Where The Wired
Things Are
December 12,
2014
“This
government does not torture people.”
The above
caption quotes George Bush lying to the American people. He had been told 18
months earlier that we were, in fact, torturing people. He and his boss, Dick
Cheney were, as everyone knows, directly responsible for these depredations
since it was they who ordered their people to find a way to make torture seem
legal. They did this by torturing the law of the land. They rebranded torture
as “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” to make it sound thoughtful and
pleasant. C’mon, it’s just some old techniques that we decided to enhance. How
bad could that be? Who doesn’t want
some enhancement? Like botox or lap-band surgery or fracking? It’s all good. Quit
your whining. Or you might get enhanced.
The Senate
Intelligence Committee released its long awaited report on torture, which
included letting Bush off the hook. “I think he knew everything he wanted to
know and needed to know,” Cheney told Fux News’ Brett Baier. “He was in fact an
integral part of the program; he had to approve it before we moved forward with
it.” One can’t help but wonder how Cheney managed to persuade Bush to sign off.
He probably gave him a pretzel to chew on.
According to
the report, “...the president of the United States had directed that he not be
informed of the locations of the CIA detention facilities to ensure he would
not accidentally disclose the information.” I can just imagine the conversation.
“Hey, Uncle Dick, make sure that those guys we told to start torturing, heh, heh…I
mean, enhansively interrogating, not to tell me where they’re gonna do it. You know
what a moron I am. I’d probably just start tellin’ ever’one where to go watch
the fun. But make sure I get to watch the videos before we destroy the evidence.”
To give Bush
his due, Cheney was running the show on this. Cheney circumvented the CIA when
he didn’t like what they were saying, especially regarding Iraq and WMD. Cheney
created his own secret agency to create the intelligence he needed. He took the
phony info to the press, planted it there and then used what he planted to reap
an illegal, unnecessary war in Iraq. The rest of course, is history heavily
redacted.
Bush,
in Cheney’s shadow,
even
while standing in front of him
Cheney
called the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report “a terrible piece of work”
and “deeply flawed.” Then he called it “a piece of crap.” It was interesting to
hear Cheney compare the report to the terrible job done during the Iran-Contra
hearings, which Cheney described as another case where politicians “sort of throw
the professionals under the bus.” You may recall that a record-breaking number
of high-level Reagan administration officials were convicted of felonies back
then. Some non-Cheney individuals describe events like this as JUSTICE. Cheney
said of his plan to torture, “What happened here was we asked the agency to go take
steps and put in place programs that were designed to catch the bastards that
killed 3 thousand of us on 9/11.” Cheney said he’d “do it again in a minute.” And he’s in good company. According
to Antonin Scalia, the Constitution does not appear to prohibit torture. He’s
on the Supreme Court. Does that count
as torture?
Ronald Reagan called torture, “an abhorrent practice.” Current
CIA chief John Brennan agrees, even as he tries to torture the truth about what
went on and how well it worked. Torturing people was Cheney’s idea. He is a war
criminal. John
McCain had to remind torture-loving Bill O’Reilly that after World War II we
sentenced Japanese to death for waterboarding American prisoners. Dick Cheney said those who
carried out the torture policy that he initiated deserve a lot of credit. After
all they were just following orders. Cheney’s orders. And lord knows, we
shouldn’t fault anyone for just following orders. Where would that leave us a
nation?
I. Mangrey
reporting. I’ll tell you anything you want to hear.
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