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As for Bush himself, I suppose he does not feel there is much danger from the possibility that some writer might prepare an objective, truthful portrayal of his tenure in office any time soon. No doubt he takes reassurance from the virtual certainty that the FCM would drown any such author in decibels. And should someone suggest Bush be prosecuted for war crimes, as he should be, that person would likely be sent off to do penance with Keith Olbermann. (So glad I do not have to depend on the FCM to earn a living.)
"and Making Stuff Up
As for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, according to Reuters, Bush claims KSM was "difficult to break" but that waterboarding did the trick. "He disclosed plans to attack American targets with anthrax, among other breakthroughs," writes Bush.
There he goes again, making stuff up. There is nothing to support that claim, and lots to refute it. For example, David Rose, a serious investigative journalist writing two years ago for Vanity Fair, conveyed the appraisal of a former senior CIA officer who read all the reports on Mohammed's interrogation.
His verdict? "Ninety percent of it was total "bullsh*t." In addition, a former Pentagon analyst told Rose that the interrogation of Mohammed produced no actionable intelligence.
KSM himself has boasted derisively about sending CIA and FBI agents scurrying around the world on wild-goose chases, following up on the "leads" he gave them. I imagine that, by his 183rd waterboarding session, KSM may have identified terrorists he claimed were responsible for global warming.
Other of the Bush's claims are demonstrably false -- contradicted by the FBI, for example. Bush repeats the old saw about KSM yielding information leading to the capture of one of his top aides, Ramzi bin al-Shibh. But that information came from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional, legal methods.
The So-What Yawns
By and large, the "so-what" yawns that have greeted the initial reporting on torture is further testimony to the sorry fact that raw fear can lead to the forfeiture of the ability of Americans to distinguish between right and wrong -- even regarding heinous offenses like torture. Sadly, this is made all the easier by the craven silence of the institutional churches and synagogues which, with very few exceptions, cannot find their voice -- just as the Catholic and Lutheran churches could not find theirs during the Thirties in Germany.
Behind the stained glass, the end can now be subtly seen to justify the means, if that's what it takes to head off contentiousness in the church community and keep pews and collection plates full. Anything goes; whatever is necessary to "keep us safe" is the mantra.
If a rare (prophetic) voice does enter the dialogue with a reminder that many of the prophets, including Jesus of Nazareth, were tortured to death, that voice is quickly silenced. Can't you see? This is different; the terrorists hate us and are out to kill the lot of us.
What rankles most is the success Bush and Cheney have had, with the corporate media support on which they depend, in stoking Americans' fear to the point where waterboarding and other forms of torture have become widely accepted as necessary to "keep us safe."
Hidden is the supreme irony that torture has been doing just the opposite. In fact, it has proven the most powerful fillip to violence against us. Now who should find that surprising? Bush's policy on interrogation has been directly linked by U.S. interrogators to the killing of American troops -- in Iraq, for example.
The senior U.S. Air Force interrogation specialist who uses the name Matthew Alexander and who conducted more than 300 interrogations in Iraq and supervised over 1,000 more lamented those additional killings, "It's a hard pill to swallow, but true." Alexander, a Bronze Star awardee, says that as many as 90 percent of the foreign fighters captured in Iraq said they joined the fight against the U.S. because of the torture conducted at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
Former General Counsel to the Navy Alberto Mora made the same point in testimony before Congress:
"There are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq -- as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat -- are, respectively, the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo."
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