Cartoons of the Day

(click to enlarge)

The torturers will always claim that it was worth the "effort" because we gained valuable intelligence.  Credible evidence says we didn't, and the most egregious torture stopped in Dumbya and The Dick's second term…we're told.  The Dick, in particular, is very careful about traveling abroad, fearful of being detained and charged with war crimes.  The CIA action they should have paid attention to was the infamous August, 2001 briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S." delivered over a month before the 9/11 attack.  What a legacy.

(cartoons:  top, Steve Bell, bottom, Jeff Danziger, via Gocomics.com)

The Pelosi Diversion

Are you noticing how the Villagers and mainstream media have jumped on the non-story that Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about waterboarding and did nothing to stop it? The non-story that the Rethuglicans are eagerly pushing to divert attention from their massive culpability in authorizing torture, not to prevent future attacks, but to extract false confessions regarding an Iraq/al Qaeda tie to justify the invasion? She has maintained that Bushit-era CIA officials misled her. Let's not forget that Pelosi was in the minority and was not Speaker until January 2007, so her power to change the unlawful policies of the Bushit Assministration were limited at best, even if she had been aware of the torture. But does anyone really believe that the last Administration would be honest with a Democratic leader, particularly one who consistently opposed their policies? Not likely.

Let's have that Truth Commission that the Speaker has called for, and see how the Rethugs like that.

Torture and The War

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell and a long-time military man, has some choice comments on the unfolding torture story in the Washington Note. Among the nuggets:

-- The Cheney/Bushit Assministration authorized torture techniques well before the memo from the Justice Department providing legal cover;

-- Some of the torture was aimed not at finding out al Qaeda's plans, but at trying to coerce false confessions about a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, which later proved to be false, but which were important to Dumbya's rationale for war against Iraq, along with the false intelligence about WMD.

As this story develops, it's going to lead eventually to an examination of the last Administration's push to go to war against Iraq, and the half-truths and lies it used.

Quote of the Day

"Instead of saving us from 'another 9/11,' torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House's illegality." -- the awesome Frank Rich, writing in today's New York Times. Read the whole op-ed column.

Quote of the Day

"The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush Administration thwart any 'specific imminent attacks,' according to recently declassified Justice Department memos." -- Mark Seibel and Warren Stroebel writing for the McClatchy Newspapers.

As more is learned from declassified documents, it's becoming apparent that Dead Eye Dick Cheney is out-and-out lying about the value of the torture of detainees. At least Dumbya has the minimal integrity to STFU.

Torture, Lies and A Needless War

Listening to former (Vice) President Dead Eye Dick Cheney talk, you would think that the torture program that the White House initiated late in 2001 was aimed solely at stopping future al Qaeda terrorist attacks. Not true. A report from the Senate Armed Services Committee released yesterday says that CIA and military interrogators were directed by the White House to apply torture methods to find an operational link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein to help build a case for invading Iraq, even though the White House was told early on that there was no such link.

This is reminiscent of the story about neocon manipulators insisting just days after 9-11 that we had to hit Iraq, and of the Bushit Assministration's singular focus on striking Iraq, beginning with their first National Security Council meeting in January, 2001.

The mantra of the Bushies is "we were kept safe for 7 years" (of course after we were attacked on 9-11 on their watch). But they used torture methods not so much to locate the people who attacked us -- bin Laden and his lieutenants -- but to manufacture a phony case for war with Iraq. After all, by March 13, 2002 -- 6 months after 9-11 -- Dumbya was claiming he didn't care where bin Laden was: "It's not that important. It's not our priority." War with Iraq was.