Bush Admits to War Crimes on p. 169; I am not interested about what he says elsewhere in the book, March 27, 2011
This review is from: Decision Points (Hardcover)
This is a book that is impossible to separate from its author and what we know of his actions and how they shaped our world.I have not read all of the book, nor do I intend to. I have read large excerpts and reviews written by others who fact-checked claims President Bush made, and have analyzed his admission, now in writing, to committing war crimes. Perhaps that is all we as Americans need to know, and perhaps at some level we owe him at least some gratitude for making the job of historians easier. We can now put to rest any theories that the worst abuses committed in violation of international law, the Geneva Conventions, and anti-torture treaties to which the United States is a signatory (and therefore President Bush was legally bound) were the result of a "few bad apples." President Bush himself admits to ordering the torture of detainees. Repeatedly.
On page 169, he admits that he was worried enough about the "enhanced interrogation program" to put a panel of lawyers to decide if they amounted to torture and were therefor illegal. This is an interesting admission meaning that he clearly was worried. Not worried enough to consult with experts in international law, human rights experts outside of his own government or even the Executive branch (all the lawyers he consulted were from his Justice Department or the CIA), or with medical experts who have worked with survivors of torture. He also apparently did not feel his own conscience was a guide; he sought a legal, not a moral opinion, and an arguably biased and self-serving one at that. It is unclear what expertise an attorney in the Justice Department would have on the psychological damage of torture or why even if that attorney (not facing torture himself) would sign off on the torture of another human being never tried or even charged in any court of law why the president should outsource his moral decision-making authority to someone whose expertise might be in contract law or government regulations, not human rights or international treaties.
He states that drowning someone (there is no "simulated" about it) does "no lasting harm." The definition of torture is not one of the endurance of pain but of its cruelty and intensity. The famous "is it safe" dental scene with Dustin Hoffman in The Marathon Man would not have been torture by this ridiculously narrow definition (the character in the movie could always have the dental damage caused by the drilling repaired later and the pain would pass anyway), but should any of us buy this?
None of the Geneva Conventions nor any of the Torture Protocols the United States signed state that there is an exception for either perceived national security threats or that there is a mechanism whereby torture is committee of attorneys selected by the torturing government authority approves the torture.
What Bush politely calls "simulated drowning" was called something quite different by those who invented it: the Spanish Inquisition labeled it tortura del agua. Even President Bush's Spanish is good enough to understand that the answer to this question is self-explanatory.
There is much else in the book that is self-serving and fallacious, but frankly I don't care much what President Bush has to say about why he failed on so many fronts. As we were taught at West Point, no excuse. I really am not interested in what a man who has admitted to war crimes on page 169 has to say on any of the other pages of the book.
Your Tags: war, war crimes, torture, failure, worst president ever, true crime, how to ruin your country, idiot, lies, criminal
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