Frustrated Bush defends US interrogation tactics

[sabra]

http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=141586

Frustrated Bush defends US interrogation tactics

WASHINGTON - US President George W. Bush defended controversial US interrogation tactics and secret CIA prisons in an interview broadcast Monday and expressed frustration at being "second-guessed" overseas.

Rejecting charges that US questioners used torture to extract information from terrorism suspects, and dismissing international concerns about covert CIA facilities, Bush told NBC television: "Whatever we have done is legal."

"My job is to protect this country," he said in an interview recorded Friday. "And I'm going to within the law. And it gets second-guessed all the time by people who don't live in the United States."

"Let me remind you: September the 11th for them was a bad day; for us it was a change of attitude," he said as the United States marked five years since those attacks. "This isn't make-believe."

[Lautremont]

1. This isn't make believe,

like those WMD, like the connection between Saddam and 9/11, like the rolling plutonium factories or whatever they were, like the yellowcake deals, like all the other 'evidence' that led to war and thousands upon thousands of needless deaths.

[stepnw1f]

2. He's a Very Sick Man... and He is Endangering Our Country

not only with the rhetoric and lies he has been spewing for 6 long years, but his demented perspective on life and freedom is destroying our country from within, weakening us all against terrorism.

He is playing into the fear of terrorism like a scared, paranoid child... or is he the terrorist himself. Hard to tell these days with so much evidence out there.

[saigon68]

20. He obtains Sexual Arousal from Tales ot Torture

[Rose Siding]

3. "...for them was a bad day"?

For THEM? World's MOST incoherent speaker

[Kagemusha]

7. For non-Americans, apparently. (like Canadians, Europeans)

And they just can't understand.

[Demit]

14. I truly believe he slips & tells what he's really thinking sometimes.

I think in his mind the "them" is the people in America who are not with him so therefore they're against him—or maybe even all U.S. citizens (as in "the little people"). The "us" is the people in charge, the ones with the power.

He did it that time when he said "they never stop thinking of ways to harm the American people, and neither do we." He blurts out the truth sometimes when he has to speak extemporaneously. His mind isn't structured well enough for him to be a cunning liar.

[primavera]

22. You know, "them," as in "us vs. them"

... with the "us" being himself, Torquemada Cheney, and Joe Lieberpuke; and the "them" being everyone else on the planet.

[quiet.american]

4. Damn, I wish someone would publicly call Bush on his lies. n/t

[Kagemusha]

5. But to him the law is "if the president does it, it is legal" re: war

Of course he says it's within the law, because there's no legal limit as far as he's concerned.

[MaineDem]

6. By people who don't live in the United States?

U.S. to Mr Bush: You're being second guessed by those living here as well, you ignorant fuckwit!

[rodeodance]

8. perhaps someone read him the artcle saying other countries are angry?

[Tellurian]

10. No, His perspective is ALWAYS a WE and THEM..

haven't you noticed?

[MaineDem]

13. If you're not with us you're against us

This man makes my blood boil. And I get so frustrated by the lack of response to his lies and hubris.

[MaineDem]

12. Or made a DVD for him

:eyes:

[Jack Rabbit]

18. Gee, I live in California

Of course, he probably doesn't consider blue states part of the Union. He is able to expel us by a secret, hidden clause in the Constitution that only Cheney and Gonzales can find.

[Demeter]

9. Frustrated? How About Scared S***less?

This is one of those frogs in the pot situations--it's beginning to dawn on the witless amphibians that their goose is cooked. (Too many metphors spoiling the broth, but it is fun!)

[gratuitous]

11. If what he's done is legal, then why is he trying to change the law?

If Bush is truly convinced that his corrupt administration has acted within the law, why is he trying to get his meat puppet Arlen Specter to change the law?

And hasn't the Supreme Court already ruled that he's acting outside the law? That is to say, illegally?

[leQ]

24. i ask that too, and wonder when will MSM ask that. what would be his

response? i'd sure like to know what could he would say to such a proposition.

[gratuitous]

25. Katie probably asked him

But it ended up on the cutting room floor. Yeah, I'm sure that's what happened.

[Jack Rabbit]

15. Tell it to the tribunal, Frat Boy.

The Palace of Peace
The Hague
Home of the International Criminal Court

Photo from the Dossier Nederland (The Netherlands)

[Lexingtonian]

16. technically legal is not the same as civilized

Silly me, I thought he speechified that this fight was about civilization, not technical legality. Oh, and doesn't he claim to be all about "morality"?

[elehhhhna]

17. Correction: He said "pertect", not "protect".

[Pachamama]

19. Will someone use those interrogation tactics on Bush & Cheney so we can

finally get the truth on everything from why 9/11 happened to the Invasion and Occupatin of Iraq?

:applause:

Atleast use them on them to see what they think about them, before they get outright banned by sane and honorable members of Congress and the Senate.

[SammyWinstonJack]

21. I wish he were "make-believe", then all we would have too do is wish

him away, into a corn field or somewhere. Wasn't his "job" to "protect this country" before 9/11, or maybe no one told him that? I am so SICK AND TIRED of his condescending attitude! :argh:

[chat_noir]

23. Der Leader

[mhatrw]

26. "If we did it, then it must have been legal."

That's what happens when the same branch of government makes, enforces and oversees the "law."

[Supersedeas]

27. and it is second guesses and ruled unconstitutional by US Fed Judges

but that doesn't stop the lil Chimperor.

No discussion of interrogations tactics is complete without some mention of the al-Libi case:

<The NYTimes reports, as diaried here, that the false statements of an Al Qaida-Iraq link made by captured Al Qaida leader Ibn Al-Shaykh Al-Libi, relied upon by the Bush Administration to argue in favor of the Iraq war, came as a result of torture threats:

< officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.

<The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of Qaeda members and others detained as part of American counterterrorism efforts. The Bush administration used Mr. Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda included training in explosives and chemical weapons.

<If the illegality of torture and the immorality of torture and extraordinary rendition are not sufficient for the rejection of these inhuman and barbaric practices, perhaps the American People might consider the fact that the use of torture and extraordinary rendition was a direct cause of the United States making the biggest strategic blunder since Vietnam.

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