Torture memos

[tw]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Any government that releases all it's secrets will not be around for very long. Regardless of what kind of gov it is.

Which is why an extremist George Jr administration successfully saved the nation by repeatedly subverting the 911 Commission.

Honesty exposed that not one wacko extremist did anything to save America that day. A Secret Service agent finally had to push the president onto Air Force One (in FL) because nobody from George Jr on down could make a decision. Could not even decide to get on Air Force One. Good thing we saved America by keeping that secret hidden. Good thing we keep America from learning of incompetence everywhere in that administration that day - including the VP, Transportation Secretary, Sec of Defense, National Security advisor, FAA Commissioner, ...

Best way to save America – keep it dumb and uninformed.

[tw]

And still some deny we were torturing people. How does that make America any different than Nazis? From the NY Times of 21 Apr 2009:

Report Gives New Detail on Approval of Brutal Techniques
A newly declassified Congressional report released Tuesday outlined the most detailed evidence yet that the military’s use of harsh interrogation methods on terrorism suspects was approved at high levels of the Bush administration. ...

The Senate report documented how some of the techniques used by the military at prisons in Afghanistan and at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as in Iraq ...

According to the Senate investigation, a military behavioral scientist and a colleague who had witnessed SERE training proposed its use at Guantánamo in October 2002, as pressure was rising “to get ‘tougher’ with detainee interrogations.” Officers there sought authorization, and Mr. Rumsfeld approved 15 interrogation techniques.

The report showed that Mr. Rumsfeld’s authorization was cited by a United States military special-operations lawyer in Afghanistan as “an analogy and basis for use of these techniques,” and that, in February 2003, a special-operations unit in Iraq obtained a copy of the policy from Afghanistan “that included aggressive techniques, changed the letterhead, and adopted the policy verbatim.”

Months later, the report said, the interrogation officer in charge at Abu Ghraib obtained a copy of that policy “and submitted it, virtually unchanged, through her chain of command.” This ultimately led to authorization by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez of the use of stress positions, “sleep management” and military dogs to exploit detainees’ fears, the report said.

“The paper trail on abuse leads to top civilian leaders, and our report connects the dots,” Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. “This report, in great detail, shows a paper trail going from that authorization” by Mr. Rumsfeld “to Guantánamo to Afghanistan and to Iraq,” Mr. Levin said.

But Americans don't torture? 30 years in future, expect extremists again to promote torture as if that somehow results in useful information ... when facts and examples routinely say otherwise.

Curious. Those who created the 'Saddam WMD' myths also advocated torture. Why? Because they could not find those WMDs, could not find Al Qaeda hiding everywhere to kill us all ... and could not find bin Laden because they did not want to. And yet these are honest people? With so much 'honesty' from advocates of torture, how does that make us any different than Nazis?

[tw]

From the Washington Post:

Confronting the Bush Legacy, Reluctantly
Widening an explosive debate on torture, President Obama on Tuesday opened the possibility of prosecution for Bush-era lawyers who authorized brutal interrogation of terror suspects and suggested Congress might order a full investigation. The three men facing the most scrutiny are former Justice Department officials Jay Bybee, Steven Bradbury and John Yoo.

Lying was not limited to Saddam's WMDs.

[glatt]

As much of a douche bag I think Gonzales is, I think opening the door to investigations is a bad idea.