If only this infernal engine could be found!

David Irving – your lack of “patience” has been noted I don’t need to say anymore.

The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist….

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

“There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder,” he continued.

“Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn’t any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies.”

Senior administration officials, however, “blew that off and kept insisting that we’d overlooked something, that the interrogators weren’t pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information,” he said.

Sounds like the definition of madness doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. One thing though, Sonderlager Cheney has to be one evil bastard: he refused to accept that the ties between Sadaam’s regime and Al Q were non existent, but egged on by the likes of that charlatan and crook Chalabi, kept flogging the dead horse.

Which reminds me, where’s Gino?

“I was particularly impressed by the observation about half-arsed military training in the rules of wars”

I wish to emphasise that despite this half-arsed training, soldiers, sailors and airmen of the Commonwealth of Australia are very aware of what is and isn’t torture or ill-treatment. It’s common sense, really.

I mean, the laws of war have a few obscure things which aren’t common sense. Like it’s laid out that PWs will be paid five (I think five, I can’t recall) Swiss francs a day for any work they do, or soemthing like that. Guards are supposed to salute enemy PWs who are officers of superior rank. And when you loot – er, remove the property of dead enemy, you’re meant to put it in a little bag with their ID stuff and pass it on to the Red Cross. But let’s be serious: nobody is going to be up before the ICC at The Hague because he paid the PWs four Swiss francs to PWs, or gave enemy officers the One Finger Salute instead of a proper salute, or took some dead jundie’s imitation Rolex.

The things which you have any chance at all of being prosecuted for are all common sense things, like not shooting people who are trying to surrender, caring for all wounded under your control enemy or friendly, not kicking tied-up PWs in the groin, and so on. So even the half-arsed training in laws of war is enough – it’s enough to say, “look lads, there is some shit we do not do, so behave yourselves.”

Soldiers of all countries know broadly what’s right and wrong – not the finicky details, but the main and important stuff. But sometimes they choose to set aside that knowledge, either because they as individuals are nasty bastards, or because a superior told them to and they’re cowards.

A military unit is like any other workplace: anything can happen day-to-day, but if something is happening every day over weeks, months or years, it’s because whoever’s in charge wants it to happen.

So we’d be talking dozens, probably hundreds of people responsible for mistreatment of PWs and their deaths in custody. Note that the released memos make no mention of deaths in custody of people under “rendition”. Whatever you think of torture, you have got to have something to say about killing people in custody…

I dunno, Kiashu. I’d be inclined to waterboard him because he’s a conservative Christian.

Whatever happened to equal opportunity waterboarding for all theists?

Just kidding. Agree with Kiashu: rule of law, no exceptions even for limp Dick Cheney, Turdblossom Rove, John Howard, Bill O’Reilly, and…and…. unless of course, and it must be said, that if it was a waterboarding style of enema, which would allow their remains to be buried in matchboxes.

I was particularly impressed by the observation about half-arsed military training in the rules of wars and the intellectually and moral deft cite of Malleus Maleficium.

Incidentally K. have you read “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union”? Fuck my rubber overshoes, it’s a good read. And evocatively whips up some of the points discussed on this thread.