Romney TORTURE Memo Leaked

Originally posted by ThirdEyeofHorus

Yah tell that to the Viet Cong

Are you saying that the Viet Cong is the model of civilized society we should strive for?

I do not understand you wanting to hate people that are not as good as you and then justify being as bad as them, just because they are.
I cannot believe all the self loathing that seeps from Republican talking points on ATS.

reply to post by RealSpoke


He's screwed if this story goes anywhere beyond ATS.

reply to post by charles1952


I guess you forget that republicans co wrote the amendment. You try so hard to make it a democrat only issue.

Wow NYtimes thats like .....wow Fox news, lets see, who I should believe today.

reply to post by charles1952


I may very possibly owe you an apology for misinterpreting the target of your attack in the thread. Remember that a committee hearing is called, and conducted by, its Chairman, and all Chairmen in the House are Republicans. But leaving that aside, there wasn't any evidence in the thread that you were going after Obama.

But now to your complaint about the thread drifting. You post a source discussing a memo, it is not a memo of the campaign's position, it's a draft of something they're talking about and is subject to change. We have no idea whether it got to Romney, whether it's even similar to the draft that went out, and no idea whether he approved it.

If you want to stay on the subject, fine, but note that nobody can point to any Romney approved memo on the subject. It doesn't exist.

reply to post by charles1952


It was written by Romneys administration. The one that's going to be in the white house if he wins. End of story.

reply to post by RealSpoke

I guess you forget that republicans co wrote the amendment. You try so hard to make it a democrat only issue.

The Senate and all its Committees are controlled by Democrats. They can instantly stop any thing they don't like. The Amendment was prepared, at least in part, by Democrats, then they overwhelmingly voted for it.

My point in bringing up the vote count was, that with the nearly unanimous support, there is really nothing Romney can do. I don't expect him to say that, even though Republicans and Democrats supported the bill, he's going to tick everybody off by not supporting it.

reply to post by RealSpoke

It was written by Romneys administration. The one that's going to be in the white house if he wins. End of story.

What is this "it" you're referring to? This was, at most, the beginnings of a discussion on what advice to give Romney about a year ago.

We don't know what advice was given, we don't know if it's changed over the last ten months or so, we don't know if Romney accepted it, Romney doesn't even have an administration yet. We don't know who his advisors will be. End of story? You haven't given us anything with which to even start the story.

If I were Obama in the upcoming debate - I would read this memo aloud and then ask Romney what the reasoning is, then refer back to the memo again, to reveal that the reasoning isn't reasonable, nor the least bit in congruent alignment with American principals. Romney would then invoke 9/11 as the justification and everyone watching will shudder at the thought of Bush Jr. 2.0,

If there is a devil, it's my understanding that oversight of torture is his specialty..

reply to post by charles1952

We don't know who his advisors will be.

Uh, yeah we do. Romney released them on his website alonnnnnnnnng time ago. The memo was written by these people.

Mr. Bradbury, who declined to comment, was one of 18 lawyers on the Romney campaign’s national security law subcommittee when its “Interrogation Techniques” paper was circulated.

The list also included Michael Chertoff, the former homeland security secretary; Cully Stimson, the Pentagon’s detainee policy chief; and many other Bush-era executive branch veterans: Bradford Berenson, Elliot S. Berke, Todd F. Braunstein, Gus P. Coldebella, Jimmy Gurule, Richard D. Klingler, Ramon Martinez, Brent J. McIntosh, John C. O’Quinn, John J. Sullivan, Michael Sullivan and Alex Wong. Three others — Lee A. Casey, Maureen E. Mahoney and David B. Rivkin Jr. — served in earlier Republican administrations.

Everyone below was on Romneys OFFICIAL page.

www.mittromney.com...

Michael Chertoff (born November 28, 1953) was the second United States secretary of homeland security under President George W. Bush and co-author of the USA PATRIOT Act.

John F. Lehman, Jr. (born September 14, 1942) is an American investment banker and writer who served as Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration and in 2003–04 was a member of the 9/11 Commission.

Michael Vincent Hayden

He was Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) from 1999 to 2005. During his tenure as director, the longest in the history of the agency, he oversaw the controversial NSA surveillance of technological communications between persons in the United States and alleged foreign terrorist groups, which resulted in the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy.

On May 30, 2006 and again the following day at the CIA lobby with President George W. Bush in attendance, Hayden was sworn in as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Cofer Black

From 2005 until 2008, Black was Vice Chairman of Blackwater USA, a US-based private security firm which is the State Department's biggest security contractor. He had a 28-year career in the Directorate of Operations at the Central Intelligence Agency

Robert Kagan (born September 26, 1958 in Athens, Greece) is an American historian, author and foreign policy commentator at the Brookings Institution. He is a co-founder of the now-defunct neoconservative political organization Project for the New American Century

Meghan O'Sullivan With Stephen Hadley, she is also credited as being one of the original advocates in the White House of the "surge" strategy of 2007 [4]O'Sullivan was the point person in charge of the Afghan war for the White House.

Pierre-Richard Prosper (born 1963 in Denver, Colorado, USA) is an American lawyer, prosecutor and former government official. He served as the second United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005

Mitchell Reiss He was also selected to be a White House Fellow and was assigned to the National Security Council, where he worked both for Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell.

Daniel Samuel Senor, known as Dan Senor (born November 6, 1971), is a Fox News contributor. In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and during the fighting, Senor was a Pentagon and White House advisor based in Doha, Qatar at U.S. Central Command Forward;

Jim Talent, In 2001, Talent worked for Washington lobbying firm, Arent Fox,[14] earning $230,000. During this time Talent was not allowed to directly lobby Congress, and he was not licensed to practice law in Washington, leading some Democratic opponents to accuse the lobbying firm of using his appointment as an illegal conduit to donate toward his upcoming Senate race

Vin Weber He is a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signers of the PNAC Letter sent to US President Bill Clinton dated January 26, 1998, advocating "the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power" along with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and 29 other notable Republicans.[3]

Currently, Weber is managing partner of the Washington, D.C. branch of lobbying firm Clark & Weinstock. In 2006, Weber's firm received $360,297 from home mortgage giant Freddie Mac to lobby on their behalf.[3]

All these people are creepy Bush admin neo-cons

www.thenation.com...

reply to post by NewAgeMan

If I were Obama in the upcoming debate - I would read this memo aloud and then ask Romney what the reasoning is, then refer back to the memo again, to reveal that the reasoning isn't reasonable, nor the least bit in congruent alignment with American principals.

Romney then says "That was the beginnings of a discussion. When they finally gave me the actual memo, not that piece of garbage you're reading from. I insisted on following American laws and stayed with that principle, I will not violate American laws on torture, nor will I violate American laws by avoiding the requirements of the War Powers Act, nor will I kill American citizens by drones."

And Obama resigns. (Joking. Actually, he loses.)

reply to post by RealSpoke

We don't know who his advisors will be.

I agree we know who his advisors are but we're guessing on who they will be. I suppose I shouldn't have mentioned that since it doesn't bear directly on the issue. So, what about the rest of my post? May I take it you agree with the parts you didn't object to?

reply to post by charles1952


Then I guess you live in a fantasy or just horrible misinformed. Romney already said he endorses torture.

So far, Mr. Romney has had the good sense not to follow this recommendation–at least not to a T. But in December he said he supported “enhanced interrogation techniques which go beyond those that are in the military handbook right now.” And he has said more than once that he favors waterboarding, a so-called “enhanced interrogation technique” which the United States government considered torture until the Bush administration decided it was not.

takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com...

reply to post by charles1952


Are you playing dumb or what? We already know who his advisers are, we already know what they are like. They all have a long neo-con political history. This memo was written by them. Are you seriously trying to pretend you do not know what Micheal Chertoff is like?

Ronmeys advisers wrote the memo, if elected they will be in office. What are you having such a hard time understanding?

reply to post by RealSpoke

Are you playing dumb or what? We already know who his advisers are, we already know what they are like. They all have a long neo-con political history. This memo was written by them. Are you seriously trying to pretend you do not know what Micheal Chertoff is like?

As I just said,

I suppose I shouldn't have mentioned that since it doesn't bear directly on the issue. So, what about the rest of my post? May I take it you agree with the parts you didn't object to?

I'm trying to tell you that the politics of the people writing the draft aren't as important as the results. And as I have pointed out, repeatedly, that was just a draft, and we know nothing about what happened after that.

Here, let me try something else. Pretend that you and the other guys in the sales team have to come up with an advertising campaign for a new, whatever, CD maybe. You sweat over it for a little while and the team eventually says "Let's go have some beer and ribs, maybe if we get away from the boss and work this out somewhere else, we'll come up with something." So you find a place, get a room to yourselves, and start discussing the issues. "I think we should pitch this as a throwback to heavy metal days." "You're crazy, we need to go for a softer mood, something that might interest the ladies." "Who cares about the ladies, we need to display the guy's street origins." And on and on.

Eventually the place has to close down. You've come to the agreement that you'll be writing the ladies off on this one, but haven't resolved the argument completely. You agree to get back together in a week, and finish the discussion. But before you go, you hand around a copy of the note on what you've got so far.

Those "notes," as far as the article you've linked to can tell me, is the "memo" you're talking about. The discussion wasn't finished, the "memo" to the boss hasn't even been started, and we don't know what the boss thinks of the idea your team eventually came up with.

So... if Obama gets reelected the US dies.

If Romney gets elected we dont know but its way safer than with Obama there... and all the price you have to pay for a chance to save your country and get obama out of that chair is to "legalize" torture?

I'm sure I rather have torture "legalized" than Obama in power...

Besides torture already happens and those enhanced interrogations are applied every single day, thing is, the stuff is all done under the table.

This seems another great case of how the people loves to be lied to. So if its already being done... just "legalize" it and get Obama out of that chair before the US sinks even further to a poverty level only seen in third world countries.

As Americans you should do ANYTHING to get Obama out of there. ANYTHING.

Romney has got to be the worst presidential candidate ever. It's almost as if he was chosen so that Obama automatically gets another 4 years.
If by chance this Mormon tool wins, we will be at war with Iran and god knows who else over the Israel debacle.

Yea torture is great if you want to get some scared #less kid to say what you want to hear instead of the truth. I can't believe in the 21st century we;re still dealing with this primitive idiocy. Romney is a joke, only the delusional think he stands a chance. And I'll eat my socks on that one any day if I'm wrong. Obama is the lesser of two evils and deep down, even the tea bagger's know this.

reply to post by kazanoom

Originally posted by kazanoom
Obama is the lesser of two evils...

Yeah, that makes real sense.