Abu Graib General Tapped for Senate?

Is it at all possible that Texas Democrats will be given a choice between electing another Republican or instead choosing the Abu Graib General to fill the empty senate chair that Kay Bailey Hutchison will leave next year?

It is if this article that appeared in the Star-Telegram on Friday is to be believed.

“Democrats appear to have recruited retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez to run for the U.S. Senate in Texas, setting the stage for the party to field a well-known candidate in the 2012 race to replace retiring Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.”

Sanchez is famously known for being in charge of the Iraqi prison Abu Graib during all of the prisoner abuse that went on. He was cleared of having anything to do with those abuses, saying that he knew nothing of the actions that took place at that time.

And this could all be true. Still, Sanchez admits that he left the military as a direct result of these events.

The article goes on and describes the general’s personal and political viewpoints and his upbringing in South Texas. It also mentions how Sanchez will surely draw Hispanic voters to the polls.

But I can’t get past Abu Graib. I can’t even count up the number of talking points that have been handed to any Republican candidate unless, of course, they plan on running the former commander of the Guantanamo prison facility.

But they won’t of course. First, it would look like they were just being copy cats. But mainly they won’t because running the former commander of a prison where torture and abuse were the rule rather than the exception is just not exactly the best idea.

Conclusion: Waterboarding is Torture

In case you missed it last night on MSNBC I have the entire “waterboarding experiment” as seen on Countdown embedded below.

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Waterboarding is torture. This not from the lips of a “bleeding heart librul”, but from a guy whose bile and invective against liberals of every stripe is heard on the radio every morning.

Waterboarding is torture. Americans tortured prisoners in order to extract information.

Now that all of that is settled, who is responsible for this and when do we see him clapped in irons?

Ali Soufan: Al Qaeda Terrorists Trained For Torture

Well that explains it. I was wondering, after hearing about how Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in 2002, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times, I asked myself if they could take it that many times, and at reported rates of six times per day, how effective is waterboarding as an instrument of torture anyway?

Because the first report we got from an FBI guy who read a report that said they had been tortured just once and sang like canaries afterward, giving us all the impression that this was a great way to extract information, any information whether it is true or not true.

Well it was cleared up today by former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan who testified on the first day of Senate hearings on torture. Yes, waterboarding is definitely torture but al Qaeda terrorists go to torture school as part of their training.

Soufan put it this way (From Politico):

“As shocking as these techniques are to us, the al Qaeda training prepares them for much worse — the torture they would expect to receive if caught by dictatorships.”

Interesting that he equated the Bush Regime to a dictatorship, but really a namby pamby dictatorship.

Because real dictators know how to really torture people.

You have to wonder what went through the minds of these two terrorist leaders when the CIA contractors who were used brought in the waterboards. I can think of only a one word sentence that they might have uttered under their breath: “Amateurs!”

State House Welcomes Dubya, Minus One “Whereas”

I find it comical that the Texas State Legislature, already under the gun to pass some much-needed legislation, is picking its way through a minefield finding some way to pass a resolution to welcome our ex-president back to The Lone Star State, and express words of appreciation for his service.

Apparently you can thank him for too much.

Witness the change of wording between HCR 62 authored and sponsored by a whole raft of Republican state reps, a resolution that was withdrawn by its chief author, Doc Anderson (R – Waco), and the resolution to replace it, HCR 168.

Here is the relevant text that received the bulk of the editing in HCR 62:

“WHEREAS, President Bush created the Department of Homeland Security and transformed the military, the intelligence community, and the FBI; he oversaw the development of new antiterrorism tools that have been instrumental in breaking up terrorist plots and preventing another attack on American soil; and . . .”

[Emphasis mine]

Here is the edit in HCR 168:

“WHEREAS, Throughout the remainder of his first term and continuing through his second, President Bush made national security his highest priority; he created the Department of Homeland Security and transformed the military, the intelligence community, and the FBI; and . . . ”

Now here’s the thing. There are lots of us out here on the left who are screaming for some accountability. We want to know who is responsible for putting our country in the same category as Nazi Germany, North Korea and Vietnam (when we were enemies): countries that torture their prisoners.

We want whoever these people are to be found, tried and punished.

And apparently the authors of HCR 62 found the culprit. The very one they are welcoming back into the bosom of The Lone Star State. The one that they are thanking for doing this.

Don’t you just love Texas Republicans? In their ardor for their former leader of the free world, they wind up getting at the truth: Bush oversaw the whole thing.

So that was pointed out to them. By Democratic State Rep Lon Burnam by the way.

And HCR 62 was pulled and will be replaced by HCR 168.

Now here’s the thing. Wouldn’t it have been better to keep mum and let the Republicans send this to the floor for an up or down vote? Then have it pass by 76 Aye and 74 Abstain?

That would have at least gotten the opinion of the Texas legislature on record about who was responsible for what in regard to torturing prisoners.

Oh well, I guess we’ll have to wait for the Attorney General.

Or the Spanish.

Cornyn “On Good Faith Disagreements”

Here is what my US Senator said today about the possibility of establishing a “Truth Commission,” as proposed by Senator Patrick Leahy. A body that would look into allegations of abuse of power by the Bush Regime.

“The idea that this so-called Truth Commission would somehow resolve the good-faith disagreements ... is just asking us to believe in the tooth fairy.”

Now it is possible to get behind the realpolitik stance of moderate Republican Arlen Spector, who said that Democrats “can walk in the front door” of the Justice Department and “ask directions to the relevant filing cabinet.” Mainly because that is happening already. Day by day new revelations are coming out about all sorts of unconstitutional legal opinions proffered by Justice lawyers after 9/11. Really all we have to do is look in and see what has been filed.

But Leahy is also correct. This needs to be a matter of public investigation, and should be bipartisan, or if you will, non-partisan.

But that won’t happen as long as you have brainiacs like John Cornyn in there stirring up the pot, calling acts and deeds that were arguably illegal if not immoral, “good faith disagreements.”

Did Josef Stalin have a good faith disagreement with the people he and his surrogates sent to the gulags?

With the people he had double tapped in the basements of Lefortovo Prison?

Honestly, if the disagreement is one of “good faith, ” let’s say, the good faith disagreement that waterboarding is a form of torture, I can figure out a good way to settle the disagreement.

Let’s set up a chamber in the basement of the Capitol, and let’s line up all the ladies and gentlemen of Congress who have a “good faith disagreement” that waterboarding is not really torture, John Cornyn can stand at the head of the line. Let them in the chamber one at a time, then stuff a wet rag down their mouths, tie them to a board so their feet are slightly elevated over their heads, put a wet cloth sack over their heads, and then poor water in their mouths through the sack.

All the while asking where they planted the bomb.

And not stopping until it is found out where it is.

My guess is we will have a few fewer “good faith disagreements” by the time we go through that line.

Justice Department: Torture of Prisoners is Justified Despite Geneva Convention

The New York Times has just released Justice Department letters stating the government’s official opinion on the torturing of prisoners, vis-à-vis the Geneva Convention, illuminating for the first time the rationale behind still-secret CIA interrogation rules.

It seems, according to the Justice Department, that how you interrogate a prisoner very much depends on who the prisoner is, and how desirable is the information they hope to extract. Once a prisoner is classified as a “terrorist”, new rules apply. If the person is deemed to possess information that is considered important, new rules apply. From The Times:

“‘The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act,’ said Brian A. Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, in the letter, which had not previously been made public.”

Torture, then is OK when it is done on someone in order to extract desirable information on future terror attacks, but not OK when the whole idea is to inflict humiliation on prisoners, or to generally abuse them.

In other words, if you are inflicting pain on a prisoner because of it gives one some sadistic pleasure, that’s bad. Only when you hope to get some useful information is it justified.

And the prisoner must be labeled a terrorist. That seems to be an important element of the opinions.

The casual observer would wonder what is the harm in that? Isn’t that a reasonable approach in a terrorist situation?

The problem is one of definition. One nation’s “terrorist” is another nation’s “freedom fighter”. Were the Minutemen of Massachusetts terrorists? Were the Sandinistas? What about the soldiers and militias that have put into power several African governments? If we go about labeling each and every person who takes up arms against America or any sovereign government, terrorists, especially when they are fighting on their own soil, it at least calls into question America’s credibility. At most, it gives each and every future adversary of the United States a rationale for torture of our own soldiers.

Something that the signatories of the Geneva Convention hoped to avoid.

Senator Ron Wyden (D - Oregon), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, seems to agree with this assessment:

“If the United States used subjective standards in applying its interrogation rules, he said, then potential enemies might adopt different standards of treatment for American detainees based on an officer’s rank or other factors. ‘The cumulative effect in my interpretation is to put American troops at risk,’ Mr. Wyden said.“

I guess the next time we hear about our troops being abused at the hands of their captors (and that day will come, as it has now been guaranteed) we will all know who to blame: George Bush and his malignant Department of Justice.