Bush’s Torture U.S.A - they all knew.
You’ll find out the one member of the administration who made the above statement below the fold. It’s hard to find any words to describe how sick this is. The ABC headline says it all: Top Bush Advisors Approved ‘Enhanced Interrogation‘.
In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.I guess it’s bye-bye to that VP fantasy, Condi. Below the fold, there was only one member of that committee who had any reservations about the path of torture they were taking.…The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.
The advisers were members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy. At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Our suspicions that these weren’t renegade sadists at Abu Ghraib acting without any info from the highers-up, or that the closest advisers weren’t aware of torture methods - no these closest advisors to Dear Leader were deciding how detainees were to be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or waterboarded. And he, as he has reminded us repeatedly, is The Decider. Needless to say, the White House has no comment.
If you can believe this, John Ashcroft had a minor blip of conscience on the radar.
Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.Are any of these people going to end up in the clink for this?According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”
You must read the detailed DKos diary, Memo Signed By Bush, ALLOWING TORTURE, Surfaces.
48 Responses to “The Bush Admin and torture - ‘History will not judge this kindly’”
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Jesus McChrist. When *John Ashcroft* is your lone voice of morality, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.
John Ashcroft had a minor blip of conscience on the radar.
. . . which is probably why Ashcroft is doing something else now.
Are any of these people going to end up in the clink for this?
The Soviet Union was worse, and fell completely.
Nobody ended up in the clink for what they did. Being a torturer is a well-paying and comfortable career, apparently.
Unfortunately, I don’t agree that this takes Condi out of the VP running. The assumption you’re making is that most people are against “enhanced interrogation” enough to hurt her in the election. Yea, I know it’s torture, but there’s a lot of money in making sure that those two words are repeated so often that the line is at least blurred. Also, I’ve been consistently surprised at how many people have told me that they’re on the fence about such issues, up to and including outright torture.
I suspect we’re going to get these disclosures in fits and spurts for the next decade or two, as people connected with the evil of the Cheney/Bush regime determine their need for cash, or their need for absolution, is stronger than their allegiance to king and party.
We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. By the time all the cancer is fully exposed, it’ll be pretty difficult to tell the difference between the behavior of the Cheney/Bush administration and any other tin pot dictatorship.
The founders of The United States of America would be so proud…
I told you so. Every single one of them is war criminal. Legally, the minute they step into EU jurisdiction they can be detained.
PS. everytime there is media talk about Condi is up for V.P, it’s a media trick to boost Condi’s falling global credibility.. (if she is a veep candidate, she couldn’t be that bad right? Can’t dish out the lame duck. She might come back later as a veep. etc…
so basically, it’s last ditch to give Condi non existence credibility a boost. Right now, nobody takes Condi seriously. She is worst than a lame duck, she is a stage prop nobody wants.)
You know what’d be really nice? A Truth & Reconciliation Commission at some point. American history is so thoroughly stained with ugly stuff, even if you restrict yourself just to living memory, that I think it would be a huge boost to an administration that had the chutzpah to say “Okay, let’s get everything on the table. We can’t fix it all immediately - but we can stop lying about it starting right fucking now.”
Of course, presuming that an Administration would be honest eliminates the current Republicans, and presuming that an administration would have chutzpah eliminates the current Democrats. Whatever nods that last sentence produced are a testament to how badly our collective faith in the ability of any government to accomplish something worthwhile has been shaken - which, in turn, is part of why it would be great to have a TRC.
Necessary to a proper TRC, of course, would be indictments and criminal trials for a variety of people so notorious that I’ll save myself some space and just call ‘em The Usual Suspects. A real TRC would end with the lot of them behind bars, a real good TRC would follow international law and send ‘em to The Hague or wherever the ICC convenes these days.
If such a thing is attempted, too, it can’t be in the least half-hearted. A half-assed TRC would be a terrifying failure, because just like other disciplinary measures - like impeachment and such - it would be decried as a tool of mindless partisanship by the current Republicans, then immediately appropriated as such. It must hit them hard enough to splatter their brains all over the wall. There are certainly people with a (D) after their name or who claim such affiliation that must be investigated, have their crimes laid bare, and be appropriately sentenced. They are far, far outnumbered.
Of course, after all that, the real work of not shooting the entire project of human civilization must begin - it’s just that it’s tough to do that when you’ve got a toxic ideological group in your midst who are, when viewed with an eye to the million-year scale on which humans eventually have to survive, obsessed with suicide.
Again and again, they seem to be going back to the Trunchbull strategy - making things so outrageous that it’s hard to believe them. They’re well on track, for instance, to break the Reagan administration’s record number of indicted officials. The last 30 years of Republican rule (Brad Hicks and Sara Robinson are great resources for the effects of this) have, among other crimes, pretty thoroughly demolished the idea that a government can get shit done. It’s time to end that notion - and the best way to end it would be by introducing the people who caused it to appropriate punishment for their decades-long crime spree.
I really don’t think you can call John Ashcroft realizing they shouldn’t be talking about this in the White House a blip of conscience. He’s the one who was there to say torturing prisoners was legal - and he did.
He’s just the only one who was smart enough to realize that torturing people never looks good in the long term.
I like this:
Nice way to pass the buck there, Tenny! Sorry, that will (or SHOULD) not hold up as a defense in any trial later on. Any more that “the dog ate my homework” ever did. Same grade school mentality.
Instead of cronyism or religious beliefs, can we just MAYBE consider resume, knowledge and intelligence with the next WH gang?
The CIA wanted it all in writing so they couldn’t take the fall for it like they did in the 70s.
If this were still the country I grew up in, these people wouldn’t have to go to Europe to be charged with war crimes.
And since the war is illegal and started by criminals, can’t we bring our soldiers home now? 100 years by Friedman Unit is just unbearable.
squashed: Every single one of them is war criminal. Legally, the minute they step into EU jurisdiction they can be detained.
They knew in 2002 latest that they would commit war crimes, when the pre-emptively threatened to bomb The Hague should any of their gang ever be charged there.
Looks more like a classical Cover Your Ass operation. He just felt uncomfortable knowing that ‘History’ would know about his having taken part in the discussion on ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ and done nothing to stop this madness. Any less than kind judgement History might pass would include his own conduct.
So I guess he really meant something along these lines: History will not judge this kindly, and every person in this room will be implicated. Make sure OUR (or at least MY own) record is clean. Let the
dumb fucks down therelower ranks and the interrogation specialists concern themselves with the gory details.“If this were still the country I grew up in, these people wouldn’t have to go to Europe to be charged with war crimes.”
This is what I was going to say in response: More proof of just how unique the Nuremberg Trials after WWII really were. Open trials where the evidence was not secret, where the defendants were given a chance to defend themselves, etc.
And then I got to wondering - was Nuremberg unique? Or was it really just another example of winner’s justice? Where we got to distract the world from our own atrocities (Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Dresden/Tokyo on a large scale, and countless others on a small scale) by emphasizing the (admittedly horrible) atrocities of the losers?
Has America ever been a morally just country? Or is the way the Bushites have distorted “justice” for political reasons closer to the norm than we want to admit?
The history of America’s dealings during the 20th Century can hardly be held up as anything but craven manipulation of any circumstance for our own benefit, regardless of the moral implications.
We started the century with the subjugation of the Philippines, continued on with selling arms to all sides in WWI right up until we joined in ourselves. The period before we joined in the WWII festivities is not clean - many in the US thought we should support Hitler - and there were many efforts to raise money for the Third Reich. As the war dragged on, all sympathy for enemy civilians faded away, and regarding the Japanese there was never too much of that to begin with. Korea, Vietnam, countless banana republics, overthrowing Iran’s president and installing the Shah, and scads of other shameful actions to “keep America safe!” - all in all a shameful record.
It’s all pretty depressing to look back on.
Maybe the ultimate value of the Cheney/Bush Experience will be the scales falling from the eyes of (some) Americans, who will finally realize we are not simply inherently good. If we are to ever live up to what this country was founded on, it will take a lot of effort and constant vigilance to prevent the less moral among us from dominating our behavior as a nation.
That’s important to me. I wonder how many other Americans feel the same…
Exactly, Jesurgislac. I’ve been dismayed by the love that Ashcroft has been getting from some corners of the blogosphere for this. He was simply arguing in favor of maintaining plausible deniability - that’s all.
I’m one of the ‘bad guys’ as some people have called me, not a torturer or a writer of the manuals on how to do so but I do work in the same world where those people exist. I believe that these acts will haunt us for generations but I also am conflicted over it. If one says they do not support torture ever, under any circumstances, I can totally understand that. If one says they do not support torture under any circumstances other than the ticking bomb situation I get that too but the problem for me is that the ticking bomb can and has become relative. 99% of the torture we have carried out or sponsored may very well have been completely unnecessary but what about the 1% or .1% where it led to the saving of tens or hundreds or thousands of people? I sure as hell dont trust a lot of the people involved in this to decide when its necessary and when it isnt but as an overall principle its hard for me to make the case that it is never, ever necessary. What bothers me is the stance the administration takes, be open and honest, try for that higher ideal and never ever engage in it or admit it, covering it up is never good.
As far the atrocities of hiroshima, nagasaki, dresden and tokyo, well I hate to be a relativist and I dont ‘excuse’ it but what the heck were the alternatives? Not bombing the first three would have pprolonged a war and led to possibly millions more people being killed and would have crippled germany and japan far more than they were by the bombings that took place. Making a country like japan, who committed a ton of atrocities in nanking and other cities without the goal of ending the conflict, surrender unconditionally was the best possible outcome. If one wishes to call hiroshima and nagasaki atrocities, which they undoubtedly were without context but so is all war, what exactly was the alternative?
MikeEss, I want to think that the scales are falling off, but everytime I drive by a car still sporting a W’04 sticker, I am reminded that we are not a nation of introspective people. Truthfully, no nation is. People taken at large simply prefer the fairy tales, of which American Exceptionalism is just one, as pernicious as it is.
“We’re No 1″ is not simply for NCAA sports. War is just another sport to many of us, I believe. Gambling addicts are in charge of this country, and doubling down with borrowed funds (and lives) is a given.
I don’t think the times are different, and neither are the American people. Modern communications, the internet, have shrunk the world to the point that more of us can see just how common it all is, how common we are.
Jake
jamespi, for the sake of argument, I’ll grant your 0.1-1% chance that torture could stop a ticking time bomb. I still think the torturer in that case should be tried. Saving hundreds or thousands of lives is worth risking a few years of prison. If the evidence is strong enough that mass murder was prevented, the torturer could be pardoned or have the sentence communed.
99% of the torture we have carried out or sponsored may very well have been completely unnecessary but what about the 1% or .1% where it led to the saving of tens or hundreds or thousands of people?
You’re assuming that 1% or .1% of cases is anything other than a figment of the imagination. I’d need hard evidence that this happens before even engaging the argument.
As far the atrocities of hiroshima, nagasaki, dresden and tokyo, well I hate to be a relativist and I dont ‘excuse’ it but what the heck were the alternatives? Not bombing the first three would have pprolonged a war and led to possibly millions more people being killed
Professional historians are not in agreement over whether nuking Japan was actually necessary, given the sorry state of the Japanese military by then. It seems more likely that those bombs were dropped for the benefit of the Soviets. I mean, you could make an argument that Hiroshima was intended to bring about the end of the war, but then why drop that second bomb? The answer is to show the Soviets that Hiroshima was not just a one-shot, that we could do it again.
As for your question, what was the alternative . . . well, with Japan, they were in no condition to actually continue the fight by mid-1945. It may have been possible to just wait them out.
The reason that torture must be 100% illegal is that you can NEVER, EVER, EVER trust a government to be 100% honest. Hell, you really can’t trust them to be 50% honest most of the time. Sure, they can say they’ll only use torture 1% of the time, but how in hell can we the people, in whose name said torture is being applied, possibly know if they’re keeping to that standard?
The default position of every citizen in regard to anything spoken by a government official should be skepticism. They have a vested interest in putting the most positive spin on their activities, just as every one of us does in our livelihood. But most of us aren’t put in a position to destroy people’s psyches and bodies. That kind of power must be monitored with the utmost care, and NOT by government officials. By the people, whose representatives in Congress have the ability to restrict the activities of our enforcement agencies such that abuses like those perpetrated by the current administration are not possible, or are at least prosecutable. Harry and Nancy, I’m talking to your sorry asses.
I can’t even believe someone would have to make the argument that governments can’t be trusted. Conservatives who buck and whinny at the yoke of taxes and welfare, and throw vast numbers of lobbyists into the pool to try and privatize every possible function to keep it out of the hands of the evil government bureaucracy will roll over like piddling puppies when it comes to letting law enforcement get away with murder.
I know the reasons, but mother of Jebus, I hate these people.
God what I wouldn’t give to see this administration in the Hague.
Krinn DNZ April 11, 2008 at 1:24 am
You know what’d be really nice? A Truth & Reconciliation Commission at some point. ”
a what?
The neocon has no base except on dwindling rightwing circle. The chance of civil war is nearly zero. Public support on neocons are under 20%. I for one would set up war crime tribunal instead.
Nobody ended up in the clink for what they did. Being a torturer is a well-paying and comfortable career, apparently.
Pol Pot was allowed to live out his life, and die a natural death.
“Pol Pot was allowed to live out his life, and die a natural death.”
…as were Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, both of whom were responsible for more deaths than arch-villain Adolf Hitler…
There you go, The reason they pump Rice as veep story.
It’s an attempt to give her some credibility for her next trip. At this moment, just about anybody in the planet know they can afford considering Rice as “invisible”/ why don’t you talk to the hand … aren’t you gone from the scene yet?
(with veep rumor, at least she can say. I might come back and get your ass. so you might want to sit.)
You know, diplomacy .. (it’s really just like elementary school.)
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-04/10/content_7949565.htm
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Bahrain and Kuwait later this month for talks with Arab leaders over Iraq war and the Arab-Israeli peace talks, the State Department announced Wednesday.
Rice is to visit Bahrain on April 21 to meet the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Jamespi:
Extreme situations make for bad laws. You never, ever legislate so as to create a law that can be followed precisely, to the letter. You instead create a law that works sensibly, say, 95% of the time. Then you rely on cops, prosecutors, judges, juries and executives (governors and Presidents) to sort out the remaining 5%, hoping that no one gets mangled by idiots who think that the letter of the law is intended to give government power to mistreat its people.
If someone was facing a real “ticking time bomb” scenario, and was willing to go to jail if wrong (or, heck, if right), and used torture to get information, we could discuss what should happen. But that should not be the basis of the law, or of policy.
Ron O,
Great point and one that jives well with longhairedweirdo’s post (if you dont mind me saying that). We shouldnt legislate on the extremes, youre right longhair, and perhaps if it is worth it the perp should be willing to face a few years in jail or at least a trial Ron O, what I’m saying is that there needs to be exception in place, even if it was something that stated explicitly that torture in all forms is illegal except for tt-bomb situations and if you get involved in one of those and you are authorized you will receive the full protection of the law, a presumption of innocence/good intentions and a fair trial carried out by the federal system, not military tribunal, would that work for you all?
Spencer,
I’ve seen some snippets of the hard evidence, you never will unless it at some point in the future it is released though I doubt that will happen due to the scandalous way it is being implemented now. Historians might very well not be in agreement but the benefit of hindsight, now 60 years worth is something the people at the time did not have. You say japan was in no shape to fight a war in mid 1945, heck they werent in a position to fight a war in early 1945 but they continued to do so and an invasion of the mainland, based on the reports and numbers they had in hand were far different than some of the analysis we’ve seen in the years since.
Why drop the second bomb? I dont know why and neither do you, I would say, based on what has been released from that time, that it was to show japan that it would keep happening if they didnt surrender, remember it was a culture to which the idea of surrender was never acceptable. You see it as showing the soviets something, well heres the thing, neither of us know and im sure there is a lot of disinformation but in the end, we could both be right and it would still be justified as, and I know we all hate this phrase, the lesser of two evils.
Wait them out? At what point should we have started doing that? Before or after we had cleared them all out of china? Surround and blockade the mainland and starve hundreds of thousands of civilians? Again I think hindsight is benefitting us too much. Should we not have firebombed dresden or carried out the massive bombing of civilian german population and waited them out once we destroyed their military? I’m sure a lot of jews, gypsies, catholics, etc would have had a problem with that.
I am completely convinced that W will pardon the lot on January 19, 2009. Does anyone want to bet against me?
what odds are you giving tina? ill bet a dollar with you if its 1,000,000:1
“I am completely convinced that W will pardon the lot on January 19, 2009.”
I think you’re right. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there was a “legal opinion” from one of his toadies that claims he can pardon himself, or if he’s made a Gerald-Ford-Pardons-Nixon bargain with McCain in case grandpa get elected.
Honestly, I’m surprised Bush hasn’t made his favorite horse a Senator, except that he’s the only “cowboy” in the world who’s afraid of horses…
That’s actually really interesting about Ashcroft — didn’t they also try to get him to sign something about warrantless wiretaps when he was all doped up after surgery and he refused? I mean, sure, saying torture “looks bad” rather than torture “is bad” is not grounds for winning a humanitarian of the year award. But it’s another example of when even those who drank all the koolaid (those who helped make it!) *balked*. It’s important, I think, b/c it proves that even within the bunker it was not impossible to have pricklings of conscience, granted of course that one had a conscience at all. Which everyone else in the room evidently had not.
I would not be in favor of encoding a ticking-time-bomb scenario exemption into law. It would be abused. If someone thinks it would really save lives, I want them to put their own ass on the line.
jamespi, forgive me if I suspect that you are talking out of your ass when you claim to be privy to some sort of high-level inside information on this.
you are forgiven spencer, I wouldnt believe it either. Its not particularly high level though.
Ron O, I understand your take on it, but it would suck if someone didnt do what was necessary, however rare, to save 1-100000 million people because they were covering their own ass/career. I like to look at how the discussion shifts when you discuss torture as a principle in relation to a country like israel instead of the U.S. where the tt-bomb scenario has happened. Perhaps you are right though, no exceptions other than perhaps some strange interpretation of the whistleblower act? Maybe that would be best.
Maybe the ultimate value of the Cheney/Bush Experience will be the scales falling from the eyes of (some) Americans, who will finally realize we are not simply inherently good. If we are to ever live up to what this country was founded on, it will take a lot of effort and constant vigilance to prevent the less moral among us from dominating our behavior as a nation.
I was listening to a Talk of the Nation podcast today from a couple weeks ago where they were talking about what was the ‘aha moment’ that made people take the political positions that they do. They had a bunch of callers and interviewed George Lakoff and Mary Eberstadt. She wrote a book about the ‘conversion stories’ of a bunch of prominent conservatives. Apparently, a lot of these guys (PJ O’Rourke, David Brooks, and so on) became conservative, or more so, because they can’t stand the idea of the US being perceived as weak by the rest of the world. Some of her exact reasons given for why some of these guys are so seriously messed up (of course, she doesn’t think they are, but anyway) include disillusionment with American foreign policy, the failure of the Reagan administration to retaliate for the deaths of Marines in Beirut, the failure of Vietnam, etc. She also went on an extended rant against feminism, abortion, and a bunch of other stuff that turned her conservative , but I guess that’s to be expected. It was a fairly interesting show, but also highly infuriating.
So for a lot of people, it seems that the Cheney/Bush Experience will have the exact opposite effect.
“So for a lot of people, it seems that the Cheney/Bush Experience will have the exact opposite effect.”
Sad to think of it that way, but you’re probably right…
It’s scary to think, but there are people who don’t think Bush/Cheney have been conservative enough on [insert pet issue here]. The good thing for Dems is that most of those find McCain even less conservative than BushCo (a load of ass triscuits, but if they believe it, hey…)
spencer, I don’t mean to make you feel bad or anything but I’ve seen sparkle unicorns romping in meadows and you never will unless the footage is released which it probably won’t be EVAR. sorries.
ouch kathleen, snippets does not equal footage. no America is not always the good guy, I think fetishizing WW2 has led to some of that feeling. America isnt inherently bad either, especially if you go ahead and compare us to the rest of the world, taking the blinders off would be good, open and free discourse is whats needed.
What kind of candy-ass wimps do we have in the military and the intelligence services anyway? If they’re willing to kill and be killed on the battlefield to protect their fellow-citizens, then they should be willing to go to jail. Martin Luther King and all the civil rights leaders that wingnuts deride as cowardly liberals were willing to put their freedom (and even their lives) on the line for what they believed in, but you’re suggesting that sworn members of the military and intelligence services wouldn’t do the same? I think that they’re all more courageous than that.
What happens when you legalize torture, even supposedly only in some kind of ticking-bomb situation, is that you end up torturing a lot of people who don’t know squat about any ticking bomb. At “best” they’ll be willing to make up a bunch of ticking bombs to get you to stop torturing them. Sure, if you knew that someone knew where the ticking bomb was, that might work, but what you have is someone who told you that your victim knows where the ticking bomb is, or maybe someone told you they heard from someone else that your victim knows, or maybe you tortured some other victim who said, “I don’t know where the bomb is, but I know who does, no please stop drowning me,” or perhaps you put out a bounty for people to turn in people who might know where the ticking bomb is, and everybody with a grudge and a need for money, or just access to a handy stranger, handed you a bunch of unlucky schlubs who never even heard of a ticking bomb. And you’re going to torture them until they tell you what you wnat to hear.
Torture would be evil if it worked. But all the credible evidence we have says that it doesn’t even work, so that’s evil and stupid.
You get a lot farther on mistreatment of low level detainees at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, or on the rendition of suspects who are never accused of any specific act to foreign regimes for interrogation. In these instances, clearly delineated rights are impinged upon, people are mistreated for no reason, and some of the people subjected to the mistreatment are innocent.
But I can’t muster any sympathy at all for these high level Al Quaeda leaders. And the best argument against torture, that it produces false intelligence or that it doesn’t work, is really undermined by the fact here that Zubadayah gave up Khalid Shaikh Mohammed after he was subjected to waterboarding.
Mohammed, a head of operational planning gave up tremendous amounts of information after he broke down in CIA interrogation. These practices yielded clear benefits in dismantling an organization dedicated to mass murder of civilians, and I think the CIA was entirely justified in doing anything they judged necessary to accomplish these goals.
The “ticking bomb” situation can be reasonably applied to pretty much all Al Quaeda terrorists, since they presumptively are actively engaged in planning acts of terrorism, and any information a detainee may have possession of has a clear expiration date which could render the information useless in attempts to prevent an attack. If Zubadayah had not been waterboarded, KSM might have moved to a new safehouse and remained free long enough to set another major attack in motion.
I personally think the crimes of these terrorists are sufficient that the fact that they were subjected to pain or indignity doesn’t seem unjust, especially if it yielded timely information that led to the thwarting of terrorist attacks or the capture of other terrorists. These are bad guys and I can’t empathize with their suffering at all. Whatever was done to them, they deserve worse.
Despite the fact that Bin Ladin and Zawahiri remain at large, the CIA has done an exceptional job of smashing the Al Quaeda infrastructure, dismantling its leadership, and reducing its operational capacity. I’m not convinced you can separate that success from the means used to achieve it.
“Despite the fact that Bin Ladin and Zawahiri remain at large, the CIA has done an exceptional job of smashing the Al Quaeda infrastructure, dismantling its leadership, and reducing its operational capacity.”
Oh yeah! Why we must have killed or captured at least 200+ Al Quaeda #2 and #3 men alone! We must have completely devastated the IslamoCommunoFascistLiberal Axis of Terror! Why they’ve barely been able to keep all of their top people completely hidden from us and yet still functioning since we blew the invasion of Afghanistan!
And this all because the Top Minds (the VERY TOP MINDS!!!) in The Cheney/Bush Administration of Destiny - Hoorah!!! - got together and personally shaped and promoted the use of torture!
And then lied to us about deciding to torture! ‘Cause we don’t really want to know what the people we voted into office are doing in our names! Especially if it involves a bunch of people from somewhere else that we barely consider to be human!
No other country will EVER look at
Dick Cheney’s tiny , shriveled, non-functioning manhoodMassive Awesome Military Might and laugh ever again!America! Fuck Yeah!!!
…
1. Cheney/Bush Administration
2. International Criminal Court
3. Life in prison for war crimes
Some assembly required…
That is a common trope about terrorist groups, that when you cut one down, another springs up in its place, and, therefore, you have to address the “root cause.”
It’s not true.
Al Quaeda does not have a limitless well of talent and expertise. They can no longer operate their training camps. If there are terrorists out there who can still get into western countries to plan attacks, there are is no longer operational leadership guiding them.
That is why you go from massive terrorist attacks like 9/11 and the train attack in Spain to much less sophisticated, unsuccessful attempts like Richard Reid, the shoe bomber who was caught by a stewardess, the Heathrow attack where the terrorists didn’t manage to do much more than set themselves on fire, and the car bombs in London that didn’t go off. The 7/7 bombings were unfortunately successful, but were still less sophisticated than previous attacks.
It’s also noteworthy that the United States has not been attacked again. The American Muslim population is religiously moderate and complacently middle-class, compared to the Muslim populations of European and Middle Eastern countries which are poor and fanatical.
Since Al Quaeda has made little headway in converting people who are already in America to their cause, the terrorists have to sneak people into the country, and they haven’t been able to because we’ve nailed so many of their operatives and penetrated their communications networks.
I don’t think there is a serious argument that Al Quaeda has not been seriously disrupted and is no longer capable of an attack on the scale of 9/11.
Why the F should they carry out another attack like that when it might make us actually go after their bases in Waziristan? They got us to destroy one of the few secular regimes in the middle east, kowtow to religious fanatics, shred much of our military and put us, our children and grandchildren $3 trillion further in debt with the initial attack. And they got us (one of their intial demands) to abandon our bases in Saudi Arabia.
Al Qaeda is definitely smart enough to know when to just sit back and let its enemies destroy themselves.
Paul, I don’t think the West is destroying itself. That’s really apocalyptic. We ate the cost of WWII, and we’ll eat the cost of Iraq.
And Jordan, Egypt, UAE, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait among others are all secular regimes. The only one that really rates as an Islamic theocracy is Iran, and it’s Shiite, not Sunni like Al Quaeda.
And Al Quaeda doesn’t have any bases we aren’t blowing up. We don’t need another 9/11 to justify any and all attacks on those guys. The one was enough. They need to keep attacking to build pressure on us to make concessions.
The costs of war are heavy and this kind of sacrifice of lives and money is politically stressful, but we are not losing this war, and especially not our war with Al Quaeda. By all accounts, those guys are shut down and cowering in holes somewhere. Where do you get your information?
Mitchforth, why would any Muslim pissed as the US want to come over here and stir it up? There’s nothing to be gained.
They have all the American service people over there they need to maintain a constant rate of American deaths, while the continued American presence is the best recruiting tool they could imagine.
And I’m glad you’re unquestioningly swallowing the Cheney/Bush spin on how incredibly vigilant and competent they are in fighting the Islamofascist Menace. It’s people like that who make their “job” so much easier…
What does a constant rate of American deaths do for them? People in the United States aren’t afraid of terrorists anymore, and making people afraid they will be killed is how terrorists try to extract concessions. If they can’t scare us, what can they accomplish?
I’m not swallowing anyone’s line. If you think that by attacking them, smashing their network, disrupting their communications, capturing and killing most of their upper echelon, and sending the rest into hiding, we’ve somehow played into their hands, maybe you are the one swallowing something.
“People in the United States aren’t afraid of terrorists anymore…”
Oh really? What United State do you live in? ‘Cause the one I live in is saturated with fear. It’s not the “I’m going to die in the next 5-min” type, but there is a constant level of fear that there are hordes of unthinking, evil people out there whose sole purpose in life is to come to the US and kill us. Remember, “they hate us for our freedom!”, or some other bogus platitude that utterly removes any responsibility we have for helping cause the outrage to begin with.
Color-coded terror alerts, periodic audio- and videotapes from bin Laden, constantly connecting bin Laden’s al Qaeda, with “al Qaeda in Iraq” (although they are unrelated), reinforcing the meme that Iraq was behind 9/11 - all of these things are done to keep people fearful and on alert.
“…and making people afraid they will be killed is how terrorists try to extract concessions. If they can’t scare us, what can they accomplish?”
Of course, this fear is so incredibly useful to the Cheney/Bush administration that they spend an inordinate amount of time constantly reinforcing it. And since this fear is also incredible useful to the “terrists”, they reap the benefit too.
If you want to spy on Americans, listen to every phone call, read every email, keep track of Internet usage, pry into every bank transaction, etc., you need terrorism as an excuse.
If you want to suspend major portions of the Constitution, setup the president as the King of America, enable the VP to run a shadow government unaccountable to anyone, you need terrorism as an excuse.
If you want to make sure that the “defense” of this country remains a huge distraction for funneling billions into contributor’s pockets, you need terrorism as an excuse.
Cheney/Bush and bin Laden/al Qaeda are a great example of codependents.
Ask yourself if you would be willing, right now, to roll-back all of the restrictions and security theater involved in flying, close down Guantanamo, eliminate torture, re-impose the 4th Amendment, end all domestic spying, etc. After all, if we’ve eliminated the threat of terrorism through our awesome destruction of the terrorists and their organizations, it should be a no-brainer to go back, right?
No fear among Americans? Bullshit…
“If you think that by attacking them, smashing their network, disrupting their communications, capturing and killing most of their upper echelon, and sending the rest into hiding, we’ve somehow played into their hands, maybe you are the one swallowing something.”
bin Laden is the Emmanuel Goldstein of our age. Whether he actually exists or not is immaterial. The threat of his existence is what’s valuable to all parties, Americans and “radical” Islamists.
“What does a constant rate of American deaths do for them?”
This acts as proof to Americans that there there really IS something going on, and that it’s not a complete fabrication by our government. And as I said, it also helps the Islamists, who are reminded of the constant subjugating presence of infidels, while also offering them hope by regularly demonstrating we are not invulnerable.
So it’s in everybody’s best interests to keep the whole thing simmering.
Absolutely textbook guerrilla techniques…combined with a good health portion of proto-dictatorship thinking on the part of the Bushites…
But you will only wake up and smell the coffee if you want to. Nothing I or anyone else can say will get you to do it if you wish to remain blind and ignorant…
Dubya is the torture president and he heads the torture administration.
And always by Dubya’s side was his faithful dog, I mean companion, the VP FUtus of Borg.
Their motto: semper quiritatio. Always screaming.
For you who are not in the know, here is a scoop.
Neoconservatism is a Satanic cult. Why do you think they seek
100 years of death of maiming in Iraq that will result in a Shiite state
and very rich oil companies? Did you ever stop and think: what’s in this
for us? Nothing, unless you are a member of a Satanic cult. After all,
Al Queda was not in Iraq until chief Satanist Dubya attracted them with
an illegal, immoral, unnecessary war.
To Dubya, you are the enemy. That’s why he reduced your constitutional
rights to a fair and speedy trial, your right to counsel, and curtailed
your freedoms against search and seizure, rather than putting up a
fence on the border and checking everything and everyone that crosses into
our territory. Did anyone notice that all the terrorists come from Saudi Arabia
which Dubya did not attack? There is a bonus in all this. If you agree to
die for oil profits. If you agree to die to keep oil expensive and scarce. Dubya
may shed a tear for you.