Memos Provide More Evidence Criminal Bush Regime Endorsed Torture
The criminal Bush regime endorsed torture. That is no surprise.
Progressive bloggers and others knew this from the beginning; it was obvious from all the evidence and the vehemence with which the administration kept denying the obvious, its usual MO.
And this spring and summer a plethora of even more proof emerged. I wrote about it, for example, here, here, and here.
Now from The Washington Post comes this: "The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.
"The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.
"The memos were the first -- and, for years, the only -- tangible expressions of the administration's consent for the CIA's use of harsh measures to extract information from captured al-Qaeda leaders, the sources said. As early as the spring of 2002, several White House officials, including then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice andVice President Cheney, were given individual briefings by Tenet and his deputies, the officials said. Rice, in a statement to congressional investigators last month, confirmed the briefings and acknowledged that the CIA director had pressed the White House for "policy approval."
These despicable tortrue loving high level Bush official should be sitting in the dock at The Hague. They shouldn't make any overseas travel plans after leaving office.
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