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The Pinochet Presidency
Posted by Kevin

In 2002, high ranking officials — including Rice, Cheney, Ashcroft, and Powell — met to approve torture tactics:

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies.

…

Bush approved of those meetings and their objective:

“Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people.” Bush told ABC New s White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. “And, yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.”…

Bush said the ABC report about the Principals’ involvement was not so “startling.”

At the highest level of government torture was planned and approved. Not even the smallest detail of the torture was left unexplored. They went so far as to choreograph individual torture sessions. Can’t you just see Cheney sitting there, watching someone act out the torture of another person in exquisite detail, Cheney leaning forward intently, bit of drool at the corner of his mount, shrivillveled little heart beating harder and harder as the grotesque play was acted out in front of him?

These are the acts of war criminals, of miniature monsters. They have abandoned all morality n their desperate attempt to prove to themselves that they aren’t the pathetical little cowards they know themselves to be. They have violated laws and common decency with impunity. They will probably get away with it — our press refuses to cover it and our Democratic leadership refuses to act. But hiding our collective heads in the sand wont change a thing. These people are tin-pot thugs and they have acted in the most despicable and cowardly fashion. They know it, their supporters know it, the world knows and we aren’t going to forget it.

This is what it means to be a Bush supporter today: so terrified by Al Qaeda that they turned themselves into cut-rate Pinochets. I have said this before, but Al Qaeda has beaten these people. They are so afraid that they willingly abandon the best of America and behave exactly as Al Qaeda wants them to behave. Pathetic is a good word to describe them. So is evil.

April 13th, 2008 General | 5 comments