Torture: "There's a word for this: it's evil"

[fiorello]

It's hard to get even more outraged by torture - but today's NY Times provided two additional beyond-outrage outrages.

1. Ex-FBI agent Ali Soufan writes that the defenders of torture (Cheney) claim they tortured top captives because they weren't getting information out of them - but it's a flat-out lie. And that they got vital information after they tortured them - also a lie. They got critical information by using traditional legal methods - not torture.

2. Paul Krugman, quoting Jonathan Landay at McClatchy, wrote that the Bush/Cheney people tortured prisoners to get them to say there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.

In Krugman's words:

"Let's say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.

There's a word for this: it's evil."

In my words: No, they did not torture because 911 threw them into panic. They tortured for the same reasons as torturers everywhere - out of sadism. And they tortured to gain advantage over their real enemies - their domestic enemies.

(Remember what a bind the Democrats faced in 2003. If they denounced torture they were soft on security. If they did not, they were morally compromised. Cheney is still peddling the same crap. There is one word for him: he's evil.)

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Ali Soufan:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23soufan.html

Krugman:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/grand-unified-scandal/

[Supersedeas]

1. will the GOP Television News Establishment report the substance and facts??