The Hypocrisy of George Bush – The Torture Edition

Recently a video has surfaced of the speech Bush made before we went into Iraq. What made this pretty interesting to behold was that Bush was warning Saddam and the Iraqis about committing war crimes and the excuse of “just following orders” would not be recognized. It’s pretty apparent that Bush is aware of what a war crime is by watching this video otherwise he would not have warned the Iraqis about it. The irony comes when you realize that he was aware enough to have authorized the very same war crimes in the pursuit of intelligence from detainees. The difference here is he gave the orders instead of just following orders.

With the release of the memos authorizing the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” aka torture, we now see the mindset that the Bush Administration was operating under. It wasn’t pretty. In essence, the memos said that almost anything goes short of death. Given that there were detainees who died while in custody, they couldn’t even stick to that limitation. This all ignores the prevailing law of the United States under US Code 2340, Title 18 and the Convention On Torture of which the US was a willing signatory. Even the “quaint” Geneva Convention has rules about torturing people that we apparently tossed by the wayside along with our morality. 

What became even more interesting is the conduct of Condi Rice over the last few days. She was captured on camera admitting to passing along the word to the CIA about the new rules.

I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency, that they had policy authorization, subject to the Justice Department’s clearance. That’s what I did. 

According to Jonathan Turley, constitutional law professor at George Washington University, Condi Rice just implicated herself in the conspiracy to torture detainees by that admission. She didn’t stop there, however. She then proceeded to try and justify Bush’s actions with Nixonian logic. 

I just said, the United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture. And so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.

Well, Condi dear, that load of crap did not work when Richard Nixon tried to justify his role in the Watergate burglaries 37 years ago and it isn’t working now. The president isn’t above the law but rather subject to the law. He has the obligation to support the Constitution and he didn’t. In fact, he’s the guiltiest party in this whole mess and you helped out.

The legal gibberish that Bybee and Yoo (as well as David Addington) signed off on was a tortured attempt to justify torture and circumvent the law. A first year law student can make Swiss Cheese out of their insane logic and if this ever goes to trial. rest assured, someone with a whole lot more experience will do the honors. Trouble is, I do not think, in this day and age, that there are any prosecutors alive that have the passion or the balls to pursue these crimes where ever the evidence leads. Politics, and President Obama’s desire to bury this festering pus bag of wrongdoing without exposing all that was done, will make certain of that.

A trip to the Hague for George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld,  John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington and the rest of the scum that debased our Constitution and our world image seems to be out of the question. That’s a real shame. It means they got away with it.

Links:http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/30/condi-president-makes-it-legal

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/28/bush-torture-flashback/

---

Posted in Politics
Tags: Condi Rice, Convention On Torture, David Addington, George Bush, Jay Bybee, John Yoo, torture