Pelosi Knew About Torture, Colin Powell Did Not: I'm Calling BULLSHIT

[Mr. Ected]

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/04/colin_powell_no_meeting_on_tor.html


The most riveting passage in retired Army Gen. Colin Powell's conversation with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow -- Aries, both, the interviewer noted -- involves what the former secretary of state knew about the interrogation of suspected terrorists on his watch.

There were regular "principal's meetings,'' our former colleague, Jan Crawford Greenberg, of ABC News now, first reported of the Bush administration's consultations on the conduct of interrogation. This included conferences of several of the highest-level members of the Bush administration, including Powell.

"There was no meeting on torture,'' Powell told Maddow of those meetings, and they did not conduct "play by play'' discussions of the techniques being used on some of the highest-value targets,-- at least not in the meetings that he attended.

Powell maintains that it was always his position in those sessions that any interrogation must adhere to the strictures of the Geneva Convention. But he also allows that the full story of this saga remains to be told, and may be revealed some day in "the written record'' of those meetings.

" It is constantly said that the meetings - I had an issue with this - we had meetings on what torture to administer,'' Powell says. "The only meetings I recall were where we talked about what is it we can do with respect to trying to get information from individuals who were in our custody.''

As for that question of "torture,'' he maintained, "It is a legal issue, and I think we have to be very careful and I have to be very careful, because I don't want to be seen as implicating anybody or accusing anybody because I don't have the complete record on this. And that complete record I think in due course will come out.''


Let's see those records. Now.

[babylonsister]

1. Nice catch, and good point. Yet no one questions Powell's

knowledge or lack thereof. rethugs and their different standards-yet another example.

[shadowknows69]

7. Powell was Bushies front man on creating the whole "war on terror", bullshit Iraq link.

The chances that Colon Powell didn't know what was going on are about the same odds that I'll be elected Pope someday.

[Solly Mack]

2. You won't ever hear me say Powell didn't know

or wasn't actively a part of the process.

His own words give him away.

First he says: "'There was no meeting on torture,' Powell told Maddow"

Then he says:

"The only meetings I recall were where we talked about what is it we can do with respect to trying to get information from individuals who were in our custody.''

Well, Duh! Powell is playing the word game here...we didn't talk torture...we just talked about what we could do to get information out of the detainees.

And what they talked about was which "enhanced interrogation technique" to use...and we all know that those "enhanced interrogation techniques" were torture, as well as cruel, degrading and humiliating treatment (all war crimes)

He knew. He took a role.

And some of us have always said so

[Mr. Ected]

3. Colonel Wilkerson Knew

Ergo, Colin Powell knew.

Powell has spent years trying to undo the damage he contributed to during his days as SoS.

But what happened, happened.

The written reports won't lie.

[Solly Mack]

4. He can't undo it...not really

He can and should pay the price for being involved in torture - just like the rest of them should

Sure, he can be sorry for it. Sure, he can express remorse. Sure, he can try and get more information out there....but none of that should change the fact that he still should be held accountable for his role.

[madokie]

5. When it comes right down to it

Powell is not an honorable man. Remember My Lai
I met, briefly knew one of the murderers in that incidence. It drove him crazy, I suspect he was already nuts but this sent him over the edge no doubt. butch grover was his name, killing was his game. Tried to kill myself and a couple of my friends, he didn't we won. Finally put a couple rounds through his own head, even though some of us wondered if maybe his wife helped with that second one. She was a beautiful girl and got caught up in the excitement of the times. The poor girl I'm sure is still having nightmares of her times with butch all these years later.

Murderer in this case is the right word as a Soldier he wasn't, a Trooper maybe but never a Soldier. Soldiers are honorable, he wasn't and neither was/is Colon in my book.

[Solly Mack]

6. I agree.