If there was ever any question as to whether the torture memos should have been  released to the public, that question was removed with the revelation that the Bush administration was using torture not for the purpose of avoiding that mushroom cloud, rather,  torture was being used to try and get false confessions to justify the invasion of Iraq.

According to McClatchy Newspapers, A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaeda and Iraq.

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaeda and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that intelligence agencies and interrogators find evidence of al Qaada-Iraq collaboration.

Dick Cheny says he wants the release of the documents he claims will show that torture paid off. That’s a request that runs the risk of being a case of “be careful what you wish for.”  Because even if the documents reveal that torture was effective in getting critical information that won’t justify him ordering torture to try and get a concocted story saying that 9-11 was connected to Sadam Hussein.

The talking head’s debate has focused on the issue of were these interrogation enhancement techniques actually torture? Were theses techniques really that bad?  The criminal act of torturing to get false information to cover up a questionable decision to go to war is being ignored in the current discussion. Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan and even Liz Cheny, yeah his daughter, appearing with Nora O’Donnell, chose to focus their concerns on the contention that water-boarding wasn’t so bad. Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan joked that each drop that was poured on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed constituted one count of water-boarding. Thus the 183 times he was water-boarded was exaggerated.
 
This is Pinochet level corruption, not in the extent of the torture methods, but in the level of government deceit. Torturing people to make false statements to justify sending American men and women to war is the ultimate breach in public trust. We tried, convicted, and punished others for committing these same offenses, which are also a violation of the Geneva Convention. In other words Bush and Cheny committed war crimes to try and justify engaging in an illegal war.  Does it get any worse than that?   

The revelations reveal the level of corruption of the Bush and Cheny administration. The ramifications of these revelations are staggering. The nation has been dragged down a dark alley by an administration that had no compunction regarding engaging in practices that we have denounced both legally and morally while all the time piously posturing and describing other countries as “the axis of evil.”

There are those that contend that in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 there was a climate of fear, anger, and dread that practically dictated extreme measures by the authorities. However, the torture for cover-up purposes is a different story that has no excuse. It remains to be seen if and when this aspect of the torture issue will receive its appropriate review.

What would appear to be the most egregious offense is the idea that a government would engage in any kind of coercion to get detainees to say that 9-11 was connected to Iraq in order to justify sending American men and women to war. Yet days after this information surfaced there has been little or no attention given to this shocking revelation.   

It was left to Fox news anchor, Sheppard Smith to come up with the most morally emphatic denouncing statement punctuating the debate on the various nuances and euphemisms bandied about to rationalize torture. Sheppard’s outburst has become yet another YouTube hit.  “We are America, I don’t give a rat’s ass if it helps, we do not f…king torture.”