In this regards, the sequence of statements out of the White House is extremely revealing. It started with firm denials, then went silent and then pulled back rather sharply to a “President Bush has no present recollection of having seen the tapes.” This is a formulation frequently used to avoid perjury charges, a sort of way of saying “no” without really saying “no.”
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Bush and the torture tapes
For a while, I thought that this humble blog was the only venue paying attention to Larry Johnson's assertion that George W. Bush personally viewed the CIA torture tapes. Now Scott Horton of Harpers gives the claim an airing.
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Perjury? Dude, John Ehrlichman opined under oath that the POTUS can commit murder in the name of National Security. That was in 1974, and I don't recall anything coming out of Congress since then saying 'the POTUS shall not...'. Surely our POTUS can watch a torture tape like he's watching a weapons demo. Why do we need criminal, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence of wrongdoing, and for what? If the members of Congress had psych degrees instead of law degrees, or had history degrees, Cheney and Bush would have been gone in 2003.
Larry Johnson informs us on good authority that orders to torture were issued from the top, and that "the top" was even personally involved with the torture/interrogation of high interest detainees. He now says that Bush himself witnessed the interrogation of Abu Zabaydah. Knowing what we do know about this president, this shocking and unthinkable charge only makes sense. OF COURSE George W. Bush would want to watch, would want a souvenir! Didn't he want to don a flight suit and land on the flight deck of a Navy carrier? Didn't he want the handgun of Saddam Hussein brought to him so that he could fondle it and display it in his office? Didn't his college fraternity, Skull and Bones, keep the skull of Geronimo in its display case as a trophy? (And wasn't it even his own father who stole the skull for the fraternity in the first place?) Didn't he brag immediately with a smirk on his face that Zubaydah broke easily and gave away a trove of secrets, naming names? He was crowing then and we didn't even know the half of it. What a guy!
Trophies -- such as confiscated weapons or severed ears or scalps or videotapes of enemy degradations -- are big to a man with a certain type of mind-set. Some private contractors have videotaped their pot-shooting assassinations of innocent Iraqis in cars, for sport. Some U.S. soldiers transmitted gruesome images of dead Iraqis in exchange for internet porn. The killer of Che Guevera recently auctioned off a lock of Che's hair that he had kept as a personal trophy all these years. I wonder what other trophies Bush is keeping for his personal viewing pleasure. You just know he's got them!
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