George W. Bush wants to go down in history as the man who led a righteous crusade campaign to bring freedom to the Middle East. He wants to be remembered as the Hero of 9/11, the Scourge of Saddam, the Terror of Terrorists.
He will actually be remembered as the man who legalized torture, as long as it's committed by the United States of America.
He will be remembered as the Torture President.
Congress passed a bill barring the CIA from using waterboarding, beatings, and other "interrogation techniques" instantly recognized worldwide as torture. The bill would have brought the intelligence agency into line with practices used by the military, which specifically bars torture techniques up to and including mock executions, starvation and rape.
The Army Field Manual says very specifically on page 102, "Use of torture by US personnel would bring discredit upon the US and its armed forces while undermining domestic and international support for the war effort. It could also place US and allied personnel in enemy hands at greater risk of abuse."
Bush likes to make a big deal of how he "listens" to his military generals and does whatever they recommend - except when they disagree with him.
So he vetoed the bill, insisting on the right of the CIA to torture War on Terror™ prisoners whenever they feel like it. In his weekly radio address Saturday announcing the veto, he once again used all the same buzzwords (9/11, al Qaeda, "hardened terrorists," etc) and said that "we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists."
Including torture, it seems.
Waterboarding has been around since the Spanish Inquisition. Japanese officers during World War II were convicted of war crimes for ordering prisoners waterboarded, as were American soldiers during the Vietnam War. Everyone knows it's torture.
Bush's "logic" is that since the Army Field Manual is freely available online, suspected terror prisoners can be "trained to resist the methods outlined in the manual. And this is why we created alternative procedures to question the most dangerous al Qaida operatives, particularly those who might have knowledge of attacks planned on our homeland." You can almost hear the telescreens shouting, "Be afraid! Be afraid!"
Speaking of the Army Field Manual, White House press secretary Dana Perino actually claimed last month that the Manual "is a perfectly appropriate document that is important for young GIs, some so young that they're not even able to legally get a drink in the states where they're from." In other words, she said that America's soldiers are young and stupid and don't know any better, a statement which would bring howls of outrage from the GOP had it been uttered by a Democrat. Way to support the troops, Dana. (By an incredible coincidence, the transcript containing Perino's outrageous statement is conspicuously missing from the White House website - but it's still available elsewhere.)
If we follow Bush's supposed logic, since everyone now knows we use beatings and waterboarding, Osama bin Laden (remember him?) should now be teaching his minions how to resist them. Bush's prophecy is thus self-fulfilling - as some forms of torture become widely known, we must move on to other and more severe forms of torture.
Where does it end? Will prisoners be burned with hot coals? Hung by their arms until their shoulders dislocate? Bones broken and organs damaged? If they still don't talk, will their family members be hauled in to face the same treatment? And what happens if they are determined to be innocent? Will they be patched up (if that) and dumped on a roadside somewhere with an "oops, sorry about that" note?
The truly revolting part of this whole obscenity is that torture doesn't work, despite what the TV show 24 is teaching American soldiers. Anyone who has ever dealt with it knows it. Torture doesn't make prisoners tell the truth, it makes them tell the torturer anything he wants to hear. In fact, the supposed plots Bush mentioned in his radio address all turned out to be at best in the planning stages. Most of them turned out to be nothing at all, just kooks muttering in their beer with an FBI agent listening in.
The Army knows this very well, as it makes clear on page 97 of the Field Manual: "Use of torture is not only illegal but also it is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the HUMINT [human intelligence] collector wants to hear. Use of torture can also have many possible negative consequences at national and international levels."
And yet information gained via torture is used anyway as a political weapon, to terrorize the public into accepting the wholesale destruction of the values which have made the United States a beacon of freedom and liberty.
All this is enough to make one wonder - again - if Bush is actually bin Laden's sleeper agent in the White House. After all, everything he's done has presented al Qaeda with a gold-plated recruiting poster.
He will actually be remembered as the man who legalized torture, as long as it's committed by the United States of America.
He will be remembered as the Torture President.
Congress passed a bill barring the CIA from using waterboarding, beatings, and other "interrogation techniques" instantly recognized worldwide as torture. The bill would have brought the intelligence agency into line with practices used by the military, which specifically bars torture techniques up to and including mock executions, starvation and rape.
The Army Field Manual says very specifically on page 102, "Use of torture by US personnel would bring discredit upon the US and its armed forces while undermining domestic and international support for the war effort. It could also place US and allied personnel in enemy hands at greater risk of abuse."
Bush likes to make a big deal of how he "listens" to his military generals and does whatever they recommend - except when they disagree with him.
So he vetoed the bill, insisting on the right of the CIA to torture War on Terror™ prisoners whenever they feel like it. In his weekly radio address Saturday announcing the veto, he once again used all the same buzzwords (9/11, al Qaeda, "hardened terrorists," etc) and said that "we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists."
Including torture, it seems.
Waterboarding has been around since the Spanish Inquisition. Japanese officers during World War II were convicted of war crimes for ordering prisoners waterboarded, as were American soldiers during the Vietnam War. Everyone knows it's torture.
Bush's "logic" is that since the Army Field Manual is freely available online, suspected terror prisoners can be "trained to resist the methods outlined in the manual. And this is why we created alternative procedures to question the most dangerous al Qaida operatives, particularly those who might have knowledge of attacks planned on our homeland." You can almost hear the telescreens shouting, "Be afraid! Be afraid!"
Speaking of the Army Field Manual, White House press secretary Dana Perino actually claimed last month that the Manual "is a perfectly appropriate document that is important for young GIs, some so young that they're not even able to legally get a drink in the states where they're from." In other words, she said that America's soldiers are young and stupid and don't know any better, a statement which would bring howls of outrage from the GOP had it been uttered by a Democrat. Way to support the troops, Dana. (By an incredible coincidence, the transcript containing Perino's outrageous statement is conspicuously missing from the White House website - but it's still available elsewhere.)
If we follow Bush's supposed logic, since everyone now knows we use beatings and waterboarding, Osama bin Laden (remember him?) should now be teaching his minions how to resist them. Bush's prophecy is thus self-fulfilling - as some forms of torture become widely known, we must move on to other and more severe forms of torture.
Where does it end? Will prisoners be burned with hot coals? Hung by their arms until their shoulders dislocate? Bones broken and organs damaged? If they still don't talk, will their family members be hauled in to face the same treatment? And what happens if they are determined to be innocent? Will they be patched up (if that) and dumped on a roadside somewhere with an "oops, sorry about that" note?
The truly revolting part of this whole obscenity is that torture doesn't work, despite what the TV show 24 is teaching American soldiers. Anyone who has ever dealt with it knows it. Torture doesn't make prisoners tell the truth, it makes them tell the torturer anything he wants to hear. In fact, the supposed plots Bush mentioned in his radio address all turned out to be at best in the planning stages. Most of them turned out to be nothing at all, just kooks muttering in their beer with an FBI agent listening in.
The Army knows this very well, as it makes clear on page 97 of the Field Manual: "Use of torture is not only illegal but also it is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the HUMINT [human intelligence] collector wants to hear. Use of torture can also have many possible negative consequences at national and international levels."
And yet information gained via torture is used anyway as a political weapon, to terrorize the public into accepting the wholesale destruction of the values which have made the United States a beacon of freedom and liberty.
All this is enough to make one wonder - again - if Bush is actually bin Laden's sleeper agent in the White House. After all, everything he's done has presented al Qaeda with a gold-plated recruiting poster.
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