Perhaps this week will involve some kind of conversation about accountability for the torture that was carried out by members of our intelligence community and armed forces during the presidency of George W. Bush. I hope so. But let’s be clear at the outset about one thing.
We have a confession.
“I was a big supporter of waterboarding. I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques.” – Dick Cheney, Valentine’s Day, 2010.
In fact, President Bush has also confessed, although with less enthusiasm and in narrower terms.
“Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” the former president said during an appearance at the Economic Club of Grand Rapids, Michigan, according to the Grand Rapids Press.
“I’d do it again to save lives,” he added.
There is a difference between those two confessions. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was believed to be the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks and someone who, therefore, excelled in creating deadly sleeper cells bent on carrying out large suicidal attacks that cause huge casualties and incalculable economic and moral damage to their victims.
Torture is wrong, and it is generally ineffective, leading more often to false confessions and bogus leads than to solid, actionable intelligence. But if the Bush administration had limited itself to torturing Khlaid Sheikh Mohammed, we wouldn’t be seeing the Senate Intelligence Committee releasing a report on torture. We never would have had to suffer through the Abu Ghraib humiliation. You can call President Bush’s confession a modified limited hangout. He admitted to torturing someone who most people would feel had information that could prevent a major terrorist attack, while taking no responsibility for the hundreds of other people who were tortured as a result of his policies and direction.
Dick Cheney, on the other hand, took responsibility for all of it, because he freely admitted that he was “a big supporter” of torturing people. And letting Dick Cheney off the hook for that means that we have to let everyone downstream from him off the hook for it, too. Otherwise, our justice would be worse than no justice at all.
So, anyway, maybe Bush was misled about what the CIA was doing. I’m not sure I believe that, but I hear the report will make that case. But Cheney was definitely not deceived. He ordered it and he cheered them on.
Remember that this week when people are talking about this issue.
Not looking forward to the predictable effort by the media to couch this in that infamous “some people say”, and “what some call torture” framing.
Will any of them dare to utter the fact, out loud, that Cheney supported and endorsed torture, in all its forms and regardless of the circumstances? No way in hell.
This subject is just going to bring to the forefront, once again, how criminal these people are and how our system knowingly chooses to give them a pass. How we respond to this report is what really matters. I, for one, have almost no hope that we will respond in the appropriate manner that is called for by the facts contained in the report and the public statements made by the principal characters involved.
They are guilty as hell, and proud of it. And they know they will pay no price.
Yeah, just like the nation’s domestic soldi…er, police. The institutions of power are no longer accountable. Next comes open bribery.
It’s the US criminal justice system and police that tell us who the criminals are. Among the worst, based on the response of the long arm of the law, are pot users/dealers, loosie sellers, and cigarello thieves.
Government officials and the police that do their bidding only engage in torture, mayhem, and killing to “keep us safe.” Banksters stealing billions keep our “financialized economy” humming. They’re just doing their jobs.
That is exactly why we have formal procedures for courts and the discovery in the legal process–to sort these things out.
But what these confessions are in this case (and even Obama’s dry “We tortured some folks.”) is a blatant parading of impunity from accountability and a full and detailed accounting of the war crimes and crimes against humanity that the United States and its personnel have committed as an act of state.
All of these leaders, including Obama, are expecting to get a free pass from history on the brutality of their actions.
As a one off, it would not be so bad, but the inability of the Obama administration, for whatever reasons, to break free of the Bush policies, bring the perpetrators to justice and punish them severely means that it becomes a latent acceptable policy (at best) that will be used again. At worst, it becomes the foundation of a continuing torture state whose practices gradually migrate into the treatment of criminals and then political prisoners in the hands of a corrupt leadership.
I see that the people releasing this report are slow-walking it as much as they can. Udall could lance that boil if he would. Otherwise they might slow-walk it until he’s safely gone and then not release it at all.
“As early as Monday” has now become “as early as Tuesday”.
The crucial error was the Dems failing to impeach the criminal mastermind Cheney, since all his confessed lawbreaking was well known by 2006, and plenty more besides. Instead, silence. And if senate Repubs refused to convict, fine. The play’s the thing.
So Cheney and his Bushco really broke the back of the system and constitution (to the extent there was anything left to break) and left it all a mockery of itself. But the hapless Dems played a best supporting actor role. Now, one cannot imagine actual and legitimate accountability in our collapsing polity, although hypocritical Repubs will still be happy to impeach a Dem exec based on pure spite.
The defeated Udall just opined that “America would be disgusted” when they “learn” of the torture in the oft-delayed report. Most already know and aren’t disgusted in the least. I’d instead propose they are proud of our (and hence their) brutality.
We are debating the nuances of state-sponsored torture in the context of a national security regime which is increasingly focussed on pre-emptive domestic surveillance and domestic law enforcement which reveals a widespread pattern of extra-judicial violence and coercion including, apparently, execution. Considerable evidence suggests our wealth is being harvested by amoral corporations whom have established, for all practical purposes, control over the outcomes of our elective processes which seem exclusively intended to empower and enrich them at our expense. Our media are bobble-heads. There is no cogent public discussion of these issues or sign of a change on the horizon or of any credible, coherent resistance to these trends.
When should we legitimately start using the f-word? Just askin’.
The mid-to-late 1940s, is how I’d answer.
The end-game, which is what a lot of our Masters are aiming for, is neo-feudalism.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I despise what America has become with all the torture, war, surveillance, and fear. Bush and Cheney deserve all the the hate I have for them. But they are not alone in this crime. The entire country… myself included, are guilty of the same crimes. I’ve lost all hope for this country and its people so seeing it continue descend into chaos and self-destruction is the only justice left.
I keep hearing “rule of law” from conservatives when it suits them. But not a peep over the last 13 years about the wanton flouting of the ratified treaty of the Geneva Conventions.
Sadly, this is typical of military empires. Over time the people just come to accept certain evil practices as normal and justified as long as their own country is the one doing the practicing.