Bush determined to remove Article 3 Geneva Convention protections

The lastest from the BushCo. people is an attempt to retroactively make their use of torture legal. This is often phrased as 'protecting our troops from prosecution'.

The unsaid question of course is 'why do they need protection from prosecution if they haven't done anything wrong'? Even the most cursory examination of the photos and testimony from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay will eliminate any doubts about whether what they did was a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

The concern that they might be called to the carpet on their barbarian behaviour has reached the point that some CIA interrogators are taking insurance out for the possibility that they may be prosecuted.

My personal favourite story is that of the CIA torturing one Zubayday - a man who both the CIA and FBI determined was mentally ill prior to his interrogation;

(from the Washington Post review of Run Suskind's book 'The One Percent Doctrine'):

"Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."

- All of which reminded me of this;

"If you f*cking beat this pr!ck long enough, he'll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago fire, now that don't necessarily make it f*cking so! "

- Nice Guy Eddie (Reservoir Dogs)

It seems that even the ultra-violent gangsters of Reservoir Dogs know the value of torture is minimal, whereas BushCo. can't seem to grasp the concept.

Even when Mr. Blonde tortured the cop, he did so, not for the information (which we should note that he didn't get), but because he was a grinning psycho-sadist who enjoyed torturing others.

So there we have it, the Bush regime has descended below the moral standard set by Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs.

Congratulations, and nice country you got there.