So now we know. Our suspicions are confirmed that the Bush administration did indeed discuss torture.
I wonder if this is the first unraveling, and if we'll see more of this kind of thing hit the light over the next few months prior to Bush leaving office.
What kind of person would think that waterboarding is not torture? Having see it done to a journalist who agreed to experience it under safe conditions (with a safety word that was used just seconds into the process), there's no way anyone could consider it anything but cruel and torture.
I hope these revelations end with the closing of Guantanamo and the cessation of torture as an interrogation device. My tone is incredulous.
Here's the LA Times excerpt:
WASHINGTON -- Senior Bush administration officials held a series of meetings in the White House in 2002 and 2003 to discuss allowing the CIA to use harsh interrogation methods on Al Qaeda detainees, according to a written statement Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently provided to Senate investigators.
Rice's written response to investigators on the Senate Armed Services Committee marks the first time a high-ranking White House official has formally acknowledged the White House discussions, which led to the CIA's use of waterboarding and other coercive methods.
I wonder if this is the first unraveling, and if we'll see more of this kind of thing hit the light over the next few months prior to Bush leaving office.
What kind of person would think that waterboarding is not torture? Having see it done to a journalist who agreed to experience it under safe conditions (with a safety word that was used just seconds into the process), there's no way anyone could consider it anything but cruel and torture.
I hope these revelations end with the closing of Guantanamo and the cessation of torture as an interrogation device. My tone is incredulous.
Here's the LA Times excerpt:
WASHINGTON -- Senior Bush administration officials held a series of meetings in the White House in 2002 and 2003 to discuss allowing the CIA to use harsh interrogation methods on Al Qaeda detainees, according to a written statement Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently provided to Senate investigators.
Rice's written response to investigators on the Senate Armed Services Committee marks the first time a high-ranking White House official has formally acknowledged the White House discussions, which led to the CIA's use of waterboarding and other coercive methods.
In particular, Rice wrote in the Sept. 12 statement that officials discussed simulated torture techniques that elite U.S. soldiers were subjected to as part of a survival training program, and that she and other officials were told that such methods "had been deemed not to cause significant physical or psychological harm."
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