Bush endorsed torture, documents prove

This video from the USA is called Mancow: Waterboarding is Torture: Olbermann.

From the Washington Post in the USA:

White House memos backed waterboarding

Secret papers, issued to CIA in 2003 and 2004, were prompted by fears of backlash

By JOBY WARRICK

Oct. 14, 2008, 11:43PM

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency’s use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques against al-Qaida suspects — documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency’s interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.

See also here.

If I would be a suspect of being Cleopatra, Greta Garbo, Osama bin Laden, or George W. Bush, and would be tortured to “prove” that, I’d probably confess to being all four of them.

From British weekly Socialist Worker:

More ‘war on terror’ lies from Labour

In May 2004, Tony Blair told MPs that neither he nor any member of his government knew anything about the torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison.

Bill Rammell, at the time a junior Foreign Office minister, now admits that he had known about the torture.

He had been briefed during a meeting in Geneva by the president of the Red Cross, seven weeks before the scandal became public knowledge.

He said, “I was assured that defence ministers were already aware of the allegations.”

So again the New Labour government is shown to be complicit in torture. Not surprising, but worth noting.

The US and Britain: a strained ‘special’ relationship: here.