Prisoners waterboarded to provide link between Iraq and al Qaeda

But torture works! (Yeah, works at eliciting false confessions...)

I want someone to ask Cheney if torturing Iraqis into lying about a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda made us any safer. It's a simple question really, and sort of amazing that no one has the balls to ask him since he's making wild (and inaccurate) assertions in these copious interviews.

C'mon, lob some more softballs, MSM! What's the deal? The press was so much harder on Sarah Palin.

Sickening. Actually, this sort of proves that even the most hostile and cynic opinions of US foreign politics here in europe have been far too benevolent in regards to the Bush administration.

However, petty "I told you so" crap aside, what is far more telling is the timing on this.
You can virtually see the press, those inside sources and a lot of people in general coming out of the woodworks now that it seems Obama is the real deal. This stuff hasnt magically appeared in the 100 days since he took office. But its now relatively safe to flaunt it around. There is no bullet to the head waiting for you at night when you go tell people the vice presidents office is actually run by criminals.

Either way, at this point this is past. The question here is, do you REALLY want to throw this stuff at the world, at your own country and at every last poor guy who is possible not really able to differentiate between USA in general, and Bushs USA Inc. in particular ? Sure, currently the world isnt all that amiable towards the United States anyway, but it can get worse, and digging in these graves is going to make that happen really fast. What is there to gain?
Is it realistic to hope for a precedent of a first world country former head-of-state and his goonies to maybe one day face charges? Do you really want to start this kind of shitstorm? And I suppose we will now see in how far the corporate press is in anyones pocket but their own, because if they arent, chances to hold this stuff back are gone. Apparently the Bush Administration managed to cow a lot of them into softball inactivity, but if the american press runs wild with this stuff and digs deeper, the consequences on an international level may well be deadly for some people, ambassadors and tourists especially.

I say go for it. I say lock up, trial and sentence Dick Cheney and his puppets. But I am not the one who has to live with a USA in his passport, and I am not the one who has to see his country dragged through all the shit of the past 8 years over and over. And as a german, trust me, I know a LOT about that stuff

By using these techniques for political gains, Cheney made it a lot easier to go after him legally. They can't use the ticking time bomb scenario (and by proxy a national security defense) in court since they weren't asking those questions to the detainees.

I think the only way to do this is to appoint an independent commission with subpoena powers. That way, Obama can keep his hands clean and can defend the CIA or whoever's loyalty he needs to foster while allowing justice to reach daylight. At this point both parties are asking for a full vetting and so it can't be considered entirely partisan. Unless of course, Nancy Pelosi is behind all of it!

This whole deal reads like the plot from some pulpy spy/conspiracy novel. It's just so over the top morally reprehensible. The people running the US news media and all the top "journalists" should gather in one place and just start spitting in each other's face for a whole day for fucking up their job so bad.

calling them Nazi experiments is a but much.

Again, this is where your more optimistic view of humanity may be differing from my take, but maybe it's not weird at all, maybe they're not in denial - maybe these are the same 'normal' people who are the reason you live in the only western democracy that still has people murdered by the state.

Maybe these people are completely fine with torture because it's happening to people they in no way empathise with?

...and maybe, just maybe, that's why there will never EVER be anything akin to either a truth commision, serious investigation or any kind of high level charges lain against those people who had power and purpotrated this evil.

Depends how much history you see in that term these days. Mind you, after WW2 there were thousands of germans happily claiming the "I had no idea really, it wasnt clear, and we were never outright told" defense, when they did the same as people do now.... shut ears, dont walk towards the forest where the smoke comes from, and consciously evade any source of information that would require you to think about it.

At this point, I think talking about minor differences in terms of how serious this should be named, or whether or not some minor nitpicks are right or wrong, is seriously detracting (and giving unneeded leniency) from the core fact that this is far beyond of what even pessimistic voices said just half a year ago.

I was thinking of the actual experiments, while I do agree with your point on the mind set that some people had during the time. Pretty much pretending nothing ever happened.

I think we're all missing the important thing here: how could Nancy Pelosi let this all happen?

YT, have you read The Dark Side? You should -- it lays out the case pretty clearly that fear is what motivated the people who made the decisions about torture. Cheney among them.

I agree that some kind of Truth and Reconcilliation Committee needs to be formed and I also have realized that the full truth won't come out for years, but Nazi comparisons are a bit much. It's a loaded word, and it sort of comes off as grandstanding hyperbole in this thread.

I understand you're upset, but I really hope this isn't one of those situations where you make up your mind before looking at all the facts from all the angles/interpretations. See: that ludicrous 9/11 conspiracy thread.

Some points to add to the discussion

1) Bush and especially Cheney made it a point to say publicly that the United State Government was going to do "anything necessary" including "things we can't talk about" to protect "The Homeland"

(and God how I hope that we never see that particular term used to describe the United States again)

They basically said they were taking a no holds barred approach. I think it was the public statements that have unnerved the rest of the world. It'd one thing to have the CIA do what "needs to be done" under cover of darkness. It's another thing entirely when the leadership openly brags about these vile actions

2) From all accounts I've read, Cheney was a standard issue corrupt bureaucrat until 911. That event seems to have traumatized him into genuinely believing torture was necessary]

3) Part of what we are seeing now is Cheney trying to setup the Obama Administration. Should any terror attack occur during Obama's watch that results in Americans being killed, and especially if they occur on American soil, the Right will scream that Obama is weak on terrorism and Bush/Cheney were justified in their actions.

4) I think many Bush supporters think Torture is A-OK if it means getting to those Terrorists

What a horrible place to be at when Torture threatens to be a major politcal issue in future elections.

This is what I came out of The Dark Side with. The "terrorists" sent anthrax to Cheney's office, to the Senate, and even more than 9/11, that scared the shit out of people. That was what set Cheney off, set him on the course to allowing torture and the like. In a way, you can compare a lot of the arguments made about Cheney to why people need conspiracy theories to make sense of the world. We need a bad guy, a Darth Vader with evil motives, when in reality, he's just an angry old man in a wheelchair who was scared just as much as everyone else.

Read the book.

I just wanted to suggest there were more sides to the story out there. I agree with Mayer re: her interview, but I thought the book had some very salient points, one of which was what I stated above. That was one of the things I got out of the book, not me trying to tell Jane Mayer what she should think. And that is, in fact, something else I believe -- as stated in my initial post about the book.

You always do this when people disagree with you, though (which is funny, because I'm a pretty liberal guy with a strong distrust of government and the Bush administration), so I'm not going to go ten rounds.

Easy, yt. I'm pretty sure Rath's basically on your side.

Edit: Never mind.

I agree with her, basically, and it makes me ashamed to be an American when I think about some of the things we've done over the last eight years. I'm also ashamed when I think about the genocide of the American Indian, the internment camps, slavery, Jim Crow, and many of the other fucked up things we've done in this country. I shouldn't have to say that as a defense, though.

I want the truth to come out, but I want it to come out without a lot of grandstanding, for political purposes, or pointing towards the corporate oligarchy as having dulled us into complacency. That's why I tend to believe that we won't really know what went on during the Bush administration for years, unless you have a Truth and Reconciliation type commission formed. It should come out a lot sooner -- will it? I hope so, but I don't think so. My only disagreement was that she used the Nazi analogy, which I felt was loaded hyperbole. I suggested a very well written book that really shook me, made me think about a lot, and come to some conclusions about the torture issue. Just like I suggested she read 102 Minutes when she was posting links to Loose Change.

Re: "Homeland" being coined by the Nazi. That is why I hate it being used in the US

Re: Eliciting False confession....
I think Cheney et al felt they knew who the Bad Guys were but didn't have evidence at hand. So they used torture to get what they "knew" was there. Just like they "knew" Saddam had facilities making nukes, giant robots etc. The fact that no evidence for said WMDs or connections to Al Queda turned up simply meant the Bad Guys were really really good.

I think it is highly unlikely that we will see a Truth Commission because the people being tortured were either foreign nationals or perceived as such. Also anyone lobbying for such a commission will be seen (and painted as) partisans with a mad on for the Bushies.

It's not like South Africa or parts of post Soviet Europe where for decades you had neighbors spying on each other, turning each other in to settle private feuds etc. In those cases you have an entire society trying to come to grips with their past.

Sorry, just an aside here, but one of the most blackly funny things I'd ever come across in studying history was about this very thing. In some amazingly thorough books about the Gestapo as a police organization, Eric Johnson recounted how the officers became overwhelmed and eventually irritated by the sheer amount of neighbors doing this very thing. They reached a point where they had to literally enforce punitive measures on folks who tried to solve petty squabbles using the very methods the party itself implied people resort to.

Item #5,499,134 in the "Crazy Shit About The Third Reich" file.

Sounds like Hasselbeck takes 24 just a liiiitle too seriously.
"enhanced interrogation" my ass.

'60 Minutes' did a piece on this subject in the U.S. It was pretty harrowing. One guy had FBI show up at his door and they interrogated him for a few hrs. His crime? He was badmouthing Bush pretty severely at the local gym (nothing that could be interpretd as hostile though) which some guy apparently didn't like, so he called some anonymous hotline that was set up post 9/11. There were other stories like that.

Yes that guy was featured in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911.

Thing is these were isolated incidents, not systemic.

I'm not saying these people shouldn't be prosecuted. I'm just saying I do not see any massive outrage by the public about. And without that, you will not see a Truth Commission.