VP of Torture
Jun 25th, 2007 at 8:02 am by Susie
Nothing we didn’t suspect, but boy, he sure is consistent. Go read Part 2 of the Washington Post series on Cheney:
Geneva rules forbade not only torture but also, in equally categorical terms, the use of “violence,” “cruel treatment” or “humiliating and degrading treatment” against a detainee “at any time and in any place whatsoever.” The War Crimes Act of 1996 made any grave breach of those restrictions a U.S. felony [Read the act]. The best defense against such a charge, Addington wrote, would combine a broad presidential direction for humane treatment, in general, with an assertion of unrestricted authority to make exceptions.
The vice president’s counsel proposed that President Bush issue a carefully ambiguous directive. Detainees would be treated “humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of” the Geneva Conventions. When Bush issued his public decision two weeks later, on Feb. 7, 2002, he adopted Addington’s formula — with all its room for maneuver — verbatim.
In a radio interview last fall, Cheney said, “We don’t torture.” What he did not acknowledge, according to Alberto J. Mora, who served then as the Bush-appointed Navy general counsel, was that the new legal framework was designed specifically to leave room for cruelty. In international law, Mora said, cruelty is defined as “the imposition of severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” He added: “Torture is an extreme version of cruelty.”
As I’ve been saying all along, all these crazy legal interpretations are aimed at keeping Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld out of the Hague for war crimes.
What do you want to bet that the Democrats help them?
As Booman commented this morning, “The Democrats feel that impeachment will reinvigorate the president and have the opposite effect they want for pulling his party away from them and towards ending the debacle in Iraq.”
And as I replied, if this is true, my cynicism and hopelessness is completely justified.
You know what’s more exhausting than nihilism? Having your hopes dashed again and again and again. It’s a lot easier when you don’t believe in anyone or anything.
The Democrats have been helping these war criminals from the start. It’s called aiding and abetting. We are misrepresented by weasels, wankers, and cowards.
This sh*t makes me want to believe in reincarnation.
What would Cheney be reborn as as, an amoeba?
Rumsfeld?
Dubya?
Gonzalez?