Tag: George W. Bush

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 someone close to Bush who has read the book.

George W. Bush: Torturer in Chief.

• Red Cross: America practiced torture
• Routine and systematic torture is at the heart of America’s war on terror
• The horrors really are your America, Mr Bush
• Poll: On torture, evangelicals not looking to Bible, doctrine
• George Bush has claimed to be a Christian — a follower of Jesus Christ, and many people who also consider themselves to be ‘Christians’ believe him. Yet he lied about the fact that America — under his leadership and with his approval — tortured people. He tried to redefine torture, but torture by any other name is just as vile. Christians who support that kind of behavior — and those kind of leaders – are not followers of Jesus Christ, since their very behaviour shows they do not even know Him.
• National Religious Campaign Against Torture

And then there’s this…
• US defends human rights record before UN body

The Americans Civil Liberties Union deserves credit for suing for the memos’ release. And President Obama deserves credit for overruling his own C.I.A. director and ordering that the memos be made public. It is hard to think of another case in which documents stamped “Top Secret” were released with hardly any deletions.

But this cannot be the end of the scrutiny for these and other decisions by the Bush administration.

Until Americans and their leaders fully understand the rules the Bush administration concocted to justify such abuses — and who set the rules and who approved them — there is no hope of fixing a profoundly broken system of justice and ensuring that that these acts are never repeated.

George Bush, who claims to be a Christian, lied when he said America does not torture.

Further evidence that George Bush is a liar. He has claimed over and over again that America does not torture. But he won’t give us the practice.

A group of Methodist ministers has begun a national petition drive asking Southern Methodist University to remove itself from negotiations to get the George W. Bush presidential library.

Wherever he goes, Bush encounters hostility. The natural extension of this negative view of Bush in the eyes of the world is a negative view of the U.S.

A new book by a former US official says President Bush’s top political advisers privately ridiculed evangelical leaders, while publicly embracing them. David Kuo says the aides recognised the religious leaders’ political use in securing election victories.