head-spinning hypocrisy

in a further bid for transparency, president obama ordered the release of some justice dept. memos this past week pertaining to "enhanced interrogation" tactics -- torture -- used on detainees in abu ghraib, gitmo, cia black holes and other prisons. his entirely reasonable reason being that all the tactics within were already known. the case involving that scamp in camo lynndie england and her pals was 5 years ago already.

predictably, karl rove and dick cheney decried the release of the papers. "now the tactics are ruined!" "now the enemy will know what we do and how far we'll go!" (like a crying brat from whom somebody took his toys?) yup. ok, mohammed, when they capture you, just hold out cuz after 183 dunks they'll stop waterboarding you. piece of baklava, my friend.

these assertions were quickly followed by well, if our soldiers are captured, the crazed blood-thirsty insurgents would torture them. excellent -- governing by the "i know you are, but what am i?" method. (didn't their mom ever ask them about peer pressure: "if all your friends jumped off a bridge thingie?)

a former u.s. army psychiatrist, maj. charles burney, told army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the guantanamo bay detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

"while we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al qaida and iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al qaida and iraq," burney told staff of the army inspector general. "the more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

anybody remember the "leaked" downing st. memo in which tony blair flatly stated that facts were being molded to push for the iraq invasion even though the evidence of a link did not exist? there was no proof of wmd's either, regardless of cheney's bold lies on tv a few days later.

the fbi, the government agency with the greatest knowledge of al qaeda in 2001, chose not to participate in the cia interrogation program after agents became uneasy about the earliest use of harsh methods in 2002 on abu zubaydah, a long-sought terrorist facilitator -- who was diagnosed as schizophrenic and turned out to be little more than a greeter, regardless of the lies george bush told on tv about zubaydah being a mucky-muck. after being tortured, zubaydah offered no more info than he'd already given.

alberto mora, a former general counsel for the navy,has said that some flag-rank officers believe that abu ghraib and guantánamo constitute “the first and second identifiable causes of us combat deaths in iraq,” because they galvanized jihadis. just this weekend over 159 shi'ites were blown up by suicide bombers in iraq.

in an interview with vanity fair last year, the fbi director since 2001, robert s. mueller III, was asked whether any attacks had been disrupted because of intelligence obtained through the coercive methods. “i don’t believe that has been the case.”

that assessment stands in sharp contrast to many assertions by bush and cheney, who on fox news said of the methods: “they did work. they kept us safe for seven years.” while scores were killed by jihadis in europe, no real plots have been foiled in the u.s. since 9/11. zero. absence of evidence and all that... just like the god-mongerers.

no soldier above the rank of sergeant was prosecuted in the abu ghraib scandal.

the men in the attorney general's office who authored some of these memos, and outlined the newly permissible torture are graduates of places like harvard and yale. they worked in prestigious white shoe law firms. one justice, jay bybee, a cubmaster for a local boy scout troop, wrote one of the memos regarding tecnhiques specifically for abu zubaydah. he advised 10 escalating steps, including face slapping, bug-in-a-box and waterboarding, which, he wrote, "does not, in our view, inflict ‘severe pain or suffering.’ ” he now has life tenure on the 9^th us circuit court of appeals in san francisco.

idi amin -- bad.
saddam hussein -- bad.
pol pot -- bad.
general pinochet -- bad.
mao zedung -- bad.
hitler -- bad.
spanish inquisition -- bad. (really? nobody expected them?)

george bush was the first and only western leader to defy the geneva convention and "redefine torture". even by medieval standards, what our operatives did by express permission of the justice department was torture. men including bush, cheney and rumsfield ignored pleas from every armed service branch to not move forward in this fashion. they blithely lied to the press and to congress about evidence that did not exist to facilitate the agenda they held upon bush's election. it needed only one bad muslim to get the wheels moving. how do these men look at themselves in the mirror everyday and not slit their own throats instead of shaving?

i can't stand it.