(WashingtonsBlog) – There are numerous headlines this week about torture:

• Bush: “Damn right” I authorized waterboarding

• Bush says waterboarding is legal “because the lawyer said it was legal”, even though the head of the 9/11 Commission – Thomas Keane – said they got legal opinions they wanted from their own people.

• The CIA agents who destroyed videotapes of torture interrogations will not be charged

• Waterboarding is torture, Downing Street confirms

• Former British intelligence chairman all but calls Bush liar, says waterboarding didn’t stop terror plots

But these headlines make no sense unless they are put in context and given historical background:

• President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, Malcolm Nance (an advisor on terrorism to the US departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations and Intelligence), Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples (the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency) and many other interrogation experts and high-level politicians say that waterboarding is torture

• The United States has always considered waterboarding to be a crime of torture, including when the Japanese did it in WWII (and see this)

• Everyone claiming waterboarding is not torture has changed their tune as soon as they were exposed to even a small dose of it themselves. See this, this and this

• Former Navy Judge Advocate General Admiral John Hutson said that “Torture is the technique of choice of the lazy, stupid and pseudo-tough”

• General Petraeus: Torture is Unnecessary, Hurts Our National Security and Violates Our American Values

• Top Interrogation Experts Agree: Torture Doesn’t Work

• Its Official: Torture Doesn’t Work

• Torture REDUCES National Security

• One of the Military’s Top Interrogators Says Torture Cost Hundreds ‘If Not Thousands’ Of American Lives

• Torture Is Not a Partisan Issue . . . George Washington – Who Was Neither a Democrat or Republican – Forbid All Torture

• Torture Is Continuing Under the Obama Administration, Creating More Terrorists and Further Destabilizing the Economy

• Senator: Government Used Communist Torture Techniques Aimed at Extracting FALSE Confessions

• Homeland Security Chief: We Were Wrong to Torture

• Most of Those Tortured Were Innocent

• Humanitarian Aid Worker: Torture Only Stopped When I Pretended I Was In Al Qaeda

• Under torture, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi claimed there was a link between Saddam Hussein, al-Qaida and WMD.

• One of the Main Sources for the 9/11 Commission Report was Tortured Until He Agreed to Sign a Confession that He Was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ

• 9/11 Mastermind: “During … My Interrogation I Gave A Lot Of False Information In Order To Satisfy What I Believed The Interrogators Wished To Hear”

• Self-Confessed 9/11 “Mastermind” Also Falsely Confessed to Crimes He Didn’t Commit

• Most of the 9/11 Commission Report was Based on 3rd Hand Reports of What People Said While Being Tortured

• The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) – who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry – recently said: “The CIA tapes of the interrogations were destroyed. The story of 9/11 itself, to put it mildly, was distorted and was completely different from the way things happened“

• Former Guantanamo Prosecutor: Prosecute Those Who Authorized Torture

• Cheney Admits to Being War Criminal

• Major General Antonio Taguba: Photos Show Sodomy, Rape and Sexual Assault With Wire and Various Blunt Instruments

• Why We’re Losing the War on Terror

• Nice Work Creating New Terrorists, You Morons

• Law School Professor: Republicans Are Blackmailing Obama on Torture

• Americans Supported Torture Because They Were Deceived into Thinking that it was a Necessary Evil

• Torture is a Form of Terrorism

• Expert: Prosecuting Those Who Created Torture Program Will Reduce Attacks Against the U.S. and Against American Troops

• Torture is Bad for the Economy

Source: Washingtons Blog

No related posts.