AP Confirms Cheney, Rice,& Others Knowingly Ok’d the Use of Torture

April 12, 2008

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The Associated Press is now confirming the ABC report, released earlier this, which claimed that nearly all of President Bush’s cabinet, including VP Dick Cheney and then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, knowingly approved the explicit use of torture methods. After the orders, or in this case, whispers, CIA officials then utilized a handful of methods that have been clearly deemed as acts of torture –such as water boarding– on detainees who were classified as prisoners of war and were being held under U.S. authority via military, CIA, or any government organization implemented in President Bush’s “war on terror.”

Ironically the prisoners/detainees that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and the rest of the gang knowingly agreed too, are the very people in question referenced in the Geneva Convention treaties regarding the treatment of non-combatants and prisoners of war, a series of treaties that the United States is a chief signatory nation too:

“Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney, on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned.”

“The officials also took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved.”

“A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the meetings described them Thursday to the AP to confirm details first reported by ABC News on Wednesday. The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue.”

This leaves absolutely no argument claiming that numerous administration officials, including the Vice President, broke the law, and did so time after time. These people knew exactly what they were doing, and finally a smoking gun has emerged vilify the accusations. Moreover, if it wasn’t enough to break international law, this administration with the aid of foreign elements “fixed” the laws they were breaking, in order to back up what was already decided.

The parallel between this “caught red handed” moment and the administrations argument regarding WMD intelligence, and the Downing Street memo are eerily similar, with the same endgame: Bush and company knowingly lied us into a war, and continued to break international law throughout the said confrontation. Period.