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I don't have a Facebook or a Twitter account. Research and publish the best content. Royal de Luxe 1. A global guide to the first world war 1. Accord de Beauvais 1. Afrique de l'Est 3. Afrique de l'Ouest 1. Afrique du Nord 6. Afrique du Sud Agence Internationale des prisonniers de guerre 2. Alec Stanhope Forbes 1. Alfred von Schlieffen 2. Ambulance de Notre-Dame de Pouy 1. Anna Coleman Ladd 2. Anne de Fornel 1. Annuaire de sites Web 1. Appel des Classes 2. Arc de Triomphe 1. Archives de France 1. Archives de Lyon 1. Archives de Paris 3. Archives du Pas-de-Calais 1. Archives Municipales de Grenoble 1.
Archives municipales de Lyon 1. Archives municipales de Nantes 2. Archives Municipales de Saint-Nazaire 1. Archives Nationales de France 3. Arnoulx de Pirey 2. Arthur Charles Leguay 1. Arthur Conan Doyle 3. August Hermann Zeiz 1. Augustin Joseph Louis Victorin 1. Austrian National Library 2.
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Banque de France 1. Bataille de Tabora 1. Batailles de 1. BataIllon Mixte du Pacifique 1. Battle of Somme 1. Bavarian State Library 1. Centenaire guerre 8. Centre d'Histoire Sociale de Paris I 1. Centre de recherches de Croix-Moligneaux 1. Centre Henri Pourrat 1. Centre Image Lorraine 1. Centre international des sciences de l'homme 1. Centre Mondial de la Paix 1. Ceux de 14 3. Chambre de commerce 1. Champs de Batailles 1. Changing the Landscape 1. Chansons de 3. Charles de Gaulle Charles de Menditte 1. Charles Joseph Clerc 1. Charles William Jefferys 1. Chemin des Dames Chemins de Fer 2.
Chinese Labour Corps 1. Comme en 14 1. Committee on Public Information 1. Commonwealth War Graves 1. Compagnie Sidi Brahim 1. Correspondance de Guerre 3. Cote du Poivre 1. Course des Poilus 1. Croix de guerre avec 4 palmes 1. Daniel de Losques 2. Digital First World War Resources 1. Duke of Wellington's Regiment 1. Dunoyer de Segonzac 2. Ecrivains Morts pour la France 1. Editions du CNRS 1. Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett 1. Emaux de Longwy 1. Emprunt de la victoire 1.
Erich Maria Remarque 4. Etienne Le Roux 1. Eugene James Bullard 1. Europeana Collections 4. Festival International des Programmes 1. And she knows the likely results. Secretary of State John Kerry expressed the concerns of allies about increased violence. A National Intelligence Council report warned of threats to embassies, installations and individuals, and explored how partners would react to the disclosure. So why has Feinstein donned her Guy Fawkes mask?
Tension with the CIA? The main reason, I suspect, is different. Democrats who approved of enhanced interrogation at the time such as Feinstein must now construct an elaborate fantasy world in which they were not knowledgeable and supportive. They postulate a new reality in which they were innocent and deceived — requiring a conspiracy from three former CIA directors, three former deputy directors and hundreds of others. Occam would indicate a different answer: Partisan torture report fails America Intelligence agencies need guidance to do better, Senate Democrats failed to provide it.
I regret having to write a piece that is critical of the Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Most of them are former colleagues and friends. I hope they will remain friends after reading this. For eight years I served on this committee. Thanks to the and efforts of Senator John McCain I do not have to wait to be certain our interrogation policies and procedures are aligned with our core values. The enemy does not have an easy to identify and analyze military.
In the war against global jihadism, human intelligence and interrogation have become more important, and I worry that the partisan nature of this report could make this kind of collection more difficult. I do not need to read the report to know that the Democratic staff alone wrote it. The Republicans checked out early when they determined that their counterparts started out with the premise that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it.
This committee departed from that high road and slipped into the same partisan mode that marks most of what happens on Capitol Hill these days. In both cases we were very critical of the practices of the intelligence agencies. In both cases we avoided partisan pressure to blame the opposing party. In both cases Congress made statutory changes and the agencies changed their policies. In both of these efforts the committee staff examined documents and interviewed all of the individuals involved.
Their rationale — that some officers were under investigation and could not be made available — is not persuasive. Most officers were never under investigation and for those who were, the process ended by Fairness should dictate that the examination of documents alone do not eliminate the need for interviews conducted by the investigators. Isolated emails, memos and transcripts can look much different when there is no context or perspective provided by those who sent, received or recorded them. It is important for all of us to remember how unprepared we were for the attacks of September 11, and how unprepared we were to do the things necessary to keep the country from being attacked again.
There was no operating manual to guide the choices and decisions made by the men and women in charge of protecting us. I will continue to read the report to learn of the mistakes we apparently made. I do not need to read the report in full to know this: We have not been attacked since and for that I am very grateful. It is important for all of us to not let Congress dodge responsibility. Congressional oversight of intelligence is notoriously weak. The worse consequence of a partisan report can be seen in this disturbing fact: It contains no recommendations.
This is perhaps the most significant missed opportunity, because no one would claim the program was perfect or without its problems.
But equally, no one with real experience would claim it was the completely ineffective and superfluous effort this report alleges. Our intelligence personnel — who are once again on the front lines fighting the Islamic State — need recommended guidance from their board of governors: Remarkably this report contains none. I hope — for the sake of our security and our values — Congress will follow the leadership of Senator McCain and give them this guidance. Bob Kerrey, former governor of Nebraska and U. Anyone in the world who wants to read it can do a full download, and think what they think.
Bob got his Thinking Look, and paused. We were quiet for a moment, and then our minds went to exactly the same place at the same time: Japanese torture of American soldiers in the Pacific war. The terrible, vicious barbarity of it. More than 40 years later, maybe it was still there, showing up in a poll.
It was just our guess, but I think a good one. This is one of the reasons, only a practical one, torture is bad. It makes people lose respect for you. And when you come most deeply to terms with it, it can make you lose respect for you, too. But America should never again do what is asserted and outlined in the report, which enumerates various incidents of what I believe must honestly be called torture.
American policy should be to treat prisoners the way we would hope—with clear eyes, knowing it is a hope—our prisoners would be treated. Torture is not like us. It is almost childish to say it, yet children sometimes see obvious truths. Someone has to be the good guy. For a long time in the world that has been our role. You might say it bubbled up from our culture. They went with the legal guidance they had, propelled by the anxiety we all experienced. None of them should be abused, embarrassed or prosecuted now. But who is more hawkish and concerned about our security than Sen.
He was denied medical treatment, starved, beaten, his arm rebroken and his ribs shattered; he was made to stand and put in stress positions, and put in solitary confinement for two years. Those involved in the episodes outlined should have been interviewed, and were not. The investigation and report should have been conducted so that they could win full bipartisan involvement and support, and were not. The most stinging critique came from Mr. Kerrey, a Democrat who served eight years on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which issued the report.
There are more questions about the report. One is that it is generally understood to reflect longstanding tensions between the committee and the CIA. Another is the timing—the report was issued just as a defeated Democratic majority walked out the door, and has the look of a last, lobbed stink bomb: It can be hard to take seriously a report that seems largely a product of partisan resentment, guilt and blame shifting. And yet it outlines believable incidents of what is clearly torture. The report is out there. If any good comes of it, it can be as a final demarcation between an old way of operating and a new one.
A travesty of a report Charles Krauthammer Washington Post. Bush of war criminality. Amid panic and disorientation, we lost our moral compass and made awful judgments. The results are documented in the committee report. They must never happen again. And it is not just unctuous condescension but hypocritical nonsense. Indeed, this was the considered opinion of the CIA, the administration, the congressional leadership and the American people. Al-Qaeda had successfully mounted four major attacks on American targets in the previous three years.
The pace was accelerating and the scale vastly increasing. The country then suffered a deadly anthrax attack of unknown origin. Al-Qaeda was known to be seeking weapons of mass destruction. And we knew next to nothing about the enemy: There was nothing morally deranged about deciding as a nation to do everything necessary to find out what we needed to prevent a repetition, or worse.
Nancy Pelosi, then ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, was briefed about the interrogation program, including the so-called torture techniques. As were the other intelligence committee leaders. Democrat Jay Rockefeller, while the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was asked in about turning over Khalid Sheik Mohammed to countries known to torture. There was no uproar about this open countenancing of torture-by-proxy.
Which demonstrates not just the shamelessness of Democrats today denouncing practices to which, at the time and at the very least, they made no objection. It demonstrates also how near-consensual was the idea that our national emergency might require extraordinary measures. It is to say that the root-and-branch denunciation of the program as, in principle, unconscionable is not just hypocritical but ahistorical.
To make that case, to produce a prosecutorial brief so entirely and relentlessly one-sided, the committee report written solely by Democrats excluded any testimony from the people involved and variously accused.
No interviews, no hearings, no statements. The excuse offered by the committee is that a parallel Justice Department inquiry precluded committee interviews. That inquiry ended in Moreover, even during the Justice Department investigation, the three CIA directors and many other officials were exempt from any restrictions. So that committee Democrats could make their indictment without contradiction.
So what was the Bush administration to do? A nation attacked is not a laboratory for exquisite moral experiments. Accordingly, under the direction of the Bush administration and with the acquiescence of congressional leadership, the CIA conducted an uncontrolled experiment. It did everything it could, sometimes clumsily, sometimes cruelly, indeed, sometimes wrongly.
The Torture Taboo The taboo against torture is important and honorable, but sometimes the real world gets a veto. By Jonah Goldberg Jonah Goldberg. What some of these detainees went through pretty obviously amounted to torture. Everyone can agree that hot pokers, the rack, and the iron maiden qualify. But loud music, sleep deprivation, and even waterboarding?
At first, maybe not. But over time, yes. Torture can be a lot like poison: It is a taboo word, like racism or incest. Once you call something torture, the conversation is supposed to end. As a result, if you think the enhanced interrogation techniques are necessary, or simply justified, you have to call them something else. Even John McCain — a vocal opponent of any kind of torture — has conceded that in some hypothetical nuclear ticking-time-bomb scenario, torture might be a necessary evil.
His threshold might be very high, but the principle is there nonetheless. And nearly everyone understands the point: When a greater evil is looming in the imminent future, the lesser evil becomes more tolerable. This is why opponents of the interrogation program are obsessed with claiming that it never worked, at all. And this suggests why the talking point about drone strikes has such power. Killing is worse than torture. Life in prison might be called torture for some people, and yet we consider the death penalty a more severe punishment.
Most people would prefer to be waterboarded than killed. All sane and decent people would rather go through what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed went through than see their whole family slaughtered from 10, feet by a drone. And yet President Obama routinely sanctions drone strikes while piously outlawing the slapping of prisoners who might have information that would make such strikes less necessary — and, more importantly, would prevent the loss of innocent American lives.
America killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in World War II, but few would call that murder because such actions as the firebombing of Dresden were deemed necessary to win the war. When we tortured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, it was to get actionable intelligence on ongoing plots. Also, KSM was not some innocent subjected to torture to satisfy the grotesque desires of some sadists.
He is an unlawful combatant responsible for murdering thousands of innocent Americans. This may sound like nothing more than a rationalization. But that is to be expected when you try to reason through a morally fraught problem. The same goes for truly devout believers in nonviolence who think any and all killing is wrong.
I can respect that, because I think the taboo against torture is important and honorable, just like the taboos against killing. And just like the taboos against killing, sometimes the real world gets a veto. Washington Post December 5. The men and women of my former organization, the CIA, are accustomed to frequent and sudden reversals of direction from their political leaders. But the latest twists and turns are especially dramatic. In one ear they hear the public, the media and members of Congress raising alarms about the terrorist threat from the Islamic State: According to news accounts of the report, Feinstein and her supporters will say that the CIA violated American principles and hid the ugly truth from Congress, the White House and the public.
The interrogation program was authorized by the highest levels of the U. The leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees and of both parties in Congress were briefed on the program more than 40 times between and That is simply not true. I was among those who briefed her. In the wake of the Sept.
Members of Congress and the administration were nearly unanimous in their desire that the CIA do all that it could to debilitate and destroy al-Qaeda. The CIA got the necessary approvals to do so and kept Congress briefed throughout. Here are a couple of reminders. Getting that information will save American lives. We have no business not getting that information. Blitzer asked if the United States should turn over KSM to a friendly country with no restrictions against torture. If Feinstein, Rockefeller and other politicians were saying such things in print and on national TV, imagine what they were saying to us in private.
We did what we were asked to do, we did what we were assured was legal, and we know our actions were effective. Our reward, a decade later, is to hear some of these same politicians expressing outrage for what was done and, even worse, mischaracterizing the actions taken and understating the successes achieved.
It represents the single worst example of Congressional oversight in our many years of government service.
Let us repeat, no one at the CIA was interviewed. Worse, the Committee selectively used documents to try to substantiate a point of view where ample and contrary evidence existed. In the intelligence profession, that is called politicization. Nothing could be further from the truth. We, as former senior officers of the Central Intelligence Agency, created this website to present documents that conclusively demonstrate that the program was: None of those officials were interviewed either. CIA relied on their policy and legal judgments.
We deceived no one. You will not find this truth in the Majority Report. This was a time we had solid evidence that al Qaida was planning a second wave of attacks against the U. In this atmosphere, time was of the essence. We had a deep responsibility to do everything within the law to stop another attack. We clearly understood that, even with legal and policy approvals, our decisions would be questioned years later. But we also understood that we would be morally culpable for the deaths of fellow citizens if we failed to gain information that could stop the next attacks.
The report defies credulity by saying that the interrogation program did not produce any intelligence value. In fact, the program led to the capture of senior al Qaida leaders, including helping to find Usama bin Ladin, and resulted in operations that led to the disruption of terrorist plots that saved thousands of American and allied lives. Finally, Congress was in the loop. The briefings were detailed and drew reactions that ranged from approval to no objection to encouragement to be even more aggressive. We urge all Americans to read them carefully before reaching any judgments.
Interrogations Saved Lives The Senate Intelligence investigators never spoke to us—the leaders of the agency whose policies they are now assailing for partisan reasons. Goss and Michael V. Calland a retired Navy vice admiral and Stephen R. Examining how the CIA handled these matters is an important subject of continuing relevance to a nation still at war. As in all wars, there were undoubtedly things in our program that should not have happened.
When we learned of them, we reported such instances to the CIA inspector general or the Justice Department and sought to take corrective action. The country and the CIA would have benefited from a more balanced study of these programs and a corresponding set of recommendations. It offers not a single recommendation.
The program was invaluable in three critical ways:. We are convinced that both would not have talked absent the interrogation program. The removal of these senior al Qaeda operatives saved thousands of lives because it ended their plotting. KSM, alone, was working on multiple plots when he was captured. Without revealing to KSM that Hambali had been captured, we asked him who might take over in the event that Hambali was no longer around. West Coast, in all likelihood using aircraft again to attack buildings.
Once they had become compliant due to the interrogation program, both Abu Zubaydah and KSM turned out to be invaluable sources on the al Qaeda organization. We went back to them multiple times to gain insight into the group. The majority on the Senate Intelligence Committee further claims that the takedown of bin Laden was not facilitated by information from the interrogation program. There is no doubt that information provided by the totality of detainees in CIA custody, those who were subjected to interrogation and those who were not, was essential to bringing bin Laden to justice.
A detainee subjected to interrogation provided the most specific information on the courier. Additionally, KSM and Abu Faraj al-Libi—both subjected to interrogation—lied about the courier at a time when both were providing honest answers to a large number of other critical questions. Since other detainees had already linked the courier to KSM and Abu Faraj, their dissembling about him had great significance. So the bottom line is this: The interrogation program formed an essential part of the foundation from which the CIA and the U.
That claim is wrong. Durham examined whether any unauthorized techniques were used by CIA interrogators, and if so, whether such techniques could constitute violations of U. In a press release, the attorney general said that Mr. The investigation was concluded in August It was professional and exhaustive and it determined that no prosecutable offenses were committed.
Fourth, the majority left out something critical to understanding the program: This was a time when:. These detainees had received highly effective counter-interrogation training while in al Qaeda training camps. And yet it was clear they possessed information that could disrupt plots and save American lives. But we were charged by the president with doing these things in emergency circumstances—at a time when there was no respite from threat and no luxury of time to act.
Our hope is that no one ever has to face such circumstances again.
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The committee also failed to make clear that the CIA was not acting alone in carrying out the interrogation program. Throughout the process, there was extensive consultation with the national security adviser, deputy national security adviser, White House counsel, and the Justice Department. The president approved the program. The attorney general deemed it legal.
The CIA went to the attorney general for legal rulings four times—and the agency stopped the program twice to ensure that the Justice Department still saw it as consistent with U. The CIA sought guidance and reaffirmation of the program from senior administration policy makers at least four times. CIA senior leadership forwarded nearly 20 cases to the Justice Department, and career Justice officials decided that only one of these cases—unrelated to the formal interrogation program—merited prosecution. That person received a prison term. The CIA briefed Congress approximately 30 times. Initially, at presidential direction the briefings were restricted to the so-called Gang of Eight of top congressional leaders—a limitation permitted under covert-action laws.
The briefings were detailed and graphic and drew reactions that ranged from approval to no objection.
The briefings held nothing back. One senator leaned forward and forcefully asked: In September , at the strong urging of the CIA, the administration decided to brief full committee and staff directors on the interrogation program. As part of this, the CIA sought to enter into a serious dialogue with the oversight committees, hoping to build a consensus on a way forward acceptable to the committee majority and minority and to the congressional and executive branches.
The executive branch was left to proceed alone, merely keeping the committees informed. How did the committee report get these things so wrong? Astonishingly, the staff avoided interviewing any of us who had been involved in establishing or running the program, the first time a supposedly comprehensive Senate Select Committee on Intelligence study has been carried out in this way. The excuse given by majority senators is that CIA officers were under investigation by the Justice Department and therefore could not be made available. The investigations referred to were completed in and and applied only to certain officers.
They never applied to six former CIA directors and deputy directors, all of whom could have added firsthand truth to the study.
Yet a press account indicates that the committee staff did see fit to interview at least one attorney for a terrorist at Guantanamo Bay. We can only conclude that the committee members or staff did not want to risk having to deal with data that did not fit their construct. Which is another reason why the study is so flawed. What went on in preparing the report is clear: The staff picked up the signal at the outset that this study was to have a certain outcome, especially with respect to the question of whether the interrogation program produced intelligence that helped stop terrorists.
They will cooperate less with the United States. All of this means more danger for the American people and for our allies. Anyone who has led a U. It is essential as a check on leadership judgment in a profession that deals constantly with uncertainty, crises and the potential for surprise. We have all experienced and benefited from that in our careers, including at times when the judgment of overseers was critical. When oversight works well, it is balanced, constructively critical and discreet—and offers sound recommendations.
Between and , the al Qaeda leadership in South Asia attacked two U. The al Qaeda leadership has not managed another attack on the homeland in the 13 years since, despite a strong desire to do so. La racine du conflit? Robert Wexler, qui dirige le Centre S. Deux poids deux mesures? La Nakba est leur traumatisme fondateur. Vers un nouveau Moyen-Orient! Arafat au nom du peuple palestinien en For people not trained in the nuances of Middle East diplomacy, the sentence might appear unremarkable. However, many experts say it represents a significant shift in U. As is often the case with diplomacy, the context and the speaker are nearly as important as the words.
Ever since the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors, it has been clear that peace with the Palestinians would be achieved through some exchange of land for security. Indeed, Israelis and Palestinians have held several intensive negotiations that involved swapping lands along the Arab-Israeli dividing line that existed before the war — technically known as the Green Line, or the boundaries established by the Armistice agreements. So, in many ways, it is not news that the eventual borders of a Palestinian state would be based on land swaps from the dividing line.
But it makes a difference when the president of the United States says it, particularly in a carefully staged speech at the State Department. This then is not an off-the-cuff remark, but a carefully considered statement of U. Here is a tour through the diplomatic thicket, and how U. The pre lines are important to both sides for setting the stage for eventual negotiations, but for vastly different reasons. From an Israeli perspective, the de facto borders that existed before were not really borders, but an unsatisfactory, indefensible and temporary arrangement that even Arabs had not accepted.
So Israeli officials do not want to be bound by those lines in any talks. From a Palestinian perspective, the pre division was a border between Israel and neighboring states and thus must be the starting point for negotiations involving land swaps. This way, they believe, the size of a future Palestinian state would end up to be — to the square foot — the exact size of the non-Israeli territories before the conflict.
Palestinians would argue that even this is a major concession, since they believe all of the current state of Israel should belong to the Palestinians. Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict. Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.
Nevertheless, until Obama on Thursday, U. Here is a sampling of comments by presidents or their secretaries of state, with some explanation or commentary.
There must be secure and there must be recognized borders. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again. This means that the Israeli occupation that began in will be ended through a settlement negotiated between the parties, based on UN resolutions and , with Israeli withdrawal to secure and recognize borders. Bush slipped in a mention of in his famous Rose Garden speech that called for the ouster of then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. One could argue that the reference to Resolution was a de facto mention of the lines. At the time, the Arab League was promoting a peace initiative based on the idea of Israel returning to the boundaries, and this reference was seen as a nod to that concept.
It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities. When Sharon agreed to withdraw Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, Bush smoothed the deal by exchanging letters that supported the Israeli position that the lines were not a useful starting point. The letter infuriated Arabs, but it helped Sharon win domestic approval for the Gaza withdrawal. Interestingly, despite Israeli pleas, the Obama administration has refused to acknowledge the letter as binding on U.
Obama did not go all the way and try to define what his statement meant for the disputed city of Jerusalem, or attempt to address the issue of Palestinians who want to return to lands now in the state of Israel. He said those issues would need to be addressed after borders and security are settled. But, for a U. A number of readers have asked about a statement made by George W. I purposely did not include this in my list because in the annals of diplomacy it is considered a relatively unimportant statement.
It was made at a news conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, not in a speech or in a letter where, by contrast, the language is more carefully formulated. At the time, it was considered an insignificant statement, by the Americans and the Palestinians — and the reporters. I looked back at the paragraph article I wrote on the news conference. For diplomatic purposes, speeches and letters will almost always trump remarks at news conferences.
The context is also important. Analysts who are citing this as evidence of little difference between Bush and Obama are deceiving themselves. Mis en ligne le 25 janvier , par Menahem Macina, sur le site France-Israel. Beaucoup de bruit pour rien? Mais pas que pour rien. Pourquoi cet effet de surprise?
Pourquoi ce changement de langage? Le monde entier ne parle que de cela: Il pose la question suivante: The study also details the key elements of a demilitarized Palestinian state, as was proposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shortly after taking office in Historically, every peace accord the State of Israel has reached with its neighbors has been challenged by other Middle Eastern states across the region or by international terrorist organizations.
Given that experience, the only peace that will last over time is a peace that Israel can defend. In the study, a number of retired IDF generals explain the philosophy behind the concept of defensible borders. He focused on the importance of Israel retaining the Jordan Valley, a natural physical barrier that can be defended with relative ease.
It is not only Israel that should be concerned, Dayan noted, but also the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.