The news is stunning. Rice, Cheney and even Colin Powell (who of all people should have known better) choreographed the torture of “high value” detainees. And we will no doubt get push back of “well it worked dammit!” But we do not really have the smoking gun of that statement while we do have the smoking gun of having our nations leaders detailing torture techniques.
Regardless of how “successful” they were, torture is a war crime. When are these folks going to stand trial? When is Cheney going to be impeached and then the chimp after him?
(xposted at dKos)
From Crooks and Liars:
ABC News aired a segment on their daily news show that after a five month investigation, they could say that Bush’s most senior officials not only knew about the torture they were inflicting on suspected terrorists, but decided down to the last detail exactly how much torture to inflict.
The discussions in the White House were top secret and sources say, involve some of the President’s most senior and influential advisors, principals of the National Security Council. In dozens of private talks and meetings, sources said that a handful of top advisors discussed specific high-value al Qaeda prisoners and exactly how those prisoners would be interrogated. Whether, for example, they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding. The discussion about the “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, sources said, the interrogations were almost choreographed, down to the number of times the CIA could use a specific tactic. Former CIA director George Tenet, in an interview last year with ABC News told Charles Gibson,
“It was authorized. It was legal, according to the Attorney General of the United States.”
It also was discussed and approved in meetings by the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a group that included Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, John Ashcroft.
