Thursday, April 23, 2009

Call me Condi, "The Torture Queen"

Yes, although former Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice told congress last year that she had basically nothing to do with the torture techniques used on the Arab detainees, the torture memos reveal otherwise.

Yes, Queen of Torture's fingerprints are all over this, as well.

Then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice verbally OK'd the CIA's request to subject alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah to waterboarding in July 2002, a decision memorialized a few days later in a secret memo that the Obama administration declassified last week.

Rice's role was detailed in a narrative released Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It provides the most detailed timeline yet for how the CIA's harsh interrogation program was conceived and approved at the highest levels in the Bush White House.

The new timeline shows that Rice played a greater role than she admitted last fall in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The narrative also shows that dissenting legal views about the severe interrogation methods were brushed aside repeatedly.

But even the new timeline has yet to resolve the central question of who inside the Bush administration first broached the idea of using waterboarding and other brutal tactics against terror detainees in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The Intelligence Committee's timeline comes a day after the Senate Armed Services Committee released an exhaustive report detailing direct links between the CIA's harsh interrogation program and abuses of prisoners at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in Afghanistan and at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Ah, yes, Condi is now trying to cover that ass, as indicated by davidkc over at Daily Kos:
Watching Rachel Maddow interview Philip Zelikow, a top State Department lawyer under Condoleezza Rice, about his recent decision to go public about his 2005 memo showing that he seriously questioned the Bush adminstration's legal arguments for the use of torture, I couldn't help but think that was nothing more, and nothing less, than an attempt to cover his ass and that of former boss Rice, now that it looks like loyal Bushies might, um, go to jail over this matter. And tonight we find out why Condi has decided that she needs to go into serious CYA mode. The Washington Post has a new story up on its website showing that Rice played a key early role, much more so than previously known, in Bushco's approval of torture.

Everyone who had anything to do with torturing inside that Bush White House need to lawyer up.

Lastly, I agree with Joe Scarborough on morning joe, release all the memos. Right now the right wingers are stating that these torture techniques work, but in the end it did not. If these techniques worked, Usama Bin Laden would be in federal prison right now, and we all know that he is not. And Joe Scarborough, the issue is that torture is illegal and the Bush Administration broke the law here in the United States and internationally. The question is not to pick and choose what you may constitute as torture, in the end torture is that torture.

The torture wheel is continuing to spin....

Source

Home Page