qaeda is training fighters that "look western" and could easily cross U.S. borders without attracting attention, CIA Director Michael Hayden said on Sunday.

The militant Islamist group has turned Pakistan's remote tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan into a safe haven, and is using it to plot further attacks against the United States, Hayden said.

"They are bringing operatives into that region for training -- operatives that wouldn't attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles (airport outside Washington) with you when you were coming back from overseas," Hayden said during an interview on NBC's television show Meet the Press.

"(They) look western (and) would be able to come into this country without attracting the kinds of attention that others might," Hayden said, without offering further details.

i'm working with a number of afghans on the project i'm consulting for... some of them dress western style and some don't... some come in one way one day and another way the next... if dressing, looking and acting like westerners is the goal, hey, that ain't hard to do, and i doubt very seriously if it suddenly occurred to al qaeda that, "OMG, maybe if we try to look more western, we could pass more easily"...

< D'OH >

you're an idiot, hayden, and the media who print this drivel are just as bad for sucking it up...

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Hayden, McConnell and Mukasey are "highly respected and nonpolitical officials"

IF it is true, according to bill kristol, writing in today's nyt, that...

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of national intelligence, the retired Vice Admiral Mike McConnell, and the attorney general, the former federal judge Michael Mukasey, are highly respected and nonpolitical officials with little in the way of partisanship or ideology in their backgrounds.

THEN why, pray tell, are they behaving that way now...?

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Our puppet, Pervez, decides he wants to be a "REAL" boy

pinocchio cuts his strings and flips off BOTH uncle mike AND uncle mike...

The top two U.S. intelligence officials made a secret visit to Pakistan in early January to seek permission from President Pervez Musharraf for greater involvement of American forces in trying to ferret out al-Qaida and other militant groups active in the tribal regions along the Afghanistan border, a senior U.S. official said.


The official, speaking on condition of anonymity given the secret nature of the talks, declined to disclose what was said, but Musharraf was quoted two days after the Jan. 9 meeting as saying U.S. troops would be regarded as invaders if they crossed into Pakistan to hunt al-Qaida militants.

The New York Times — which first reported on the secret visit by CIA Director Michael Hayden and Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence — said Musharraf rebuffed an expansion of an American presence in Pakistan at the meeting, either through overt CIA. missions or by joint operations with Pakistani security forces.

careful, pervez... you don't want to put your allowance at risk...

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Ray McGovern shares his thoughts on pre-9/11 spying, Nancy Pelosi, Michael Hayden and other potential criminals

rather than attempting to excerpt key passages, i suggest you click on over to consortium news and read it all for yourself... it's well worth it...

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Hayden joins McConnell in fear-mongering

echoing mcconnell's dishonest, fear-mongering in the lead-up to the passage of the shameful protect america act last month, michael hayden joins the drum-beating in an effort to keep the fires of fear well-stoked...

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said Friday that the agency's ability to pursue Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks was being hampered by declining political and public support for aggressive methods that the CIA had used in interrogations and other counter- terrorism operations.

In a rare public speech by a CIA chief, Hayden lashed out at the media and complained that the political climate was slipping toward apathy and risk aversion characteristic of the period leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"When I get in the car at Langley and drive down the George Washington Parkway," Hayden said, referring to the corridor between the CIA's headquarters in Virginia and downtown Washington, "it's not long before it begins to feel like Sept. 10.

and what would fear-mongering be without sharp attacks against anybody who dares question the wisdom of our all-powerful government's blatant disregard for the constitution, international convention or public opinion...?

Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Hayden provided new details to counter what he characterized as damaging misconceptions about the agency's interrogation and "rendition" operations.

In particular, he disclosed that the CIA had transferred fewer than 100 prisoners to other countries. Critics have contended that the rendition program has led to detainees being tortured in such nations as Egypt and Uzbekistan.

Hayden also lashed out at a European Parliament investigation that was harshly critical of CIA operations. He called the contents of its report "wild speculation."

fewer than 100, eh...? and that's supposed to make us feel GOOD...?

Under an executive order signed by President Bush this summer, the CIA is still allowed to use an array of interrogation techniques -- including sleep deprivation and so-called stress positions -- that are banned under the military manual that the Army adopted. The manual was developed in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.

Hayden argued in his speech that imposing the stricter military rules on CIA interrogators would damage the agency's ability to collect intelligence and protect the country from future attacks.

it's completely incomprehensible to me how torture can be defended under any rationale whatsoever, but that's obviously because i simply don't care that much about protecting my country from "future attacks..."

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Going after Hayden for confirming that Plame was "covert"

un-frigging-believable...

Hayden’s approval of Waxman’s statement about Plame’s covert status “confirmed Republican suspicions that Hayden is too close to Democrats,” Novak wrote. “When Hayden’s role was pointed out to one of the President’s most important aides, there was no response.”

Novak, it appears, has gone from acting as Bush’s water carrier to becoming an instigator for reprisals against public officials who are not sufficiently “loyal Bushies.”

Hiatt and his colleagues on the Washington Post editorial page apparently see nothing wrong in conveying these thinly veiled threats of reprisals to the broader Washington community.

novak and his principal enabler, fred hiatt, should be fired - immediately...

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