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Two
Worst Lies in W's Book
by Dan Froomkin
These days, when we think of George
W. Bush, we think mostly of what a horrible mess he made
of the economy. But his even more tragic legacy is the loss of our
moral authority, and the transformation
of the United States of America from global champion of human rights
into an outlaw nation.
History is likely to judge Bush most harshly for two things in
particular: Launching a war against a
country that had not attacked us, and approving the use of cruel and
inhumane interrogation techniques.
The 'Decision' to
Go to War
The truth
The embrace of torture
Bush's two-part argument is simple;
That waterboarding was legal and that it worked.
But neither assertion is remotely true.
Waterboarding is self-evidently, almost definitionally, torture. The
U.S. government had always
considered it torture. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer who
waterboarded an American
with war crimes. It is flatly a violation of international torture
conventions.
And as far as I know, no American government official had ever even
suggested it wasn't torture
until Bush's Justice Department, working under orders from Cheney,
claimed otherwise.
Lauer asked Bush in their interview why he thought waterboarding was
legal.
"Because the lawyer said it was legal," Bush replied. "He said it did
not fall within the Anti-Torture Act.
I'm not a lawyer, but you gotta trust the judgment of people around you
and I do."
You hired a Texas toadie with a law degree to give you the exact opinion you wanted.
Bush gets off on torture and murder.
You know those waterboardings were recorded for W's masturbatory pleasure.
In his pea-brain, he's still stuffing firecrackers up the asses of frogs
but this time the frogs are Iraqis.