The President for Torture

I cannot help but notice this casual aside in the Woodward book, a book that deserves its massive sales, because it exposes the incompetence, recklessness, and sheer brutality of the men who now run this country:

The Saudis had arrested and detained some key al Qaeda suspects immediately before and after 9/11. The president told Bandar, "If we get somebody and we can't get them to cooperate, we'll hand them over to you." ... Though the Saudis denied it, the CIA believed the Saudis tortured terrorist suspects to make them talk. In the immediate wake of 9/11 Bush wanted answers from those who had been detained.

What's striking both in Bush's and Cheney's attitude is that it never even occurs to them that there is a moral issue here. It's a "no-brainer." Here we are on the outside having impassioned debates about the rights and wrongs of abuse and torture of detainees and these two most powerful men simply assume it's fine. Their only concern is that they can find a legal euphemism in order to lie about it and pretend it isn't happening. And remember who their base is: Christians. Orwell could not have invented this.