Republicans Are Touting War Crimes!

Republicans are becoming desperate.  They can’t afford for America to learn that they lied about strength all these years, and are really pitifully weak on national security.  So they are trying to horn in on the credit and make it seem as though Texas Torquemada had a hand in bin Laden’s end.  Clinton deserves some credit for warning Bush.  Obama deserves more credit for having the courage to lead.  The troops who carried out the mission and the intelligence professionals who made it possible deserve the most credit of all.  Bush and his Republican minions deserve none whatsoever, but I’ll get to why after dealing with the absurd claims that it was their war crimes that made it happen.

The Navy SEAL’s successful mission, authorized by President Obama, to get Osama bin Laden sent the right-wing into a tizzy over giving credit where due. While many Republicans praised Obama’s leadership, others contorted bin Laden’s death into praise and justification of the Bush administration methods, most notably waterboarding. After learning that information regarding bin Laden’s courier came from detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Bush torture apologists [propaganda lies delinked] immediately insisted that waterboarding was a key technique in securing the vital information. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) quipped, “Wonder what President Obama thinks of water boarding now?”

On Fox’s O’Reilly Factor yesterday, House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King (R-NY) jumped on the waterboarding bandwagon. When host Bill O’Reilly asked for him to “tell us something new,” King immediately that the courier information was obtained through waterboarding, adding that those “who say it should be stopped and never used again, we got vital information which directly led us to bin Laden”…

…Watch it:

 

“That is absolutely fascinating,” O’Reilly later responded. “You’re not going to hear that on other networks.” There’s a good reason. According to former Bush officials, Mohammed, in fact, “did not reveal the names while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding.” He identified the names months later under “standard interrogation, they said.” The C.I.A actually obtained the courier’s name by placing “more agents in the field” in 2005 and “intercepting telephone calls and e-mail messages between the [courier’s] family and anyone inside Pakistan. From there they got his full name… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Think Progress>

So once again it becomes clear that Republicans are covering their own weakness with lies.  Lawrence O’Donnell and Interrogator Mark Fallon further debunk this Republican attempt to deceive America.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Fallon was certainly in a position to know.

Now, if memory serves, in December 2001, the Taliban offered to hand over Osama, but Bush refused.  He wanted a war of conquest to take over the country and build a gas pipeline for his energy cronies.  Had Bush acted responsibly, there would have been no war in Afghanistan and no excuse to invade Iraq.  Bush and his Republican minions deserve zero credit, because none of this would have been necessary, if not for their duplicity, incompetence and greed.