Forget John Yoo (who?), forget the absent-minded media and pay attention to ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern. McGovern has the goods on Bush and finally nails him to the floor about torture. We all know, either in the back of our conservative heads or in the front of our liberal ones, that George Bush wants to torture people. It is sick, but hey, people can be sick and when they have power like our buffoon of a President bad things can happen. Really bad things. Well he said we didn't torture, but like in many other areas, he lied about that as well and now we have the proof.
From Consortium News:
Is it because John Yoo, the former Justice Department's hired hand, is such an easy target? Is it because of the cheeky, in-your-face way in which Yoo argues that the president has the authority to have your eyes poked out and your sons' testicles crushed, because we are "at war" and he is commander in chief.
Or is it because our press is STILL reluctant to go after Yoo's guys – first and foremost his ultimate client – President George W. Bush? Oh, but that would be hard, you say.
Nonsense.
Available on the Web, in its original format, is a 7 Feb. 2002 action memorandum that the president signed to implement the dubious advice he was getting from Yoo and those at Justice who hired Yoo – and from the vice president's office which guided Yoo.
Yoo did their dirty work (and now he takes the rap).
So it wasn't a little Bushophile that was ultimately responsible for this madness, the directions to torture came straight from the top. From that bastard Dick Cheney and his sidekick George. Let me say it again. They. Signed. Off. On. Torture. That means waterboarding, electrocution, sleep deprivation, whips, torches, you name it. If the Geneva Convention (which we signed) said no, Bush said yes.
Just in case you don't want to click on that big, bad PDF file....
In his Feb. 7, 2002, memorandum, Bush wrote: "I determine that common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either al Qaeda or Taliban detainees." (Common Article 3 bans "torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.")
Then, drawing on the lawyerly legerdemain, Bush did something really dumb. Using words drafted by Vice President Dick Cheney's lawyer, David Addington, for a memo dated Jan. 25, 2002, signed by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, the president ordered that detainees be treated, "humanely ... to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity."
Tacked onto the end of that sentence is a classic circumlocution: "in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva." But that is not what Geneva says, and there is no way to square that circle.
Squaring circles is what Bush tries to do in all aspects of his Presidency. This peg warrants impeachment and imprisonment. He is a war criminal, there really isn't much more to that. Conservatives can come up with all the BS arguments about the GWOT all they want, this is a war crime and Bush's signature is more than plenty of evidence.
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