One Small Step for Mitt, a Big Step for Blackwater

[Echo In Light]

One Small Step for Mitt, a Big Step for Blackwater
Published on Sunday, December 02, 2007.

Source: TruthNews - Kurt Nimmo

"...CNN’s Anderson Cooper tried to clarify matters a bit, asking the former governor if he believes waterboarding is, in fact, torture. Romney hedged again, but sounded like he would utilize the torture technique if elected.”

Of course he would. Because he is a neocon. In fact, the entire Republican line-up, with the single exception of Ron Paul, are neocons that will, if elected — and none of them will — continue the neocon program.

“I’m not going to specify the specific means of what is and what is not torture so that the people that we capture will know what things we’re able to do and what things we’re not able to do,” said Romney. “I get that advice from Cofer Black, who is a person who was responsible for counterterrorism in the CIA for some 35 years.”

Cofer Black is Romney’s counterterrorism policy chief. In September, Spencer Ackerman of TPM Muckraker wrote:

Once he was known as the “Flies On The Eyeballs” guy. Lately, he’s been the vice president of controversial private security company Blackwater. Now, Cofer Black has a new position: top counterterrorism adviser to Massachusetts Republican Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

The one-time chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center got his flamboyant nickname after delivering a famous post-9/11 briefing to President Bush about the CIA’s plans to destroy al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. (”They’ll have flies on their eyeballs” when CIA is done with them, Black is reported to have said.) But that wasn’t Black’s most famous utterance. In September 2002, in his first-ever public testimony before a joint Congressional inquiry into 9/11, Black — by then the head of the State Department’s counterterrorism shop — acknowledged that in terms of the CIA’s “operational flexibility,” after 9/11, “the gloves come off.” In retrospect, it’s considered the first public reference to the agency’s detention, rendition and interrogation policies.

Black left government in 2005 to join Blackwater, whose activities in Iraq have drawn both the ire of the Iraqi government and the opprobrium of House Oversight Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA). But that hasn’t disqualified Black from advising Romney’s campaign.

http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=4910

[annabanana]

1. Keep bragging about this guy, Mitt.. Keep him front and center...

After all, the "majority" of Americans are right in line with the Repug base..

[Demeter]

2. And the Worst Is, Ron Paul Is a Bigger Nut!

There is no lesser Evil here, folks!

[Jim__]

3. "Of course he would. Because he is a neocon. "

Actually, I think Romney is an absolute zero. He acts like a neocon today because he thinks that will help him win the primary. If he thought being an admirer of Kim Jong Il would help him get elected, he's be an admirer of Kim Jong Il.

The man is just garbage.

[gratuitous]

4. And yet, for all of his pandering

You will never, ever hear on the teevee those immortal words, "Mitt Romney will say anything to get elected." No, that's reserved exclusively for Democratic candidates, as is the observation that "So-and-so, Democrat, is a calculating candidate whose naked ambition for the office is just so unseemly." The implication being that the Republican good old boys just, aw shucks, were just thrust into the presidential race, and they're not really raising (or funding their own campaign) all that money or making all those appearances.