Froomkin on Perino on the White House on the Torture Videos
Dan Froomkin does a good job of summing up the last few days’ hijinks from White House press secretary Dana Perino regarding what the White House did, and didn’t, know and do back in the day regarding the CIA torture videos: The Tell-Tale Stall.
Perino’s currently stuck in trying-to-have-it-both-ways mode: She doesn’t want to talk about the subject (because talking about it threatens to reveal the truth, which is almost certainly that folks like Addington were up to their eyeballs in pushing the CIA to ignore judicial orders and destroy the evidence of the torture they’d been committing). But at the same time, she wants to push back against the New York Times reporting that in the first few days after the story broke, the White House was peddling (via anonymous leaks) that Harriet Miers had been telling the CIA that the agency should not destroy the tapes.
There’s a constitutional provision specifically designed for handling situations like this. It’s called impeachment. And Nancy Pelosi needs to get off her skinny ass and start that process.
In the meantime, here are the highlights of yesterday’s White House press briefing. I know she doesn’t know what the Bay of Pigs was. And she’s defending torturers. But I have to admit: I’ve kinda got a crush on Dana.
December 20th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Dana has a point. “No comment” means no comment; when further information comes out, then that can not be compared to the “no comment” to suggest that now things are bigger, smaller, sooner, or later than what she might have said had she said something other than “no comment.” I think Dana expressed it better than me. Whoever picked her is a genious. As the public face of the Bush administration even I have a lot of sympathy and wish the best for her. Regardless, the task(s) she has been given – stonewall and try to kick the accountability “can” as far down the road as possible – tarnishes her otherwise innocent persona and if she does not show the stress of being a defender of rather obvious “evil” by aging rapidly over the next few months, it may sadly invoke an inner sickness or a festering within her soul. In any event, it is sad that the perpetraitors remain in positions of power during lengthy investigations that, if they ever reach a conclusion it will be so far down the road anyway that the results might pale in comparison to the tragedies and emergencies of that future brought about by perpetraitorrs between now and then. What would I do, remove them from power immediately pending investigation? No, simply speed up the investigation dramatically to reach interim conclusions at which time their powers can be suspended – or not, depending on the interim conclusion -and then proceed to criminal indictments if necessary.
Destroying CIA tapes is simply the tempest of the day, and only serves to distract attention from other executive decisions such as those made in the September 15 – September 30 time frame. That was to covertly videotape OBL rather than capture him:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_maher_os_071216_impeachment_or_treas.htm
December 21st, 2007 at 8:35 am
This is something that further diminishes people’s trust in government. As someone who works in records/information management I can tell you that disposing of records related to an ongoing investigation is a big no-no, well at least it is in the private sector. The current US administration seems to have their own rules. Can you say obstruction of justice?
Some are saying that these tapes weren’t related to the investigation because these particular suspects were being held not at Guantanamo Bay, but other secret CIA prisons. I say bullshit. This has everything to do with how the US currently treats suspects. That’s right, suspects, not anyone charged with anything, just suspects.
I feel the tapes were ordered destroyed to hide something. Sadly, I almost don’t even want to know.
As for Dana, I think she’s just another hot bitch who is good at lying. Actually, I don’t even know if she’s that good of a liar.
December 26th, 2007 at 1:01 am
NL,
Dana does not seem like a bitch who is good (or not so good) at lying. What she seems to be, sadly, is unbelievably naive (or willfully ignorant) about who and what she represents. She has yet t o realize taht she is being used, and that she is the butt of a very bad joke.
Perhaps in that way she is like Ari Fleischer before he started to figure things out; or maybe like Scott McClellan before he realized his LIES (“I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the president himself”) and quit.
DANA IS TALKING ABOUT THESE TAPES, which according to Thomas Kean:
From: http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/12/24/kean_cia_impeded_911_inquiry/6109/
How convenient. CIA spooks again take the fall, getting their masters off the hook. That game is getting old, and Kean has a lot more to answer for than that:
Kean and Hamilton are Hilarious! [by LeftWright]
Who will they blame for the Commissions failure to report:
1) That they knew the NORAD officials, including Gen. Richard Myers, were lying to them during their testimony before the Commission;
2) That they excluded any mention of WTC 7 [collapse] from their report. WTC 7 being the $850 million, 47-story steel-framed building that fell in 6.6 seconds at 5:20pm on 9/11/01 that was not hit by a plane and whose destruction still has not been explained by any government body;
3) on Norman Mineta’s testimony, before their very Commission and live on CSPN, that clearly implicates V.P. Cheney … ;
4) on FBI translator Sibel Edmonds 3 1/2 hours of closed door testimony which she has said connected very well known Americans to the 9/11 operation;
5) on William Rodriguez’s 2 1/2 hours of closed door testimony in which he describes massive explosions going off in the sub-basement of the North Tower before the first plane hit;
6) on the numerous military war games and governmental exercises that were going on 9/11/01, many of which were designed to simulate the events that actually occurred, such as hijacked planes being flown into buildings;
7) on Mayor Giuliani’s statement to Peter Jennings on live tv that he was warned that the Towers were about to collapse when no one else had any idea that this unprecedented event would occur;
8) that the U.S. Secret Service completely disregarded all standard operating procedures while “protecting” Pres. Bush in the Florida classroom;
9) that Mohammed Atta and many other of the alleged “hijackers” received training on U.S. military bases and were allowed to fly in and out of the U.S. many times leading up to 9/11/01, even though they were on so-called “terrorist watch lists”;
10) that the FBI admits that they have “no hard evidence linking bin Laden to the events of 9/11”;
11) that the FBI secured and cleared the three main crime scenes (NYC, Pentagon and Shanksville, PA) before doing any kind of proper forensic investigation;
12) the fact that they allowed themselves to be spoon fed information by Philip D. Zelikow, an obvious Bush Administration insider with a clear interest in covering up any administration foreknowledge or complicity and who was allowed to write the absurd and mythical final report.
The msm’s complete and total failure to report on any of this is one very large, noisy BAD JOKE…
And Dana is simply the latest version of this bad joke.
December 26th, 2007 at 1:11 am
And Dana is simply the latest version of this bad joke.
January 2nd, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Not so sure Dana has a point. If this is as much the Cheney administration as I think it is, then most of the time “no comment” doesn’t mean no comment, it means “go screw yourself”. Or something close to that.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
LOL…
Tony, you are probably right.