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As a result of the release of the Bush White House torture memos, Republicans and defenders of the Bush White House have tried to justify their illegal use of torture by claiming that it resulted in intelligence that saved lives. New evidence proves that claim to be false.
Dick Cheney and other Bush defenders have made the claim that information obtained as a result of water boarding Khalid Sheik Mohammed foiled a terrorist plot to crash a plane into the Library Tower in Los Angeles and saved hundreds if not thousands of lives.
The claim was also made by George W. Bush in 2006. A February 9, 2006 report from the Associated Press stated:
"In an address last October, he (President Bush) said the United States and its allies had foiled at least 10 serious plots by the al-Qaida terror network in the last four years, including plans for Sept. 11-like attacks on both U.S. coasts.
"The president filled in details on Thursday.He said that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks who was captured in 2003, had already begun planning the West Coast operation in October, just after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Under the plot, the hijackers were to use shoe bombs to blow open the cockpit door of a commercial jetliner, take control of the plane and crash it into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, since renamed the US Bank Tower, Bush said".
But Bush public statements at the time, reported not only by the AP but by the New York Times back in Februrary 2006, claim that the plot was foiled in 2002.
The claim that water boarding Khalid Sheik Mohammed led to information that foiled the Los Angeles attack in 2002 is now shown to be clearly false since both Bush and CIA documents claim the attack was foiled in 2002 and Kahilid wasn't even captured until March of 2003.
Undermining even further any claim that the illegal torture saved lives, in a December 2008 article in Vanity Fair, FBI Director Mueller was asked point blank in an interview by writer David Rose if he knew of any instance where any terrorist attacks had been thwarted as a result of water boarding or other forms of torture.
Mueller's answer was," I don’t believe that has been the case.”
As more evidence is revealed showing Bush, as well as members of Administration, have lied repeatedly about all aspects of the torture issue, Congressional hearings are becoming an inevitability.
Obama's attempts at placating Republicans by saying he doesn't want Congressional hearings is becoming more and more untenable. And the moral ambivalence Obama has shown since the release the memos threaten to undermine his own Presidency. Pessure from Democrats to have these hearings will leave Obama with little choice except to reverse himself once again and support them.
His attempts at political expediency is not working. His statements about "looking forward" and opposing the idea of hearings is falling on deaf Democratic ears. And for good reason. There has to be accountability.
Obama has spent his entire political career not taking a stand on anything or trying to stand on both sides of an issue. The press has largely let him get away with it. This time that clearly is not going to work. The torture controversy is not going away.
Bush Administration officials including Dick Cheney and perhaps Bush himself may be forced to make their claims for the first time under oath in front of a Congressional committee and face the consequences if they commit perjury. And having to tell the truth especially in public will be an ordeal that for Dick Cheney and other members of the Bush Administration will certainly be torture.
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