Enhanced Finger Pointing

I predict that this "Enhanced Interrogations" scandal is about to escalate/dissolve into a "he said/he said" finger pointing exercise in ass covering between the Bush Administration and the CIA. And this is gonna be fun:)

Soon the opponents of these "Enhanced Interrogations" are going to realize that the real moral and criminal concern regarding these memos isn't that the United States participated in torture – It's that the United States participated in GOVERNMENT-SANCTIONED torture. This wasn't some rogue CIA operative who waterboarded and "walled" detainees here and there, this was a carefully-crafted, sophisticatedly-reasoned, pain-staking and thought out, top-down, Executive Branch-authorized, program for torture.

As I stated in a previous entry, the frightening and revealing issue pertaining to these memos that nobody seems to be discussing is the fact that THERE HAD TO BE MEMOS!!! The existence of these "Enhanced Interrogations" memos means one of two things – either the Bush Administration ordered that these techniques be used and the CIA REFUSED or the CIA blackmailed the Executive branch into sanctioning torture.

If the CIA initiated the request for these "Enhanced Interrogations," that means that the CIA, in affect, told the President that they COULD protect America but that they WOULDN'T unless he drafted written legal rationale giving them permission to torture. That would mean that the CIA is a bunch of blackmailing cowards – I doubt that is the case.

The other option, and the most likely, is that because these captured, high-ranking terrorists refused to admit that there was a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, the Bush Administration ordered the CIA to do whatever it took to get a confirmation from these detainees that Iraq was a partner in a global terror network. That would mean that the Bush Administration was not trying to avert an imminent threat, but rather, that they were trying to create one in order to justify an invasion that they had already decided was going to take place. If the Bush Administration were the ones that initially requested that these tactics be used than that would just be another example of the Bush Administration trying to take the easy road.

I know where I've got my money.