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    Principal Crimes

    Though I'm not exactly surprised, the new ABC News report that shows that a "Principals Committee" made up of the top Bush Administration officials (Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Tenet and Ashcroft) were consulted directly (and in detail) on the use by the CIA of "enhanced interrogation techniques" on Al Qaeda suspects fills me with quite a bit of rage.

    When I first skimmed the article, I saw that Ashcroft had been quoted as saying "[h]istory will not judge us kindly," and I had one of my first quasi-pleasant thoughts about the man. Then I realized that it was the fact that the conversations were held in the WH that was the problem, not the torture itself. So fuck Ashcroft. Fuck them all, really, and I hope that history will not, in fact, judge them kindly.

    All that being said, I guess I'm just glad that they weren't cheeky enough to call it the "Principles Committee".

    #2
    Principal Crimes

    The only name on that list that I find mildly surprising is Powell, and I wonder if he was included with the express goal of neutralizing any objections he might have voiced.

    The link appears to be dead, btw.

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      #3
      Principal Crimes

      Fixed the link.

      I'm not even all that surprised by Powell. I am, somewhat, surprised by the general lack of outrage in the US, though. Before this, the administration had always claimed that this stuff was done by loose canons at lower levels. This wasn't close to credible to me, but may have been to those who were more prone to trust the administration. With this report, there is no escaping who has caused this to be done, and yet I don't sense that people much care. If anything, I bet this burnishes Rice's VP chances amongst the electorate (though hopefully not in McCain's eyes).

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        #4
        Principal Crimes

        Charming.

        And then, of course there's Yoo Two.

        "During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing this morning, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) questioned Attorney General Michael Mukasey about that October, 2001 Justice Department memo in which John Yoo found that the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens against "unreasonable searches and seizures," had "no application to domestic military operations."

        Has that memo been withdrawn? If not, was it still in force? Feinstein wanted to know.

        She found it difficult to pry an answer loose. "I can't speak to the October, 2001 memo," Mukasey said when she asked whether it had been withdrawn. He said that Yoo's later March, 2003 memo -- which broadly authorized the use of torture by military interrogators on unlawful combatants -- had been withdrawn, but refused to discuss that October, 2001 memo."

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          #5
          Principal Crimes

          The Attorney General "can't" speak to whether it was withdrawn? Surely that's the wrong contraction.

          I wonder which, if any, of the three main candidates for president would stop this crap.

          (By the way, your link is broken.)

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