The Bush administration put relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.
Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. No evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime.
The use of abusive interrogation — widely considered torture — as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.
God the more I read about this the more nauseous I become.
Torturing somebody for information is inhumane.
Torturing somebody because you have a narrative that you demand that they lie to support is inhuman.
I am very relieved to hear that Obama is open to going after the Bush administration members who allowed these criminal activities to take place. We need everybody involved to face severe punishment and send a message to the world that America will NEVER engage in these sort of techniques ever again.
Totally agree.
ReplyDeleteVery happy Obama is doing the right thing now.
OT, but, as a great admirer of Deepak Chopra (except for those goofy red sparkly glasses he wears sometimes) I got a big laugh out of his article today in Huff Post. It's all about Faux News. I thought others would enjoy it as well. It explains a lot even, also, too, on this subject of torture and the Iraq war and how Fox was instrumental in getting the non-thinkers to believe all the Bush malarkey.
I would also like to add that I was very upset to hear CNN commentator Roland Martin say that Obama should not have changed his mind on this torture prosecution stuff; that once he had said "no prosecutions" he should have stuck with that, and to change his mind makes him look weak.
ReplyDeleteExCUSE me, but isn't that exactly the attitude that got us into this whole mess that GWB and Cheney got us into? The unwillingness, once a position has been proven WRONG, or to be based on wrong facts, to change one's stance on it?
I do not know what possessed Obama to come out with the original stance on "we should be looking forward" and not prosecute. I am guessing in his newness as President, he was attempting to show some respect to the former administration (as much as they do not deserve it). Who knows, maybe in his mind, he was all along gonna leave it to the Justice Dept. once all the paperwork was made public.
In my opinion, most of the Bush Administration needs to be investigated and prosecuted and made an example of so that this crap NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN. This torture stuff is too important of an issue, both morally and strategically, to just "walk away" from (Peggy Noonan).
IMO, if this torture stuff is slid by without accountability, the US is as bad as any other country that we have the audacity to accuss of human rights violations while doing the same ourselves, and our standing in the world should rightly be diminished.
Bill O'Reilly was great last night. He had on two military experts on torture and he expected them to say what he wanted them to say. They didn't and they kept saying that torture doesn't work. Bill got cranky and started yelling and interruptiing them in his usual way and never did get anything to his satisfaction out of them.
ReplyDeleteI don't watch him regularly but I do tune in once in a while for the chance of a treat such as this. I hit the jackpot last night. If anyone can see it rerun somehow, I highly recommend it. It was as good as Jon Stewart this time!
Count the years you have been ignorant of the worlds events. Multiply that with the number of your neighbors. The answer will be only a fraction of the number of American lives saved to date. War is HELL and never pretty. Thank a soldier for ensuring your ability to post a comment.
ReplyDeleteCongress provided support for the President's response in the form of a joint resolution, providing in part:
ReplyDelete[T]he President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.