"Got to find a link with Iran, got to find a link with Iran." It's sickening.'

[leftchick]

Iraqi fighters 'grilled for evidence on Iran'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2209036,00.html


US military officials are putting huge pressure on interrogators who question Iraqi insurgents to find incriminating evidence pointing to Iran, it was claimed last night.

Micah Brose, a privately contracted interrogator working for American forces in Iraq, near the Iranian border, told The Observer that information on Iran is 'gold'. The claim comes after Washington imposed sanctions on Iran last month, citing both its nuclear ambitions and its Revolutionary Guards' alleged support of Shia insurgents in Iraq. Last week the US military freed nine Iranians held in Iraq, including two it had accused of links to the Revolutionary Guards' Qods Force.

Brose, 30, who extracts information from detainees in Iraq, said: 'They push a lot for us to establish a link with Iran. They have pre-categories for us to go through, and by the sheer volume of categories there's clearly a lot more for Iran than there is for other stuff. Of all the recent requests I've had, I'd say 60 to 70 per cent are about Iran.

'It feels a lot like, if you get something and Iran's not involved, it's a let down.' He added: 'I've had people say to me, "They're really pushing the Iran thing. It's like, shit, you know." '

<snip>

Other military intelligence officials in Iraq refused to comment, but one said: 'The message is, "Got to find a link with Iran, got to find a link with Iran." It's sickening.'




.... This is why Hil's vote for the Kyl-Lieberman bullshit is so dangerous.

[liberal N proud]

1. All they need is one claim, true or not and they will bomb away

They may even have to fabricate the claim if they can't waterboard the claim from some poor sucker.

[Postman]

3. Waterboarding is used to garner confessions

i.e. bogus intelligence to throw at the gullible public into supporting another bogus war. Just as they did with Al-Libi (sic?) regarding Iraq.

This is Nazi Germany, not America.

[MadHound]

2. This entire drumbeat sounds like the same rhythm that they used in the run up to Iraq

Yet it is incredible how many people both in and out of government don't recognize the beat. Bush is going to start a war with Iran before he leaves, and Dems like Hillary are once again throw up their hands claiming that they couldn't have known, that they were fooled or lied to or whatever.

Meanwhile, the top tier candidates can't promise to be out of Iraq during their first term, gee, I wonder how long it will take for them to get out of Iran.

[leftchick]

4. "It now really depends on who gets elected President in the US."

not if it is hillary :scared:

<snip>

It now really depends on who gets elected President in the US. If nothing changes in the current course, I'd say military action is inevitable. But we have to hope there will be a change of course.'

[frogcycle]

12. i agree with the frustration over

the obliviousness to the charade being conducted to trump up another war.

But the drumbeat over the "won't promise" thing is wearing thin.

Candidate:

"I would do everything in my power to get us out, and I am confident we would be out of combat situations in a few months or even less, and out of direct harms way within a year. But I cannot state unequivocally exactly when we'd be able to get the last one out. I believe it would be well before the time frame you state, but won't make promises based on an unknown future."

Spin:

He's going to keep them there forever!

[Strelnikov_]

5. "privately contracted interrogator . . . information on Iran is 'gold"

Ah, the wonder of the free market.

Client willing to pay for evidence linking Iran. A market opportunity to prop up revenues for the quarterly earnings report.

And the Republican-Libertarian party line tells us when a war is started due to false intelligence, the client will fire the firm supplying the intelligence, the self correcting nature of the 'free market'.

Ain't life under Republican-Libertarian rule grand!!!

[Time for change]

6. It's almost exactly the same as the leadup to the Iraq War

Anyone who can't see it is either blind or in denial or a shill for the war profiteers. :banghead:

[leftchick]

7. where doe that leave our front runner?

Hillary? Shill for the war profiteers is my guess.

[Time for change]

8. I don't know

She's near the bottom of my list for the Democratic nomination. But if she wins it, like she looks like she will, I will almost certainly vote for her. I'm hoping that she will make a better president than it would currently appear. Maybe she's just positioning herself to the center and acting tough so as to position herself for the general election.

[lumberjack_jeff]

10. Richard Clarke: "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection."

From CBS
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml

fter the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.

"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.

"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking.

<snip>


"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."

Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'

"I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it, because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don't think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don't think he sees memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer."

[hootinholler]

9. Great! SO now we'll just fire up the torture machine and manufacture a link!

Fucking Bastards!

-Hoot

[lumberjack_jeff]

11. Absolutely. The absence of a link is nothing a few torture-induced confessions can't cure. n/t