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Bush Normalises Torture

Comment by Larry Ross, July 14, 2007

James Bamford, author and long-time expert on the CIA says the recent CIA released "crown jewels" of CIA operations from 1950 into the 1970's, "seems so minor compared to what the CIA is doing today".

He is talking about the Bush Administration renditions, secret imprisonments in different countries, and torture of so-called terrorist suspects. It is all being done by the CIA. It is a deliberate policy to create hate and loathing among Muslims, thereby creating the very opposition that will fuel Bush's "war on terrorism". This in turn provides the excuses Bush needs for his series of illegal wars. The long term aim, incorporated into various US Defence position papers, is domination of space and control of the world's oil resources. That means "endless wars" with any opposition automatically labelled "terrorists".

It also means huge profits for the US arms industry with spin off donations to the "campaign funds" of politicians of both major parties. That is basically how the Bush Administration exploits the US system and guarantees high profits to people willing to participate. Media co-operation is essential in repeating Bush's lies and suppressing any revelations about his lies. The same philosophy applies to the US Democratic opposition with none of the leading candidates revealing that the Iraq war is based on a number of lies. That is the only way Bush Republicans and their Democratic allies can keep the war going and keep feeding the war with billions of dollars taken from the US taxpayers.

Torturing and imprisoning thousands of suspects, mainly Muslim, is a calculated strategy. The so-called 'intelligence' it gains is of little value as victims tell their torturers anything to stop the torture. It's done to create hate and fear and to fuel Bush's wars, and intimidate and condition Americans to regard torture as legal and normal.

Bush's new laws permit his thugs (the CIA) to kidnap any person, including Americans, then secretly imprison and torture them. There is no trial or charges.

It is a warning to the rest of the world that the US will resort to any crime to get what it wants, and that international law and human civilization as we know and want it, will be sacrificed in the process. Over 655,000 Iraqis killed and a willingness to use nuclear weapons and risk World War III indicates that the Bush neocon administration is willing to go all the way and risk human existence itself. They are power mad and deluded. Bush claims 'God is on his side and directs him". As he is a born again fundamentalist who believes in "End Times" his religious beliefs justify whatever he wants. A nuclear Armageddon is okay and God's will as shown in the Bible.

The most recent poll showed Bush's popularity has sunk to 26%, an all time low, so Americans are more aware that Bush is leading them to disaster.

But leaders aiming to establish a dictatorship don't expect to be popular. The pressures are increasing on the Bush Administration. He knows he'll have to act fast, tell big lies and stage false flags and other trickery to try and fool the US people again. Having committed so many crimes and told so many lies, he and his associates are very unlikely to stop now. They will try and increase their crimes and stage a huge crisis and new war, to avoid being kicked out and forever discredited.

To save America, Bush, Cheney and others in his administration will have to be impeached before they are able to start a new major war, such as a nuclear war on Iran.

Stop the torture and save America from dictatorship Do-It-Yourself Impeachment

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Architect of Torture

The Berkeley professor who gave a president a license to (all but) kill

by Nat Hentoff, July 10, 2007

The rush of attention on June 26, when the CIA released 700 pages of what it internally calls its "crown jewels" detailing lawless acts - many of them dangerously reckless crimes - committed from the 1950s through the 1970s, led General Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, to explain smoothly: "That was a very different era - a very different agency."

In the descriptions of assassination plots and the tight surveillance of journalists detailed in the papers, I found much that I had already written about during those years - such as the CIA's sprinkling of LSD in New York subways to test riders' reactions, and the suicide of a particular person of interest to the CIA, given LSD without his knowledge by the agency. But by and large, I agree with James Bamford, the expert on warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency under Bush: "Looking back, it seems so minor compared to what the CIA is doing today."

Among the many examples of how the CIA today makes the agency detailed in the "crown jewels" documents look pallid by comparison is the system of torture created by the Bush administration in the treatment of suspected terrorists. Along with the Iraq War, the CIA's "renditions" and "black sites" greatly add to what Julianne Smith of the Center for Strategic and International Studies calls "the rather dark shadow [cast] on our relationship with our European allies," and much of the rest of the world.

In all the reporting I've done on this CIA strategy to secure our freedoms, the darkest and most chilling shadow that fell upon me was when Notre Dame professor Doug Cassel - an international human rights scholar - confirmed what he'd been told during a debate with John Yoo.

A University of California law professor, Yoo, as the 2002 deputy chief of the Justice Department's Office of Counsel, became the chief legal architect of the Bush administration's claim that the president has unlimited unilateral power to conduct the war on terrorists as he sees it - including the infliction of torture by the CIA, operating with "special powers" from Bush.

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