Krugman: Bush tortured to get fabricated link btwn al queda & Saddam, as pretext to invade Iraq:

[amborin]

"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.

Let’s say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link...."

<http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/>

[Xipe Totec]

1. Torture evidence helped capture Al-Jamon and Al-Queso

in Al-Sandwich.

Other than that, zero.

[TayTay]

2. Has anyone brought up the "T" word here?

Treason?

Engineering a fake war based on fake evidence obtained under torture and the subsequent deaths of 4,275 (last count on icasualties.org) is treason.

[OneGrassRoot]

3. Sure fits...."treason":

All three apply to BushCo, in my opinion.

trea⋅son

   /ˈtrizən/ Show Spelled Pronunciation Show IPA
–noun
1. the offense of acting to overthrow one's government or to harm or kill its sovereign.
2. a violation of allegiance to one's sovereign or to one's state.
3. the betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery.

Origin:
1175–1225; ME tre(i)so(u)n < AF; OF traïson < L trāditiōn- (s. of trāditiō) a handing over, betrayal. See tradition

Synonyms:
1. Treason, sedition mean disloyalty or treachery to one's country or its government. Treason is any attempt to overthrow the government or impair the well-being of a state to which one owes allegiance; the crime of giving aid or comfort to the enemies of one's government. Sedition is any act, writing, speech, etc., directed unlawfully against state authority, the government, or constitution, or calculated to bring it into contempt or to incite others to hostility, ill will or disaffection; it does not amount to treason and therefore is not a capital offense. 2. See disloyalty.

[TayTay]

10. This story just keeps getting worse and worse

Treason.

We have to have a reckoning on this.

[neverforget]

5. There are a lot of Benedict Arnolds around today.

[spanone]

4. knr

[Kaleko]

6. Finally. A relief from 8 years of total cognitive dissonance.

Even Krugman is now saying what we've been aware of from the start.

[amborin]

8. not sure

if you've read K before?

he's been one of the harshest critics of Bush all along

[Kaleko]

12. Not nearly harsh enough for my tastes.

:) But my standards are so high, they required people shouting "treason" from the rooftops after 9/11 was such an obvious head fake.

[amborin]

14. here's an article that sort of summarizes K's ongoing Bush bashing:

<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=av56boh_S7S4&refer=us>


"....most widely known for his critiques of Bush's policies from the war in Iraq to economics in a twice-weekly column in the New York Times and appearances on television.

snip

Krugman, 55, doesn't mince words when it comes to Bush. He was an early, frequent and fervent critic.

``Mr. Bush retains a public image as a plain-spoken man, when in fact he is as slippery and evasive as any politician in memory,'' he wrote on Oct. 25, 2002.

On Feb. 11, 2005, he referred to Bush as ``someone who takes food from the mouth of babes and gives the proceeds to his millionaire friends.''

Bush, with his plan to use tax credits to buy health insurance, is ``not even trying to hide his fundamental indifference to the plight of the less-fortunate,'' Krugman wrote on Jan. 22, 2007.

`A Game of Deception'

And on April 28 2008, he said the Bush administration ``engaged in a game of deception'' to hide the true costs of its tax cuts.

In a May 18, 2007, column, he said the president ``degraded our government and undermined the rule of law; he has led us into strategic disaster and moral squalor.''

snip

Krugman is a fierce critic of Bush's foreign policy and was an early opponent of the war in Iraq.

Of the president's case for removing Saddam Hussein, Krugman wrote on Feb. 11, 2003, ``Mr. Bush's America does not look like a regime whose promises you can trust.'' He was even more blunt on Oct. 25, 20002: ``The Bush administration lies a lot,'' he wrote.

``People claim to be shocked by the Bush administration's general incompetence,'' Krugman wrote on Oct. 8 last year. ``But disinterest in good government has long been a principle of modern conservatism.''

Beyond Economics

Krugman also criticized Bush's response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, at time when the president was near the top of his popularity. ``Mr. Bush's advisers were greedy,'' he wrote on Sept. 12, 2003. ``They wrapped as much as they could in the flag.''

In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, Bush's approval rating hit as high as 90 percent in Gallup surveys. It sunk to 25 percent in Gallup's most recent survey. Only Richard Nixon and Harry Truman hit lower marks, 24 percent and 22 percent respectively.

Krugman's public commentary on the economy and politics has earned him criticism from conservatives such as Donald Luskin, chief investment officer for Trend Macrolytics, an investment consulting firm in Menlo Park, California.

``He is not in the same category as John Maynard Keynes, he is in the same category as Oprah Winfrey. To give it to him is to dishonor the Nobel Prize,'' Luskin, a contributing editor for National Review Online, said.

Krugman, in a brief telephone interview after the award was announced, said ``it's a total surprise.''

Carter, Gore

Krugman is not the first Bush critic to win a Nobel Prize.

Former President Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, awarded for decades of work to resolve international conflicts, ``was more of a slap in the face,'' said Stephen Hess, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Carter and former Vice President Al Gore, Bush's opponent in the 2000 election who won the Peace Prize last year for his efforts to promote awareness of climate change, are more widely known than the Princeton economist.

[Kaleko]

15. That is impressive, you're right, Amborin.

I sit corrected. Krugman is *fierce* in those excerpts you've collected.

[glitch]

9. The good news is apparently quite a few high profile mainstream folks feel it is safe to say.

Finally. It has been a long 8 years.

[calimary]

11. No kidding.

It must be like a pressure cooker. You can only keep a lid on this shit for just so long.

[slipslidingaway]

7. knr nt

[applegrove]

13. Such clarity. Krugman is the best.