The Associated Press has now confirmed ABC News' Wednesday night story on the existence of a secret "torture cabal" in the White House, headed by Vice President Cheney, that approved and even choreographed the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and other locations.
Not only did the AP confirm the story, they even dredged up a few more revolting details. "Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality," says the AP story.
Note the latter part of that sentence - it clearly says that the cabal first decided to torture the prisoners and only then asked the Justice Department, by then filled with "loyal Bushies," to sign off on it. They didn't ask whether it was legal, they simply decreed that it was and then directed Justice to rubber-stamp their already-made decision.
Torture is, of course, highly illegal under American law, no matter what Cheney et al may claim. A case can therefore be made to press conspiracy charges against everyone who took part in the meetings, including Cheney.
The story also says that the cabal "took care to insulate" President Bush, who likes to call himself the Decider, from having anything to do with the actual decisions to torture prisoners. This sounds a lot like the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s, when President Ronald Reagan allowed his staffers to run wild and secretly create their own illegal foreign policy apparatus.
Assuming the "insulation" part of the story is true and not just another falsehood to protect Bush, the question now is the same as twenty years ago. Namely, did the president knowingly allow his senior staff to violate the law and keep him in the dark, or was he so befuddled that he genuinely didn't know about it? The second possibility is not as fanciful as it sounds, as Bush all too frequently gives the impression of being merely a figurehead with no actual idea what's going on. Frankly, I don't know which is worse.
Of course, if that part of the story is a lie, that means the President of the United States - a man whose oath of office includes a vow to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" - was deeply involved in a deliberate criminal conspiracy to violate federal laws against torture. That's an impeachable offense, no matter how you spin it.
Either way, both stories make it very clear that torture was directed from the very top. The White House wanted firm control over the whole process, and they got it.
"No one at the agency wanted to operate under a notion of winks and nods and assumptions that everyone understood what was being talked about," said a CIA source quoted in the AP story. "People wanted to be assured that everything that was conducted was understood and approved by the folks in the chain of command."
Sadly, even with the smoking gun of torture left squarely in the White House, Congress is unlikely to impeach Bush and Cheney for these outrages as there are only nine months left to go in this presidency. Plus, the GOP's disastrous impeachment jihad against Bill Clinton a decade ago essentially gave the next president a "get out of jail free card," since it allows them to claim that any attempt to impeach Bush is merely payback.
But Congress still has oversight power. They just need the guts to use it, to drag this loathsome torture conspiracy into the light and make sure something like this never happens again.
Not only did the AP confirm the story, they even dredged up a few more revolting details. "Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality," says the AP story.
Note the latter part of that sentence - it clearly says that the cabal first decided to torture the prisoners and only then asked the Justice Department, by then filled with "loyal Bushies," to sign off on it. They didn't ask whether it was legal, they simply decreed that it was and then directed Justice to rubber-stamp their already-made decision.
Torture is, of course, highly illegal under American law, no matter what Cheney et al may claim. A case can therefore be made to press conspiracy charges against everyone who took part in the meetings, including Cheney.
The story also says that the cabal "took care to insulate" President Bush, who likes to call himself the Decider, from having anything to do with the actual decisions to torture prisoners. This sounds a lot like the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s, when President Ronald Reagan allowed his staffers to run wild and secretly create their own illegal foreign policy apparatus.
Assuming the "insulation" part of the story is true and not just another falsehood to protect Bush, the question now is the same as twenty years ago. Namely, did the president knowingly allow his senior staff to violate the law and keep him in the dark, or was he so befuddled that he genuinely didn't know about it? The second possibility is not as fanciful as it sounds, as Bush all too frequently gives the impression of being merely a figurehead with no actual idea what's going on. Frankly, I don't know which is worse.
Of course, if that part of the story is a lie, that means the President of the United States - a man whose oath of office includes a vow to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" - was deeply involved in a deliberate criminal conspiracy to violate federal laws against torture. That's an impeachable offense, no matter how you spin it.
Either way, both stories make it very clear that torture was directed from the very top. The White House wanted firm control over the whole process, and they got it.
"No one at the agency wanted to operate under a notion of winks and nods and assumptions that everyone understood what was being talked about," said a CIA source quoted in the AP story. "People wanted to be assured that everything that was conducted was understood and approved by the folks in the chain of command."
Sadly, even with the smoking gun of torture left squarely in the White House, Congress is unlikely to impeach Bush and Cheney for these outrages as there are only nine months left to go in this presidency. Plus, the GOP's disastrous impeachment jihad against Bill Clinton a decade ago essentially gave the next president a "get out of jail free card," since it allows them to claim that any attempt to impeach Bush is merely payback.
But Congress still has oversight power. They just need the guts to use it, to drag this loathsome torture conspiracy into the light and make sure something like this never happens again.
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