Friday, May 15, 2009

Torture and Tortured Logic

How is it that Newt Gingrich can state with a straight face that the Congress should investigate Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for claiming that the CIA never told her about waterboarding...

"I think that the House has an absolute obligation to open an inquiry, and I hope there will be a resolution to investigate her. And I think this is a big deal. I don't think the speaker of the House can lie to the country on national security matters," the Republican leader said in an interview with ABC Radio.
...and yet, there is no call from old Newt to investigate THE ACTUAL WATERBOARDING?!?!?!

And how does the focus on torture shift from investigating who ordered and approved the torture and why to whether a congressperson from the minority party was briefed on the practice? This is what the Republicans excel at - deflection and distraction. How does the corroborating statements from Bob Graham, who was a Senator at the time in question get buried?

And if you are wondering why torture was really used, check out this story regarding a former aide to Colin Powell. It all becomes so clear -- torture can be effective at getting false testimony. The Bush administration -- Vice-President Dick Cheney in particular -- used torture to try and establish a link between 9/11 and Iraq as a justification for war. A non-existent link that many people still believed existed as late as 2006!

The more that comes to light about what was going on in the Bush Administration, the more I am sickened and convinced that those who perpetrated this evil must be brought to justice.

1 comment:

ElisaC said...

Deflection and distraction, yup. I hadn't even heard about that Bob Graham corroboration of Pelosi's version until you told me.

What a joke. Republicans have LONG had to get people worked up about non-critical issues to keep our attention off of the critical ones (and how out of touch with Americans they are on those critical ones.)

The Democrats should just ignore them blithely and move on with getting our country back on track.