Chancelucky

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Tortured Logic (President Reveals Secret Prisons program)



The President put American Security at risk today by revealing the existence of a secret network of prisons where high value detainees were taken to be tortured.  He tells us that this was worth it, because the program got a lot of useful information that helped us capture more secret detainees and thwart more possible attacks.  Of course, when the New York Times revealed the existence of the same program, it was called an act of treason that weakened America’s ability to defend itself.  Now that the White House has declassified  the information, it’s yet another example of how effective the Adminsitration has been.   Okay, I’m confused.

  1. Keeping it secret is okay until it’s to your benefit for it not to be a secret anymore?  Darned Hamdan decision.

  1. He doesn’t want to explain exactly how these people were tortured because then the terrorists would better figure out how to resist.

  1. The United States however doesn’t “torture” according to the President, it’s just that we’re proposing a bill that might allow us to try some of these people with “coerced” testimony and we don’t want to let anyone know how we got it.

  1. By the way, one of our concerns was that U.S. intelligence officers involved in this might be tried for “war crimes”.  We don’t however torture anyone because we are after all the United States.  We’re only worried because the darn U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to looking at what we’ve been doing this way.

  1. Besides, we’re done with our questioning now, which explains why Al Qaeda has all but disappeared and why we’ve caught Bin Laden.  

  1. We do have a new interrogation field manual that applies to armed service personnel.  This does not include CIA nor does it appear to include civilian contractors.  

To quote Olivier from “Marathon Man” “Is it safe yet?”

This  made me feel better .  The Pentagon issued this small correction story to explain why they decided to hold up the announcement of  his capture until after the mid-term election campaigns started in earnest.  

This is the same week I learned that Valerie Plame was in charge of a CIA unit looking for the proof of WMD in Iraq.  

I guess they really do expect me to look on waterboarding, threatening to kill detainee’s families, and not allowing them to be confronted with the evidence against them as  good news.  




8 Comments:

At 9/07/2006 04:37:00 AM, Blogger Dale said...

Can we not just press Jennifer Aniston into some sort of public service and help clean up all these problems? I mean she's free right now isn't she?

 
At 9/07/2006 06:49:00 AM, Blogger inkyhack said...

Obviously someone in the administration is a huge Star Wars Fan.

*waves hand*
"These are not the droids you are looking for."

 
At 9/07/2006 08:22:00 AM, Blogger Chancelucky said...

Dale,
I think she's unmarried, but not free. How did Jennifer Aniston escape from the Friends with Money thread anyway?
Public service ads to explain all of this would be pretty entertaining.

Inky,
I suspect that someone from the administration saw Revenge of the Sith and got really really confused about who the good guys were.
Is Natalie Portman running for senate this year?

 
At 9/07/2006 04:09:00 PM, Blogger None said...

How do these "leaders" sleep at night. There are photos of Americans who have tortured prisoners. Who are they kidding? Bush said, "I have not authorized it, and I will not authorize it." Well, thats great, but just where does the buck stop? I'm not sure what worries me more. That these events have happened. Or that Bush appears to have little if any control over the armed forces. The most likely case is that he set the conditions (little supervisory oversite) for these horrible war crimes.

 
At 9/07/2006 04:23:00 PM, Blogger Chancelucky said...

Parklife,
The Suskind book "One Percent Solution" is very clear how this happened. It was deliberate, they just spent a couple years denying that it was happening or that any executive decisions were involved.
Suskind's also been very outspoken about the fact that the President exagerrated what the US got out of those interrogations.

The Administration's version is that waterboarding, dark-light deprivation techniques, threatening to kill a detainee's family are not torture, despite the fact that the techniques were just specifically identified as inappropriate in the armed services revised interrogation manual (linked in the post).

I also wrote a review of the Suskind book back in July.

 
At 9/08/2006 01:55:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The only criteria for whether it's "torture" is whether we would like it if it happened to any of our soldiers who might be captured. Or to one of the Misses Bush.

If not, then we ought not do it. Somehow I think we would demand that our prisoners be treated with basic decency and dignity.

 
At 9/08/2006 10:23:00 AM, Blogger None said...

Bush is a political animal. He's going to puff himself up as best he can. His delusional idea that torture produced some meaningful data is misleading to the public. Unless he spells it out exactly what they did and what information was gained, I will have little faith in what a political leader has to say. To date, I have not seen anything that would suggest any gains through torture. The republicans continue to be misleading and secretive.

 
At 9/08/2006 11:05:00 AM, Blogger Chancelucky said...

Mr. Pogblog,
I think having to be Mrs. Bush may well be a form of torture in and of itself.

Parklife,
The republicans are secretive except when they think outing someone or declassifying the secret is going to help them.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home