If you think that George W. Bush is the only person in the “hot seat” when it comes to torture, think again. There are people in Congress who knew about it, who condoned it, who gave the Bush administration the “thumbs up”.
We need to hold them accountable as well.
I’m doing my part. Below is the letter I sent to my state newspaper, among others…
Why is it the media’s job to not merely report the news, but, to ensure that what is reported is accurate? Why is it the media’s job to not simply print what they are told by our politicians, but, to fact check it, and, if it is untrue, ensure that it isn’t printed without at least the editorial board eviscerating the politician for attempting to deceive the electorate? An informed electorate is the foundation to a democracy. With the departure of George W. Bush from the White House and inauguration of Barack Obama as the new President, can the media say that they were nothing more than stenographer’s for the Bush administration? Glenn Greenwald answers that question with his usual attention to detail.
The David Gregory’s of the journalism world are the reason that people are still saying things like this even today: “George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney leave Washington today. For eight years they have ably served the nation, keeping us safe.” You can only say that George W. Bush kept America safe for 8 years if you believe that 9/11 didn’t occur during his administration, and, it got worse from there; “President Bush did not set out to be a wartime President.” Actually, yes, being a “war President” was something that George W. Bush wished for during his Presidency:
In interviews I conducted last fall, a well-known journalist, biographer and Bush family friend who worked for a time with Bush on a ghostwritten memoir said that an Iraq war was always on Bush’s brain.
“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and Houston Chronicle journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said, ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He went on, ‘If I have a chance to invade…, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.'”
In 2004, then President Bush said: “I’m a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign-policy matters with war on my mind. Again, I wish it wasn’t true, but it is true. And the American people need to know they got a president who sees the world the way it is. And I see dangers that exist, and it’s important for us to deal with them.”
George W. Bush got his wish; he got to invade a country and got to play war as president. He got to be seen as the cowboy saying, “bring it on!” He didn’t have a successful presidency, however. In fact, George W. Bush leaves office with an approval rating only higher than Nixon’s. George W. Bush now regrets that his legacy is one of being seen as a warmonger;
President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a “guy really anxious for war” in Iraq. He said that his aim now was to leave his successor a legacy of international diplomacy for tackling Iran.
In an exclusive interview, he expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric.”
Having his legacy as one of being seen as a warmonger is the least of his troubles, however, as he is also seen by most of the world as a war criminal who authorized the use of torture:
The UN’s special torture rapporteur called on the US Tuesday to pursue former president George W. Bush and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture and bad treatment of Guantanamo prisoners.
“Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation” to bring proceedings against Bush and Rumsfeld, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak said, in remarks to be broadcast on Germany’s ZDF television Tuesday evening.
He noted Washington had ratified the UN convention on torture which required “all means, particularly penal law” to be used to bring proceedings against those violating it.
“We have all these documents that are now publicly available that prove that these methods of interrogation were intentionally ordered by Rumsfeld,” against detainees at the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Nowak said.
This “case study” I just presented is why the media shouldn’t be passive stenographer’s for politicians merely reprinting what they are given, something The State is, and has been, guilty of for years with Senator’s DeMint and Graham. Do you really believe that Senator Graham was ignorant of the fact America tortured people? If you do, then you haven’t been paying attention and been merely the stenographer for him;
I was in the audience February 12, 2007, during the Washington, DC, screening of the new HBO documentary, “The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.” After watching the documentary, panelists Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) discussed prisoner abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib.
To the amazement of the audience, Graham said with a twinkle in his eye that “Americans don’t mind torture; they really don’t.” Then he smiled broadly, almost gleefully, and said that the US had used certain interrogation techniques on “Sheikh Mohammed, one of the ‘high-value’ targets” – techniques that “you really don’t want to know about, but they got really good results.”
I firmly believe that Graham’s statement acknowledged that US officials have tortured prisoners, and he, as a senator, knew what was done and agrees with the torture because “it got results.”
This is the person that Brad Warthan fawns over, a Senator that stated, “Americans don’t mind torture; they really don’t“. This is the Senator who hands The State a written paper that is reprinted without question or even commentary on it other then when Brad Warthan writes an editorial that a person reading can visualize him drooling in his servitude.
AMERICANS DON’T MIND TORTURE; THEY REALLY DON’T
That is the person that Brad Warthan pays homage to; the man who thinks that Americans don’t mind torture. There is no question that George W. Bush authorized torture. There is no question that there were people in our Congress who knew about it, and, even tacitly sanctioned it; one of whom was South Carolina United States Senator Lindsey Graham. Do you believe that Senator Graham owned up to it? Think again; GRAHAM: “The Uniform Code of Military Justice makes it a crime to abuse a detainee. You can get good information, I believe, by being aggressive physically and psychologically without becoming your enemy.”
Yes it does. That is why there are U.S. soldiers in Fort Leavenworth, KS, right now, serving prison terms for doing exactly what Senator Graham called “OK” in his eyes during the interview with FOX News. But, notice, never once did he mention the waterboarding that he knew was being used on prisoners. He didn’t own up to what he knew, what he himself called torture, what he himself thought the American people didn’t really care about. And yet, this is the man that The State reprints without question, without fact checking, without commentary unless it comes in the form of prostrated subservience.
Now that the United Nations has weighed in and called for George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld to be held accountable for the torture they authorized, President Obama will find that he really has no choice but to do just that, or, he will have zero credibility with the world’s leaders. As for Senator Graham, who will hold him accountable for his own participation, his own statements, his own complicity, in the torture if not the electorate in the state of South Carolina? But, for that to happen, that means that the truth must come out, must be told, and he be held to account for his own actions. That means that The State must do more than be his subservient lapdog.
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The “leaders” of the “opposition” party didn’t do their jobs–not only didn’t they oppose the law-breaking, they were informed of it, and they both sat back and allowed it to continue.
The very real problem is finding enough people in DC with enough power to prosecute all the guilty–people who aren’t themselves compromised. Pelosi, Reid, Rockefeller, et al were briefed on the program and silently stood by and allowed the Constitution to be broken repeatedly on their watch. Now they are they same people who have the position and the power to prosecute the bushies but as accessories after the fact, is it likely they will?