Gold9472
10-27-2006, 08:50 AM
Bush: The U.S. doesn't torture. Cheney: Oh, yes it does!
Lies. Truth. More lies. More hard-to-determine truth.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=15archive/&entry_id=10252
10/26/2006
Fresh from the mother of all disingenuous flip-flops, in which self-styled "war president" George W. Bush admitted that he was changing his strategy in Iraq instead of "staying the course" there, Vice-president Dick Cheney has now made it known, in his own way, that the U.S. tortures detainees.
Never mind Bush's November 2005 assertion, "We do not torture." That's when the president made a point of dodging reporters' questions about the just-revealed network of C.I.A. facilities in other countries where detainees reportedly had been "interrogated" using abusive techniques. (We now know, thanks to Bush himself, that those once-secret jails did exist; his Republican-led Congress recently approved legislation to keep the torture program going.)
When the secret-jails story broke late last year, ABC News reported that it had learned from C.I.A. sources that the spy agency had been authorized to employ "enhanced interrogation techniques" to squeeze information or statements out of detainees. Among them: sleep deprivation, a common way to force confessions; making prisoners stand naked in cold cells for long periods, while routinely dousing them with cold water; and waterboarding, in which a detainee "is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over [his] face, and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in, and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt."
Now, in a fawning interview, conservative, North Dakota radio host Scott Hennen has spoken with Cheney about waterboarding. He asked: "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?"
Cheney replied: "It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice-president 'for torture.' We don't torture....We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that. And thanks to the leadership of the president now, and the action of the Congress, we have that authority, and we are able to continue to [sic] program." (White House transcript)
In the U.S., news reports have noted that, with Cheney's interview, the Bush administration effectively has confirmed for the first time that American interrogators "used waterboarding against important al Qaeda suspects." The question is, though, have such techniques been used on detainees who had nothing to do with actual or would-be terrorist activities - that is, on innocent individuals? How will the American public ever know?
Cheney spokeswoman Lee Ann McBride denied that her boss had "confirmed that U.S. interrogators [had] used waterboarding or endorsed the technique." She stated: "What the vice-president was referring to was an interrogation program without torture....The vice-president never goes into what may or may not be techniques or methods of questioning." (McClatchy Newspapers)
Overseas, some news watchers appear to be disillusioned and disappointed by Team Bush's word games concerning torture. Columnist Yahia Bounouar, writing for Africa's Le Jeune Indépendant, observes of the U.S. today: "The country of freedom of the press....[T]he country of Uncle Sam, generous and benevolent....[I]n losing its soul, that America has disappeared. It doesn't exist anymore. It has been replaced by...[a] country that spies on its citizens....A country in which info-propaganda takes the place of information. A country in which the president has lied outrageously for five years, and no one even dares think of going after him - a bit like it is here among us, in the countries of the South[ern Hemisphere]."
Bounouar notes that the U.S. has become a country that "institutionalize[s] the detention of persons without evidence, without lawyers to defend them and - the icing on the cake - with torture to force confessions. One would think one is in Iraq under Saddam or [back in] the gulag of the Soviet Union." Sadly, he concludes: "Cheney and his gang of extremists have transformed the American Dream into a planetary nightmare. Bye-bye, America!"
Lies. Truth. More lies. More hard-to-determine truth.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=15archive/&entry_id=10252
10/26/2006
Fresh from the mother of all disingenuous flip-flops, in which self-styled "war president" George W. Bush admitted that he was changing his strategy in Iraq instead of "staying the course" there, Vice-president Dick Cheney has now made it known, in his own way, that the U.S. tortures detainees.
Never mind Bush's November 2005 assertion, "We do not torture." That's when the president made a point of dodging reporters' questions about the just-revealed network of C.I.A. facilities in other countries where detainees reportedly had been "interrogated" using abusive techniques. (We now know, thanks to Bush himself, that those once-secret jails did exist; his Republican-led Congress recently approved legislation to keep the torture program going.)
When the secret-jails story broke late last year, ABC News reported that it had learned from C.I.A. sources that the spy agency had been authorized to employ "enhanced interrogation techniques" to squeeze information or statements out of detainees. Among them: sleep deprivation, a common way to force confessions; making prisoners stand naked in cold cells for long periods, while routinely dousing them with cold water; and waterboarding, in which a detainee "is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over [his] face, and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in, and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt."
Now, in a fawning interview, conservative, North Dakota radio host Scott Hennen has spoken with Cheney about waterboarding. He asked: "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?"
Cheney replied: "It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice-president 'for torture.' We don't torture....We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that. And thanks to the leadership of the president now, and the action of the Congress, we have that authority, and we are able to continue to [sic] program." (White House transcript)
In the U.S., news reports have noted that, with Cheney's interview, the Bush administration effectively has confirmed for the first time that American interrogators "used waterboarding against important al Qaeda suspects." The question is, though, have such techniques been used on detainees who had nothing to do with actual or would-be terrorist activities - that is, on innocent individuals? How will the American public ever know?
Cheney spokeswoman Lee Ann McBride denied that her boss had "confirmed that U.S. interrogators [had] used waterboarding or endorsed the technique." She stated: "What the vice-president was referring to was an interrogation program without torture....The vice-president never goes into what may or may not be techniques or methods of questioning." (McClatchy Newspapers)
Overseas, some news watchers appear to be disillusioned and disappointed by Team Bush's word games concerning torture. Columnist Yahia Bounouar, writing for Africa's Le Jeune Indépendant, observes of the U.S. today: "The country of freedom of the press....[T]he country of Uncle Sam, generous and benevolent....[I]n losing its soul, that America has disappeared. It doesn't exist anymore. It has been replaced by...[a] country that spies on its citizens....A country in which info-propaganda takes the place of information. A country in which the president has lied outrageously for five years, and no one even dares think of going after him - a bit like it is here among us, in the countries of the South[ern Hemisphere]."
Bounouar notes that the U.S. has become a country that "institutionalize[s] the detention of persons without evidence, without lawyers to defend them and - the icing on the cake - with torture to force confessions. One would think one is in Iraq under Saddam or [back in] the gulag of the Soviet Union." Sadly, he concludes: "Cheney and his gang of extremists have transformed the American Dream into a planetary nightmare. Bye-bye, America!"