Dear Corporate Media, Now That You're Connecting Torture to War, Can We Talk?

[babylonsister]

Dear Corporate Media, Now That You're Connecting Torture to War, Can We Talk?
by David Swanson | May 16, 2009



Dear Producers and Editors,

Now that you're beginning to talk about the fact that our country tortured people in order to elicit war rationales, can we talk for a minute? I'd like to point a few things out that you can verify without spending a dime on investigative reporting. First, we now know that we tortured in hopes of producing justifications for a war. Let's suppose that this was done in "good faith" and that the lies al Libi told to stop the pain were actually true. We know that the torturing preceded and exceeded the OLC memos, the OLC memos were themselves insane (I think that's the legal term for it, but you can ask your lawyers), and dozens of people were tortured until they were dead. Let's suppose none of that to be the case. Let's suppose that Jay Bybee magically legalized certain types of torture and only those types of torture were engaged in, and nobody died. None of that would change the fundamental fact that we were not torturing for defense of this nation but for an offensive attack on another nation.

In fact, Mr. Bybee wrote a lengthy memo that, to my knowledge (I'd love to be corrected), not a single one of you has condescended to take note of in which he makes clear that (1) he is aware that even if mountains of "evidence" can be produced to tie Iraq to 9-11 and WMDS he still needs additional arguments (or at least royal commands) to actually "legalize" an aggressive war, and (2) by the decree of Prime Minister Bybee any aggressive war launched by an American president shall simply be legal no matter what, even if zero evidence is found to support that president's propaganda campaigns. Does this seem relevant to you? If so, please consider the following.

Jay Bybee wrote a memo that nobody has noticed, one purporting to authorize crimes far worse than torture, the same crimes the torture was itself intended to create false justifications for. On October 23, 2002, Assistant Attorney General Bybee signed a 48-page memo to the "counsel to the president" (Alberto Gonzales) titled "Authority of the President Under Domestic and International Law to Use Military Force Against Iraq." This was another secret law, but instead of authorizing particular uses of torture (which in reality were far exceeded, engaged in prior to the memos, etc.), this one authorized any president to single-handedly commit what Nuremberg called "the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." And while the torture memos extensively and grotesquely limited the days of sleep deprivation and the hours of waterboarding, the aggressive war memo included only a single paragraph at the bottom of page 47 requiring that:

"Were the President to determine that the use of force in self-defense is necessary to counter the threat posed by Iraq's WMD program, such force should be proportional; in other words, it should be limited to that which is needed to eliminate the threat posed by Iraq."

When this memo was written, our president, vice president, and top cabinet officials were screaming about Iraq's vast quantities of weapons, but Bybee was already crafting his justifications around the idea of weapons "programs."

more...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/21823

[ck4829]

1. K&R

[pleah]

2. K&R

[Usrename]

3. I'm not convinced the torture was to justify an aggressive war.

It is just as likely, actually more likely, that the false confessions were obtained through torture in order to obscure the identity of the real person(s) behind the 9/11 attacks.

It is extremely likely that the whole torture as a justification for war is just another ruse. Torture fits much better with the rest of the actions that were taken to implement the 9/11 coverup.