Not in my United States
Simply put, the extent of the torture of prisoners of war exceeds the worst imaginable by our worst enemies ever. Two prisoners were waterboarded 183 times and 83 times, respectively.
If it works so well, why was it repeated so many times?
And sharp-eyed bloggers figured it out from redacted memos: kudos to them all!
The fact that waterboarding was repeated so many times may raise questions about its effectiveness, as well as about assertions by Bush administration officials that their methods were used under strict guidelines.
A footnote to another 2005 Justice Department memo released Thursday said waterboarding was used both more frequently and with a greater volume of water than the C.I.A. rules permitted.
The new information on the number of waterboarding episodes came out over the weekend when a number of bloggers, including Marcy Wheeler of the blog emptywheel, discovered it in the May 30, 2005, memo.
The sentences in the memo containing that information appear to have been redacted from some copies but are visible in others. Initial news reports about the memos in The New York Times and other publications did not include the numbers.
This is torture, ordered by sociopaths in the Bush White House. It can be denied no longer, nor justified by anyone, except equally sick psychopaths. If we have any respect for justice, this has to be prosecuted, top down. Most of the recent revelations only confirmed what I knew or suspected, but this one floored me.
They were simulating drowning on one guy for a period akin to daily for 6 months. And what was the purpose for that type of brutality? To test us, as Americans, to see how much we’ll let them get away with.
Cheney and his team of lawyers should never be released from jail.
April 20th, 2009 at 11:34 am
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