In December of 2007 Guardian and Independent published stories that were clearly designed to muddle the facts and divert attention away from the real story. The real story was that these training camps were to create the Tehreek-e Taliban-e Pakistan (TMP) or Pakistani Taliban; but why?

A key factor in Bush administration’s Afghan policy was to get Pakistan to make the war against Taliban its own war and not consider it as an American war that can be used to further Pakistan’s goals. By creating Pakistani Taliban US and Brits would be able to pit Pakistan’s military against the Taliban in general and eventually against the Pushtuns to the extent that Pakistani military could be used to do the fighting in Afghanistan. Furthermore, a side benefit of this program would be, if the Taliban were to take over some areas in Pakistan and a part of the capital, then this would provide a sufficient basis for the US to bomb Pakistani nuclear installations and cease their nuclear weapons. There were serious war plans and military exercises conducted by US forces for this scenario. However, unexpected competence of the Pakistani intelligence and ability of the Musharraf government to convince Karzai to through the two Brits out, put a damper on the CIA-MI5 plan. This kind of policy is typical of Bush administration: grandiose, fuzzy and inconsiderate of human life. I think it is the details of this plan that Panetta has uncovered and it may be the reason why Brits are generally unhappy with Obama administration.

But, that Cheney could have operated domestically singed some eyebrows. Sy Hersh had it, but would only allude to extraordinary overreaching. We were, and may still be, three hairs away from a coup d’etat. Why else would Obama let Cheney rave on – and why else would Obama and Holder still be playing at protecting BushCo from prosecution under Geneva?

And I’ll NOT bite you – I don’t know where you’ve been!

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/happy-hour-roundup-43/

And you are invited to bite me – hard.

Cause you aren’t better than anything – you’ll use any tactic to try to change the subject.

No one charged Cheney with anything – the rumor is public now – it’s all over the place. And if the CIA misled Congress on something Cheney was doing, what makes you think the CIA didn’t mislead Congress on something else?

Who else mentions Pelosi? Why, none other than Sam Stein in the post to which Sargent links! “Nevertheless, the late-evening stories provide a boost to earlier claims from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that she was drastically misled by the CIA when it was briefing members about the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation techniques.”

I’m wondering – did you even read the letter the Dems sent – the one which seeks a retraction of a statement made by Panetta IN RESPONSE TO PELOSI’s CHARGES?

I’m not setting up a straw man. You can thank Greg Sargent and Sam Stein and the Dems for all trying to link this “revelation” to a defense of Pelosi’s claims about CIA briefings regarding EITs.

C’mon now!

SG – you’re better than this. Tena – not so much. Jumping the gun a bit on the Cheney assassination squad aren’t we?

And sbj -= nice attempt at a straw man but we aren’t talking about Nancy Pelosi and what she knew. We’re talking about Dick Cheney and what he DID.

One of the things that is being tossed around is that they were briefed on the assassination ring that Cheney supposedly had at his disposal.

Also Thornberry was just on Hardball trying his best to spin it away and claim he couldn’t recall but when L O’Donnell pressed him he had to admit that it WAS something that should be investigated. As a matter of fact he kind of unwillingly supported Pelosi’s assertion that they get lied to “all the time” because he said over and over that this wasn’t necessarily an anomoly and that several times they are briefed well after something goes down.