Scott Horton: Busting The Torture Myths (The Stomach-Turning Truth of Bush's Torture Programs)

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/rights/138625/the_stomach-turning_truth_about_bush%27s_torture_programs

Busting the Torture Myths
by Scott Horton

Scott Horton, who has led coverage of Bush-era wrongdoing, exposes three pervasive myths—and the surprising reason Cheney and Rove are keeping the issue alive.

• A torture memo writer refused to comply with a warning about criminal risks—and exposes the truth about the policies.
• Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are convinced that Bush-era torture policy is a promising political product for a party down on its luck.
• Donald Rumsfeld gave step-by-step directions for techniques used at Abu Ghraib.
• Torture techniques originated from the White House shortly after 9/11—long before they were arguably needed on the battlefield.
• Torture was used by Cheney and Rumsfeld to find justification for the invasion of Iraq.
• Jay Bybee was confirmed to a lifetime appointment as all eyes were on Colin Powell’s speech to the U.N. about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.

In the space of a week, the torture debate in America has been suddenly transformed. The Bush administration left office resting its case on the claim it did not torture. The gruesome photographs from Abu Ghraib, it had said, were the product of “a few bad apples” and not of government policy. But the release of a series of grim documents has laid waste to this defense. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s report—adopted with the support of leading Republican Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham—has demonstrated step-by-step how abuses on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan had their genesis in policy choices made at the pinnacle of the Bush administration. A set of four Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memoranda from the Bush era has provided a stomach-turning legal justification of the application of specific torture techniques, including waterboarding.
Rove and Cheney are convinced that Bush-era torture policy is a promising political product for a party down on its luck. Its success on the political stage is just one more 9/11-style attack away.
As public and congressional calls for the appointment of a prosecutor and the creation of a truth commission have proliferated, President Barack Obama stepped in quickly to try to turn down the heat. A commission would not be helpful, he argues, and he has made plain his aversion to any form of criminal-law accountability. Republicans, meanwhile, bristle with anger as they attempt to defend against the flood of new information. But, in the end, Obama’s assumption that the torture debate has run its course and that the country can now “move on,” as conservative pundit Peggy Noonan urged, may rest in some serious naïveté: Karl Rove and Dick Cheney have different ideas. They’re convinced that Bush-era torture policy is a promising political product for a party down on its luck. Its success on the political stage is just one more 9/11-style attack away.
The latest disclosures can best be grouped in terms of the destruction of a series of long-enduring myths and the emergence of some new truths.

The Broken Myths

1. Torture was connected to some “rotten apples,” mostly enlisted personnel from rural Appalachia who were improperly supervised.

The Senate Armed Services Committee meticulously documents the abuses that were chronicled at Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Base, and other sites and links them directly to techniques that were approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials in the Bush administration. Even in the case of Abu Ghraib, it shows step-by-step how directions given by Rumsfeld that the harsh techniques he adopted for Guantánamo be imported to Iraq, specifically for use on high-value detainees at the Abu Ghraib facility. Among the 232-page report’s conclusions: “The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ‘a few bad apples’ acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”

2. The torture techniques were derived as a last resort, only after other techniques had failed and that interrogators in the field pushed for their use.

The report shows, however, that the effort to identify and seek authority to use harsh new techniques started shortly after 9/11—that is, in 2001, well before there were any prisoners on whom they could be used. It also shows that the effort had its origin in the White House, specifically in the office of Vice President Cheney and involved a series of people who had Cheney’s confidence.

THE REST AT LINK

[EFerrari]

1. Scott is right. If we don't sort this out, we can "look forward"

to more of the same and worse because it always gets worse.

[bjobotts]

28. Degenerate elitists are hard to stomach. They think no one can touch them.

[bjobotts]

29. If this goes without prosecutions it will doom American Democracy

[bjobotts]

30. We are a nation of laws not Kings. Standing for the rule of law makes you left wing radical

[bjobotts]

31. Only leftists think the rule of law applies to everyone equally, including presidents

[bjobotts]

32. It is an insult to our Judicial system that Jay Bybee is now a federal judge for life.

[Hissyspit]

2. kick nt

[Voice for Peace]

3. Excellent article.

kick & recommend

[Solly Mack]

4. K&R

[Lugnut]

5. K&R n/t

[glitch]

6. Excellent article from Scott Horton as usual. K & R nt

[alfredo]

7. Either we do it, or Spain and other wronged nations will press charges.

[EFerrari]

8. People should start calling it what it was, Cheney's torture program.

Stop dancing around it.

[Hissyspit]

9. .

[Karenina]

11. bttt!

[Hissyspit]

18. sppp!

[Martin Eden]

10. K&R

The rethugs have really sunk low if they're embracing torture as politicially helpful for them.

[florida08]

12. pretty damning evidence there

"The report shows, however, that the effort to identify and seek authority to use harsh new techniques started shortly after 9/11—that is, in 2001, well before there were any prisoners on whom they could be used. It also shows that the effort had its origin in the White House, specifically in the office of Vice President Cheney and involved a series of people who had Cheney’s confidence."

This just might suggest they knew there were no WMDS. The so called mushroom cloud conspiracy. We do know they were told ahead of time about the lack of evidence to support such positions as well as the link to Al Qaeda. I do remember a dinner that Bush attended where he "joked" about not finding them. Prosecute them ALL to the MAX.

[mod mom]

15. and Rumsfeld owns Mt Misery where physical and psychological torture was administered to slaves:

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Rumsfeld and a mountain of misery

By AMY GOODMAN


Frederick Douglass, the renowned abolitionist, began life as a slave on Maryland's Eastern Shore. When his owner had trouble with the young, unruly slave, Douglass was sent to Edward Covey, a notorious "slave breaker." Covey's plantation, where physical and psychological torture were standard, was called Mount Misery. Douglass eventually fought back, escaped to the North and went on to change the world. Today Mount Misery is owned by Donald Rumsfeld, the outgoing secretary of defense.

It is ironic that this notorious plantation run by a practiced torturer would now be owned by Rumsfeld, himself accused as the man principally responsible for the U.S. military's program of torture and detention.

Rumsfeld was recently named along with 11 other high-ranking U.S. officials in a criminal complaint filed in Germany by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights. The center is requesting that the German government conduct an investigation and ultimately a criminal prosecution of Rumsfeld and company. CCR President Michael Ratner says U.S. policy authorizing "harsh interrogation techniques" is in fact a torture program that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld authorized himself, passed down through the chain of command and was implemented by one of the other defendants, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller

-snip

http://www.seattlepi.com/opinion/293201_amy22.html?source=mypi

we had some seriously disturbed individuals running this country.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

17. There is no irony here. That sickening coward Rumsfeld

would be drawn to a place with such a dark history. These men are truly evil.
I hope he lives long enough to be prosecuted.

[Two Americas]

19. of course they knew

Had they not been absolutely certain that there were no WMDs they would have never invaded Iraq.

[JDPriestly]

26. Precisely, Two Americas -- or, alternatively, if you read accounts

of the use of gas in WWI and chemical weapons in the Iraq/Iran War, they would have equipped the troops and managed their entry into Iraq very differently.

[Usrename]

21. Remember the 9/11 commission?

They used statements made under torture to produce their "offical" 9/11 Report.

When they used these statements made under torture as evidence, they committed a completely separate violation of the Convention Against Torture:

Article 15


Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made.

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/h_cat39.htm

This is the blue ribbon commission we are talking about here. They used false confessions to fabricate a false narrative about what happened with the twin towers. The whole thing is crap! And not one commissioner has come forward to denounce their crime. What does that tell you? They KNEW it was crap when they wrote it.


From a post made over a year ago by kpete:

NBC: 9/11 Commission KNEW About Torture: TORTURE "Done Specifically" To Answer THEIR Questions!!!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2799833

[merh]

24. I don't understand why people keep overlooking this.

[Usrename]

33. Maybe they are just afraid of getting the thread sent to the dungeon.

Anything that is posted here that doesn't SUPPORT and REINFORCE the "official" story is subject to censorship.

[merh]

35. I hadn't thought of that.

And then again, maybe because of the dungeon, people are quick to overlook any discussion of 9/11 - they are conditioned to overlook and ignore any such discussion.

[florida08]

34. thanks for the link

wasn't here a year ago and apparently missed this on the news. I always knew the commission was a coverup but seeing it in print is extraordinary. Have learned so much from the DU and how deep the corruption has been. I found this part from the article you linked me to astounding!

Remember," the intelligence official said, "The Commission had access to the intelligence reports that came out of the interrogation. This didn't satisfy them. They demanded direct personal access to the detainees and the administration told them to go pound sand.

It leaves me speechless. Thanks so much for this important information. Why these people haven't been tarred and feather by now is
just dumbfounding.

[RalphieD]

13. Bush/Cheney/Rummy are war criminals

They should be immediately tried and convicted and put in
Gitmo.  That'll show 'em.

[mod mom]

16. The climate at GITMO is too pleasant for them. I think somewhere very cold & damp

to honor their commitment to water boarding would be more appropriate.

[malaise]

14. Bravo Scott

K & R

[L. Coyote]

20. drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip

[WestSeattle2]

22. Promising political product......what, like Watergate?

Watergate started out the same way. Public did a shrug followed by "whatever". As the months passed and more dirt was released, the public slowly became involved, and incensed. By the time Nixon skulked off in utter shame, the public was sick of him and republicans. They came unglued when Ford pardoned the SOB.

Remember, we control the information now and can release it "at the time and place of our choosing". Public needs a little stoking? Release some reprehensible photos. Public starting to lose interest? Release a few more incriminating memos. This is like building a bon-fire, one well-placed stick at a time until you have a roaring inferno. I have no doubt that Obama wants to do the right thing, hell anyone with an ounce of ethics and morals does, but he needs the public behind him. We'll get there, just one stick at a time until the percentage of enraged citizens reaches critical mass. Moderates take longer to become engaged, that's just a fact of life.

[JDPriestly]

27. Yes, the momentum for prosecutions, the horror of the public

is likely to increase as time passes. Are more pictures to be released?

I am waiting for our religious leaders to speak their consciences on this. So far, I have not heard from any of them except one video on DU that was a little aberrational.

[WestSeattle2]

37. Excellent point, religiousity has been strangely silent...n/t

[calimary]

23. Kick!

[chill_wind]

25. K & R. n/t

[HillWilliam]

36. Kick it again

This thread needs to stay on top.

Rumsfeld drawn to Mt Misery? How fucking fitting. Evil always finds it hovering place. Soon enough, Rumsfeld and his ilk won't be just hovering. They'll be blistering in hell.

Good.