Helen Thomas Questions Bush Admin on Use of Torture
Veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas asks the White House to reconcile contradictory statements on the approval of and use of torture:
Q The President has said publicly several times, in two consecutive news conferences a few months ago, and you have said over and over again, we do not torture. Now he has admitted that he did sign off on torture, he did know about it. So how do you reconcile this credibility gap?MS. PERINO: Helen, you're taking liberties with the what the President said. The United States has not, is not torturing any detainees in the global war on terror. And General Hayden, amongst others, have spoken on Capitol Hillfully in this regard, and it is -- I'll leave it where it is. The President isaccurate in saying what he said.Q That's not my question. My question is, why did he state publicly, we do not torture --MS. PERINO: Because we do not.Q -- when he really did know that we do?MS. PERINO: No, that's what I mean, Helen. We've talked about the legal authorities --Q Are you saying that we did not?MS. PERINO: I am saying we did not, yes.Q How can you when you have photographs and everything else? I mean, how can you say that when he admits that he knew about it?MS. PERINO: Helen, I think that you're -- again, I think you're conflating some issues and you're misconstruing what the President said.Q I'm asking for the credibility of this country, not just this administration.MS. PERINO: And what I'm telling you is we have -- torture has not occurred. And you can go back through all the public record. Just make sure -- I would just respectfully ask you not to misconstrue what the President said.Q You're denying, in this room, that we torture and we have tortured?MS. PERINO: Yes, I am denying that.
Share This Post
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
posted by Mike Posner at
10:19 AM
28 Comments:
Why is Helen Thomas the only reporter in the room standing up to the lies of this administration? Are the others afraid, just plain stupid or so much a part of the insanity that they go right along with it? It's truly bizarre and frightening.
Could anyone ever expect any truth whatsoever from this administration? Condoleeza Rice went around the world proclaiming that the U.S. does not torture, when the record has come out showing that she participated personally in the planning of specific torture for specific suspects.
I'm sure everyone remembers dirtbag Dick Cheney, "A little waterboarding never hurt anybody."
Nauseating.
As for "truth"? This administration abhors it. Isn't this the very same George Bush who proclaimed that his adminstration would never abandon support for Donald Rumsfeld? And then the very next week this "leader" proclaimed that he was working out the details of Rumsfeld's dismissal even at the time he had made the earlier statement?
He lied us into Iraq. He lied us into economic decline. He lied us through torture and the subsequent wages of torture.
Disgusting, disgusting.
Obviously Dana Perrino, Condi Rice and Dubya himself occupy some alternate, Alice in Wonderland universe.
The U.S. didn't "torture" anyone. It used "enhanced interrogation techniques."
"The word means what I want it to mean. Nothing more, nothing less. The question is, 'Who is to be master?' That's all" Humpty Dumpty
Thank heavens for Helen Thomas. May she ask and ask and ask until this administration's unlawful deeds are exposed for all to see.
Too bad all the other white house reporters have no back bone.
At least Thomas is trying to save America. God Bless Her!
I admire Helen's persistence so much, even when she knows that this administration is incapable of telling the truth.
Helen has exposed the lies simply by asking the questions. If only more journalists had her courage.
I had to re-post this sickening display of lies by our administration. Thank you Helen, for asking for someone to speak the plain truth. Shame on US for allowing these lies to continue unchecked!
When will the rest of the American people demand that the House Judiciary committee proceed with hearings on HR 799, articles of impeachment! I call Conyers, Pelosi, etc. regularly. CodePink says we need to call especially: Reps Scott(VA), Davis (AL), Watt (NC) Lofgren (CA) and Sherman (CA) to convince them to ask for hearings.
What exactly does person have to do to get Impeached?
Invading Irag a country that did not attack us, but was willing to trade oil for Euros.
Allowing torture. Just the War profiteering that has occurred with Haliburton. The Democrats will not stand up to him. What can the citizens do to hold their Government accountible? We have to wait years and vote the criminals out?
Clearly. The Bush Administration prefers the words harsh interrogation techniques to torture. Helen Thomas: American Hero--you're just using the wrong term. Those other wonks in the room are just taking up space.
The youth group who assert that older Americans are out of touch could take a leaf out of Helen's book.
If all of them would listen as much as they prattle, they would learn a lot from her.
It seems that they are more interested in asking the questions than they are in hearing the answers.
I do not think impeachment will happen as the time element looms large. But, my greatest hope is that following the inauguration in January 2009, the Federal marshalls will step forward and arrest Bush/Cheney and all other co-conspirators (wherever they may be) and take them to the Hague to be tried for war crimes.
Anonymous 3:42pm
That is why we must elect a Democrat. If McCain were to become President there would be no trials.
I recall a friend of mine who was in the 101st Airborne during the World War II Operation Market Garden operation. He said that his superiors told his Company that they were to treat German prisoners with respect, to get them medical treatment if needed and not to steal anything from them. He was told this because they would be operating behind enemy lines and that if they were caught and word got out about how they treated the German soldiers, then they would most likely get treated the same. We are always told about the "Greatest Generation That Ever Lived", meaning the people who grew up during World War II as being a group of people who have character and go the extra mile to do the right thing. Seems like they didn't learn anything. I don't trust our government. The current administration uses legal language to answer questions from the press - so that "legally" they are not doing anything wrong. But in fact, they are probably doing everything that if they were devout Christians like they want you to believe, they would go straight to Hell for their actions!
All journalists know how to ask questions. Very few of them know how to question the answers.
Let's see, Foul Bush, Like Eisenhower, used semantics to have his way with Humans. Bush re-named 'em "enemy Combatants" while Eisenhower's choice of words was "DEFS", (Disarmed Enemy Forces). I'd like (one time), before I die to see this nation of "heros" attack a country that was REALLY a threat instead of always little, tiny nations that have no hope of putting up any real kind of a fight, let alone hurting us. Let's see, is YANKS really an acronym for Yellow-Agressive-Neocon-Killer-Swine? I'm second generation German American and I tell you all from my heart, If I were younger and had a few bucks I'd kiss this country goodbye and never look back. It's gone too far now. Believe me, I want me out of this country as much or more than you Lemmings want me and people who think like me out. Why, (in this "free" nation), do I see so many "anonymous" posts?
Helen, thank you for your hard work.
The Justice Department memo released yesterday is a key link in the chain of evidence connecting the monstrous abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere straight to the White House.
President Bush has described the torture and murder of prisoners by U.S. military personnel as the work of an aberrant few. But this 2003 memo opened the door to precisely the kinds of abuse so horrifically chronicled in the Abu Ghraib photographs.
And the memo's author -- John Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel -- was a longtime ally and notoriously pliant scribe for the radical legal views of Vice President Cheney and his chief enforcer, David S. Addington.
Yoo's memo is a historic document. It is the ultimate expression of Cheney's belief that anything the president or his designates do -- no matter how illegal, barbaric or un-American -- is justifiable in the name of national self-defense.
It is also an example of how enabling zealots to disregard the rule of law and the customary boundaries of human conduct leads to madness.
This criminal administration has now empowered Al-Qaeda in Iraq when we had a golden opportunity to unit the world after 911. It is so upsetting to realize this criminal administration continues to use lies, smoke screens and deceit, loosing sight of Bin Laden and going after Iraq's Oil and American's hard earned money to support the military complex this criminal administration is criminally tied to. Yet this barely gets talked about in the nightly news or brought up in the Congressional and Senate hearings. When Bush lies, American soldiers die, because this is a war for politics this is a war crime. Crimes against the American people, the people of Iraq and the world. Our government is being taken over by criminals. We must investigate these crimes and deal with this injustice!!
Arlan Boll
Helen Thomas is a true patriot - curious, truth-seeking and fearless in the face of tyranny. How I wish others in the MSM would follow her lead instead of repeating this regime's propaganda lies. Go bless Helen Tomas. I hope we live to see the day when no one listens to this bunch of neo-cons and laughs in their faces.
>>>>
Greatview said...
Anonymous 3:42pm
That is why we must elect a Democrat. If McCain were to become President there would be no trials.
April 25, 2008 3:53 PM
>>>>
You're joking....right? If the only option we have, as voters and as citizens, is to elect a Democrat in hopes of seeing this Bush gang prosecuted, we might as well give up right now and sign this nation over to the fascists.
The Democrats have been COMPLICIT in all of this administration's crimes. Whether out of gutlessness, stupidity, or political calculation, these s-o-b's have aided and abetted Bush and his criminal/anti-Constitutional agenda for the past 8 years.
THESE are the people you are relying on to deliver us from this Evil?!! They have done SUCH an excellent job of "defending and up-holding" our Constitution (i.e., doing their SWORN duty), that they deserve to be rewarded for their "efforts"????!!! The current Democratic majority in Congress were elected--or re-elected--under false pretenses in 2006. Since coming into power, their greatest--only!--concern has been to retain that power and grab more, as they have sat quietly by and allowed Bush & Co. free rein to drive this country into wider war and deeper debt.
I'm voting for a 3rd Party candidate (again). Anybody with any guts or sense should do the same...otherwise, by supporting this 2-Party duopoly, we will seal our own doom.
Trying to get pathological liars to admit the truth is an impossibility. The bigger shame is that such persons beget others just like them. Everyone with an ounce of common sense knows the truth whether they hear it or not.
I never thought I would ever see this country's leaders act more like our enemys than our enemys act.
The administration's lies disgust me .
Helen Thomas, the reporter, is a very honorable woman for standing up and speaking the truth and wanting the lies explained....
This country needs a leader like Helen Thomas. I can at least trust her.
In the film Judgement at Nuremberg, Spencer Tracy (Judge Dan Haywood) delivers this poignant summation of the Nuremburg Trials of four Nazi Judges.
"There are those in our own country too who today speak of the 'protection of country' -- of 'survival.' A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient -- to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what?' A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult!
Before the people of the world let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being."
The web site www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches contains:
"... [T]he film ... finishes by cutting to the core of the issue: how could this happen in a civilized country? The answer in essence is that 'all that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.'
This lesson is encapsulated in the character of Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) a man of considerable intelligence who was not a 'good German who knew how to take orders, who sent men before him to be sterilized like so many digits' nor a 'decayed, corrupt bigot, obsessed by the evil within himself.' No, Ernst Janning (a fictional character who is actually a collage of several actual defendants) was 'worse than any of them because he knew what they were, and he went along with them. Ernst Jannings: Who made his life excrement, because he walked with them.'
Maximilian Schell plays a young German lawyer who argues that men cannot be found guilty for merely being loyal to their government; Lancaster plays one of the accused who argues for his own condemnation: 'I made my life excrement, because I walked with them'.
Defendant Ernst Janning, (played by Burt Lancaster) struggles with his inner demons and begins to rise from the abyss, gaining a modicum of moral respite as he forcibly rebukes Schell, changes his plea to "Guilty," and testifies as to the soul-destructive nature of 'a passing phase which became a way of life.' Lancaster's Janning is truly tragic, more so because he so clearly understands that 'he made his life excrement when he walked with [the Nazis].'"
Can we do nothing to keep our country and ourselves from also becoming "excrement" by permitting us even to be remotely associated with the "evil doers" in the Bush administration? I believe we can. Here are three suggestions:
• Let us speak out. Otherwise, by our silence we shout that we condone crimes against humanity in the form of torture, which now cannot be denied. See: www.democracynow.org/2008/4/10/headlines#1, http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/pdfs/OLCMemo1-19.pdf and http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/php/docs_swi.php?DI=1&text=who_was_who
• Unless and until our country wipes the "excrement" of the Bush administration from itself, let us send whatever financial support we can to non-profit organizations whose mission is to preserve our Constitution and the civil liberties of everyone, everywhere.
• Let us petition the next administration to extradite to the World Court in The Hague, all those in the any administration who conspired to commit crimes against humanity. How else can we demonstrate to the world that none of us is above the law and that "our lives have not also been made excrement because we walked with them"?
I guess I just think its really sad that there is an entire blog dedicated to commending a woman for asking obvious questions. I mean, good for her? For doing something that no one else does? America freaks me out. Helen should be amongst the masses in protest, not a unique individual amongst masses of robots.
In the matter of basic good manners: Why is this young woman refering to an older woman as "Helen"? As a small child most of us were taught that to be polite, when speaking to an elder use the title of Mr, Mrs or Miss. Even the text here uses this young woman's last name and title while she refers to Ms Thomas so rudely by her first name. This is a great lack of respect and rude.
Whores-to-power like Perino have been warned. Like the Nazi apologists and propagandists at Nuremberg, they are liable to prosecution for enabling crimes against humanity.
Ms. Thomas speaks for many millions and their children.
We will not be complicit.
Fools, so many fools. We HAD a candidate running for president who WOULD have impeached Cheney/Bush, who WOULD have given us a Single Payer Not-for Profit Health Care System, who WOULD have negotiated with Iran instead of making secret plans for another war. Dennis Kucinnich COULD have been the best president we have ever had, but we LET mainstream media tell us who to vote for, and he is now out of the race. Still want to stand up for what you believe in? Write him in when you vote! He won't win, but you will have made a statement, and not caved in to politics as usual. If enough of us REALLY wanted to make a difference, we'd do this, and not worrry about "throwing away our vote."....
isn't Ms. Perino Hot! I mean like thats whats important and stuff...you know what I mean and like duh.....yuck.
Why aren't people who are employed by the American taxpayer, who lie to the American taxpayer, put behind bars, or at the very least prosecuted?
CHEAP PERCOCET
Hydrocodone Without A Prescription
Amoxicillin online no prescription
Ambien Without Prescription
Buy Vicodin In Mexico
Post a Comment
<< Home