TENET STILL TRIES TO JUSTIFY "AGGRESSIVE TECHNIQUES"

There has been lots of interest in George Tenet's forthcoming book, "At the Center of the Storm," to be released this coming Monday. Karen DeYoung writes in the Washington Post that Tenet thought the plan to invade Iraq was hatched well before September 11, 2001, and that his "slam dunk" comments were taken out of context and used by Bush to blame Tenet for faulty intelligence leading up to the Iraq invasion.

However right Tenet may be about the phony basis used by Bush/Cheney for the unjustified invasion and bombing of Iraq, he is certainly wrong when he tries to justify the CIA's use of "torture." Of course Tenet does not use that word but instead calls the CIA's methods "the most aggressive" techniques. Tenet says these methods were used only on "a handful of the worst terrorists on the planet."


What is surprising is that there still are people like Tenet who think these "most aggressive techniques" are somehow justifiable. Have these people ever read the history of the Inquisition in Portugal and Spain? How people totally innocent will under the most aggressive techniques admit they were witches, and in consort with Satan and other dark forces of the imagination?

Let's put these aggressive methods to the test. Let's take Tenet and Cheney and Bush and Rumsfeld and Rice and John Yoo (who as a lawyer tried to justify the use of these methods of torture) and let's subject them to water-boarding. Let's see who is the first to admit consorting with Osama bin Laden. Let's see who is the first to admit the most horrible crimes of murder and treason.

Better yet, instead of water-boarding which might be too "aggressive," let's put their delicate hands in a vice and turn the screw. No lives or organs would be in danger, only fingers and small bones. Then let's observe who is the first to yell uncle.