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No Appetite for Prosecution: In Memoir, Bush Admits He Authorized the Use of Torture, But No One Cares
by Andy Worthington
With just days to go before George W. Bush’s memoir, Decision Points, hits bookstores (on November 9), and with reports on the book’s contents doing the rounds after review copies were made available to the New York Times and Reuters, it will be interesting to see how many media outlets allow the former President the opportunity to try to salvage his reputation, how many are distracted by his spat with Kanye West or his claim that he thought about replacing Dick Cheney as Vice President in 2004, and how many decide that, on balance, it would be more honest to remind readers and viewers of the former President’s many crimes – including the illegal invasion of Iraq, and the authorization of the use of torture on “high-value detainees” seized in the “War on Terror.”
As I fall firmly into the latter camp, this article focuses on what little has so far emerged regarding the President’s views on Guantánamo, and, in particular, on his confession that he authorized the waterboarding of “high-value detainee” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which is rather more important than trading blows with a rapper about whether or not his response to the Katrina disaster was racist, as it is a crime under domestic and international law.
On Guantánamo
On Guantánamo, the only comments in the book that have so far emerged are insultingly flippant, which is disgraceful from the man who shredded the Geneva Conventions and authorized an unprecedented program of arbitrary detention, coercive interrogation and torture. In addition, Bush’s baleful legacy lives on in the cases of the 174 men still held, in the recent show trial of Omar Khadr, and in the complacency regarding the basis for detaining prisoners of the “War on Terror” – the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress the week after the 9/11 attacks – on which Barack Obama continues to rely, despite its formidable shortcomings.
[snip]
In addition, the [Obama] administration’s stock response to attempts to investigate torture claims in court – as, for example, in the cases of five men subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and torture, who sought to sue Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a Boeing subsidiary that acted as the CIA’s torture travel agent – has been to slam all the doors shut mercilessly, inappropriately invoking the little-known “state secrets” privilege to prevent anyone with a valid complaint from even getting anywhere near a court.
This is unlikely to change in the near future, of course, leaving George W. Bush able to boast openly about his crimes, apparently secure in the knowledge that he is untouchable, although as David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University, and a long-standing critic of the Bush administration’s interrogation and detention policies, told the Washington Post on Thursday, “The fact that he did admit it suggests he believes he is politically immune from being held accountable … But politics can change.”
At present, it is difficult to see how, but those compiling evidence will have taken note that, in the very public forum of an internationally available memoir, George W. Bush has failed to rehabilitate his legacy and has, instead, openly confessed to war crimes.
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there The comments are positive, by and large.
But the issue is not about Obama, it’s about a system that installs an Obama every 4 years, and they’ll never get that because they can’t handle the truth.
I think part of the reason some people don’t want to see that is because of their own economic situation which was probably much better during the Clinton years, than under Bush 1, Bush 2, or Obama. Mine was too. Much, much better. Bush 2 had a lot to do with killing high tech in the US, and transferring jobs abroad, and spending money on the military, and Obama has continued all of that.
(and, for me, file sharing sites did some major damage)
But, while many may look back on Clinton era as some kind of better time – for them – Clinton and the US establishment were running around doing a lot of harm in the world. They were bombing civilians in Somalia, they were giving helicopters to Israel–you name it they were doing it. That era just happened to coincide with a high tech boom, that while it had already peaked by the election in 2000, could perhaps have been revived, but never was.
So, I think people in the US look back on that as a bit of a halcyon time, especially as there was no major war going on. Clinton gets credit from people on the (real) left for small cutbacks in the MI budget, but actually that started under Bush, and ended far to early-also under Clinton.
People aren’t seeing the forest, for the trees.
Clinton personally did come into office with some things he actually wanted to change in a positive way. That seems clear. Obama possibly did not. But the result in the end is the same, because there are more powerful interests pushing the direct and flow of history, and over the course of 8 years (8 minutes for Obama) they win out no matter who the nominal head of state is.
Carter is another example-a perfectly reasonable dude now it was under his watch that the funding of the Contras began, with the torture, the school of americas training, and the rape of the nuns, and all that followed. He was said to have resisted funding them, but in the end, he did.
I have got in-laws on happy pills who can’t muster rational functioning of day to day life let alone give a rats ass about political shit. Then there is the younger set who is the corporate suck up with two advanced college degrees working at Best Buy as a manager. Yes, I too spent eight years bitching about Bush only to get shafted by the Pelosi continuation of the Bush war of error and the Homeboy Stupidity, the American version of Hilter’s SS, getting banned from numerous left gatekeeper websites for bringing up such “controversial” topics like Larry Silverstein’s unique solution to his fucking asbestos insulation world trade center problem.
What does that figurehead Obama do other than attempt to assign five billion dollars to microchip every cow in Wyoming in an attempt to control farm dust. You can’t reign in sociopathic entities who manipulate governments in 169 countries plus have total command of the information structures culturally geared toward “your own” specific peasant population.
What, Obama is like what a 2 in the 47 higher secret government security classifications? I would rather take the world of decidedly off based prophecies of, what I think it was some south American guy talking about the last American president. Me, I have been hoping for three years now that magical prospect of NOT having to bother with an IRS tax return.