Bush on torture: Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes...?

many thanks to kos and bill in portland maine for sharing the miami herald's right-on editorial by leonard pitts...

(via the buffalo news...)

Well, I guess that settles that.

"We do not torture," President Bush said on Monday. Never mind all those torture pictures from Abu Ghraib. Never mind all those torture stories from Guantanamo Bay. Never mind the 2002 Justice Department memo that sought to justify torture. Never mind reports of U.S. officials sending detainees to other countries for torture. Never mind Dick Cheney lobbying to exempt the CIA from rules prohibiting torture.

"We do not torture," said the president. And that's that, right? I mean, if you can't believe the Bush administration, who can you believe? No torture. Period, end of sentence.

But . . . What does it say to you that the claim even has to be made?

Bush spoke in Panama on the last day of a five-day swing through Latin America to promote free trade. He was addressing controversy over secret CIA prisons in foreign countries. America, Bush reminded us in case it had slipped our minds in the 20 minutes since he last reminded us, is at war.

Guess that would explain all the dead people.

[...]

In the name of fighting terror, we have terrorized, and in the name of defending our values, we have betrayed them. We have imprisoned Muslims in America and refused to say if we had them, why we had them, or even to provide them attorneys. We have passed laws making it easier for government to snoop into what you read, who you talk to, where you go. We have equated dissent with lack of patriotism, disagreement with treason. And we have tortured.

Yes, Bush says we don't do that kind of thing but, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, who you going to believe, him or your lying eyes?

the above is just the coda to the lengthy litany of atrocities committed by the criminals in the bush administration... markos made this comment earlier today in a post arguing against bush's impeachment...

We have bigger fish to fry than getting even against Bush for his misdeeds.

that's a painfully shallow comment, imho... it isn't about getting even... it's about getting rid of truly evil people who, every single day that they are left in charge, are continuing to systematically destroy everything that we hold dear... i don't give a rip about how we get them out of there... i just know that we MUST get them out...

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