Related Link: Text of the Torture MemosRelated Post: 4 Torture Memos Released, No Prosecutions of Interrogators
I am still concerned that the Obama Administration's release of four Bush-era memoranda documenting the authorisation of torture (or, as Politico insists, "interrogation techniques") is, in part, a deflection from ongoing issues over Executive power and surveillance/rendition/indefinite detention. And I suspect we'll be pursuing those matters in days to come.
But for today, as former members and acolytes of the Bush Administration absolve themselves in the press:
This was torture sanctioned by President Bush and his chief advisors. This was torture that was illegal, immoral, and ineffective. This was a torture that did not win the "War on Terror" but damaged US foreign policy and American standing with other countries and peoples.
This was a brute exercise of power, sanctioned by (but not actually responding directly to) the brutal attacks upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001.
To Michael Hayden, former Director of the National Security Agency/Central Intelligence Agency, and Michael Mukasey, former Attorney General,
who write in the Wall Street Journal that the release of the memoranda "makes the problem [of national security] worse":
Both of you, without question or qualm, carried out the orders that violated the Geneva Conventions, defied agencies such as the Red Cross, suspended any notion of US and international law, and --- in certain cases --- led to injury and death. Both of you strove for years to hide these orders. Both of you put out stories of the effectiveness of "interrogation techniques" which were later discredited.
To William Kristol,
who sneers at the statement of current Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair that "[these] methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing":
From your editor's chair at the
Weekly Standard and with yo social-political connections in Washington, you pressed for a war --- one that would both demonstrate and assure American superiority --- you had been advocating since 1998. Initially, you declared that war against the "jihadists". But, even as you supported the torture of detainees, your priority was not our safety from Al Qa'eda but the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. And, after that, you wanted the overthrow of the Iranian Government.
Your primary concern was not "terrorists". Yet you were happy, in the name of perpetual war, to promote any method, no matter how effectively it shredded our own laws and standards rather than the threat from our enemies.
To Karl Rove,
who Twitters about Kristol's column: "Another Must Read":
Your primary, maybe only, concern about the measures taken by the Bush Administration was the extent to which they supported the election and re-election campaigns of Republican candidates. If we raised our voices against torture, that only bolstered your message that we were soft, unreliable, appeasers of the enemy. And you too were only using Al Qa'eda as a foil to get to your #1 battle, the War against Iraq that would ensure a Republican mandate for years to come.
Forgive me, gentlemen, if you are receiving an undue share of my anger, given that the former President, George W. Bush, and the leaders of the campaign for torture, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, should also be held to account. But as they have not responded to yesterday's news....
Your fatuous, sometimes whining criticism of this current Administration for revealing your illegal, immoral, counter-productive seizure and manipulation of power is no better than the criminal blaming the judge who allowed the evidence into his courtroom.
You are deceivers and liars. In an ideal world, you would be held to criminal account for your actions; in this world (ironically thanks to yesterday's Administration decisions) you will face no formal prosecution. Therefore, we can only hope that your ex post facto excuses and pretenses reinforce a determination to ensure that this shall never happen again.
Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 17:37 
Our partner website Libertas has returned from an Easter break with a powerful analysis by Charles Gannon on the challenges of challenging power. His conclusion, as he moves between the government, corporate power, and The Wizard of Oz?