National Security Principles Committee ~= War Criminals

John Ashcroft protested regular White House meetings of Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet and others who met to discuss extreme torture methods with these words, “Why are we talking about this in the White House?  History will not judge this kindly.”  Perhaps this is part of the reason Ashcroft resigned after the first term.

You know, what pisses me off the most about this story is the fact that we’re actually talking about the most extreme part of the problem.  ANY torture is illegal in international law.  These were discussions of methods so extreme that almost all serious interrogators would never even attempt to use them.  Physical torture is rarely effective in producing actual intelligence.

This is a lesson we all learned as kids.  Push the other kid down, shove their face in poop, or tickle them, or give them charlie horses and eventually they’ll say uncle.  Who the hell even knows why people are supposed to say uncle.  These alleged terrorists do the same thing.  They’ll say anything we want them to say just to make the pain go away.

Let’s be clear here, just because people attended these meetings doesn’t mean that they condoned these practices.  In some cases, high level leaders in the military or the intelligence world will force politicians to explicitly state what is allowed and what isn’t so that they are not hung out to dry when the outrage comes from the American public.

The Zoo has some coverage of this, here, including a 6 minute video clip of John Turley, a George Washington University Law Professor, speaking with an MSNBC reporter about this.  He knows this stuff way better than me, so check it out.

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