In my previous post, Bush on waterboarding: ‘Damn right’, I quoted from a news article quoting from George Bush’s memoir.

The former president writes, “His understanding of Islam was that he had to resist interrogation only up to a certain point. Waterboarding was the technique that allowed him to reach that threshold, fulfill his religious duty, and then cooperate.” Bush elaborates that Zubaydah gave him a direct instruction, “‘You must do this for all the brothers.’”

I asked why Bush wasn’t suspicious that this instruction from Zubaydah had been coerced from him.

I may have to give credit to the Cheney forces for some humanity after all.  Perhaps they didn’t coerce Zubaydah into making that statement.  Perhaps they were kind enough to just lie to the President about it.

I can picture it now, Cheney turns to an aide and says, “Bush is about to go soft on torture.  What can we do to ease his conscience so that he doesn’t take to drink again?”

The aide and Cheney hatch this plot to concoct this unbelievable directive from Zubaydah.  They knew that Bush was so troubled by what was going on that he would grasp at any straw to assuage his guilt.

Remember that Zubaydah’s attorneys said that after Zubaydah’s 83 waterboardings,  Zubaydah’s mind had been so destroyed that he was unable to contribute to his own defense.  Yet we are to believe he wrote a lucid directive to President Bush? Maybe it wasn’t humanity on Cheney’s part, maybe they couldn’t get anything more from Zubaydah.

If you read the book “The Shock Doctrine” you will learn how the idea of destroying a person’s mind came to be an acceptable goal in psychiatric circles. I know some of this information first hand without having to have read it in the book.

Anyway, Cheney and his aide were probably horrified to see this line published in his memoir.  They knew that people with a clear conscience wouldn’t fall for such nonsense.

This only apparently applies to people with clear conscience.  Even Bush’s main speech writer repeated this nonsensical claim in a debate moderated by Christine Amanpour.