Torture: Republicans v. Democrats
Posted on: May 18, 2009
As we all know, the Republicans have put Pelosi in their sights. From CNN:
House Minority Leader John Boehner demanded that Pelosi provide evidence to support her accusations.”Lying to the Congress of the United States is a crime,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
He should be careful about making such assertions. The Bush administration wasn’t exactly honest. It seems that there was a lot said about Iraq that wasn’t truthful. Notably, information in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address. Try this one:
Congress and the American people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaida. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.
The source was Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi (aka Curveball) (that’s possibly misspelled), who made this admission to avoid further torture. According to Colonel Lawrence B Wilkerson, “former chief of staff of the Department of State during the term of Secretary of State Colin Powell”:
Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.
So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee “was compliant” (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, “revealed” such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.
There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just “committed suicide” in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi….)
Here’s a Washington Post article about his suicide that is not linked to in Wilkerson’s article.
It’s sad how hypocritical Rep. Boehner is about what Pelosi knew about what the Bush White House was actually doing. If he is going after what Pelosi knew, then perhaps we should actually disbar the 12 lawyers that worked for the Bush administration. After all, they did:
…[misuse] their license to practice law to provide legal cover for the war crime of torture. This misuse of their license requires the bar association to disbar them or the bar will become complicit in torture.
I guess if we’re going after everybody but those who actually approved torture this makes sense. Let’s nail Pelosi to a cross. Then we can start with the 12 attorneys who allegedly misused their law licenses. Then we can go after those who were actually responsible, and I’m not referring to those who were in the interrogation rooms physically applying the illegal techniques. I’m referring to those who approved and ordered them to be carried out.
The sooner this mess gets cleaned up the sooner we can start cleaning up the present mess – or at least prepare to clean it up in 2012.
Cognitive Coup 
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