Colin Powell's Close Aide Says Cheney's Office Pro-Torture

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July 12, 2006

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Cheney's Office Cultivated a Pro-Torture Environment

{snip}

After 9/11/2001, President Bush and his senior staff allowed a combination of outrage and emotion about the attacks, suspicions about Islam, old scores to settle with Saddam Hussein, and a lot of Texas swagger to justify the suspension of traditional norms and routenized processes that were part of America's system of checks and balances.

The President and his staff decided that they would adopt a "war paradigm" in which each key part of the nation's national security bureaucracy would identify rules of process and procedure and not only suspend notifications to the legislative and judicial branches but also assert massive expansion of executive authority in these arenas beyond the norm.

What is interesting is that Cheney, Libby, Addington, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, and others decided to shed the "rules of war" as well and to substitute this so-called "war paradigm" in America's military and intelligence programs.

This was a systemic change and explains why we see the absence of legal gravity in everything from the manner in which prisoners were handled in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo to the establishment of enormous and extra-legal domestic spying operations as in the warrantless wiretap case to the White House simply lying to or failing to inform the Congress of its activities -- as Peter Hoekstra, a Republican House member, has been telling the press.

more: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001524.php

[bryant69]

1. I've heard it discussed that this was their test of the executive power

I mean if President Bush has the power to command that, what doesn't have the power to do?

Which fits right with Cheney's theories on executive power.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[bigtree]

3. I see it more as a republican culture that doesn't believe in democracy

Democracy doesn't serve their ambitions or interests which go against the will of the American people and some of their representatives. Whatever motivates that is mostly irrelevant to their disregard for laws, rules, and precedent. The effect is a fascist stifling of our democratic process, notwithstanding Congress' will to hold the Executive accountable.

[redqueen]

2. But we're just hearing about this now.

Why didn't they say so sooner?