"Should the United States of America be using forms of torture dating back to the Spanish Inquisition?"
Ray McGovern
(No relation to George. Honest!)
Do you want to know why I love Jesse Ventura so much? Because he pisses EVERYBODY off. The other night on Larry King Live, Jesse said, "I'll tell you what: you give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and two hours, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders." I can top that one easily. Just give me three hours with the hideous thug and I'll have him confessing that he was part of the Lincoln Assassination conspiracy. Oh, hell; give me five hours and I'll have him saying that he framed Judas!
Ah, Dick Cheney! As the clock was counting down on the final hours of the Bush administration, I have to confess that I was feeling kind of blue. It would never again get half as weird or one tenth as entertaining as it was when Richard Bruce Cheney held center stage. I just assumed that the dirty old dingbat would slither away into that good night of ignoble obscurity and that would be that. But he didn't go away. Not only that, at a time when the GOP is desperately trying to mend its image and undo the irreparable damage that was done to it by the Bush Mob, the Dickster is in the final stages of pounding the nails into the GOP's coffin. He knows he's in big trouble and is looking at a very long stretch in federal prison. He's out there talking as loudly as he possibly can to as many interviewers he can con into letting him into their studios. It is pitifully obvious that he is trying to contaminate any potential jury pool. You think such a blatantly opportunistic ploy is beneath him? You don't know Dick.
And he is not the only member of the Cheney Klan spewing the propaganda on the media circuit. Wednesday morning, daughter Liz Cheney could be seen debating Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Eugene Robinson on MSNBC's Morning Joe - if you want to call it a "debate". Her idea of discourse was to talk loudly over whatever point Robinson tried to make in defense of his piece that had been published earlier in the day in the Washington Post - a piece which was decidedly critical of her father. That's the only way people like that know how to operate. It's the old Josef Goebbels strategy: Just keep repeating the lie over and over and over again. Eventually, the people will start to believe it. In spite of Liz's subterfuge, Gene held his own quite nicely, thank you very much. And here's to you, Mr. Robinson!
From my blog, December 16, 2007:
For the record: "Waterboarding involves strapping some poor schmuck down, taping a piece of cloth over his face, and pouring torrents of water over him. He then gets the overwhelming sensation that he is drowning. When an investigator asked the CIA to perform the procedure on him, even though he knew he was in no danger of dying, he found the duration of the ordeal unbearable and extremely frightening. His conclusion? Waterboarding is torture. PERIOD. Sixty years ago, several Japanese military commanders were sent to prison for many years for committing the same crime. Some were even executed! You see where I'm headed here, don't you. Okay, I'll stop."
And you thought the only thing George W. Bush was torturing all those years was the English language! And do you remember the word Alberto Gonzalez used in describing the international laws against torture? "Quaint".
"Did you see that, Lester? That there feller's entire respiratory system just shut down! Aw, sheeeit! Ain't that quaint?"
I hate be a party pooper here, but I have a funny feeling that in an international court of law, none of Cheney's defenses regarding torture would hold much water (No pun intended). I've always had this quaint notion that the United States is bound by tradition - and honor - to abide by the Geneva Conventions. To say that these so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" (Paging Dr. Orwell) were successful is, to put it as politely as I can, disingenuous. Were they able to extract any reliable information from these guys via the use of torture? It depends on whom you ask. But this much may be ascertained beyond a shadow of a doubt: a waterboarderdee will eventually tell the waterboarder anything and everything he or she wants to hear - anything to stop the extreme pain and terror. Human beings (being human beings) are kind of funny that way, you know?
Under the right (or wrong) conditions, a person in duress will confess to damned near anything. When I was a kid, I once admitted to a guy who was twisting my left index finger that late at night when no one was watching, I liked to sing the old Jerome Kerns song Smoke Gets In Your Eyes while dressed in a Coco Chanel negligee. Hey! A guy's gotta go what a guy's gotta do! As you can imagine (and has been proven beyond a doubt) much of the information the CIA received during these interrogations was absolutely bogus.
"The United States DOES NOT TORTURE."
George W. Bush
Oh, really? Tell that to ibn al-Sheik al-Libi.
Under conditions of extreme torture, al-Libi agreed in 2002 to provide his interrogators with the political cover the Bush/Cheney cabal needed in order to invade the sovereign nation of Iraq. Libi made a deal with his captors. He would tell them everything they wanted to hear and then some. In exchange, they would stop the torture. This was the same time the now-infamous "Torture Memos" were being written. If there is a case to be made against that disgusting administration for war crimes (and there is - trust me on this one, campers) Mr. Libi has been described as the "smoking gun" .
Good news: HOORAY! We've got an Arab John Dean!
Bad news: Oh, damn. ibn al-Sheik al-Libi is dead.
They found his body last week. He appears to have committed "suicide" even though his family and friends insist there were no warning signs that he was about to kill himself and that such a self-destructive act was not in his nature. That's okay. I'm sure its all just an innocent coincidence. Never mind.
The ball is now in President Obama's court. It's disturbingly apparent that he lacks the will - the political courage - to have his Justice Department initiate the prosecutions against these murderous jackasses. The only problem is the fact that it's not just his Department of Justice - it's ours, too. If the American people aren't very angry over the plight a bunch of tortured "A-Rabs", you can bet your last dollar that when they learn the reason those people were tortured, they'll be seething with rage. Let's put things in their proper perspective, Shall we?
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (both failed oil men) were desperate to seize control of a country which possessed the second or third largest oil reserves on the entire planet. But they needed evidence that the ruler of that country, Saddam Hussein (Remember him?) was harboring dangerous Weapons of Mass Destruction, that he was somehow in cahoots with Osama bin Laden in the atrocity that was committed on September 11, 2001, and that he was an imminent threat to the peace and security of the free world in general and the Young Republicans in particular. The only problem was that they needed one crucial thing which they did not have - EVIDENCE. So how would they be able to get the evidence they needed so badly? Extract it from hapless Prisoners of War by any means necessary. Torture was the means they used to achieve their ends. As a result, nearly five-thousand American kids - not to mention as many as a million Iraqi men, women and little children - are dead.
They were determined to invade a country that was a danger only to itself. They fabricated the reasons for that invasion out of thin air - very similar to the reasons Hitler gave when he invaded Poland on September 3, 1939. They cherry-picked a mole hill of evidence that claimed Saddam was a threat to America and completely ignored the mountain of evidence which conclusively proved that he was nothing of the sort. They wanted that oil, baby - and they were determined to grab it come hell or high waterboard.
I don't know about you but I've got a funny feeling that when the American people finally figure all of this stuff out, they're going to be just a tad peeved, don'cha think?
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net
SUGGESTED VIEWING:
Uncovered: The War on Iraq
A film by Robert Greenwald
Ray McGovern
(No relation to George. Honest!)
Do you want to know why I love Jesse Ventura so much? Because he pisses EVERYBODY off. The other night on Larry King Live, Jesse said, "I'll tell you what: you give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and two hours, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders." I can top that one easily. Just give me three hours with the hideous thug and I'll have him confessing that he was part of the Lincoln Assassination conspiracy. Oh, hell; give me five hours and I'll have him saying that he framed Judas!
And he is not the only member of the Cheney Klan spewing the propaganda on the media circuit. Wednesday morning, daughter Liz Cheney could be seen debating Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Eugene Robinson on MSNBC's Morning Joe - if you want to call it a "debate". Her idea of discourse was to talk loudly over whatever point Robinson tried to make in defense of his piece that had been published earlier in the day in the Washington Post - a piece which was decidedly critical of her father. That's the only way people like that know how to operate. It's the old Josef Goebbels strategy: Just keep repeating the lie over and over and over again. Eventually, the people will start to believe it. In spite of Liz's subterfuge, Gene held his own quite nicely, thank you very much. And here's to you, Mr. Robinson!
From my blog, December 16, 2007:
For the record: "Waterboarding involves strapping some poor schmuck down, taping a piece of cloth over his face, and pouring torrents of water over him. He then gets the overwhelming sensation that he is drowning. When an investigator asked the CIA to perform the procedure on him, even though he knew he was in no danger of dying, he found the duration of the ordeal unbearable and extremely frightening. His conclusion? Waterboarding is torture. PERIOD. Sixty years ago, several Japanese military commanders were sent to prison for many years for committing the same crime. Some were even executed! You see where I'm headed here, don't you. Okay, I'll stop."
And you thought the only thing George W. Bush was torturing all those years was the English language! And do you remember the word Alberto Gonzalez used in describing the international laws against torture? "Quaint".
"Did you see that, Lester? That there feller's entire respiratory system just shut down! Aw, sheeeit! Ain't that quaint?"
I hate be a party pooper here, but I have a funny feeling that in an international court of law, none of Cheney's defenses regarding torture would hold much water (No pun intended). I've always had this quaint notion that the United States is bound by tradition - and honor - to abide by the Geneva Conventions. To say that these so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" (Paging Dr. Orwell) were successful is, to put it as politely as I can, disingenuous. Were they able to extract any reliable information from these guys via the use of torture? It depends on whom you ask. But this much may be ascertained beyond a shadow of a doubt: a waterboarderdee will eventually tell the waterboarder anything and everything he or she wants to hear - anything to stop the extreme pain and terror. Human beings (being human beings) are kind of funny that way, you know?
Under the right (or wrong) conditions, a person in duress will confess to damned near anything. When I was a kid, I once admitted to a guy who was twisting my left index finger that late at night when no one was watching, I liked to sing the old Jerome Kerns song Smoke Gets In Your Eyes while dressed in a Coco Chanel negligee. Hey! A guy's gotta go what a guy's gotta do! As you can imagine (and has been proven beyond a doubt) much of the information the CIA received during these interrogations was absolutely bogus.
"The United States DOES NOT TORTURE."
George W. Bush
Oh, really? Tell that to ibn al-Sheik al-Libi.
Under conditions of extreme torture, al-Libi agreed in 2002 to provide his interrogators with the political cover the Bush/Cheney cabal needed in order to invade the sovereign nation of Iraq. Libi made a deal with his captors. He would tell them everything they wanted to hear and then some. In exchange, they would stop the torture. This was the same time the now-infamous "Torture Memos" were being written. If there is a case to be made against that disgusting administration for war crimes (and there is - trust me on this one, campers) Mr. Libi has been described as the "smoking gun" .
Good news: HOORAY! We've got an Arab John Dean!
Bad news: Oh, damn. ibn al-Sheik al-Libi is dead.
They found his body last week. He appears to have committed "suicide" even though his family and friends insist there were no warning signs that he was about to kill himself and that such a self-destructive act was not in his nature. That's okay. I'm sure its all just an innocent coincidence. Never mind.
The ball is now in President Obama's court. It's disturbingly apparent that he lacks the will - the political courage - to have his Justice Department initiate the prosecutions against these murderous jackasses. The only problem is the fact that it's not just his Department of Justice - it's ours, too. If the American people aren't very angry over the plight a bunch of tortured "A-Rabs", you can bet your last dollar that when they learn the reason those people were tortured, they'll be seething with rage. Let's put things in their proper perspective, Shall we?
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (both failed oil men) were desperate to seize control of a country which possessed the second or third largest oil reserves on the entire planet. But they needed evidence that the ruler of that country, Saddam Hussein (Remember him?) was harboring dangerous Weapons of Mass Destruction, that he was somehow in cahoots with Osama bin Laden in the atrocity that was committed on September 11, 2001, and that he was an imminent threat to the peace and security of the free world in general and the Young Republicans in particular. The only problem was that they needed one crucial thing which they did not have - EVIDENCE. So how would they be able to get the evidence they needed so badly? Extract it from hapless Prisoners of War by any means necessary. Torture was the means they used to achieve their ends. As a result, nearly five-thousand American kids - not to mention as many as a million Iraqi men, women and little children - are dead.
They were determined to invade a country that was a danger only to itself. They fabricated the reasons for that invasion out of thin air - very similar to the reasons Hitler gave when he invaded Poland on September 3, 1939. They cherry-picked a mole hill of evidence that claimed Saddam was a threat to America and completely ignored the mountain of evidence which conclusively proved that he was nothing of the sort. They wanted that oil, baby - and they were determined to grab it come hell or high waterboard.
I don't know about you but I've got a funny feeling that when the American people finally figure all of this stuff out, they're going to be just a tad peeved, don'cha think?
