Room 101 - The final punishment for thought criminals in the Ministry of Love.
"The thing in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world....The worst thing in the world varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths....." Newspeak Dictionary
Helen Thomas to Her Colleagues in the White House Press Corp: "Where is everybody? For God's sake."
By Richard Power
The White House denies that the US tortures prisoners (in violation of the Geneva Accords as well as our own laws and military traditions) even though Bush has boasted about it.
Helen Thomas: The President has said publicly several times, in two consecutive news conferences a few months ago, and you have said over and over again, we do not torture. Now he has admitted that he did sign off on torture, he did know about it. So how do you reconcile this credibility gap?
MS. PERINO: Helen, you're taking liberties with what the President said. The United States has not, is not torturing any detainees in the global war on terror. And General Hayden, amongst others, has spoken on Capitol Hill fully in this regard, and it is -- I'll leave it where it is. The President is accurate in saying what he said.
...Helen Thomas: You're denying, in this room, that we torture and we have tortured?
MS. PERINO: Yes, I am denying that.
Helen then turned in her seat, looked at her colleagues, shook her head in disgust, and asked sadly: "Where is everybody? For God's sakes!" Eric Brewer, Raw Story, 4-24-08
Millions of e-mails are "missing" from the period in which the covert identity of US secret agent Valerie Plame was betrayed as well as the period in which several US attorneys were fired for political reasons.
Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola of the U.S. District Court ordered the White House to once and for all provide "precise information" about its e-mail system. The order stems from a lawsuit by the National Security Archive, filed on September 5, 2007 against the Executive Office of the President and the National Archives and Records Administration, claiming that a possible 5-to-10 million e-mails were either improperly preserved as Presidential records, as required by law, or lost entirely. Nick Langewis, Raw Story, 4-24-08
Why is the White House stiffing the Federal court's demand for clarity and accountability?
Consider what some e-mail from Bush's Veterans Administration reveals, and then imagine what is in the missing White House e-mails:
In one email message titled “Not for the CBS News…,” the VA’s head of mental health Dr. Ira Katz wrote "Shh!" and then claimed there were 1,000 suicide attempts per month by veterans under the care of the agency. The e-mail was written last February when CBS News was questioning the VA about the number of veterans who have tried to kill themselves.
After a public records request, the VA provided CBS News with data that showed there were a total of 790 attempted suicides by VA patients in the entire year of 2007. This number was nowhere near what Katz was saying privately in his email. CBS News, 4-23-08
Indeed, where is everybody?
Perhaps you tell yourself it is almost over, and that whoever is sworn into office in January 2009 will end the lawlessness and the indifference to human suffering.
You may well be proven wrong in two out of the three possible outcomes of the US presidential election.
If so, then what will you do?
Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.
Helen Thomas, Torture, Veterans Affairs, DoJ, Valerie Plame, Cheney, Bush, Richard Power, Words of Power
