Criminal, Not Political

My aim with this blog was, and continues to be, to avoid the political. I have high hopes for Mr. Obama, but I don't want to be a wide-eyed believer.

That being said, this story which continues to build is not political, it's criminal if true. Actually, I'm not even sure what the defense would be. We know there were no WMD's. We know prisoners were tortured at Gitmo. We know the CIA assessment was that Saddam had no WMD's before the war and they had witnesses to testify to that. It's not hard to infer that "evidence" of al-Qaeda and Iraq connections was tortured out of these prisoners.

"detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn't true."

"interrogators at Guantanamo and other prison camps were ordered to find evidence of alleged cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — despite CIA reports that there were only sporadic, insignificant contacts between the militant Islamic group and the secular Iraqi dictatorship."

"two alleged senior al Qaida operatives in CIA custody were waterboarded repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times and Khalid Sheik Mohammed at least 183 times."

"A key proponent of the Iraq invasion and of harsh interrogation methods, Cheney has become the leading defender of such measures"

I have never studied law, beyond business law, but I suspect people have been indicted on less than what has so far been revealed in this episode.

Somehow, the fact that Liz Cheney and the CIA are saying there's nothing to it, doesn't put my mind at ease.

(Liz) Cheney said: "You saw the CIA come out yesterday and say, absolutely, unequivocally, waterboarding was not used to establish this kind of a link."

Fortunately, we have Michael Steele and "a lot of Republicans" calling for a truth commission.

UPDATE: I meant to mention Speaker Pelosi in the original post. Since I just saw it at PolAnimal, I'll say it now. Investigate everyone who should reasonably be investigated.

UPDATE DOS: President Obama is quickly going from the "new JFK" to being the "new LBJ."