The NYTimes this morning reminds us that in 2007, a Bush appointee in the CIA said that Abu Zubaydah agreed to cooperate after only 35 seconds of waterboarding. Nobody ever stepped foward to clarify the statement. The purpose of this statement, which we now know to be false, was to convince the American people that (1) waterboarding was very rare and (2) that it was effective. We now have word that Mr. Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding 83 times in a row. Apparently Kahlid Muhammed was waterboarded over 180 times. This is sadism. The lies show a guilty conscience. To paraphrase the Simpsons, "This time, you didn't just cross the line, you threw up on it."
I think it is becoming more imperative to put Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bybee, Yoo, Bradbury and other co-conspirators under oath to find out what they knew and when they knew it. It is all too tempting to suggest that they be treated in the manner they declared lawful, but that is just childish. It is also unnecessary. It is not important, however satisfying it may be,to have these cruel and deceitful people acknowledge their sins. What is important is that these men be tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. President Obama and AG Holder have already taken significant steps to describe their era as a "dark period" and to use the powerful words "never again."
Monday, April 20, 2009
Bush Administration Lies about Torture
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 7:58 AM
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You can put them under oath, but they'd lie. Then you would have to get them for perjury. Or hey . . . how about a little water boarding to get the truth out of them? Sorry. Bad joke.
These Bush people were all pathological in their own ways. It is time we start using the right words to describe these people. Wild eyed nut cases. Then we prove it.
Wow... And to think I had believed, after reading those horrible torture memo, that my conscience could not be more shocked. Once again, the Bush Administration stoops beneath my worst expectations.
I agree with LTG that we need to convict these people in the court of public opinion. We need to change the prevailing view of torture in this country from being a regrettable, necessary evil to being just plain evil. I agree with USWest, though, that there is no point to putting inveterate liars on the stand.
You're also going to have a problem with the conservative wingnuts, who even now are proclaiming that "they kept us safe!", the main problem being that these people are too dense to understand that torturing non-white detainees held on questionable grounds actually makes one less safe, due to the understandable hatred it inspires. Sigh.
First, US West...I agree with you 100% they would lie their lying asses off and half of them would not even realize they were doing it and the other half would be immune to torture because they secretly get off on it.
Second, Dr. S...I too am schocked even further...
Third, Pombat...I will disagree with you in technicality while agree with you in spirit (you may decide which is more important). The problem with the "they kept us safe" argument is the number of times the torture had to be used. Let's say they waterboarded Khalid Mohamed 10 times a day. That would mean they waterboarded him then questioned him for an hour then did it again then questioned him for an hour, etc... for 10 hours straight.
It's unlikely they did it with such a short time span between events. Part of the impact of this stuff is instilling the FEAR of the next event. You have to let the guy sit in the dark (or, more likely, stand in the dark) and think about the next time they are going to come and get him and waterboard him again. But in any case, let's be generous and say they did it every hour on the hour for 10 hours each day. That would mean they did this for 18 days!!!! If they did it around the clock every hour 24 hours a day every day, 180 hours would work out to 7.5 days (suspiciously similar to their self imposed limit for sleep depravation).
The racial backlash issue is real from my point of view but here is the another logical inconsistency with the "they kept us safe" argument. The canard the neo-cons like to use is "would you agree to using torture if you knew the bad guy knew the location of a nuclear time bomb?..." Really!? A nuclear time bomb with an 7.5 to 18 day fuse? GIVE ME A F-ING BREAK!
So here is what I think happened to Kahlid Muhammed, They waterboarded him every hour on the hour for 7.5 days straight. And he told them absolutely NOTHING OF VALUE! If he had they would either have stopped doing it or bragged about all the information they got out of him. But my impression from this is that waterboarding this man did nothing what-so-ever except make a bunch of micro-phalic shitforbrains feel like big men for a few hours.
Let me clarify. I am NOT a Christian. I am therefore free to HATE without reservation. And I HATE these these people. These people where the kind of people HATE was invented for.
And now I'm on the verge of tears over this...
From the Huffington Post...
"Rep. Jerry Nadler, a senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, called Monday for the impeachment of federal judge Jay Bybee, one of the principal authors of the torture memos released last week by the Obama administration.
'He ought to be impeached,' Nadler said in an interview with the Huffington Post. 'It was not an honest legal memo. It was an instruction manual on how to break the law.'"
-hugs for RbR-
Actually, I think we're agreeing in both spirit and technicality - I totally disagree with the conservatives who reckon this kind of stuff "kept us safe", hence my calling them wingnuts (I'm feeling unusually polite).
I do not believe that torture works in any way, shape or form, unless you define "works" as "keeps our pet sadist occupied". It certainly does not yield useful information, most often just the opposite, as incorrect/invented information given up in desperation must be followed up, thus wasting time on false leads. And in terms of relationships with other countries/religions, us torturing people can only provide a rallying point for anti-us extremists, thus making the world less safe for us.
So, go ahead and hate as much as you want, just don't let that hate hurt *you* too much.
I started to do the same calculation as RBR and stopped. It was too hideous to think about. My next question was "how long does it take to waterboard someone?". So if you did it every hour on the hour, and it takes 5-10 minutes . . .
And then Dick Cheney goes out to his favorite Conservative media outlet and berates Obama for releasing the memos. Cheney can't even leave well enough alone. He has to keep popping up and accusing Obama of threatening our safety by revealing the limits of what our agents can do. That man is so fucking pathological, psychotic. So the "micro-phalic shitforbrains" king is Cheney.
I have to hand it to the CIA. They gave Obama a loud, standing ovation when he visited yesterday. Doesn't seem they agree with Cheney. He disrespected them. He disrespected our military personnel by pushing them to do things that were not just illegal, but morally wrong.
These are just the first truths that will come out. This is just the beginning. Be prepared to be more and more shocked as more and more is released.
Cheney and his ilk turned us into terrorists. He is a hateful man.
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