Torture doesn't work

There are two stories here:

For one thing, the death of two thousand Americans in Iraq (so far) is the rotten fruit of our morally bankrupt practice of sending people to foreign regimes to be "interrogated" in ways that we legally can't. We relied on information obtained through questionable means. This is a graphic demonstration of the fact that the Bush administrations fascination with torturing prisoners is not only warping our national soul, but engandering our national life:

The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.

The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.

But, in addition, the Bush administration KNEW that the information was probably false, and used it anyway.

The question of why the administration relied so heavily on the statements by Mr. Libi has long been a subject of contention. Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, made public last month unclassified passages from the February 2002 document, which said it was probable that Mr. Libi "was intentionally misleading the debriefers."

The document showed that the Defense Intelligence Agency had identified Mr. Libi as a probable fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda involving illicit weapons.

So, they not only turned a wilful blind eye while prisoners were tortured - they did so even though they knew that it yielded bad information.

There are no words in the English language that can adequately describe scum like that.


These people have done so much to warp our national soul that we are having a DEBATE as to whether or not we should TORTURE PRISONERS.

I don't know what country that is that has such a debate. It CAN'T be Amerca. Because in America when I was growing up, it went without saying that our ENEMIES tortured prisoners, and that was part of the REASON that they were our enemies. Everyone KNEW that it was an evil act to torture prisoners.

Under Bush, we aren't so sure anymore.

Isn't it odd that America is suddenly claiming to be "Christian" - while newly embracing actions that have been considered evil for centuries?

These people have warped both America AND Christianity completely beyond recognition.