Robatoy wrote:
On May 21, 5:21 pm, Tim Daneliuk wrote:


On the one hand, I stand
with you insofar as I believe Bush was well within his legal right to
do what he did. I also believe that doing so saved lives,

How?

Article II of the Constitution nominates the president as Commander in
Chief. As such, he is solely in charge of war-making and his decisions
cannot be gainsaid by anyone.


notwithstanding the constant drone of "You can make anyone confess
anything under "torture."

If you torture people to get them to give you the excuse for the
illegal war you wage, torture becomes useful.

Well, there's that. You may be overlooking, too, the shear fun of it (which
makes about as much sense).


If, in fact, there had been no benefit to
doing so, why on earth would Bush have continued to tolerate
something that cost him so much political capital, and arguably cost
his party reelection?

Because he was arrogant enough to think it would not harm him and his
cronies.
He also didn't just 'tolerate' it, he bloody well initiated it. He
instructed his henchmen to torture a confession out of his detainees
so he could justify his war(s).
Either he initiated it, or he didn't have the balls to stand up to
Cheney and his death squad.

I've already agreed with you that the Bush administration was arrogant - all
administrations are arrogant. But you're wrong in one observation. To my
knowledge, no confessions were obtained by coercive techniques. We, like the
early church, didn't need confessions to prove anything - guilt was already
established. We wanted, like the church, something completely different: The
church wanted a soul-cleansing on the part of the condemned; we wanted
information to prevent more attacks.