War Crimes

Think Progress has this up this morning;


Former CIA Interrogator: We Carried Out Torture Because The White House Told Us To


In an interview last night with ABC News, John Kiriakou — the CIA official who headed the team that interrogated al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah — said that Zubaydah was waterboarded, but defended those actions as having prevented “maybe dozens” of planned attacks and “probably saved lives.”

But despite his vigorous defense of his past conduct, Kiriakou says he now views what he did as torture and says that he would not recommend those tactics going forward. “We don’t need enhanced techniques to get that nugget of information,” he said in an interview with Matt Lauer this morning on The Today Show.

Lauer asked Kiriakou where the permission was given to carry out torture. “Was the White House involved in that decision?” Lauer asked. “Absolutely,” Kiriakou said, adding:

This isn’t something done willy nilly. It’s not something that an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he’s going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner. This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department.
Snip

Yep, what we figured all along.
Stupie McFuckwit got coerced by Darth and Rummsfiel, guaranteed.
You know that stupid fucker isn't smart enough to find his ass with either hand and has to ask permission to use the bathroom.
BUT, sign off on it he did.
Now we hear that the CIA actually taped some of this happening and when the heat turned up, erased the tapes, destroying evidence, and committing crimes in the process.There is a shitstorm coming, long overdue, over this.Starting at Abu Graib years ago now, this administration and lots of agencies in it have systematically tortured people, kidnapped them right off the fucking streets, and illegally flown them to various countries to have them tortured and imprisoned.
Fuck the Fourth amendment, the Constitution is just a Goddamn piece of paper, just ask George Walker Bush, the 43rd President of the United States of America.
And already some are speculating that Georgie has a plan, well, somebody has a plan;

“I think there’s a real possibility one of President Bush’s last acts very well might be granting immunity to certain CIA employees,” a defense attorney who has defended military personnel accused of prisoner abuse, Frank Spinner, said. “I think it depends in part on the election.”
snip

Unfortunately for Stupie, the fucking asshole can't pardon himself.
Just another day in the disintegrating country that I grew up in.
I wonder what Brittany is up to today?

Update:

TPM has more;

Today's Must Read

The CIA official who ordered the destruction of the torture tapes apparently acted on advice of CIA counsel--though not the CIA's general counsel. Does that leave a paper trail for investigators?

--David Kurtz