George W. Bush, international war criminal, admits torture
George W. Bush's very casual comment on Wednesday that he had tortured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and would do it again, has some former military and intelligence officials concerned that the former president doesn't realize the gravity of what he is admitting. Retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years, says Waterboarding is, "unequivocably torture." He added, "As a nation, we have historically prosecuted it as such, going back to the time of the Spanish-American War. Moreover, it cannot be demonstrated that any use of waterboarding by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life." According to most reports, Khalid Sheik Mohammed had been highly cooperative and provided excellent intelligence initially, but then clammed up when they began waterboarding him to try to force him to say that there was an association between 9-11 and Saddam Hussein. Additionally, the Bush/Cheney/Bybee/Yoo policy of torturing prisoners of war has placed as-yet-unborn future generations of American soldiers who may be taken prisoner at great risk, as other nations will point to our having used torture to justify their own use of it against our soldiers. Torture historically has been used only for a single purpose - to get people to say what the torturers want them to say, regardless of whether its true or not. This is why the communist dictatorship of China announced earlier in the week that they will no longer criminally prosecute people based on confessions obtained by torture, because so many of the confessions are false. China gets it, the military gets it, but George W. Bush is still clueless. And still an international war criminal.
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