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In new memoir, Bush makes clear he approved use of waterboarding
WaPoo ^ | 11/8/10 | Jeff Smith

Posted on 11/08/2010 11:37:29 AM PST by Mikey_1962

Human rights experts have long pressed the administration of former president George W. Bush for details of who bore ultimate responsibility for approving the simulated drownings of CIA detainees, a practice that many international legal experts say was illicit torture.

In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.

In his book, titled "Decision Points," Bush recounts being asked by the CIA whether it could proceed with waterboarding Mohammed, who Bush said was suspected of knowing about still-pending terrorist plots against the United States. Bush writes that his reply was "Damn right" and states that he would make the same decision again to save lives, according to a someone close to Bush who has read the book.

Bush previously had acknowledged endorsing what he described as the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation techniques - a term meant to encompass irregular, coercive methods - after Justice Department officials and other top aides assured him they were legal. "I was a big supporter of waterboarding," Vice President Richard B. Cheney acknowledged in a television interview in February.

The Justice Department later repudiated some of the underlying legal analysis for the CIA effort. But Bush told an interviewer a week before leaving the White House that "I firmly reject the word 'torture,' " and he reiterates that view in the book. Reuters and the New York Times first published accounts of the book's contents Tuesday evening.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Extended News; Government; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: getbush; ksm; pravdamedia; treason; waterboarding
Bush aproved waterboarding: GOOD!
1 posted on 11/08/2010 11:37:30 AM PST by Mikey_1962
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To: Mikey_1962

The WaPoo sounds like they are fans of KSM.

Then again so is the Obama Administration who are treating him as a common criminal and not an enemy of the State.


2 posted on 11/08/2010 11:38:39 AM PST by a fool in paradise (The establishment clause isn't just against my OWN government establishing state religion in America)
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To: Mikey_1962

3 posted on 11/08/2010 11:38:51 AM PST by Doogle ((USAF.68-73..8th TFW Ubon Thailand..never store a threat you should have eliminated))
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To: Mikey_1962

GOOD!! Wait until the next building or city gets levelled by the Jihadis, we’ll see its return in spades!


4 posted on 11/08/2010 11:39:59 AM PST by Spok (Free Range Republican)
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To: Mikey_1962

Well, he’s already said that before. Of course he did.

A a good thing it was, too.


5 posted on 11/08/2010 11:41:25 AM PST by Ramius (Personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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To: Spok

They were used against a self-confessed participant in terrorism and the technique yielded data that was used to thwart a number of subsquent terrorist attacks (including the bomb plot on Heathrow airport).

KSM is still alive by the way. So the scare stories that he might have died are false.

Where are the war crime trials for the terrorists who kill women and children in Iraq?


6 posted on 11/08/2010 11:41:56 AM PST by a fool in paradise (The establishment clause isn't just against my OWN government establishing state religion in America)
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To: Mikey_1962

I’ve never seen the problem with waterboarding. Seems quite humane under the circumstances.


7 posted on 11/08/2010 11:43:46 AM PST by LightningStriker2010
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To: Mikey_1962

Hmm, so he needed to make a decision then and there to keep anther attack from happening instead of taking months on end to make the decision like Obama?


8 posted on 11/08/2010 11:44:01 AM PST by Wee-Weed Up
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To: Mikey_1962

As an American citizen, for use against the enemy, I approve too.


9 posted on 11/08/2010 11:44:41 AM PST by UCANSEE2 (Lame and ill-informed post)
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To: LightningStriker2010
I’ve never seen the problem with waterboarding. Seems quite humane under the circumstances.

The same people who objected are the sames ones who objected to us putting panties on their heads.

10 posted on 11/08/2010 11:47:16 AM PST by UCANSEE2 (Lame and ill-informed post)
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To: Mikey_1962

I guess I’m supposed to be really, really mad now, right?


11 posted on 11/08/2010 11:48:05 AM PST by MichaelCorleone
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To: MichaelCorleone

Only if you’re pals with the ACLU and the flaming terrorists; otherwise, no.


12 posted on 11/08/2010 11:51:55 AM PST by 12Gauge687 (Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice)
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To: Mikey_1962

And if I recall correctly, so did that witch Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats who were asked about it.

And there are people in Great Britain and Los Angeles that are alive today because we waterboarded that piece of crap KSM, although you don’t hear about it anymore.


13 posted on 11/08/2010 11:57:44 AM PST by Right Cal Gal (Ronald Reagan: "our liberal friends....know so much that isn't so...")
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To: Mikey_1962

Bush: “The buck stops here.”

0bama: “What buck? I never saw any buck. It’s Bush’s fault. Bush must have stolen the buck.”


14 posted on 11/08/2010 12:10:46 PM PST by Bubba_Leroy (The Obamanation Continues)
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To: Mikey_1962

Notice how the debate over is water boarding torture just kind of faded away. They lost but still it is just assumed by Big Media that it is.


15 posted on 11/08/2010 12:41:44 PM PST by DManA
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