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Republicans spill the intell beans.


Just to prove their case on torture.
Republicans ignited a firestorm of
controversy on Thursday by revealing some of
what they had been told at a closed-door
Intelligence Committee hearing on the
interrogation of terrorism suspects.

Democrats immediately blasted the GOP
lawmakers for publicly discussing classified
information, while Republicans said Democrats
are trying to hide the truth that enhanced
interrogation of detainees is effective.

GOP members on the Intelligence Committee on
Thursday told The Hill in on-the-record
interviews that they were informed that the
controversial methods have led to information
that prevented terrorist attacks.

When told of the GOP claims, Democrats
strongly criticized the members who revealed
information that was provided at the closed
House Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight
and Investigations hearing. Democrats on the
panel said they could not respond
substantively, pointing out that the hearing
was closed.
Of course what would you expect from a party whose members still
think beating slaves is a pretty neat idea. And whose former leader
got his yayas from blowing animals to pieces with fire crackers.

To them torture is just another fun game.


C

4 Comments

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Republicans have always had leaks in their intelligence holders.

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You leak what seems good for your side, you hide what you think is bad for your side....

The dupes cheney had at the NYT...one of them now works for Fox.

No one enforces the various alien and sedition acts against the big guys. Which is a damnable shame really, but that is what real power is....

I mean leaking classified material is against the law.

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"Democrats weren’t sure what they were going to get," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (Mich.), ranking Republican on the Intelligence panel, referring to information on the merits of enhanced interrogation techniques. "Now that they know what they’ve got, they don’t want to talk about it."
[. . .]
Hoekstra did not attend the hearing, but said he later spoke with Republicans on the subcommittee who did. He said he came away with even more proof that the enhanced interrogation techniques employed by the CIA proved effective.

"I think the people who were at the hearing, in my opinion, clearly indicated that the enhanced interrogation techniques worked," Hoekstra said.

Jared Allen, "Intel firestorm: GOP reveals briefing info", The Hill, June 4, 2009
Pete Hoekstra hurled a blanket indictment at the Democrats, based only on hearsay. Even though he is the Ranking Intelligence Committee member, he couldn't make it to the hearing. The Republican Party proves it was incapable of ridding the government of it rampant intelligence failures after 911, when it was in control of both Congressional Houses, since Hoekstra is Ranking Member of The Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. However, Hoekstra has shown he is capable of Chairing The House Selective Intelligence Committee many times in the past. The following is just one of the many examples of this:
Last March (2006), the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to "leverage the Internet" to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended "pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing."
[. . .]
The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.

"For the U.S. to toss a match into this flammable area is very irresponsible," said A. Bryan Siebert, a former director of classification at the federal Department of Energy, which runs the nation’s nuclear arms program. "There’s a lot of things about nuclear weapons that are secret and should remain so."
[. . .]
Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a private group at George Washington University that tracks federal secrecy decisions, said the impetus for the Web site’s creation came from an array of sources - private conservative groups, Congressional Republicans and some figures in the Bush administration - who clung to the belief that close examination of the captured documents would show that Mr. Hussein’s government had clandestinely reconstituted an unconventional arms programs.

"There were hundreds of people who said, ‘There’s got to be gold in them thar hills,’ " Mr. Blanton said.

The campaign for the Web site was led by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan. Last November, he and his Senate counterpart, Pat Roberts of Kansas, wrote to Mr. Negroponte, asking him to post the Iraqi material. The sheer volume of the documents, they argued, had overwhelmed the intelligence community.
[. . .]
On April 18, about a month after the first documents were made public, Mr. Hoekstra issued a news release acknowledging "minimal risks," but saying the site "will enable us to better understand information such as Saddam’s links to terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and violence against the Iraqi people." He added: "It will allow us to leverage the Internet to enable a mass examination as opposed to limiting it to a few exclusive elites."

Yesterday, before the site was shut down, Jamal Ware, a spokesman for Mr. Hoekstra, said the government had "developed a sound process to review the documents to ensure sensitive or dangerous information is not posted." Later, he said the complaints about the site "didn’t sound like a big deal," adding, "We were a little surprised when they pulled the plug."

William J. Broad, "U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer", New York Times, November 3, 2006
Why does Pete Hoekstra still have a security clearance?
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In general, I'm always left wondering why Dems. so often seem ineffective at, or uninterested in, the game of enforcing political penalties on hypocritical Republicans, such as Hoekstra?

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cmaukonen

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