ABC News Reports Cabinet members specifically approved torture techniques

[Kat Kid]

President Bush was "shocked" by Abu Ghraib.  Shocked, I tell you!  Clearly this was a case of a few bad apples, at the top of the Bush Administration.

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4583256&page=1

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The people who are being accused of this?:

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

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[steve dave]

So, kinda puts a damper on all the McCain/Rice ticket talk

[cireksu]

Bush's War on PBS made Powell look pretty clean during this.  www.pbs.org

[Skycat]

Bush's War on PBS made Powell look pretty clean during this.  www.pbs.org

Yeah.

Which sort of made be doubt the whole thing.  It seemed like access to Armitage bought the Powell camp a lot of good will.  Not that it's not possible that Powell knew/was responsible for more or less than anyone else, but the way he came off like a choir boy seemed pretty strange.

The other thing that seemed odd about "Bush's War" was how completely and totally absent Bush was from the narrative.

[pissclams]

pretending that torture doesn't exist or isn't needed in certain instances may put you in a happy place but at some point, reality will set in for you.  hopefully.

[Kat Kid]

pretending that torture doesn't exist or isn't needed in certain instances may put you in a happy place but at some point, reality will set in for you.  hopefully.

Well then change the laws, that is how government is supposed to work.  Laws are accountable, secret torture memos aren't unless the  .  I would love to hear When/Why torture, suspension of habeas corpus and bypassing multiple human rights treaties we are obligated to follow is "needed."  If it is so goddamn needed then lets drop the "enhanced interrogation" rhetoric and have a discussion about it.

They don't want a discussion about it.  They lied/lie about it.  They need to be held accountable.

[sonofdaxjones]

Why do so many youngsters think that this torture thing is new??  The US has been in the torture business for decades.   Either directly like in Vietnam and many other places, or indirectly via proxy regimes and US supported governments.   

What do they teach these days anyway. 

The NSA and the CIA are all offspring of DEMOCRATIC administrations.  Does anyone in academia not discuss things like the uk/USA agreement, the development of ECHELON which started back in the late 1940's and were signed off on by . . . DEMOCRATIC administrations??  No discussion at all about how the Kennedy's spied on the Civil Rights movement??  Did you know that Brown and Root (Haliburton) owned LBJ??  They basically put the guy in power, that's why they got millions upon millions of dollars worth of no bid contracts in Vietnam (in today's dollars worth hundreds of BILLIONS).   No discussion at all about how LBJ used the FBI and the CIA in cahoots to spy on the anti-war movement.   Hell that's what got James Angleton the CIA's counter-intel spook into so much trouble, along with many others, they saw commies everywhere. 

J. Edgar Hoover was spying on American's from the day he took over the FBI. 

I am not saying any of this is right, but I am just amazed at the lack of depth and clarity by so many today who believe that the United States just started doing this stuff in 2001. 

Come on man, wake up. 

[jeffy]

Tenet was a Clinton appointee.

[Kat Kid]

Dax.  I'm not towing any company line here.  Kennedy was awful on civil rights (Hell Bobby worked for McCarthy) the bay of pigs was terrible.  The Shah was terrible, the overthrow of Allende was terrible, Vietnam escalation under Kennedy and LBJ was terrible, the Indian Removal Act was terrible.

I just don't see what any of that has to do with this.  Of course this isn't the first administration to completely abuse the power of the executive branch by asserting by fiat the right to do illegal acts, but they deserve hearty criticism and consequences for it. 

Bypassing the FISA court (which is a rubber stamp and already secret) is as egregious an abuse as what J. Edgar Hoover ever did simply because of the level of chutzpah it takes to do it with a straight face.  I don't think that this administration has had the worst abuse of American civil liberties on record, I think the Trail of Tears and Internment camps might be worse, but that was then and this is now.  It just seems completely unhinged to spout off the history of terrible things the U.S. has done to confuse the clear and mounting evidence that this Administration has enshrined torture and rule by fiat with no oversight as official policies of the United States of America.

In addition, the United States HAS embraced torture in the past by "rendition" and support of despotic regimes, but now IT IS OFFICIAL POLICY.