1115.org

More evidence is trickling out to suggest that preventing another terrorist attack may never have been the prime motivation behind the torture the Bush-Cheney regime practiced on high-value al Qaeda detainees. That the prime motivation may have been to produce (as opposed to, for example, discover) evidence to support one of their main justifications for the invasion of Iraq, the alleged link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. That this may be the reason why Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times in March 2003.

Shining a harsh spotlight on the whole Bush-Cheney culture of abuse is former NBC producer Robert Windrem’s The Daily Beast story about Cheney pressuring the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, to waterboard not a suspected terrorist detainee but a senior Iraqi intelligence official who was a POW protected by the Geneva Conventions, with the express purpose of getting him to ‘fess up to the mythical Iraqi-al-Qaeda connection.

This is Dick Cheney suborning torture of a POW, not in order to prevent another terrorist attack or for any other national security purpose, but purely for political purposes, only to help justify the decision to invade Iraq.

Ordering this guy to be waterboarded is clearly a war crime. The fact that Duelfer refused to carry out the order (because he considered it “reprehensible”) doesn’t cancel out that crime. Giving that order is still a war crime. And the OLC memos don’t provide any legal wiggle room either.

Is our honest, open, transparent, forthright President (as opposed to the other guy who came before) going to continue to look the other way, spouting that fatuous claptrap about moving forward instead of looking back? At what point does Obama’s conscience make him stand up and say I cannot continue to justify ignoring my oath to defend the Constitution, I cannot continue to cover up the ugly secrets of the Bush-Cheney regime, not when there’s prima facie evidence that crimes were committed?