It's Tough Stuff
by digby
So our last president confessed to being a war criminal and said he'd do it again. Gosh, that sure makes me proud to be an American, how about you?
George W. Bush's casual acknowledgment Wednesday that he had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed waterboarded -- and would do it again -- has horrified some former military and intelligence officials who argue that the former president doesn't seem to understand the gravity of what he is admitting.
Waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, is "unequivocably torture", said retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years.
"As a nation, we have historically prosecuted it as such, going back to the time of the Spanish-American War," Irvine said. "Moreover, it cannot be demonstrated that any use of waterboarding by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life."
Irvine told the Huffington Post that Bush doesn't appreciate how much harm his countenancing of torture has done to his country.
"Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," Bush told a Grand Rapids audience Wednesday, of the self-professed 9/11 mastermind. "I'd do it again to save lives."
But, Irvine said: "When he decided to do it the first time, he launched the nation down a disastrous road, and we will continue to pay dearly for the damage his decision has caused.
"We are seen by the rest of the world as having abandoned our commitment to international law. We have forfeited enormous amounts of moral leadership as the world's sole remaining superpower. And it puts American troops in greater danger -- and unnecessary danger."
Dan Froomkin's headline(linked above) says, "Bush's Glib Waterboarding Admission Sparks Outrage," which it should, and Probably does among a minority of this country, but it certainly shouldn't surprise us that Bush would make a "glib" statement about something so despicable and immoral. He was always like that:
From: "Devil May Care" by Tucker Carlson, Talk Magazine, September 1999, p. 106
"Bush's brand of forthright tough-guy populism can be appealing, and it has played well in Texas. Yet occasionally there are flashes of meanness visible beneath it.
While driving back from the speech later that day, Bush mentions Karla Faye Tucker, a double murderer who was executed in Texas last year. In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. 'Did you meet with any of them?' I ask.
Bush whips around and stares at me. 'No, I didn't meet with any of them,' he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. 'I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?' 'What was her answer?' I wonder.
'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, 'don't kill me.'
I must look shocked -- ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel, even for someone as militantly anticrime as Bush -- because he immediately stops smirking.
'It's tough stuff,' Bush says, suddenly somber, 'but my job is to enforce the law.' As it turns out, the Larry King-Karla Faye Tucker exchange Bush recounted never took place, at least not on television. During her interview with King, however, Tucker did imply that Bush was succumbing to election-year pressure from pro-death penalty voters. Apparently Bush never forgot it. He has a long memory for slights."
Sometimes I worry that all the attention to the psychopathy of Dick Cheney has diminished the malevolent nature of George W. Bush. He was there and he enthusiastically signed off on all of it, proud to be the bold decider. I'm quite sure that in his mind these were among the best moments of his presidency.
George W. Bush was an idiot but he was a nasty idiot, never an innocent:
During Abu Zubaydah's interrogation President Bush learned he was on painkillers for the wounds he suffered during his capture and was therefore difficult to get information from. President Bush exclaimed to then CIA director George Tenet “[w]ho authorized putting him on pain medication?” It would later be reported that Abu Zubaydah was denied painkillers during his interrogation.
.