Cheney's Torture Program Shot Down From Every Angle

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Bruce Fein, the former Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Regan spoke to MSNBC's David Schuster about Dick Cheney's torture program. On the topic of torture, Fein said that Cheney not only clearly knew, he lead the congressional briefing, he authorized, championed, and supported it.

Fein said that here are no exceptions to the torture prohibition. None for ticking time bombs. None for Al Qaeda. None for useful information. In her relentless media tour in defense of her father, Liz Cheney's seems to already understand the simplicity of the Fein's agrument. She focuses more on delivering a national message that her father's efforts have "saved thousands of American lives." and "averted a secondary terrorist attack following 9/11."

In seems as if both Cheney's are trying to create an understanding by the public at large, that while questionable or even outright illegal, the country is in immediate danger should President Obama and his administration not adopt and continue the torture program.

WATCH VIDEO:

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Previously undisclosed Justice Department e-mail messages, interviews and newly declassified documents show that some of the lawyers, including James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general who argued repeatedly that the United States would regret using harsh methods, went along with a 2005 legal opinion asserting that the techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency were lawful.

That opinion, giving the green light for the C.I.A. to use all 13 methods in interrogating terrorism suspects, including

waterboarding and up to 180 hours of sleep deprivation, "was ready to go out and I concurred," Mr. Comey wrote to a colleague in an April 27, 2005, e-mail message obtained by The New York Times.

While signing off on the techniques, Mr. Comey in his e-mail provided a firsthand account of how he tried unsuccessfully to discourage use of the practices. He made a last-ditch effort to derail the interrogation program, urging Attorney General

Alberto R. Gonzales to argue at a White House meeting in May 2005 that it was "wrong."

"In stark terms I explained to him what this would look like some day and what it would mean for the president and the government," Mr. Comey wrote in a May 31, 2005, e-mail message to his chief of staff, Chuck Rosenberg. He feared that a case could be made "that some of this stuff was simply awful."

The e-mail messages are now in the hands of investigators at the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which is preparing a report expected to be released this summer on the Bush administration lawyers who approved waterboarding and other harsh methods. The inquiry, under way for nearly five years, will be the Justice Department’s fullest public account of its role in the interrogation program, which

President Obama has ended.

In years of bitter public debate, the department has sometimes seemed like a black-and-white moral battleground over torture. The main authors of memorandums authorizing the methods —

John C. Yoo, Jay S. Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury — have been widely pilloried as facilitators of torture.

Others, including Mr. Comey,

Jack Goldsmith and Daniel Levin, have largely escaped criticism because they raised questions about interrogation and the law. But a closer examination shows a more subtle picture. None of the Justice Department lawyers who reviewed the interrogation question argued that the methods were clearly illegal.

For example:
Mr. Goldsmith, now a

Harvard law professor, unnerved the C.I.A. in June 2004 by withdrawing a 2002 memorandum written by Mr. Yoo that said only pain equal to that produced by organ failure or death qualified as torture.

In addition, in a previously undisclosed letter to the agency, Mr. Goldsmith put a temporary halt to waterboarding. But he left intact a secret companion memorandum from 2002 that actually authorized the harsh methods, leaving the C.I.A. free to use all its methods except waterboarding, including wall-slamming, face-slapping, stress positions and more.

¶Mr. Levin, now in private practice, won public praise with a 2004 memorandum that opened by declaring "torture is abhorrent." But he also wrote a letter to the C.I.A that specifically approved waterboarding in August 2004, and he drafted much of Mr. Bradbury’s lengthy May 2005 opinion authorizing the 13 methods.

¶Mr. Comey, who had forced a 2004 showdown with White House officials over the

National Security Agency’s surveillance program, concurred in that Bradbury opinion. His objections focused on a second legal opinion that authorized combinations of the methods. He expressed "grave reservations" and asked for a week to revise the memorandum, warning Mr. Gonzales that "it would come back to haunt him and the department," Mr. Comey said in a 2005 e-mail message to Mr. Rosenberg.

Justice Department lawyers involved in the opinions felt torn between what was legal and what was advisable, Mr. Levin said. "Obviously you can only do that which is legal," he said in a recent interview. "But that does not mean you should automatically do something simply because it is legal."

The e-mail messages and documents provide new details about a critical year in the interrogation saga, beginning in mid-2004. The C.I.A. inspector general had questioned the legality and effectiveness of the harsh methods, prompting a review of the program. Under intense White House pressure, the Justice Department lawyers in May 2005 approved a series of opinions that reauthorized the harshest practices.

The lawyers had to interpret a 1994 antitorture law written largely with despotic foreign regimes in mind, but used starting in 2002, in effect, as a set of guidelines for American interrogators. The law defined torture as treatment "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering." By that standard, a succession of Justice Department lawyers concluded that the C.I.A.’s methods did not constitute torture.

The only issues that provoked debate were waterboarding, which Mr. Goldsmith questioned, and some combinations of multiple techniques, which Mr. Comey resisted. Some outside experts agree that the language of the 1994 law is strikingly narrow. "There’s no doubt whatsoever that a great deal of coercive treatment that most people would call torture is not prohibited by the federal antitorture statute," said Benjamin Wittes, a

Brookings Institution scholar who has studied interrogation policy.

But many believe that even under that law, the Justice Department should have recognized that waterboarding, at least, was torture. To argue otherwise, said Brian Z. Tamanaha, a

St. John’s University law professor who has studied the interrogation memorandums, required "extraordinary contortions in language and legal analysis."

Waterboarding, the near-drowning method that Mr. Obama has described as torture, was used on three operatives for Al Qaeda in 2002 and 2003. The C.I.A. never used the technique after it was reauthorized in 2005.

Bush Kept America Safe: A Fantasy

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George W. Bush claims that his torture policies have kept America safe for seven years and that information obtained via these violations of the Geneva Convention have assertained specific information that have prevented subsequent terrorist attacks (plural) from taking place. Yet we have not heard word one as to the time, place, manor, and person or persons involved in these thwarted attacks, and what judicial measure of justice has been served upon the would-be terrorist?

Much like the so-called terrorist sleeper cell cases of Detroit, Portland, Lackawana, etal, there seems to be an eliment of fantasy in many of claims that Bush and Cheney make in justifying their torture programs. Cheney recently stated in an interview with CBS that he was convinced, absolutely convinced that these policies have saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. Try as I may, I cannot accept such a claim at face value and particularly due it's source.

If the Septmember 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center claimed 3,500 lives, what kind of attack could Dick Cheney possibly believe his torture policy was directly responsible for interrupting that saved hundreds of thousands of lives. The fact that he says "I'm convinced" that we saved hundreds of thousands of lives makes it quite clear that this claim is nothing more then an assumption, if not wishful thinking and that it has no basis in fact. Therefore, if he is only convinced and not certain that hundreds of thousands of lives were spared, then whatever information that was obtained via the waterboard would also be assumptive and speculative at best.

If you step back and look at the big picture surrounding this issue, I submit that it was actually President Clinton who is responsible for keeping America safe for seven years following the February 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. As disconnected as the FBI, DOJ, CIA, and State Departments were during that time, Ramsi Youseff and a whole list of other individuals responsible were caught and brought to justice rather swiftly. Not only do I disagree that George Bush kept America safe as he cliams, I believe that Bush ignored vital information that was passed on to him by the Clinton Administration during the transition in regards to Osama Bin Ladin.

We all know that Bush gave no creedence to the "Osama Bin Ladin Determined To Strike Inside of The United States." memo and the famous "Okay, you've covered your ass." line when he was briefed yet again in person regarding OBL.

Way back in 1993, many may have wondered whether the World Trade Center bombing itself is not a harbinger of the train wreck coming. Well...we now have that answer and no matter how you want to disect it, it happened on Bush 43's watch, and his lack of attention and concern over Osama Bin Ladin was a key factor.

Chico Brisbane

Former Senior Interrogator Dissects Cheney's Lies

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As a senior interrogator in Iraq (and a former criminal investigator), there was a lesson I learned that served me well: there's more to be learned from what someone doesn't say than from what they do say. Let me dissect former Vice President Dick Cheney's speech on National Security using this model and my interrogation skills.

First, VP Cheney said, "This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately... it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do." He further stated, "It is much closer to the truth that terrorists hate this country precisely because of the values we profess and seek to live by, not by some alleged failure to do so." That is simply untrue. Anyone who served in Iraq, and veterans on both sides of the aisle have made this argument, knows that the foreign fighters did not come to Iraq en masse until after the revelations of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. I heard this from captured foreign fighters day in and day out when I was supervising interrogations in Iraq. What the former vice president didn't say is the fact that the dislike of our policies in the Middle East were not enough to make thousands of Muslim men pick up arms against us before these revelations. Torture and abuse became Al Qaida's number one recruiting tool and cost us American lives.

Read More Here: Huffington Post

Former Senior Interrogator in Iraq Dissects Cheney's Lies and Distortions

Dick Cheney's Torture Program Exposed

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For all of Dick Cheney's recent efforts to defend his torture program, it all seem too little and too late now that orders to torture have been traced directly back to the former vice president himself.

Am I Wrong To Regret Voting For Obama?

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When George W. Bush invaded Iraq, he committed the United States to the reckless task of disassembling a sovereign nation, and then reassembling it according to his wishes. In the process of mishandling the war, the country and congress became aware of just how misleading the president and his administration were in seeking to gain approval for the war. Now that Bush is out of office, internal DOJ memos are casting a far more sinister light on the former president and vice presidents insatiable appetite for war.

In an attempt to counter the recently declassified memos, the former vice president has embarked on a media tour to justify the torture detainees while other Bush sycophants echo the same flimsy rational. They claim that water boarding is not torture and even if it is, it was necessary to keep America safe from another terrorist attack. The bottom line is that where we go one as a nation, we go all as a nation, and if we facilitate our own Hanoi Hilton, we have no moral ground to stand on should American soldiers be subjected to torture in the future. NONE WHATSOEVER!

When George H.W. Bush was ramping up to the Gulf War, Jimmy Carter sent a letter to the United Nations Security Council urging them not to rush into war without exploring a negotiated solution. The first President Bush and other Republicans in Washington considered this treasonous, a former president trying to thwart a sitting one, lobbying foreign diplomats to oppose his own country on a war resolution.

In 2002, when George W. Bush was ramping up to his war against Saddam, Al Gore made a speech trying to slow down that war resolution, pointing out that pivoting from Osama to Saddam for no reason, initiating “pre-emptive” war, and blowing off our allies would undermine the war on terror.

Charles Krauthammer called Gore’s speech “a disgrace.” Michael Kelly, his fellow Washington Post columnist, called it “vile” and “contemptible.” Newt Gingrich himself said that the former vice president Gore asserting that President Bush was making America less safe was “well outside the mark of an appropriate debate.”

“I think the president should be doing what he thinks is best as commander in chief,” Gingrich said flatly.

Now, however, Gingrich backs Dick Cheney when he asserts that President Obama has made America less safe. What was once treasonous is now ones civic duty in the minds of many republicans that fear for the demise of their party. Asked by Bob Schieffer on Sunday how America could torture when it made a mockery of our ideals, Cheney blithely gave an answer that surely would have been labeled treasonous by Rush Limbaugh, if a Democratic ex-vice president had said it about a Republican president.

“Well, then you’d have to say that, in effect, we’re prepared to sacrifice American lives rather than run an intelligent interrogation program that would provide us the information we need to protect America,” Doomsday Dick said.

The man who never talked is now the man who won’t shut up. The man who’s “SO WHAT?” line was the usual response to public opinion is now whining at nausium about how President Obama is holding back documents that should be made public. Cheney, who had five deferments to get out of going to Vietnam, would rather follow an oxy-cotin addict like Rush Limbaugh who has had three divorces and who also avoided Vietnam, than a four-star general who spent his life serving his country.

“Bush 41 cares about decorum and protocol,” said an official. “I’m sure he doesn’t appreciate Cheney acting out. He is giving the whole party a black eye just as Jeb is out there trying to renew the party.”

Cheney unleashed, egged on by the combative Lynne and Liz, is pretty much the same as Cheney underground: He’s batty, and he thinks he was the president. Bush admired Cheney’s balls, but grew increasingly skeptical of him, the more he learned about foreign policy himself, and the more he got pulled into a diplomatic mode by Condi in the second term. There were even reports of W. doing a funny Cheney imitation and that it dawned on him that Cheney and Rummy represented a scofflaw, paranoid Nixon cell within his White House.

“Toward the end, 43 was just as confused as anybody about what makes Cheney tick,” said a Bush family loyalist.

Cheney’s numskull ideas — he still loves torture (dubbed “13th-century” stuff by Bob Woodward), Gitmo and scaring the bejesus out of Americans. He has no coherent foreign policy viewpoint. He still doesn’t fathom that his brutish invasion of Iraq unbalanced that part of the world, empowered Iran and was a force multiplier for Muslims who hate America. He left our ports unsecured, our food supply unsafe, the Taliban rising and Osama on the loose. No matter if or when terrorists attack here — and they’re on their own timetable, not a partisan red/blue state timetable — Cheney will be deemed the primary one who made America more vulnerable. W.’s dark surrogate father is trying to pull the G.O.P. into a black hole of zealotry, just as the sensible brother who lost his future to the scamp brother is trying to get his career back on track.

When Cheney was in the first Bush administration, he was odd man out. Poppy, James Baker, Brent Scow croft and Colin Powell corralled Cheney’s “Genghis Khan” side, as it was known, and his “rough streak.” Cheney didn’t care for Powell even then.But with W., “Back Seat” — Cheney’s Secret Service name in the Ford administration — clambered up front. Then he totaled the car. And no amount of yapping on TV is going to change that when history is written. On the other hand, I have become so frustrated by President Obama's soft stand on holding those responsible for these war crimes accountable, that I am on the verge of regretting my November 3, 2008 for one Barack Hussein Obama. Was Sean Hannity right all along?

Chico Brisbane

Bush Failure To Disclose Waterboarding Appears To Violate Law

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From: Huffington Post

Bush Failure To Disclose Waterboarding Appears To Violate Law


The furor over when and whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was briefed about the use of waterboarding has distracted attention from what is, perhaps, a far more problematic revelation regarding the Bush administration's interrogation of suspected terrorists.
According to the testimony of two high-ranking Democrats and recently declassified CIA and Justice Department documents, the Bush White House failed to disclose the use of waterboarding until roughly half a year after it was first deployed. Other writers -- notably Marcy Wheeler -- have picked up on this timeline. But it is worth restating and highlighting again because, if accurate, it appears to constitute a violation of law by the former White House.

As documented by the Congressional Research Service, the President is required to ensure "that the congressional intelligence committees are kept 'fully and currently informed' of U.S. intelligence activities, including any 'significant anticipated intelligence activity.'" The basis of this is the 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act, which places a statutory obligation on the President to not just keep relevant committees "fully and currently informed" but to disclose "any significant anticipated intelligence activity."

"The requirement to report significant anticipated activities means, in practice, that the committees should be advised of important new program initiatives and specific activities that have major foreign policy implications," reads language accompanying the FY 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act. With these disclosure obligations in mind, it is worth revisiting what is known about who was briefed on the use of waterboarding and when. According to Office of Legal Council memos and other sources, it is clear that the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah began in August 2002.

Multiple records, meanwhile, show that Senate and House intelligence committee chairs and ranking members were briefed "on the interrogation" that fall. But the two Democrats who were briefed in 2002 -- Pelosi on September 4 and former Sen. Bob Graham on September 27 -- insist that they were not told waterboarding was in use. Indeed, the CIA disclosure about the time and content of the briefings describes the subject matter as "use of [Enhanced Interrogation Techniques] on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed."

The first time waterboarding was mentioned in a congressional briefing, it seems, comes on February 4, 2003 when Sens. Pat Roberts and John Rockefeller were told "in considerable detail" how EITs were deployed including "how the water board was used."

A day later, Rep. Jane Harman and an aide to Pelosi were briefed on detainee interrogation programs and techniques. "It was also discussed that interrogation methods were similar to those taught/used in SERE training." The SERE training served as the basis for the waterboarding techniques used on terrorism suspects.

In short: six months appeared to pass between the waterboarding of Zubaydah and the moment when Democrats were briefed on the matter.
Bush administration officials say that they kept all members of Congress in the know. But their statements leave some wiggle room. In a Washington Post op-ed, former House intelligence committee chairman and CIA Director Porter Goss wrote that he was "briefed on the CIA's 'High Value Terrorist Program,'" in the fall of 2002 and was "slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed." The phrase "were to actually be employed" noticeably differs from "were being employed."

So it seems plausible that, in the fall of 2002, members of Congress were either told only that the government was considering or planning the use of waterboarding or were kept in the dark entirely about the technique. Both Pelosi and Graham insist that latter is true. And if that is, in fact, the case, it would seem to place the Bush administration outside the law requiring disclosure of intelligence activities.

Bob Graham: I Don't Recall Being Briefed On Waterboarding

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From TMP
By Zachary Roth - May 11, 2009, 4:13PM

Bob Graham, the Democratic former Florida senator, has said he has no memory of being told in a briefing about waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques, as a recently released CIA document indicates. Graham told Greg Sargent this afternoon: "I do not have any recollection of being briefed on waterboarding or other forms of extraordinary interrogation techniques, or Abu Zubaydah being subjected to them."

Greg adds:
Graham denied being told about EITs, and argued that the presence of two staff members at the meeting (as indicated in the records) would have made it "highly unusual" for the briefers to divulge such sensitive info. "I don't recall having had one of those kinds of briefings with staff present," he said. "That would defeat the purpose of keeping a tight hold" on the info.
Graham's claim would appear to cast further doubt on the accuracy of a CIA document released last week. The document indicates that Graham, at the time the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, attended a CIA briefing in September 2002, at which the use of harsh interrogation techniques on Zubaydah was discussed.

The document also indicates that a briefing a few weeks earlier for Nancy Pelosi, who was then the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, covered the same subjects. And that a top Pelosi aide was told in 2003 that torture had been used. Republican have used the documents to attack Pelosi, who has said that she wasn't briefed on the fact that the techniques had already been used. CIA director Leon Panetta noted in a letter accompanying the document that it may not be entirely accurate. We have our own call in to Graham and will let you know what we hear from him.

Why Do Republicans Only Apply The Law To Democrats?

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Why Do Republicans Only Apply The Rule Of Law To Democrats?

TORTURED LOGIC

From: TNR – By: Jonathan Chait

Remember the Rule of Law? In the late 1990s, it was all the rage in conservative circles. Having maneuvered Bill Clinton into a position where he could either lie under oath or suffer massive personal and political embarrassment, conservatives reasoned that Clinton must be held accountable for perjury or the basic underpinnings of democracy would be shattered. The Republican sensibility was best reflected by the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which not only crusaded for impeachment but demanded, in 2001, that Bill Clinton be indicted even after leaving office. The Journal rejected the logic of promoting healing and insisted that a post-presidency indictment would uphold "the principle that even Presidents and ex-Presidents are not above the law."

Over the last decade, though, the right's thinking on this question has evolved. Today, the administration malfeasance consists of illegal torture, a crime I'd argue is no less serious than lying under oath about fellatio. Yet Republicans now believe that the Rule of Law is not only consistent with letting administration crimes go unpunished but actually requires it. To prosecute the departed administration would make us (to use their new catchphrase) a "banana republic"--the premise being that banana republics are defined not by their use of torture but by their overly zealous enforcement of anti-torture laws.

The GOP line is once again reflected by the Journal editorial page, which now thunders against "a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements." The editorial notably fails to even address the question of whether the previous administration complied with the law, which is apparently no longer an important element of the Rule of Law.
The right's newfound outrage is a more hysterical manifestation of the mainstream sentiment that it would be an unseemly form of vengeance or "looking backward" to hold the previous administration legally accountable for torture. It's a bizarre sentiment. The prosecution of any crime is inherently backward-looking. We prosecute law-breakers to keep them or others from breaking the law.

Now, exceptions can be made, and the question of whom to prosecute is tricky. It seems unfair to prosecute CIA agents who tortured, as they had been specifically advised that techniques like waterboarding were legal. It's likewise tricky to prosecute the Bush administration lawyers who wrote torture-authorizing memos. Administration defenders assert that those lawyers were "acting in good faith." And, yes, they were making a good-faith effort to stop terrorism, but to suggest that they were making a good-faith effort to interpret the law insults their intelligence and ours. A recent Washington Post story leaves the impression that torture-memo author Jay Bybee, now a federal judge, realized the tendentiousness of his memos, which said waterboarding isn't torture (and therefore is legal) because it does not inflict "severe physical or mental pain or suffering."

The best defense against holding Bush officials accountable for torture is that September 11 freaked out the entire country and that we can't judge their actions by the standards of how they look "on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009," as Obama's intelligence director puts it. This argument would carry more weight if Republicans had changed their thinking on torture and could be expected to follow the law the next time they won the presidency. Alas, they show little sign of intellectual progress.

Even after the release of the torture memos, Republicans persist in denying that techniques like waterboarding or chaining a prisoner in a standing position for hours constitute torture. The most common defense of waterboarding is that we subjected our own soldiers to it. That's true--as a way of training them to withstand enemy torture. When you reverse engineer a torture-resistance program, you're almost by definition engaging in torture.

In reality, Bush's waterboarding methods did differ from the U.S. military's torture-resistance training, in that our soldiers knew how far we'd go and could stop the exercise if they couldn't bear it. Conservatives have inadvertently confirmed this point. Numerous Republicans object that the release of the torture memos will render waterboarding and other techniques useless--"terrorists are now aware of the absolute limit of what the U.S. government could do to extract information from them," complain former Bush officials Michael Hayden and Michael Mukasey.

It's true. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, or torture methods devised thereby. Our chief weapon is surprise. (Surprise and fear. ... Amongst our weaponry are such elements as surprise and fear, as Michael Palin might put it.) That's exactly why training soldiers to withstand waterboarding is different than actually waterboarding.

The worst part is that conservatives continue to view torture through the stylized prism of the Fox drama "24." They discuss the practice as if the subjects are always terrorists, the interrogators always know just what information to ask for, and the answer can prevent imminent destruction. All of these premises are shaky.

First, there's no such thing as a government policy of "torturing terrorists. " There's only a policy of torturing people the government thinks are terrorists. Many of the suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, subjected to agonizing stress positions, turned out not to be terrorists--not because the soldiers who captured them were venal, but because they were human.

Second, torture is designed to force prisoners to provide an answer the interrogator already knows. The torturer relents when his subject provides the "correct" answer. Intelligence gathering, by contrast, is designed to garner answers the interrogator does not already know.
Finally, yes, we can imagine ticking-time-bomb situations where regular interrogation methods work too slowly and extreme measures might prove helpful. But this premise bears the same relationship to the question of legalizing torture as the morality of stealing a loaf of bread to feed your starving family does to the question of legalizing theft.
It's worth thinking about how likely the ticking-time-bomb scenario is to occur, and how our military and intelligence apparatus can be legally structured to account for it. But, first, Republicans are going to have to be disabused of their dramatic fantasies and reminded that a long war needs to be guided by the rule of law.

Jonathan Chait is a senior editor of The New Republic.

Waterboarding Is Torture

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Author Christopher Hitchens undergoes the controversial drowning technique, at the hands of men who once trained American soldiers to resist—not inflict—it.

As you will see in the video below, the first drop of water hits his face at 3:15 on the clock and a mere 17 seconds later, he gave the predetermined signal that he was drowning. I would like to see every public official who says that this is not torture to under go the cruel process 138 time for 10 to 20 minutes per session as was done to Kahlid Shahk Mohommad. I wonder what "vital intel" we could extract from them.

Once upon a time, waterboarding was something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict. It was endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that American Soldiers might find at the hands of a lawless foe who shows a total disregarded the Geneva Conventions. This is exactly what and where 8 years of the Bush – Cheney regime has lead our country.

After reading the piece in Vanity Fair “Believe Me, It’s Torture,” by Christopher Hitchens, I’ve had serious reservations about the torture tactic and I call it that because that it what it is, TORTURE! -- Hitchens submitted himself to a brutal waterboarding session in an effort to understand the human cost of America’s use of harsh tactics at Guantánamo and elsewhere. He hesitantly admits that he didn’t last very long and pointed out that unlike actual detainees, he had the luxery of ending the session immediately with a predetermined singal. A signal that Hitchens used only seconds into the torture session that he underwent. This is substantiated by the photo above that shows a couple of one gallon jugs of water on the floor. One is still full and the other is missing less than a quarter of it’s contence. The megor amount of water on Hitchens light blue shirt seem to substantiate his words and the photograph itself.

Hitchens goes on to explain that his particular handlers had only trained American G.I.’s how to resist the torture tactic and had never inflicted it on an actual dteainee. Yet these handlers boasted about how it was their understanding that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the so-called “Mastermind” behind the September 11, attack lasted only two minutes before he cracked. However, Hitchens adds a (By the way, this story is not confirmed) after that claim. You’re God Damn right it’s not confirmed because it’s not true. If he cracked after 2 minutes, why in the fuck would Khalid Sheikh Mohammed need to be waterboarded 183 more times? – While The Fox News Channels Sean Hannity was bullied into undergoing waterboarding by guest Charles Grodin, it’s safe to say that he doesn’t have the balls to actually go through with it.