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Bush Vetoes Bill Outlawing CIA Waterboarding
WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush on Saturday vetoed legislation passed by Congress that would have banned the CIA from using waterboarding and other controversial interrogation techniques.
Lawmakers included the anti-torture measure in a broader bill authorizing U.S. intelligence activities.
"Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists," Bush said in his weekly radio address. He added that the vetoed legislation "would diminish these vital tools."
The House of Representatives approved the legislation in December and the Senate passed it in February despite White House warnings it would be vetoed.
CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress last month that government interrogators used waterboarding on three suspects captured after the September 11 attacks.
The simulated drowning technique has been condemned by many members of Congress, human rights groups and other countries as a form of illegal torture.
The U.S. Army Field Manual prohibits waterboarding and seven other interrogation methods and the bill would have aligned CIA practices with the military's.
In a message to CIA employees on Saturday after Bush's veto, Hayden said the CIA would continue to work strictly within the law but said its needs were different from that of the U.S. Army and that the CIA needed to follow its own procedures.
"There are methods in CIA's program that have been briefed to our oversight committees, are fully consistent with the Geneva Convention and current U.S. law, and are most certainly not torture," Hayden said.
In his remarks, Bush did not specifically mention waterboarding.
But he said: "The bill Congress sent me would not simply ban one particular interrogation method, as some have implied. Instead, it would eliminate all the alternative procedures we've developed to question the world's most dangerous and violent terrorists."
It is unlikely that Democrats, the majority party in Congress, could muster enough votes to overturn Bush's veto. The bill passed the House and Senate on partisan votes, short of the support needed to reverse the president.
© Reuters 2008
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Is this the Law of the Land or
just American Family Values?
Hey Bush, why don't you waterboard Laura just to show it's really no big deal.
Imagine if the USA had a media to ask questions like, "Hey McCain - is this a decision you'd overturn if you got in to the Whitehouse?"
Good job Bushie. I am sure future US POWS will love your pro War/draft dodging heart for it.
Good old fashioned Christian Family Values.
Now that the insurgents know that "waterboarding" in in our interrogating repertoire, I wonder what will be in theirs!!
What do you expect from a depraved, degenerate sadist like Bush? He was probably jerking off to videos of the secret CIA torture sessions he ordered while his running dogs were writing his veto explanation.
Shame. Must we tolerate 10 more months of this?
Forced, false confessions are the only means the CIA has for their international role:
(1) CIA commits crimes,
(2) CIA tortures innocent people they hate to get a confession for the CIA's crimes,
(3a) US convicts innocent people for "terrorist activities", or
(3b) CIA obtains terror plans that were invented on the spot by the fantasies derived from pain, to get the suffering to end, and someone's then charged as a terrorist for things that didn't and wouldn't even happen.
McCain can't over-ride Bush's veto. His lips are locked too tight on George's ass.
Water-boarding. Sort of makes beheading almost look humane.
Right, kittyladyoregon. Waterboarding is associated with de Torquemada, the first inquisitor for the Spanish Catholic Church in the 15th century. So, it has a strong Christian tradition. It fits with any fanatical, power-mad meglomaniac throughout history.
Once it was washboarding Monday.
But now, with our LAUGHING COW Boy, it's
waterboarding the Axis Monday.
It's no wonder that Things Fall Apart.
Torture's on the march!
Looking at the transcript oh his radio address, I noticed that Bush did not mention his real reason for vetoing the bill... it did not guarantee immunity for his co-conspirators in the Telecom industry.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/03/20080308.html
The USA should change it's name to the UST: United States of Torture. Damn you America and your fake ass dictator "President" Bush!
The CIA needs to torture people to do what? We know they get the information wrong anyway, they've been wrong so often. The CIA ig good at illegal subversion, not at spying. In Iraq they were lost until the sunnis started to give them the information they couldn't get for 5 years!
foxtrader,
Don't take out all your hatred of Bush syndicate on all Americans.
Some of us don't recommend torture or even preemptive War or unitary Executive or spying on Americans.... but when we talk about war, so far the ruling class knows that the fear and secrecy that covers every real fact is top secret...Just because the war crimanals hide behind the flag is no reason to blame all the American people... In fact we are gonna change it....just watch and hold on to your ass and if you really want to enjoy the revolution..... get involved and lighten up!
If it wasn't for torture we wouldn't have known about the WMD's in Iraq or where Osama is hiding.
America has shown great leadership once again. What a beacon on a hill it is for the rest of us.
Could I suggest that mobile torture wagons be produced and taken to places of dissent. That way you could give a bit of on-the-spot torture to get info or just to deter people from speaking out.
By the way, have you heard about the Hillary/Barack Wedding?
www.dangerouscreation.com
whoever says no good info come out of torture probably did not use the procedure correctly or abused it.
as long as this procedure keeps my wife and labrador retriever safe it should be used. "you can always get more with a kind word and a two by four than just a kind word..."
Bush's only recourse is to keep to his policy of doin whatever he thinks is the law.
David,
He has all the Guns and people who are trained to kill to protect his sorry criminal Ass.
That scares lots of folks in government too.
We remember what they did to JFK, MLK, RFK and others not so big.....
So yes there is fear here in America.. It is gonna get bad Depression time is closer and the change will speed up.... I may be delusional but it looks to me that strange things are happening.... Just like in the history books.
Waterboarding is NOT simulated drowning. Waterboarding is the beginning of drowning and when carried too far is murder.
It's OFFICIAL: Fascism is here.
If the American People do not respond and insure that waterboarding is illegal, then morally, they have no beef if waterboarding is used on them, and it will be. Consider that we now have eight hundred new prison camps and the unitary decider can designate anyone a terrorist, and that he belongs to a religious faith that has a history of torture and genocide.
Let's watch closely and determine "who" the Democrats are that fail to vote to overide this hubris.
I don't value chameleon2's dog or wife as much as he does. I'd be fine with outlawing torture and letting them die.
An absolutely despicable disgrace, the current administration has continously embraced barbaric activity. A pinnacle of sorts, a Machiavellian twist over the edge that probably even gives some right wing elders pause, if only to consider the particularly savage US vitrol post 9/11. No amount of "look what they'll do, if we don't" makes any amount of sense, but is remarkable fear fortifying propaganda.
As for young monkey, he seems to be artificially giddy towards the end of his employment, obscenely inappropriate. Any ambivalent, a-political young American must have seen something uniquely different when a sitting President smiles as he recalls a crude video of an enemy being asphyxiated until death.
chameleon2:
I hope that you really don't believe what you wrote.
Once torture begins, where does it stop? Is the next step using a Black & Decker on kneecaps? Or do we have some intermediate step like a hose up the rear?
chameleon2, you said, "...whoever says no good info come out of torture probably did not use the procedure correctly or abused it."
The procedure is ALWAYS abused. That is why it is called torture.
Chameleon, if you advocate torture then you have to accept the fact that it is something that can be applied to your wife (and knowing the numb-nuts at the CIA, probably your dog too.) So basically saying it is okay for someone you are saying it is okay for your wife to be tortured. Nice.
Note to Reuters:
There is no such thing as "waterboarding."
There is only WATER TORTURE. Karl Rove prefers "waterboarding" because it sounds like a really cool recreational sport the whole family might enjoy the next time they're out on the lake.
If iced tea is used, it's ICED TEA TORTURE, not iced tea-boarding. Coffee? That would be COFFEE TORTURE, not coffeeboarding. Urine? URINE TORTURE, natch, not urineboarding.
Work with us over here, Reuters - we're tryin to save a damn country!
Will someone please arrest that idiot already? Damn. Can the population of Washington DC just storm the White House gates and take these traitors into custody? What up America? Impeach. Arrest. Imprison. Thank goodness 2012 is right around the corner because I can't take much more of this nonsense.
Just override his veto, you goofballs!
Maybe since the swastika isn't taken anymore, the U.S. could put it where the stars currently are on the flag?
I've no words. And I've no energy to try to stop this. The avalanche of the destruction of humanity, our communal humane-ness, has too much force. It can't be stopped. It can't even be lessened.
It's sapped all of my will. I've no anger. I've no outrage. I've no fight left in me.
Their mission is truly accomplished.
re : surrender -- check out page 12 of the March 10th Newseek (cover page : Mr. Right, RIP)
On page 12 is a little blurb about military patches. The one of the alien holding the B-2 bomber is definitely interesting, but the one on the bottom left is really scary : a hissing dragon with stars-and-stripes wings, clutching the globe. It's tail is wrapped around a crystal. Maybe THAT should be our new flag, so everyone can see what we're really all about.
As for waterboarding -- I grew up on a lake, and my older brother (much bigger and stronger than me) took great pleasure in holding my head under water until I was on the verge of passing out. I learned early on not to struggle. It was sadistic. But I didn't dare tattle, he would have said I was making things up and then devised some new torture. I finally brought this up to him a few years ago and he got furious, said I was making it all up. He has NEVER seen anything wrong with this behavior. Neither does Bush, it's useless to try to appeal to reason or empathy. I think the relevant word is 'psychopath'. (And, by the way, my brother is has been a very popular and successful MD for many years now -- so go figure.)
The ONLY way to reverse this trend is public outrage. My silence at home bought me many more years of deranged treatment because guys seemed to sense that they could get away with it. That is where we are as a country today.
To continue the unConstitutional war on terrorizing everyone the President's minions must be allowed to torture anyone.
Evil to support evil.
And the Democrats will whine a little and roll over, as usual.
"Thank you, Mr. Bush. Now if you could just stand over there... yes... there... that's right... in front of that grassy knoll..."
barely human, thanks for not valuing my family's life. I hold no grudge against you.
Edward, I really do believe what I said and here's why:
Been reading this site for more than 3 years now and I see the people who post here are idealists. i assume a lot of them post from the US in their nice quiet suburban homes. lemme give you an update: the world does not end at the shopping plaza at the intersection of Grand St and Ellison Ave (totally made those up). It does not even end outside the little town you live in, where you yake your daughter to soccer practice.
Outside that cozy little place you call home, outside the US there are some places where people think differently, they do not value human life as you do. I agree it would be nice if were all abig happy family but that's not the case. Those people do not understand the "kind word" I metioned in my original post. You gotta use the two-by-four from the same post. I am thankful here are some around that still understand that.
And, yes I have been to some of those places and seen some really unpleasant things. That's why I think we as human being are not ready for the utopia that most of posters on this site envision.
If there's ever real war crimes trials after this, Bush just signed his guilty plea. He's now officially on record as telling the CIA to torture people.
Maybe it's time to step up the action..say Kidnap a local notable figure..maybe say..someone known to be a member of INFRAGARD the FBI snitch and special little paranoia/business nightmare...kidnap em, and then Waterboard em, get them to say ANYTHING..because that is what happens, and then send it to the media and make it that weeks little drama..but at the same time..MAKE A POINT...SHOW Americans the REALITY of what TORTURE is, and how it really works...and ALSO..give a little..uhhh..HEADS UP to those that SUPPORT this kind of..INSANE reality we are seeing more and more as.."normal" in these here "united" states..a little heads up that this is what they support and that..well..it could happen to them..(the reality of "unity" is the guy tailgating you on the highway...yeah..he really cares what you think..)
Finally..as I say over and over again..
DOES THIS REALLY BOTHER YOU? BECAUSE GUESS WHAT? YOU ARE PAYING FOR IT..YEAH THAT'S RIGHT..IT'S NOT YET TO THE POINT WHERE THESE SCUMBAGS ARE DOING THIS FOR FREE! NOT QUITE..THEY GET PAID..BY YOU..TO DO THIS..TO BREAK AVERY LAW AND FORM OF "JUSTICE" WE HAVE HELD DEAR IN THIS COUNTRY UNTIL 2000, AFTER THE MILITARY COUPE' ALL THAT IS SACRED IN AMERICA IS DEATH. SO IF YOU ARE REALLY SERIOUS...REALLY ACTUALLY DO NOT WANT THIS DONE IN YOUR NAME..THEN STOP PAYING THE SALLERIES OF THE ACTUAL PERPETRATORS, THE BUSH APPOINTED RIGHT WING CORPORATE FASCIST THEOCRATIC JUDGES THAT THEY HAVE DONE EVERYTHING TO INSTALL..EVEN FIRING OTHER JUDGES...YOU ARE PAYING THEIR SALLERIES..YEAH YOU!
LOOK AT IT HTIS WAY...WHAT IF 100 MILLION OF YOU DID NOT PAY IN APRIL...JUST SAID.."NOT IN MY NAME"...THINK ABOUT IT..THIS IS THE LAST ACTUAL "POWER" WE HAVE IN THIS COUNTRY..THE ONLY REASON THAT THEY HAVE NOT DECLARED MARTIAL LAW..BECAUSE WITHOUT THE SALLERIES YOU ARE PROVIDING..THEY DO NOT HAVE THE LOYALIST ARMY OF THUG-RUNTS TO COMMIT THESE HEINOUS ACTS, TO KIDNAP, TORTURE, MURDER (BECAUSE IF YOU THINK THAT HAS NOT HAPPENED YOU ARE AN IDIOT..SORRY BUT IT'S TRUE..) TO PASS UNCONSTITUTIONAL "LAW'S" AND ON AND ON AD NAUSEUM...SO STOP PAYING FOR IT..JUST DO NOT PAY...DON'T DO IT...YOU DON'T HAVE TO PAY INCOME TAX ANYWAY..THERE IS NO LAW THAT SAY'S YOU DO...SO JUST DON'T...PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTHS ARE...IT IS THE ONLY WAY TO STOP WHAT IS GOING ON..THE POWER OF THE PURSE IS ALL WE HAVE LEFT..
REMEMBER WHAT DER JUNIOR SAID AFTER 911...HE SAID 'JUST GO OUT AND SHOP'..THAT MOMENT WAS THE DEAD GIVE-AWAY..THEY CAN ONLY DO WHAT THEY ARE DOING WITH YOUR MONEY...AND NO OTHER...SO DO NOT PAY..DO NOT PAY..DO NOT PAY...
An like that..
SO let me get this straight,bush vetoed the bill which required that the cia line up its interrogation techniques with the army fiels manual? is this the same bush whose approval ratings are lower than nixon's when he resigned ? why can't this veto be overridden? the other day on democracy now,amy g asked a retired general to comment on our ag's unwillingness to define water boarding as torture-his reply "that's astonishing." to paraphrase abe lincoln "if water boarding is not wrong than nothing is." i don't care if our congress is made up of wing nuts and those who coddle them -any legislative body with a modicum of self respect would override this damned veto.
Torture, violence, death, evil
.... this only creates more
.... Torture, violence, death, evil
Its an illusion that this is the answer. It only creates more problems. We can't kill them all. So, every time we kill or torture or mutilate, we leave angry people behind. We leave behind a kid who knows his brother or his cousin was tortured to death by US. Guess what, that's the kid that's going to be the suicide bomber that strikes back at us.
Its a myth that this is the answer. It only leads to escalation. After that kid who's brother we tortured strikes back, we decide we have to get tougher to make it stop. We decide we have to kidnap and torture more people to 'send a message'. We bomb more. We imprison more.
And all we do is create more suicide bombers. All we do is create more people who want to kill or torture us.
Its all just bs to justify evil. Adding evil to evil only creates more evil.
Illegalizing one form of torture was a redundant and meaningless act.
Torture is illegal already. It's part of our Constitution and certain protections extend to non-citizens regardless of location. Our
compliance with International treaties such as the Geneva Convention are also mandated by the Constitution.
Congress gave quasi-lawful validation to the Executive by presenting this legislation to be "vetoed." Impeachment is the correct procedure.
The damn president doesn't have the authority to veto clear Constitutional mandates.
chameleon2, if you use that same phoney patronising tone on your wife then she doesn't need the chameleon2-approved torture from the CIA. She knows all about leading a tortured life already.
Chameleon2:
Do you really think the rest of the posters on this site don't know perfectly well that the world is not necessarily a nice happy place? You can't believe that. The people here are reading the articles on this site nearly every day, articles that outline to them clearly that this is not the case, so they're better informed about this than most Americans. And how do you know everyone here has led a safe little idyllic life in suburbia?
I don't even get your point. Are you trying to say that it's okay for the US to torture people because they're not as nice as we are? The US is the world's leading exporter of weapons of mass destruction. It is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons on living humans. We have killed millions of people in the Middle East with our bombs. The vast majority of cluster bombs are Made in America. We have blown up little children, a whole lot of them. Is it okay to do this if the blown-up children don't live in idyllic suburban utopias like the ones you seem to think everyone here lives in?
I mean, what are you trying to say? That we don't value your family's life because we think torture is wrong? How are those two things connected? I don't get it.
This contradicts the American rant, particularly of Bush, Condi Rice, Cheney, that America does not practice torture. What has been hidden so far, is atlast in the open. Probably America is the only country in the entire world that has legalised torture. The myth of America being "a city on a hill" and a "light to the world" is demythologised.
What is it that America wants to achieve by legalising torture?
The primary nature of torture and pain is that it destroys language of the victim and thus bringing about an immediate reversion to the sounds and cries of a human being makes before language is learned. This inexpressibility has political consequences. The torture victim is reduced to prelanguage screams and moans that are not heard and acknowledged by anyone. Torture becomes the visible manifestation of power. It shatters the person's voice and makes language itself ineffective. The purpose of torture and its concomitant interrogation is not the elicitation of confessions or information from the victims, but to destroy the prisoner's voice and language. The intense pain the prisoners experience destroys their connection to their world and makes both questions and answers insignificant because links to friends, family, community and country disappear in the all-encompassing world-destroying presence of pain. Torture is a primary means of destroying any sense of solidarity with a community or country. Pain annihilates everything but itself. Torturers humiliate victims, exploit his human weakness through the mechanism of pain, until he does take the role of filth, confessing his lowliness and betraying cause, friends, family, community, and country. The victims are made to speak the words of the American empire, to replace their own reality with that of the empire, to double the voice of the empire.
Isn't this what America and Americans have been involved in. Some of the Americans, who try to push the blame completely onto their government, fail to realise that the government is elected by majority of Americans. The political representatives are elected by majority of Americans. Therefore, the entire country is involved (directly or indirectly)in practising and perpetuating torture in order to destroy the voice and language of the victims and thus promote its own "master narrative": America is "a city on a hill" and "a light to the world".
I travel to dirt poor developing countries too, Chammie. There was a time when a broad majority of people in those places admired the US because we aspired to rise above vindictive, unproductive practices such as torture. Iranians admired us until we kept screwing around endlessly with their government, over oil. The days of looking up to the US are over, thanks to George Bush's barbarism. So you may join the dark side, I would rather not.
I propose that your family is safer in a country that is not known for torture.
Well, at least the Crawford Creep can't say we do not torture because he just made it legal. I guess it's torture if anyone else in the world does it, but it's OK if the good ole' USofA uses it. Some example we have become since this bastard was
given control, and 59 million idiots (with a little help from some voting machines in Ohio) re-elected him.
What'd you expect?................ I feel way safer!
As my Papaw always says, "Bush is the anti-Christ"...
Tomgram: Alfred McCoy on the CIA's road to Abu Ghraib: By 1967, just four years after compiling a torture manual for use against a few top Soviet targets, the CIA was operating forty interrogation centers in South Vietnam as part of its Phoenix Program that killed over 20,000 Viet Cong suspects. In the centers themselves, countless thousands were tortured for information that led to these assassinations....
At least twice during the Cold War, the CIA's torture training contributed to the destabilization of two key American allies, Iran's Shah and the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos. Yet even after their spectacular falls, the Agency remained blind to the way its torture training was destroying the allies it was designed to defend....
The CIA's torture experimentation of the 1950s and early 1960s was codified in 1963 in a succinct, secret instructional booklet on torture -- the "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation" manual, which would become the basis for a new method of torture disseminated globally over the next three decades. These techniques were first spread through the U.S. Agency for International Development's Public Safety program to train police forces in Asia and Latin America as the front line of defense against communists and other revolutionaries....
At the Cold War's end, Washington resumed its advocacy of universal principles, denouncing regimes for torture, participating in the World Conference on Human Rights at Vienna in 1993 and, a year later, ratifying the UN Convention Against Torture. On the surface, the United States had resolved the tension between its anti-torture principles and its torture practices. Yet even when Congress finally ratified this UN convention it did so with intricately-constructed reservations that cleverly exempted the CIA's psychological torture method....
While other covert agencies synonymous with Cold War repression such as Romania's Securitate, East Germany's Stasi, and the Soviet Union's KGB have disappeared, the CIA survives -- its archives sealed, its officers decorated, and its Cold War crimes forgotten. By failing to repudiate the Agency's propagation of torture, while adopting a UN convention that condemned its practice, the United States left this contradiction buried like a political land mine ready to detonate with such phenomenal force in the Abu Ghraib scandal....
Today the American public has only a vague understanding of these CIA excesses and the scale of its massive mind-control project. ...There is, in sum, an ignorance, a studied avoidance of a deeply troubling topic, akin to that which shrouds this subject in post-authoritarian societies....
I have evidence, which I can't reveal due obvious to National Security concerns, that chameleon2 and his wife are Al Qaeda sympethizers and possible operatives. I strongly suggest the operators of this website report his IP address to the Department of Homeland Security so he and his wife can be located and interrogated.
If chameleon2 is innocent he has nothing to fear, and I'm sure he would trust the government to believe him after a little waterboarding.