"People keep saying, 'We're not going to shoot them'."

[LynnTheDem]

The evidence backing up Masri's account of being "snatched" by American operatives is only the latest blow to the CIA in the ongoing detention-abuse scandal. Together with previously disclosed flight plans of a smaller Gulfstream V jet, the Boeing 737's travels are further evidence that a global "ghost" prison system, where terror suspects are secretly interrogated, is being operated by the CIA.Several of the Gulfstream flights allegedly correlate with other "renditions," the controversial practice of secretly spiriting suspects to other countries without due process. "The more evidence that comes out, the clearer it is that there's been a stunning failure of accountability," says lawyer John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

CIA officials are increasingly fretful about being saddled with this secret prison network at a time of intense pressure from lawyers and human-rights activists. The CIA's anxiety only deepened last week when President Bush named John Negroponte, his ambassador to Iraq, as the country's first director of national intelligence. Negroponte, a demanding career diplomat, will take over the coveted president's daily brief, or PDB, from Goss. Bush sought to reassure the CIA that it would still be welcome in the Oval Office. But Bush also signaled that Negroponte would preside over a major shift in power in intelligence gathering. "John and I will work to determine how much exposure the CIA will have to the Oval Office," the president told reporters.

While it battles for influence in Washington, the agency is also fighting a rear-guard action against critics at home and abroad. Some CIA officials fear the White House is now exposing them to legal peril. New Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, under pressure while he awaited his confirmation hearings late last year, repudiated a controversial August 2002 memo that CIA officials carefully solicited from the Justice Department for legal authorization on renditions and the agency's treatment of Qaeda prisoners. Today the CIA has dozens of detainees it doesn't know how to dispose of without legal procedures.

"Where's the off button?" says one retired CIA official. "They asked the White House for direction on how to dispose of these detainees back when they asked for guidance. The answer was, 'We'll worry about that later.' Now we don't know what to do with these guys. People keep saying, 'We're not going to shoot them'."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6999272/site/newsweek/

When the full truth comes out about what has and is being done in our names, Americans better tear the White House down, brick by brick...assuming any of us live through the blowback sure to be coming our way.

[NYC]

1. Do you think the full truth will come out?

When the full truth comes out about what has and is being done in our names, Americans better tear the White House down, brick by brick...assuming any of us live through the blowback sure to be coming our way.

I don't.

[gratuitous]

2. Isn't this a good time to be asking these questions?

"Where's the 'off' button?"

Well no fucking shit, Sherlock. And you know who's going to pay for the sins of this corrupt administration? It's damn sure not going to be Stupidhead or any of his cronies. It'll be you and me, and whoever else is luckless enough to be in whatever target of opportunity revenge-minded victims of this evil regime are able to hit back at.

And the media will be oh-so-surprised, running endless pieces wondering why the United States is so hated by these "terrorists" and "fanatics." Any inquiry into the background or root causes will be hysterically denounced by the mighty Republican Wurlitzer as being "anti-American" or "anti-freedom" because it gets too close to what's happening, and the media will play along because it's their laziness that has allowed the cover-up to succeed as well as it has.

[BillyDoc]

3. And MOST of the people on this blog

will have sat on their collective asses while all of this is going on, bitching to be sure, but actually doing . . . nothing.