According to a story in today’s Washington Post, as early as July 2002 the Pentagon and CIA were advised that “torture” would result in “unreliable information.”
A memo prepared by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency and sent to the Pentagon’s chief attorney and forwarded to the CIA includes an attachment stating,
"The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel."
But Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, believes the Bush administration ignored the attachment:
“It's part of a pattern of squelching dissent," he said. "They didn't want to hear the downside."
Following its standard m.o., the administration went ahead with torture but found euphemisms for marketing it to the public and providing FOX with its talking points (e.g., enhanced interrogation, enhanced coercive interrogation technique). This Orwellian doublespeak is about all Republican apologists now have as they make the rounds of talking-head TV sounding increasingly feeble, evasive, and isolated, as they defend the Bush policy of torturing prisoners.
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A memo prepared by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency and sent to the Pentagon’s chief attorney and forwarded to the CIA includes an attachment stating,
"The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel."
But Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, believes the Bush administration ignored the attachment:
“It's part of a pattern of squelching dissent," he said. "They didn't want to hear the downside."
Following its standard m.o., the administration went ahead with torture but found euphemisms for marketing it to the public and providing FOX with its talking points (e.g., enhanced interrogation, enhanced coercive interrogation technique). This Orwellian doublespeak is about all Republican apologists now have as they make the rounds of talking-head TV sounding increasingly feeble, evasive, and isolated, as they defend the Bush policy of torturing prisoners.
Read more
