Torture Queen "Condi" being very unqueen like (Video)

I don't care what you say or think, Condi, you were part of the torture team and trying to clean up your image is just too little, too late. You all up in the Bush kool-aid from the jump, so as it all comes out, Condi, you just have to deal. Folks, hang in there for the whole video.



h/t JJP

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Call me Condi, "The Torture Queen"

Yes, although former Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice told congress last year that she had basically nothing to do with the torture techniques used on the Arab detainees, the torture memos reveal otherwise.

Yes, Queen of Torture's fingerprints are all over this, as well.

Then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice verbally OK'd the CIA's request to subject alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah to waterboarding in July 2002, a decision memorialized a few days later in a secret memo that the Obama administration declassified last week.

Rice's role was detailed in a narrative released Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It provides the most detailed timeline yet for how the CIA's harsh interrogation program was conceived and approved at the highest levels in the Bush White House.

The new timeline shows that Rice played a greater role than she admitted last fall in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The narrative also shows that dissenting legal views about the severe interrogation methods were brushed aside repeatedly.

But even the new timeline has yet to resolve the central question of who inside the Bush administration first broached the idea of using waterboarding and other brutal tactics against terror detainees in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The Intelligence Committee's timeline comes a day after the Senate Armed Services Committee released an exhaustive report detailing direct links between the CIA's harsh interrogation program and abuses of prisoners at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in Afghanistan and at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Ah, yes, Condi is now trying to cover that ass, as indicated by davidkc over at Daily Kos:

Watching Rachel Maddow interview Philip Zelikow, a top State Department lawyer under Condoleezza Rice, about his recent decision to go public about his 2005 memo showing that he seriously questioned the Bush adminstration's legal arguments for the use of torture, I couldn't help but think that was nothing more, and nothing less, than an attempt to cover his ass and that of former boss Rice, now that it looks like loyal Bushies might, um, go to jail over this matter. And tonight we find out why Condi has decided that she needs to go into serious CYA mode. The Washington Post has a new story up on its website showing that Rice played a key early role, much more so than previously known, in Bushco's approval of torture.

Everyone who had anything to do with torturing inside that Bush White House need to lawyer up.

Lastly, I agree with Joe Scarborough on morning joe, release all the memos. Right now the right wingers are stating that these torture techniques work, but in the end it did not. If these techniques worked, Usama Bin Laden would be in federal prison right now, and we all know that he is not. And Joe Scarborough, the issue is that torture is illegal and the Bush Administration broke the law here in the United States and internationally. The question is not to pick and choose what you may constitute as torture, in the end torture is that torture.

The torture wheel is continuing to spin....

Source

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Condi in the Spin Zone for Bush

I almost spit up my coffee after reading this from AMERICAblog, "Condi: We may look really bad now, but give us 30 years".

The detour, media spin continues from Bush & Company. After yesterday's disastrous presser from President Bush, we now have to read or listen to the drivel from Condolezza Rice.

This is a woman, who at one point, was considered by Rumsfeld and Cheney as a "high priced secretary" at most, even though in the beginning of the Bush Administration she was the National Security Adviser. In other words, she was considered a joke.

Who can forget Condi out whoopin' it up in New York City while the City of New Orleans and its citizens were fighting for its existence. And here is a timeline of how the whole Bush Administration was MIA for many days as citizens of New Orleans were literally dying in the streets. This was happening as we had a President of the United States who was so out of the loop, that his staff had to compile a dvd with news clips of what was really happening in New Orleans.

So, now Condi has the nerve to say, "just give us 30 years?" My God, if we really knew how inept those in charge were in the Bush Administration we would not have given any of them 30 seconds.

In a conversation that stretched to 75 minutes -- and which Rice seemed reluctant to end -- the secretary of state said she was counting the hours until Jan. 20. But she yielded little ground in defense of her record or the administration's performance over the past eight years. After being peppered with questions about regrets, she joked, "Aren't you going to say, 'Aren't you thrilled that . . .?' "

What is more important than current controversies, she argued, slapping the table for emphasis, is how the decisions will look 25 or 30 years from now. "If you get very focused on whether someone thinks your policies are popular, you won't do the right thing," she said.

Arguing that Iraq shows signs of becoming an inclusive state -- it even "declared Christmas a national holiday" -- Rice said that if the country eventually emerges as a democratic, multiethnic state that has friendly ties with the United States, "that will be more important than what anybody thought in 2002 or 2003."

Good-bye, Condi, good riddance.

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Condi racking up in the jewelry department

Diamonds are a girls best friend....well, to some....

President George W. Bush's foreign policies may be unpopular in the Middle East, but Arab leaders showered his top diplomat with jewelry worth far more than a quarter of a million dollars last year.

While Bush himself didn't fare nearly as well, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice raked in at least $316,000 in gem-encrusted baubles from the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia alone, making her one of top recipients among U.S. officials of gifts from foreign heads of state and government and their aides in 2007.

In January, Jordan's King Abdullah II gave Rice an emerald and diamond necklace, ring, bracelet and earrings estimated to be worth $147,000, according to the State Department's annual inventory of such items released Monday just in time for Christmas.

The king and his wife, Queen Rania, also gave Rice a less expensive necklace and earrings along with a jewelry box valued at $4,630, the document shows.

Not to be outdone, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia presented Rice with a ruby and diamond necklace with matching earrings, bracelet and ring worth $165,000 in July. The inventory also includes a $170,000 flower petal motif necklace the Saudi monarch gave to Rice in 2005, which the department says was not previously disclosed.

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Morning Break...Off to Paris, Pentagon "Stomps" on Obama in Germany....

leaving hotel in germany, on his way to paris

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During the BIG NOISE of Obama, suttle partisanship have shown its ugly head. One called, "Condi" the other "Pentagon".

Condoleeza Rice attempted to step on this in Iraq, but he was in a military delegation.

Rice put out "after seeing this video below", that no state department personnel should attend the Berlin speech.



Then the Pentagon got in the picture:

Senior strategist Robert Gibbs said the visit to the military hospital in Germany had been in the works for about three weeks, with Gration serving as the campaign's contact with the Pentagon.

The Pentagon cleared the Obama plan to land at the base on either July 15 or 16, Gibbs said. The plane needed the clearance because of restrictions on landing nonmilitary aircraft there, he said.

But then on Wednesday, Gration told Obama aides that the Pentagon had informed him that the visit could be viewed as a campaign stop.

"They cited a regulation," Gibbs said of their point of contact, described as legislative affairs in the office of the secretary.

"We believed that based on the information we received that any presence, even his own and only his own, would get into a back and forth on whether his own presence was a campaign event," Gibbs said.

Obama planned to visit troops in Germany, in hospital units with no campaign coverage, no media and the Pentagon said "yes" before saying "no". Andrea Mitchell explains it below.



More information here and from WAPO, all this including how the Pentagon "appeased" John McCain, meaning "no problem John, visit the troops" even though you are a "presidential candidate".

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VEEPSTAKES....this time I expect some announcements next week before the Olympics



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Obama in Berlin: We’re a People of Improbable Hope

Updated Senator Barack Obama began his speech first by declaring that this was not a political speech.

“I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before,” Mr. Obama said, “not as a candidate for president but as a citizen — a proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world.”

And then, he felt he had to introduce himself. continue

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morning joe, chris matthews on obama speech and democratic party in disarray

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and...

Obama vs. McCain: A Dream Nightmare Contrast....

Obamanomics, video here.......


the "o" plane leaves berlin to paris

Missed Evening Wrap Up, read it here...............

Will post photos from Paris and London, as it becomes available...

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