Reply #9: So why does Bush Co do this? [View All]

I disagree with the OP, who answers that this (use of torture) must be meant to legitimize the "War on Terror" in the eyes of the American public. No, that is not it at all. The Bush Regime uses torture for the same reasons GHWB and Reagan used torture during the American Holocaust in the Central America of the eighties -- i.e., to terrorize a target population for the purpose of breaking its will toward freedom and self-determination. The idea is to create fear, apathy, and silence while the USG furthers its own self-serving agenda.

The USG is not stupid; they know very well about the ineffectiveness of torture as a means to uncover information. The history of the USG and torture, as with all regimes that deploy such means, is one of unleashed terror -- again, it's a means to instill terror into an insurgent population, to create fear and submission, to get one's way. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are not exceptions except we've dropped the pretense of proxy. Now we do it ourselves. And why not? We have a half-century's experience teaching technique to the world's most vile right there in Ft. Benning, Georgia (SOA).

USG foreign policy is in major part about punishing those that show signs of opting out of neo-liberal arrangements that benefit our owning class (this the legacy of Nitze, Kennan, et alia). We don't invade Panama, escort a leader out of Haiti at gunpoint, mine the harbors of Nicaragua, or illegally invade Baghdad because anyone perceives them, in themselves, to be a geniune threat. It's all about crushing the example of alternate models. The capitalist says Greed is Good in one breath and whispers apathy is better in the next -- all the more easy to exploit those who have no hope for a better future!

So leveling a Falujah, setting up shop at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, Eastern Europe, elsewhere -- think of it as a brutal public narrative, meant to be seen by the family and friends of U.S. victims. It is meant to intimidate, and it will grow more shrill (more vile) before it gets better as populations at home and abroad rise up against the USG and shout "ENOUGH!"