smoking gun.

[sisyphusshrugged]

via Pacific Views:

.. Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods, report National Security Correspondent John Barry, Senior Editor Michael Hirsh and Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff in the May 24 issue of Newsweek...

...By Jan. 25, 2002, according to a memo obtained by Newsweek, it was clear that President George W. Bush had already decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply at all, either to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. In the memo, written to Bush by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, Gonzales laid out startlingly broad arguments that anticipated any objections to the conduct of U.S. soldiers or CIA interrogators in the future. "As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war," Gonzales wrote to Bush. Gonzales concluded in stark terms: "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

.. Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods, report National Security Correspondent John Barry, Senior Editor Michael Hirsh and Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff in the May 24 issue of Newsweek...

...By Jan. 25, 2002, according to a memo obtained by Newsweek, it was clear that President George W. Bush had already decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply at all, either to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. In the memo, written to Bush by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, Gonzales laid out startlingly broad arguments that anticipated any objections to the conduct of U.S. soldiers or CIA interrogators in the future. "As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war," Gonzales wrote to Bush. Gonzales concluded in stark terms: "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

...The Bush administration's emerging approach was that America's enemies in this war were "unlawful" combatants without rights. [Ed. - Didn't many people say that no good would come of declaring people unlawful combatants? Another 'I told you so' that brings no damn satisfaction.]

...On Dec. 28, 2001, the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel weighed in with another opinion, arguing that U.S. courts had no jurisdiction to review the treatment of foreign prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The appeal of Gitmo from the start was that, in the view of administration lawyers, the base existed in a legal twilight zone -- or "the legal equivalent of outer space," as one former administration lawyer described it. And on Jan. 9, 2002, John Yoo of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel coauthored a sweeping 42-page memo concluding that neither the Geneva Conventions nor any of the laws of war applied to the conflict in Afghanistan. ...

And what Tim thinks of that

We even have the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, advising the President on how the Geneva Convention no longer applied:

"In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions," Newsweek magazine quoted the memo as saying.

Well fuck your judgement of quaintness, Mr Gonzales. And the judgement of every other mealy-mouthed appeaser of torture-related activities that's been trotted out, from Donald Rumsfeld down to the darkest ditches of the blogosphere and the conservative-central of talk radio. No, what has happened under US auspices to captured terrorists and Iraqi prisoners isn't anywhere near as bad as what was done to Nick Berg. But we crossed a line. We put a toe in "their" room--literally. It was as if, having declared a war on terrorism, we decided that it was okay to to set the occasional little terrorist bomb of our own, as long as we did it with right intentions, and with all due care, and as long as the intended victims were really, really bad, as long as they were, you know, terrorists, and as long as it wasn't as bad as flying planes into the World Trade Center.

The truism that we are not as bad as them should be irrelevant and insulting to us, not comforting. We measure ourselves by our willingness to distance ourselves from such barbarity as that inflicted on Nick Berg, not by the fact that we haven't reached that level of depravity. I'm no fan of the terminology, but if a "war on torture" is what is needed to drag the Bush administration and their apologists in this matter off the slippery slope to which they seem to have committed themselves, then I'm happy to use it.

And in that war, you are either with us or against us.

Comments

Smoking what?

[(Anonymous)]

In the first sentence of that piece, Isikoff makes an astonishing claim: "While it is unlikely that President George W. Bush or senior officials ever knew of the specific techniques used at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, a Newsweek investigation shows that, as a means of preempting a repeat of 9/11, Bush, along with Defense Secretary..."

ON WHAT DATA DOES ISIKOFF RELY IN MAKING THIS REMARKABLE ASSERTION???

[spiderfarmer.livejournal.com]

jeezy creezy. it just gets worse and worse...

What Can I say?

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

I have no love for Al Quida, it's members, it's methods and those who support it.
I don't believe that they should be extended the kindnesses that "The Geneva Convention" affords.
That said.....
WE ALL KNOW THAT IRAQ WAS NOT (until recently)a hot-bed of activity from that group.
Bush and his cronies are fucking war criminals and should be prosecuted accordingly.