ALL OPTIONS

DICK CHENEY SAYS the president needs all options available in the fight against terror.  Up to now the discussion of Cheney’s options has been on torture.  Should torturers also be allowed to get away with murder? [New Yorker]

Two years ago, at Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad, an Iraqi prisoner in [CIA Agent Mark] Swanner’s custody, Manadel al-Jamadi, died during an interrogation. His head had been covered with a plastic bag, and he was shackled in a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited his ability to breathe; according to forensic pathologists who have examined the case, he asphyxiated. In a subsequent internal investigation, United States government authorities classified Jamadi’s death as a “homicide,” meaning that it resulted from unnatural causes. Swanner has not been charged with a crime and continues to work for the agency. . . . In 2001, Vice-President Dick Cheney, in an interview on “Meet the Press,” said that the government might have to go to “the dark side” in handling terrorist suspects, adding, “It’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal.”

INEVITABLY WHEN MORAL boundaries move toward dark territory, what ground is walked finds us more blind to our common humanity.

PREVIOUS RELATED HERETIK POSTS [Cheney Crosses the Line] [Day for Night]

UPDATE: Bush continues to double down on the double speak.  When will someone call his bluff? 

MORE TORTURED LOGIC [WaPo] Asked whether he would allow the Red Cross to have access to the prisoners and whether he agreed with Vice President Cheney that the CIA should be exempt from legislation to ban torture, Bush did not answer directly. Nor did he confirm the existence of the secret prisons. Instead, he launched into a strong defense of the U.S. war on terrorism.
"Our country is at war, and our government has the obligation to protect the American people," Bush said emphatically. "And we are aggressively doing that. We are finding terrorists and bringing them to justice. We are gathering information about where the terrorists may be hiding. We are trying to disrupt their plots and plans.
"Anything we do . . . to that end in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law," he said. "We do not torture." 

UPDATE
THE HERETIK SEES someone needs to ask Bush if the United States is in total compliance with Article Three of the Geneva Convention.  Bush’s continued white insistence “we do not torture” in the face of all the scorched black evidence suggests he is either deluded or he speaks of torture in the Addington Gonzales concept: no grave bodily, injury no death with body in grave, no foul. 

UP TO NOW the media have let him off on this point.  It needs to be pressed and conclusions drawn on whether we are one step beyond or before drawing and quartering our live prisoners.

DEFINING TERMS [The Moderate Voice/ Michael Stickings] Yes, he [Bush] says it here. (Define "We".) But then, what was going on at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib? What may still be going on there and/or in other U.S.-run detention facilities around the world?

THE HERETIK STILL WANTS Bush’s definition of torture. And how do "we" get away with it?  "We" don't seem to realize torture is already against the law here, before McCain's "explicit" emphasis.  "We" is the United States government as represented by the Bush administration, not we the people of the United States.  We the people of the United States need to make it clear we do not like what "we" are doing.

AS PREVIOUSLY NOTED the White House seeks control in a chaotic world by whatever means necessary, all options must be availailabel.  Patrick Lang picks up this point where pandemonium takes flight.

THE DEVILS UNLEASHED [Patrick Lang/ Sic Semper Tyrannis/ Booman Journal/ EuroTrib] The danger is that Cheney and all the other political obsessives on this subject in and out of government encourage those among who are quite capable of any bestiality that their furtive imaginations contrive.  They hold out to the "dark ones" the possibility of accomplishing their dreams of power and domination.  There are such people in any society, among any people, anywhere, and at any time.  By creating a climate of permissiveness toward abuse of prisoners "for interrogation" the Cheney/Rumsfeld crowd have enabled a release of the demonic forces that, to some extent, lurk in all of us.

THE HERETIK FEARS demons let loose in flight rarely come back to ground nor respect the will of any master.  The falcon cannot hear the falconer.

Comments

[Paul the Spud]

Linked. The idea that the "President" is lobbying FOR torture should make all Americans draw back in horror.

[Paul the Spud]

Linked. The idea that the "President" is lobbying FOR torture should make all Americans draw back in horror.

[Paul the Spud]

Whoops, sorry about the double post!

[cruelanimal]

Remember the Senate vote against torture was 90-9. Could BushCo be more sadistically out of the mainstream?

By the way, remember these torture lovers

Allard (R-CO)
Bond (R-MO)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Stevens (R-AK)

and be sure to put them in stress positions during upcoming elections.

[criminal records]

good point but i thnk there is a differnt way to fight crime and terrorism