White House Specifically Approved Torture

Most of us suspected this all along, but now it has been verified by a senior intelligence official with the CIA, who talked with the Associated Press. The Bush administration not only knew of the torture techniques that were used by the CIA interrogators, but signed off on the specific techniques before their use.

The CIA held a series of meetings with officials from the White House in the years immediately following 9-11. At these meetings, the specific torture techniques to be used were explained in detail to the White House officials including Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, George Tenet and others.

Bush was not at the meetings. The CIA official said Cheney and the others were careful "to insulate President Bush". But can there really be any doubt that this was done with the full knowledge and consent of the president?

The meetings were asked for by the CIA who wanted to be sure they wouldn't be left swinging in the wind if the torture became public knowledge, as it did. The official said, "No one at the agency wanted to operate under a notion of winks and nods and assumptions that everyone understood what was being talked about. People wanted to be assured that everything that was conducted was understood and approved by the folks in the chain of command."

Cheney and the others knew they were going beyond the bounds of decency and legality when they specifically approved the use of torture in interrogations, so they asked the Justice Department to cover them. Justice issued two opinions. The first defined torture as only extreme acts causing pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure. In other words, as long as you haven't killed anyone you haven't really used torture.

The second said it was OK to use harsh techniques on detainees as long as the interrogator didn't specifically intend to torture them. That one had to have set a new high in government double-talk. It's legal to torture as long as you didn't intend to torture. The guy who came up with that one should be tortured -- unintentionally of course.

The Bush administration ordered the CIA to use techniques of torture, and actually signed off on the specific techniques to be used -- including waterboarding. They can't claim ignorance because the CIA explained in detail each of the torture techniques, so everyone would be absolutely sure of what they were ordering interrogators to do.

Oddly enough, the one person many of us thought would be the first to bend the law to allow these illegalities, was the only one to raise doubts about what they were doing -- John Ashcroft. Ashcroft said, "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

He was right. History will judge this administration as the criminals they really are.