Report by Senate Intel Committee Shows Bush's Cabinet Level Torture Team Approved Waterboarding
Bush's cabinet and high level torture team approved criminal torture techniques and Condi Rice conveyed the White House green light directly to the C.I.A. on waterboarding prisoners
No surprise.
In an April 10, 2008 blog, I wrote: "According to news reports, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Tenet, and Ashcroft discussed specific enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding also known as torture and approved them.
"These people are despicable criminals and deserve to be in the dock at The Hague."
"From ABC News via Think Progress:
'In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.
'The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.
'Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.
'But this is the first time sources have disclosed that a handful of the most senior advisers in the White House explicitly approved the details of the program.
According to multiple sources, it was members of the Principals Committee that not only discussed specific plans and specific interrogation methods, but approved them. (Underline added.)
'Then-National Security Advisor Rice, sources said, was decisive. Despite growing policy concerns -- shared by Powell -- that the program was harming the image of the United States abroad, sources say she did not back down, telling the CIA: 'This is your baby. Go do it.' "
"Torquemada Bush knew about the torture.
"The ABC report continues: 'I can say that questioning the detainees in this program has given us the information that has saved innocent lives by helping us stop new attacks here in the United States and across the world," Bush said in a speech in September 2006.' "
As I wrote in a post in February, "His Bushite, loyalist, hypocrite flunky, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, protecting Dubya from possible war crimes prosecution, disgustingly refuses to admit that waterboarding is torture, although the United States punished as war criminals those who used waterboarding against American POWs during WWII."
Now from McClatchy Newspapers comes this: "A newly declassified narrative of the Bush administration's advice to the CIA on harsh interrogations shows that the small group of Justice Department lawyers who wrote memos authorizing harsh interrogation techniques were operating not on their own but with direction from top administration officials, including then-Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
"At the same time, the narrative suggests that then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell were largely left out of the decision-making process."
And from The Guardian today: "Condoleezza Rice gave permission for the CIA to use waterboarding techniques on the alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah as early as July 2002, the first known official approval for the technique, according to a report released by the Senate intelligence committee yesterday.
"The revelation indicates that Rice, who at the time was national security adviser and went on to be secretary of state, played a greater role than she admitted in written testimony last autumn.
"The committee's narrative report (pdf) also shows that dissenting legal views about the interrogation methods were brushed aside repeatedly. The mood within the Bush administration at the time is caught in a handwritten note attached to a December 2002 memo from Donald Rumsfeld, the then defence secretary, on the use of stress positions. "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?" he asked.
"The latest report, which compiles legal advice provided by the Bush administration to the CIA, indicates that Rice personally conveyed the administration's approval for waterboarding Zubaydah to the then CIA director, George Tenet, in July 2002.
"Last autumn, Rice acknowledged to the armed services committee only that she had attended meetings where the CIA interrogation request was discussed. She said she did not recall details. Within days, the justice department secretly approved the use of waterboarding. Zubaydah underwent waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002."
Prosecutions, anyone?
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