“Known as the McCain Amendment, after its chief sponsor, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, the legislation [signed into law on December 30, 2005] prohibits cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment by both the military and intelligence agencies. It limits interrogation methods to those specified in the military field manual (a new edition is under development to […]
12/30/2005
After legal counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, David Addington, revised Arizona Republican Senator John McCain’s Detainee Treatment Act, which President Bush signed into law on December 30, 2005, “A new, secret legal memo commissioned by the White House from Steven Bradbury at the OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] provided a stealthy means of undercutting […]
12/30/2005
“Just before [President] Bush signed [Arizona Republican Senator John] McCain’s Detainee Treatment Act into law, on December 30, 2005, [legal counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, David] Addington unsheathed the red pen he kept in his pocket and eviscerated the compromise language that had been worked out between Congress and the White House. In its […]
12/30/2005
“In a poll released in December [30] 2005, the number of Pakistanis expressing a positive view of bin Laden had fallen to 33 percent [down from 65 percent in March 2004].” – Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, Page 400 […]
12/24/2005
A December 24, 2005, article in The New York Times “reported that ‘the NSA [National Security Agency] has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications.’ According to the article, this vast pipeline of raw telephone and e-mail data was being systematically combed by NSA […]
12/21/2005
“By far the strongest defense of the [warrantless eavesdropping] program has come from former vice president [Dick] Cheney, who in December [21] 2005, while on a visit to Pakistan, told a reporter from CNN that it ‘has saved thousands of lives.’ ” – Matthew M. Aid, The Secret Sentry, Page 291 […]
12/21/2005
After James Risen of The New York Times exposed warrantless eavesdropping, Vice President Dick Cheney commented, on December 21, 2005: ” ‘Watergate and a lot of things around Watergate and Vietnam, both during the ’70s served, I think, to erode the authority…the legitimate authority of the presidency’–practices exercised by Nixon that were outlawed after Watergate.’ […]
12/20/2005
Vice President Dick Cheney spoke to members of the press who were traveling with him on December 20, 2005. In defense of President Bush’s national security policy, which included warrantless wiretapping, he said: ” ‘The president and I believe very deeply that there’s a hell of a threat, that it’s there for anybody who wants […]
12/20/2005
” ‘Either we’re serious about fighting the war on terror or we’re not, he [Vice President Dick Cheney] said [on December 20, 2005]. ‘Either we believe that there are individuals out there doing everything they can to try to launch more attacks, to try to get deadlier weapons to use against us, or we don’t. […]
12/19/2005
“On December 19, 2005, [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld signed orders pulling out three thousand U.S. troops from the south [of Afghanistan], reducing the total number to sixteen thousand. It was the worst possible moment, as the largest Taliban offensive was about to unfold, but Rumsfeld refused to accept that the Taliban insurgency was expanding.” […]