The truth about torture

People have known for centuries, millennia even, that the real reason for torture is not to get true information but to extract false confessions.

Now Frank Rich writes about it in the New York Times. The column is called "The Bush White House's Appalling and Evil Legacy: Now We Know the Whole Story" and the lead goes like this: "Did we torture to extract bogus 'intelligence' from detainees to make the case for Iraq?"

Just take a look at this paragraph:

The report found that Maj. Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantnamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: "A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful." As higher-ups got more "frustrated" at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, "there was more and more pressure to resort to measures" that might produce that intelligence.

I think I want to throw up.

And I certainly agree with Rich's conclusion:

President Obama can talk all he wants about not looking back, but this grotesque past is bigger than even he is. It won't vanish into a memory hole any more than Andersonville, World War II internment camps or My Lai. The White House, Congress and politicians of both parties should get out of the way. We don't need another commission. We don't need any Capitol Hill witch hunts. What we must have are fair trials that at long last uphold and reclaim our nation's commitment to the rule of law.

Sounds like there are some people involved in this who have Obama by the short hairs...

Just sayin'.