Pain Report Update — Hey, Egypt Me!
Qaeda-Iraq Link U.S. Cited Is Tied to Coercion Claim Reports The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 – The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.
Well, okay, so maybe, and I say maybe, we could possibly have started an unprovoked war based on bad data obtained under what we’ll call duress (which is different from torture because we don’t condone or permit torture). But at least you can’t accuse us of being dishonest: When Condoleza Rice told the Europeans earlier this week that our interrogation policies saved lives, did she say our interrogation policies saved everybody’s life? No. Right. She didn’t, see?
It’s so easy now to say, “Oh, boo hoo, two-thousand American soldiers died in Iraq for no reason,” but you’ll never know how many hundreds of thousands of Americans didn’t die in Los Angeles on Oscar night thanks to our interrogation policies now, will you? So would you please pipe down and stop discouraging our troops? These kids are out there getting shot at just to protect us, after all. And just because we happen to momentarily have bit of egg on our tie, doesn’t mean it won’t hurt us even more to look weak-willed, self-hating and cowed.
And the horror of history is? That last bit might be true.