Evil in the White House

Frank Rich has another good column in the New York Times that looks at why the Bush/Cheney regime was so Hell bent to utilize torture: they had to get confessions and/or information that could be used to justify the lies upon which the war against Iraq was based. It shows just how cynical and morally bankrupt the regime was and how there was a willingness to resort even to war crimes style torture to cover up for the fact that Bush - and I suspect Cheney in particular - took the nation to war based on deliberate lies. What continues to amaze me as I have mentioned before is how the main defenders of such illegal and inhuman conduct are from the far right of the GOP which is made up principally by self-confessed "Christians," including the Chimperator who needs to be tried for what went on during his watch. These folks are not Christian and they are in no position to lecture anyone on morality. They need to be fully exposed and discredited for all time. Here are some highlights:

*

[T]he ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration’s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections. Bybee’s memo was written the week after the then-secret (and subsequently leaked) “Downing Street memo,” in which the head of British intelligence informed Tony Blair that the Bush White House was so determined to go to war in Iraq that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” A month after Bybee’s memo, on Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney would make his infamous appearance on “Meet the Press,” hyping both Saddam’s W.M.D.s and the “number of contacts over the years” between Al Qaeda and Iraq. If only 9/11 could somehow be pinned on Iraq, the case for war would be a slamdunk.

*
But there were no links between 9/11 and Iraq, and the White House knew it. Torture may have been the last hope for coercing such bogus “intelligence” from detainees who would be tempted to say anything to stop the waterboarding.

*

The Bush administration was “driven,” Levin said. By what? “They’d say it was to get more information. But they were desperate to find a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.”

*
Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.

*

President Obama can talk all he wants about not looking back, but this grotesque past is bigger than even he is. It won’t vanish into a memory hole any more than Andersonville, World War II internment camps or My Lai. The White House, Congress and politicians of both parties should get out of the way. We don’t need another commission. We don’t need any Capitol Hill witch hunts. What we must have are fair trials that at long last uphold and reclaim our nation’s commitment to the rule of law.

*

I totally agree with Rich. Unless and until Bush, Cheney, and other members of the lawless administration are tried and held to account, America will have thrown its moral standing forever into the toilet. And like it or not, the rest of the world is watching to see how we move to clean up this mess. If these misdeeds go unpunished, we will be handing a powerful recruiting tool to our enemies and detractors.