The Original Sin

Commentary By Ron Beasley

It has been pointed out in many places, including here at Newshoggers, waterboarding has been used from the Spanish inquisition to the Vietnam war not to gather intelligence but false confessions.  Frank Rich explains that how that may well have been it's real purpose when used by the Bush/Cheney cabal.

The report found that Maj. Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guant�mo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: �A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful.� As higher-ups got more �frustrated� at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, �there was more and more pressure to resort to measures� that might produce that intelligence.

In other words, the ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration�s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections. Bybee�s memo was written the week after the then-secret (and subsequently leaked) �Downing Street memo,� in which the head of British intelligence informed Tony Blair that the Bush White House was so determined to go to war in Iraq that �the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.� A month after Bybee�s memo, on Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney would make his infamous appearance on �Meet the Press,� hyping both Saddam�s W.M.D.s and the �number of contacts over the years� between Al Qaeda and Iraq. If only 9/11 could somehow be pinned on Iraq, the case for war would be a slamdunk.

But there were no links between 9/11 and Iraq, and the White House knew it. Torture may have been the last hope for coercing such bogus �intelligence� from detainees who would be tempted to say anything to stop the waterboarding.

This makes the crime of torture even more heinous.  Torture to get a false confession to justify a war that killed thousands of American soldiers and tens if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis.  Sorry Mr Broder, if these crimes are not investigated and and the guilty held accountable the American people will also be just as guilty.  If President Obama truly wants to improve the US standing in the world it will take more than talk about how we won't do it again.  As it stands now the US is in no position to be critical of even the worst of the world regimes.  There is only one way that can change.  And by the way Mr Broder that's not called vengeance it's called justice.