In a fascinating interview with Scott Horton, investigative journalist Jane Mayer talks about her new book, The Dark Side, which chronicles the Bush administration’s dealings with torture, and offers some incredible (and depressing) insight into her superb reporting over the past few years.
The reaction of top Bush Administration officials to the ICRC report, from what I can gather, has been defensive and dismissive. They reject the ICRC’s legal analysis as incorrect. Yet my reporting shows that inside the White House there has been growing fear of criminal prosecution, particularly after the Supreme Court ruled in the Hamdan case that the Geneva Conventions applied to the treatment of the detainees. This nervousness resulted in the successful effort to add retroactive immunity to the Military Commission Act. Cheney personally spearheaded this effort. Fear of the consequences of exposure also weighed heavily in discussions about whether to shut the CIA program down. In White House meetings, Cheney warned that if they transferred the CIA’s prisoners to Guantanamo, “people will want to know where they have been—and what we’ve been doing with them.” Alberto Gonzales, a source said, “scared” everyone about the possibility of war crimes prosecutions. It was on their minds.
I strongly suggest you read the entire interview, but this paragraph really stuck with me:
The sadistic treatment of Abu Zubayda also seems to have affected him psychologically in bizarre ways. Two sources said that he became sexually obsessive, masturbating so much his captors feared he would injure himself. One described him as acting “like a monkey at the zoo.” A physician was called in for consultation—one of many instances in which health professionals have played truly disturbing roles in this program. (I personally feel that the medical and psychological professionals who have used their skills to further a program designed to cause pain and suffering should be a high priority in terms of accountability. It has long been a ghastly aspect of torture, worldwide, that doctors and other medical professionals often assist. The licensing boards and professional societies are worthless, in my view, if they don’t demand serious investigations of such unethical uses of science.)
Mayer also says that although Bush officials feared prosecution and frantically sought protection via legislation like the atrocious Military Commissions Act, lawsuit are not likely because many of those in Congress who would spearhead such legal actions are themselves compromised:
An additional complicating factor is that key members of Congress sanctioned this program, so many of those who might ordinarily be counted on to lead the charge are themselves compromised. […] My guess is that the real accountability for President Bush will be in the history books, not the court room.
Glenn Greenwald pounces and tears apart the Democrats for their complicity in Bush’s torture regime/war crimes.
RELATED: Vincent Bugliosi: Bush should be tried for murder
Vincent Bugliosi, the American attorney best known for prosecuting Charlie Manson, is releasing a new book next week, titled The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, in which he argues that, well, the title kinda gives it away.
HuffPo has an exclusive excerpt:
If Bush, in fact, intentionally misled this nation into war, what is the proper punishment for him? Since many Americans routinely want criminal defendants to be executed for murdering only one person, if we weren’t speaking of the president of the United States as the defendant here, to discuss anything less than the death penalty for someone responsible for over 100,000 deaths would on its face seem ludicrous.** But we are dealing with the president of the United States here.
On the other hand, the intensity of rage against Bush in America has been such (it never came remotely this close with Clinton because, at bottom, there was nothing of any real substance to have any serious rage against him for) that if I heard it once I heard it ten times that “someone should put a bullet in his head.” That, fortunately, is just loose talk, and even more fortunately not the way we do things in America. In any event, if an American jury were to find Bush guilty of first degree murder, it would be up to them to decide what the appropriate punishment should be, one of their options being the imposition of the death penalty.
no charges will ever be brought, no need for pardons, bush and all of us will long be dead before anyone spends any real time or energy on righting past wrongs
no charges will ever be brought, no need for pardons, bush and all of us will long be dead before anyone spends any real time or energy on righting past wrongs
the next year is going to provide ample amounts of fodder for this board.
post by aril at Jul 16,2008 3:33pm
you, sir, are the opposite of Hoser.
post by W3 nli at Jul 16,2008 4:26pm
yeah cause i dont care for any government, also Bush wont need to go on any pardoning rampage since he's just using executive privilege as a way to save all his buddies.
Hmm, posting this on rttp will assuredly make a difference. Go spam your anti bush, to people that think it might make a difference. Where were you 7 1/2 years ago?
Its easy to jump on a wagon, but its not easy to build the same wagon.
post by W3 nli at Jul 16,2008 4:53pm
actually 71/2 years ago i was in texas screaming at the TV screen that the results were wrong so shove it up your ass, and while youre at it i hope it wakes you up everynight screaming at the thought of having a black president.
yeah dude, i heard he was gonna suicide bomb the white house once he gets there. crazy shit.
By suicide bomb, you mean slam back a 40 of malt liquor, and play basketball?
"The first thing I will do when I get into the White House, is tear down the bowling alley, and put up a basketball court"-Barack Obama, on Jimmy Kimmel. I was stunned, that he was going for same race-racial jokes. Uncle Tom ass Motherf.........
post by W3 nli at Jul 16,2008 5:18pm
see this i agree on, theres always time for bowling and basketball they can live together fuck the rose garden though.
