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Why
We Torture
It
has always been my view of events in Iraq
that, after the initial invasion was over,
the
Bush administration did everything it could
to incite a relatively docile population
into acts of rebellion. Since the Cold
War had ended America found itself in need
of an enemy to keep arms merchants rolling
in
tax-payer
dough, and Iraq was not only an easy target
but it was the initial falling domino that's
led to the current chaos in the
Middle East. (Bush
was told by Colin Powell that if he broke
Iraq, he'd own it. Must have been music
to Dick
Cheney's
ears.)
This explains allowing Blackwater contractors
to run
wild, the "leaked photos" from
Abu Ghraib, the secret-to-nobody black
torture sites, .etc.
What's that? You say you recall festive
throngs of Baghdad citizens assembling
in Firdos
Square to gayly topple Saddam Hussein's
statue immediately after the invasion?
Sorry, you must mean the psyops
event staged by the Marines
and a
complicit, handpicked media. In truth,
only a handful of Iraqis attended, mostly
at
the
urging
of
U.S.
soldiers.
Which is brings me to Abu Zubaydah,
a prisoner of the U.S. for 12 years, a
man who has been waterboarded at least
83 times. He is still a prisoner even though
the U.S.
government
states that they do not believe he
had any involvement with the 9/11 attacks
or that he had even been a member of Al
Qaeda.
When he was first captured the FBI sent
in their usual interrogation team, one
which employed informed
interrogation,
a technique reliant upon building rapport
with the suspect. This
included dressing his wounds and nursing
him back to health as he'd been badly injured
during his capture. And it worked, as Zubayda
began singing like a
bird.
Two weeks later the CIA stepped in (Read
FBI agent Ali Soufan's testimony) removed
the FBI agents, and proceeded to torture
the snot out of Zubaydah.
At which point he quit cooperating. This
makes
perfect
sense
to me as the last thing the Bush administration
wanted was actionable information. After
all, war is unprofitable if you have means
to end it quickly. (The military budget
this year is $800 billion dollars, so the
system works. It's an ideal way to afford
a Senator or two if you don't mind human
misery.)
Meanwhile, the CIA made torture a for-profit venture,
giving two psychiatrists $80 million dollars to develop
a torture program, uh, I mean, new interrogation
techniques. It doesn't take a genius to figure out
that the most
important criteria in such a program is to make sure
it doesn't
work,
else the gravy train will stop way too prematurely.
So if the U.S. torture program didn't make a lick
of sense to anyone who doesn't get their information
from
Jack Bauer, there's my two cents.
Because I lurve you,
here's the fourth 20-minute
chunk of Glenn
Mitchell's twelve-hour Xmas
Blockbuster, circa 2001, featuring Al
Jarreau, some horny Elvis fans, Elvis
himself, Xmas at the old corral and much,
much more you won't hear on your local
radio station.
Kid on Santa's lap: Look, how about we
simply have a select Senate committee study
this dubious cat-shaving incident and,
for the sake of all involved, quietly sweep
their findings under the rug?
It
has always been my view of events in Iraq
that, after the initial invasion was over,
the
Bush administration did everything it could
to incite a relatively docile population
into acts of rebellion. Since the Cold
War had ended America found itself in need
of an enemy to keep arms merchants rolling
in
tax-payer
dough, and Iraq was not only an easy target
but it was the initial falling domino that's
led to the current chaos in the
Middle East. (Bush
was told by Colin Powell that if he broke
Iraq, he'd own it. Must have been music
to Dick
Cheney's
ears.)
This explains allowing Blackwater contractors
to run
wild, the "leaked photos" from
Abu Ghraib, the secret-to-nobody black
torture sites, .etc.
