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TechnoratiThe Torture Presidency
President George W. Bush has launched "Operation Legacy," which he placed in the hands of his ultimate advisor, indeed his "brain," Karl Rove. Remember Rove? He's the man who refused to testify under oath when summoned by Congress to do so and was recently identified in a Congressional report as the plotter behind the U.S. Attorneys scandal, among other trainwrecks. The Rove effort features a 2-page set of talking points which have been circulated to members of the administration's team highlighting the supposedly major Bush accomplishments which have begun to fill the American media. They start with the contention that "Bush kept us safe" by preventing any further attack on American soil after 9/11. Really?
Let's just take a look at some of that "deranged" criticism. Indeed, let's start with the criticism from the man tapped by Bush's fellow Republicans to succeed him, John McCain. This week the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a powerful report, released jointly by chair Carl Levin and ranking member John McCain, that received the unanimous support of its Democratic and Republican members. The report concluded that Donald Rumsfeld and other high-level officials of the administration consciously adopted a policy for the torture and abuse of prisoners held in the war on terror. It also found that they attempted to cover up their conduct by waging a P.R. campaign to put the blame on a group of young soldiers they called "rotten apples." Lawyers figure prominently among the miscreants identified. Evidently the torture policy's authors then enlisted ethics-challenged lawyers to craft memoranda designed to give torture "the appearance of legality" as part of a scheme to create the torture program despite internal opposition. A declassified summary of the report can be read here; the full report is filled with classified information and therefore has been submitted to the Department of Defense with a request that the materials be declassified for release. (Don't expect that to happen before January 20, however).
This report sums up all you need to know about George W. Bush's eight years of leadership. Karl Rove stresses that Bush has been a perfect moral example for young people in the country. The report tells us that when photos and other evidence of abuse first surfaced, the Bush Administration firmly denied any connection between their policies and the abuse, then attempted to scapegoat a group of more than a dozen young recruits (but not, of course, any of their supervising officers, who knew the details of the administration's involvement and would have made things messy if disciplined). The report puts these actions in an unforgiving light:
The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ‘a few bad apples' acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.
But of course, Bush only turned to torture to keep America safe, right? Wrong. With the unanimous support of its 12 Republican members, the Committee concludes:
The administration's policies concerning [torture] and the resulting controversies damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.
The report has some more bombshells in it waiting to emerge on declassification. It studies with some care the introduction of specific torture techniques, showing how they were reverse engineered from the SERE program-used to prepare American pilots to resist interrogation techniques used by the Soviets, North Koreans, Chinese and North Vietnamese. By "reverse engineering," we mean it was adopting the techniques used by the nation's Communist adversaries in prior generations. We have met the enemy, and he looks remarkably like George W. Bush.
And deep in its classified hold, the report looks into the use of psychotropic drugs which were, with Donald Rumsfeld's approval, routinely administered to prisoners in order to facilitate their interrogation-in violation of international agreements and American criminal law.
The report, even in its still-classified form, does not tell the whole story of what happened. It does not address the program administered by the CIA. And even with respect to the Department of Defense, the Committee and its investigators were effectively stonewalled by the United States Special Operations Command and its overlords in the Pentagon who failed to provide information about special rules of engagement introduced with the authority of Undersecretary of Defense Stephen Cambone that authorized the torture and mistreatment of prisoners held for intelligence interrogation in operations dating back to the earliest weeks of the "war on terror."
The Levin-McCain Report, when fully declassified and circulated, will tell Americans a good deal about our history. It will help define what will become known as the "torture presidency" of George W. Bush. But it is also a remarkably incomplete document, testimony to the Bush Administration's conscious policy of obfuscation, misdirection and deceit-its mockery of Congressional oversight, and its corruption of our Constitution and system of government. It gives us a clear lesson. As John McCain stated: "This must never be repeated. Never."
11 Comments so far
Show AllI wonder if too much isn't being made of the adoption of the SERE techniques. For example, we know that sexual humiliation wasn't part of SERE, yet it was a principal feature of Abu Ghraib. Similarly, extremely loud music was used at Afghanistan's Bagram Air base, at Abu Ghraib, and at Guantanamo. But deafeningly loud music wasn't part of the SERE program. These torture techniques were used in Chile after the Pinochet coup and in other Latin American countries. Were they taught at the School of the Americas by U.S. military officers? We tend to think that torture began with the Bush administration, but of course, it didn't. It's been bipartisan since the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. It's just that in the past we used surrogates--Latin American military dictatorships, for example. What was new with Bush is that the U.S. dispensed with the surrogates and became the torturers.
Thank you white rose....murderer's, start there. Torture to DEATH....Pundit and puppet master Rove has again proven his inability to speak as a normal,moral human. Any media outlet which bring him forward as anything other than a defendant has no moral compass...and are lost at sea.
The only way to ensure that it never happens again is to deter future torturers and war criminals by aggressive prosecution, and such measures are the only way to reassure our allies that we want to join the ranks of civilized nations and convince our enemies that we've changed. Will Obama and Congress have the courage to reinstate the rule of law, or will they merely sweep the whole sordid business under the rug, forever eroding our credibility on human rights matters and rendering any condemnations of others' abuses nothing more than hypocrisy?
Alex
Meanwhile EMPEROR of the Universe George -- in a last visit to his "shocked and awed" US 51st STATE of Oil Rich Iraq -- got a "farewell" from an iraqi - a pair of shoes in the air . imagine an EMPEROR saying later :"it didn't bother me, i didn't feel threatened at all" --
THEN WHY DID YOU DUCK? it just a SHOE u know, NOT those MISSING WMD's YOU claimed iraq was IMMINENTALY going to shoot at the USA?
or maybe because he was surrounded by TOLERANT "courtiers" continuing a tolerating PRETENSE that the "emperor HAS clothes?" ewe!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6KvvgCtbOg
THE SHOE thrown at bush is the equivalent of "the BOY that said: But....sirs....the EMPEROR has NO CLOTHES".....
====================================
Man Throws Both Shoes at Bush, Calls Him a 'Dog'
Posted by AlterNet Staff, AlterNet on December 14, 2008 at 11:31 AM.
From Edwin Chen at Bloomberg:
President George W. Bush ducked two shoes thrown at him by an unidentified man during a press conference in the Iraqi prime minister's office.
Bush wasn't hit by the shoes, one of which sailed over his head. The president shrugged and said "I'm OK" after the incident in Baghdad today. "All I can report is it is a size 10," Bush said.
In Arab culture, throwing shoes is a grave show of disrespect. The man shouted an Arabic phrase, which an Iraqi present said translated as "this is a farewell kiss, dog."
This report sets the stage for prosecution in US or International courts --
So be it ---
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
Bush Legacy Project is apparently unaware of the existence of video tape. As long as historians, reporters, and the public remember and can go back to the documented record, there will be no Bush Legacy. At least it won't be the legacy Bush wants.
The question Americans must ask is "How do we prevent such persons from gaining high office in the future"?
Again this not the first time. Read "Killing Hope" by William Blum and how America involved herself in torture the World over for decades and more.
If no one faces justice it will happen again and again and America will never gain the Moral standing it claims it has.
It my opinion none of these people will ever face charges in America. Meaning of course that no one can claim America a beacon of liberty and human rights.
PK
Everybody has seen George's body language over the years; the strut, the head tilt that betrayed silent cursing of inconvenient questions at press conferences, the blank I-don't-give-a-shit stare.
To say that he has considered himself above the law understates his arrogance, his contempt for any standard of decency.
If he could be arrested, denied bail, and sent to wait in the county jail he would be the most surprised person on the planet.
George W. Bush like his father before him, a War Criminal, murderer and thoroughly repugnant piece of shit.
Yes a great example for as Mordechai says above "the next group of imperialists, warmongers, MIC wannabes, polished Wall Street thieves, geek legends-in-their-own-minds with visions of torture and international mass murder, Republicans and Democrats, MSM anchors who all look like Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper or a Stepford Wife, Type A power brokers, and all the walking, talking hemorrhoids of the Ruling Class - all still in grade school as of this moment"
To them he passes with bloody hands the instrument of torture.
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
Karl Rove stresses that Bush has been a perfect moral example for young people in the country.
For the next group of imperialists, warmongers, MIC wannabes, polished Wall Street thieves, geek legends-in-their-own-minds with visions of torture and international mass murder, Republicans and Democrats, MSM anchors who all look like Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper or a Stepford Wife, Type A power brokers, and all the walking, talking hemorrhoids of the Ruling Class - all still in grade school as of this moment - this is undoubtedly true.
If Mcsame is serious about it never being repeated, will he break the secrecy and post the full report online now? Has he called for the prosecution of those responsible for the torture and coverup of those orders? Don't let bush go quietly into the night of his retirement, send him away in the full glare of disgrace that that bastard has earned.