[I]n a 45-minute meeting last Thursday, Vice President Dick Cheney and the C.I.A. director, Porter J. Goss, urged Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who wrote the [anti-torture] amendment, to support an exemption for the agency, arguing that the president needed maximum flexibility in dealing with the global war on terrorism.
--From today's New York Times
Bush has long insisted that the Abu Graib and other torture scandals amounted to the work of a "few bad apples." He may be right. Unhappily, those people occupy such positions as attorney general, vice president, and president.
Note the way the Times politely employs the euphemism "abusive treatment" for the more pungent "torture."
1 comment:
I find this disgraceful, and one of several factors that is profoundly souring my support for Bush. When I supported his invasions, I assumed that he would enact a war that eliminated torture and minimized civillian casualties and destruction. Reexamining the situation, I see that I had no reason to make such an assumption about torture, as Bush never stated that this would not be implimented. If there exists grounds for impeaching a president for condoning torture, I would support that. I can imagine few actions that would more undermine a US military effort than torture, even of plainly evil people. If our military efforts amount to nothing more than the stronger military winning, then why bother?
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