"Oil, Lily Pad Bases and Torture"

Post over at Juan Cole - Re: Craig Murray on Manufacturing Terror

The Bush administration has been about "the Greater Middle East" (including Central Asia). It has been about basing rights in those areas. It says it is fighting a "war on terror" that is unlike past wars and may go on for decades. It has been about rounding up and torturing large numbers of Iraqis, Afghans and others. This region has most of the world's proven oil and gas reserves.

Why is the Bush administration so attached to torturing people that it would pressure a supine Congress into raping the US constitution by explicitly permitting some torture techniques and abolishing habeas corpus for certain categories of prisoners?

...torture is what provides evidence for large important networks of terrorists where there aren't really any, or aren't very many, or aren't enough to justify 800 military bases and a $500 billion military budget.

He explained what is really behind the new "lily pad" doctrine of US bases, whereby the US is seeking to encompass the "Greater Middle East" with small bases, each with 1,000 to 3,000 personnel. In emergencies, these bases could quickly swell to 40,000. Like a lily pad, they can "open up" and accommodate a landing frog. Murray said that the US documents are quite open as to why they are seeking the network of lily pad bases around the Middle East. It is because that is where the oil and gas are. If you include the Caspian region, Tengiz, and the gas reserves in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan along with what is in the Persian Gulf, the vast majority of proven oil and gas reserves are in this circle of crisis...

Bush needs torture for the same reason as Karimov does. He needs to generate false information that exaggerates the threat to his regime, so as to justify repression. He needs the ritual of confession and naming others, to have it down on paper so he can show it to Congress behind closed doors. But Bush/Cheney's ambitions are global, not just internal... (more)

Also - see David Corn's post - This Is What Waterboarding Looks Like

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People defending torture are saying things like:

"Flush the geneva convention B.S down the toilet and let's start making the rules as we see fit...."

"These animals understand one thing: violence.... "

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I suppose that those people have heard the pro-torture meme over and over by the right-wing talking heads. I remember the morality debates that we had in high school. Most of us are just amazed that people can condone the sort of thing that had been condemned our entire lives. AFAIC - there is no justification and not only is the torture abominable - it is a crime that our country is turning good people into criminals - people who are required to lose their humanity - to become depraved torturers in the name of "patriotism".