Thursday, February 07, 2008

Stating the obvious

Headline: CIA Boss: Waterboarding May Be Illegal.

Ya think?
Though now legally questionable, Hayden said waterboarding was legal in 2002 and 2003, a time period when the technique was used to interrogate Al-Qaida detainees.

"All the techniques that we've used have been deemed to be lawful," he said.

Hayden's comments came just hours after Attorney General Michael Mukasey, in a separate House hearing, said the Justice Department would not investigate whether U.S. interrogators broke the law when waterboarding accused terrorists following the Sept. 11 attacks.

And just why was it 'legal' between 2002 and 2003 and now is not? Could it just possibly be that the Bush administration demanded torture and insisted it be used? Is that why they insisted the Geneva Conventions were 'quaint'? Is that why Mukasey has to twist himself into humiliatingly painful contortions of logic and law to explain why he can't find waterboarding illegal? Is that why the Bush cabal is running for cover under rocks to hide from lawsuits?

This will be the legacy of George W. Bush, the gaseous whimpering of deflating hubris that made the Bush administration think they could shock and awe the world and have all cowering at their magnificence.

All they have is ruin and wreckage, quagmires and stench. And lawsuits hovering above their heads for ever after, amen.

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