"HeyBub" wrote in
m:

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.

Why as there any need for declarations of war, the Tonkin resolution, the
Iraq equivalent of that resolution?

I thought that Congress had the power to declare war, or the modern
equivalent of that declaration.

--
Best regards
Han
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