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Advice given to Obama by DOJ and Pentagon lawyers on Libya was overruled by Obama, according to newly-released reports.

President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner hit the links for a “golf summit”

Lady Gaga goes bald for “Hair” performance.

Michele Bachmann thinks that schools should teach “intelligent design.” 

Party crasher and village idiot Andrew Breitbart crashes the Netroots Nation Conference, and this was what happened.

Here’s a state-by-state assault of who is attacking abortion rights.

occupyallstreets: U.S. Forcibly Injected Gitmo Detainees With ‘Mind Altering’ Drugs Prisoners inside the U.S. military’s detention center at Guantanamo Bay were forcibly given “mind altering drugs,” including being injected with a powerful anti-psychotic sedative used in psychiatric hospitals. Prisoners were often not told what medications they received, and were tricked into believing routine flu shots were truth serums. It’s a serious violation of medical ethics, made worse by the fact that the military continued to interrogate prisoners while they were doped on psychoactive chemicals. That’s according to a recently declassified report (.pdf) from the Pentagon’s inspector general, obtained by Truthout‘s Jeffrey Kaye and Jason Leopold after a Freedom of Information Act Request. In it, the inspector general concludes that “certain detainees, diagnosed as having serious mental health conditions being treated with psychoactive medications on a continuing basis, were interrogated.” The report does not conclude, though, that anti-psychotic drugs were used specifically for interrogation purposes. The only drug explicitly named in the report was Haldol, first marketed in the 1960s and still used today as a relatively cheap — and hard-boiled — anti-psychotic sedative in psychiatric hospitals (more commonly in emergency rooms). Haldol has declined since the widespread introduction of newer anti-psychiatric drugs in the 1990s. Its side effects are not great. A full list would be too long to reproduce here, but they include depression, muscle contractions and suicidal behavior. A patient on Haldol can develop long-term movement disorders and life-threatening neurological disorders. There’s a possibility (though not common) of heart problems that can lead to sudden death. Haldol’s main effect, though, is that it makes you really groggy. Now combine that with sleep deprivation and intense, fearful questioning. Brent Mickum, an attorney for detainee Abu Zubaydah, said Zubaydah was “routinely overdosed” with the drug, Truthout notes. (Zubaydah was also waterboarded 83 times in one month.) The inspector general report also notes that one prisoner, listed in the report only as “IG-02,” was never given Haldol shots during interrogations, but was forced to take monthly injections as he was diagnosed as “schizophrenic and psychotic with borderline personality disorder.” Truthout identified the prisoner as Adel al-Nusairi, a former Guantanamo prisoner and former Saudi policeman who — after his release — claimed to have been forcibly “drugged and coerced into making confessions,” Kaye and Leopold write. An unnamed detainee told the inspector general he was given unidentified red and blue pills while traveling to Guantanamo from Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, in 2002. ”At the time they said it was some candy,” he said. After eating the “candy,” the prisoner said he felt like in a “state of delusion” for several days. At least one detainee, so-called “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla was tricked into believing he was injected with a “truth serum” during an interrogation, possibly a form of LSD or PCP. In reality, it was a flu shot. Still, it’s a “serious breach of medical ethics,” Georgetown University law professor and health policy specialist Gregg Bloche told Truthout. “It undermines trust in military physicians and it’s an unfair insult to the integrity of the vast majority of military doctors, who quite rightly believe that this sort of thing is contrary to their professional obligation,” Bloche said. The military’s response has been muted. A Pentagon spokesman refused to comment to Truthout as “doing so might not only compromise security,” but added that the military’s operating procedures “are ‘living’ documents, subject to regular change and updating.” The inspector general report noted comments from Guantanamo’s former medical commander that drugs were giving “to help control serious mental illnesses,” and that the practice was approved by an ethics committee. But did they consent? (No.) Did the medics consult the prisoners’ medical background before administering drugs? Were prisoners still under the effect of the drugs during interrogation? The report concludes: very likely. And what kind of confessions were interrogators receiving? They may not have been the most reliable, or truthful. Worse, men with serious mental disorders were given heavy sedatives, while interrogations continued. Not many medical professionals would call that treatment.
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occupyallstreets:

U.S. Forcibly Injected Gitmo Detainees With ‘Mind Altering’ Drugs

Prisoners inside the U.S. military’s detention center at Guantanamo Bay were forcibly given “mind altering drugs,” including being injected with a powerful anti-psychotic sedative used in psychiatric hospitals. Prisoners were often not told what medications they received, and were tricked into believing routine flu shots were truth serums. It’s a serious violation of medical ethics, made worse by the fact that the military continued to interrogate prisoners while they were doped on psychoactive chemicals.

That’s according to a recently declassified report (.pdf) from the Pentagon’s inspector general, obtained by Truthout‘s Jeffrey Kaye and Jason Leopold after a Freedom of Information Act Request. In it, the inspector general concludes that “certain detainees, diagnosed as having serious mental health conditions being treated with psychoactive medications on a continuing basis, were interrogated.” The report does not conclude, though, that anti-psychotic drugs were used specifically for interrogation purposes.

The only drug explicitly named in the report was Haldol, first marketed in the 1960s and still used today as a relatively cheap — and hard-boiled — anti-psychotic sedative in psychiatric hospitals (more commonly in emergency rooms). Haldol has declined since the widespread introduction of newer anti-psychiatric drugs in the 1990s.

Its side effects are not great. A full list would be too long to reproduce here, but they include depression, muscle contractions and suicidal behavior. A patient on Haldol can develop long-term movement disorders and life-threatening neurological disorders. There’s a possibility (though not common) of heart problems that can lead to sudden death.

Haldol’s main effect, though, is that it makes you really groggy. Now combine that with sleep deprivation and intense, fearful questioning. Brent Mickum, an attorney for detainee Abu Zubaydah, said Zubaydah was “routinely overdosed” with the drug, Truthout notes. (Zubaydah was also waterboarded 83 times in one month.)

The inspector general report also notes that one prisoner, listed in the report only as “IG-02,” was never given Haldol shots during interrogations, but was forced to take monthly injections as he was diagnosed as “schizophrenic and psychotic with borderline personality disorder.” Truthout identified the prisoner as Adel al-Nusairi, a former Guantanamo prisoner and former Saudi policeman who — after his release — claimed to have been forcibly “drugged and coerced into making confessions,” Kaye and Leopold write.

An unnamed detainee told the inspector general he was given unidentified red and blue pills while traveling to Guantanamo from Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, in 2002. ”At the time they said it was some candy,” he said. After eating the “candy,” the prisoner said he felt like in a “state of delusion” for several days.

At least one detainee, so-called “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla was tricked into believing he was injected with a “truth serum” during an interrogation, possibly a form of LSD or PCP. In reality, it was a flu shot. Still, it’s a “serious breach of medical ethics,” Georgetown University law professor and health policy specialist Gregg Bloche told Truthout. “It undermines trust in military physicians and it’s an unfair insult to the integrity of the vast majority of military doctors, who quite rightly believe that this sort of thing is contrary to their professional obligation,” Bloche said.

The military’s response has been muted. A Pentagon spokesman refused to comment to Truthout as “doing so might not only compromise security,” but added that the military’s operating procedures “are ‘living’ documents, subject to regular change and updating.” The inspector general report noted comments from Guantanamo’s former medical commander that drugs were giving “to help control serious mental illnesses,” and that the practice was approved by an ethics committee.

But did they consent? (No.) Did the medics consult the prisoners’ medical background before administering drugs? Were prisoners still under the effect of the drugs during interrogation? The report concludes: very likely.

And what kind of confessions were interrogators receiving? They may not have been the most reliable, or truthful. Worse, men with serious mental disorders were given heavy sedatives, while interrogations continued. Not many medical professionals would call that treatment.

(via anarcho-queer)

Do As I Say, Not As I Do: Cheney Cut Pentagon Budget, Now Urges GOP to Oppose Spending Cuts!!!

Dick Cheney’s re-emergence tour continued today with a visit to Capitol Hill to get Republicans “ginned up” to prevent automatic cuts to military spending that are supposed to take effect early next year. Politico reports that in a meeting with Senate Republicans this afternoon, Cheney provided some words of wisdom based on his experience as Secretary of Defense during the George H.W. Bush administration:

Cheney didn’t push a specific policy remedy for avoiding the automatic cuts, several senators said. Rather, he focused on his time as the defense secretary in the 1990s — talking particularly about the need to plan years in advance for major investments in the military.

“He just talked about some of the critical investments that have been made over time and the lag time that it takes for those things to happen,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) “There was no policy issue; it was just the fact [that] sequestration is a blunt object, and it is.”

Whether Cheney talked about his time leading the Pentagon, the big elephant in the room here is that Cheney himself oversaw drastic cuts to the DOD budget during his tenure as Defense Secretary and even pushed for cuts to expensive weapons programs. George W. Bush administration Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell, who served as Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman during the elder Bush’s administration, pointed this out last year in making the case that the “defense budget cannot be sacrosanct” when figuring ways to cut spending:

“When the Cold War ended 20 years ago, when I was chairman and [Dick] Cheney was Secretary of Defense, we cut the defense budget by 25 percent. And we reduced the force by 500,000 active duty soldiers, so it can be done. Now, how fast you can do it and what you have to cut out remains to be seen, but I don’t think the defense budget can be made sacrosanct and it can’t be touched.”

Indeed, as a recent CAP report pointed out, the budget authority for the Defense Department fell by nearly $100 billion during the George H.W. Bush administration, or Cheney’s time as Defense Secretary.

Also most likely left unmentioned in Cheney’s meetings with Republicans on the Hill is that overwhelming majorities of Americans in both Democratic and Republican congressional districts favor military spending cuts and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said this week that even the most drastic cuts would merely take the Pentagon’s budget back to 2006 levels.

shortformblog: “No Easy Day” for Pentagon: The Pentagon wasn’t quite ready for an unauthorized biography written by an anonymous Navy SEAL. “Sensitive and classified information is contained in the book,” says Pentagon spokesperson George Little. The book, “No Easy Day,” describes the fateful mission that led to the death of Osama bin Laden last year. The author wrote the book under an anonymous guise, but Fox News revealed his identity last month. The man’s lawyer says the Pentagon “invites but by no means requires” publication review, though Little suggests the author violated a non-disclosure agreement. (photo by Peter Foley/EPA)
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shortformblog:

“No Easy Day” for Pentagon: The Pentagon wasn’t quite ready for an unauthorized biography written by an anonymous Navy SEAL. “Sensitive and classified information is contained in the book,” says Pentagon spokesperson George Little. The book, “No Easy Day,” describes the fateful mission that led to the death of Osama bin Laden last year. The author wrote the book under an anonymous guise, but Fox News revealed his identity last month. The man’s lawyer says the Pentagon “invites but by no means requires” publication review, though Little suggests the author violated a non-disclosure agreement. (photo by Peter Foley/EPA)

President Obama marks the eleventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks at a memorial service at the Pentagon.

‘One of the problems is, once the drone program is so public, and one American is caught up, people don’t know much about this one “American citizen”—so called. … When people hear “American,” they think someone who’s upstanding. And this man was not upstanding by a long shot,’ said Senator Dianne Feinstein, in her questioning of John Brennan, President Obama’s nominee for C.I.A. director, on Thursday. … ‘Proud,’ ‘upstanding,’ ‘so-called American’—is this the basis on which the Senate is judging fundamental questions of American rights and due process? Before the hearing, I wondered what picture of Americans we were supposed to have when we heard about the executive giving itself the power to kill them. Feinstein could hardly have given a less reassuring answer. When and on what basis will any of us get a ‘so-called’ in front of our nationality? That there may have been a good deal of evidence against al-Awlaki is why his case should have gone before a court, not why it shouldn’t have.
Amy Davidson, John Brennan’s C.I.A. Director Hearings and the So-Called Americans (via theamericanbear)

(via dendroica)

Source: newyorker.com

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