Colin Powell's "Number One" Denounces Torture

Too Much, Even For Some War Criminals

POINT (1/2): The authorization of forced nudity, beatings, drownings and psychological terrorism (e.g. exploiting detainees' insectophobia) are bound to cost George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, et al., their freedom. All these war criminals belong in prison.

POINT (2/2): Richard Armitage is a war criminal for having sold the American war of aggression against Iraq. He betrayed the identity of a secret governmental official whose husband had attacked his (i.e. the Bush) administration's justification for invading Iraq. He has recently denounced waterboarding as a form of torture.

READ (1/7): "In 1998, (Richard) Armitage signed "The Project for the New American Century" letter (PNAC Letter) to President Bill Clinton (urging) the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power in Iraq (because it) might develop weapons of mass destruction."

READ (2/7): "During the 2000 Presidential election campaign, he (Armitage) served as a foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush (and the) United States Senate confirmed him as Deputy Secretary of State on March 23, 2001 (...)."

READ (3/7): "A close associate of Secretary of State Colin Powell, Armitage was regarded, along with Powell, as a moderate within the presidential administration of George W. Bush. (...) Armitage tendered his resignation on November 16, 2004, the day after Powell announced his resignation as Secretary of State."

READ (4/7): "On May 10, 2006, he was elected to the board of directors of the ConocoPhillips oil company."

READ (5/7): On September 7, 2006, "Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said (...) he was the initial source (...) that disclosed the CIA's previously secret employment of Valerie Plame, the wife of a prominent critic of the U.S. war in Iraq."

WATCH (1/1): "Richard Armitage Denounces Torture"

Note (1/2): Cenk Uygur explains why: (a) "looking forward" does not mean ignoring war crimes; (b) "remedial" consequences begin with punitive ones; and, (c) recognizing how the United States Congress failed to provide proper "oversight" bears on neither the Bush administration's crimes (e.g. torture) nor the necessity of redressing them through severe legal prosecutions, convictions and sentences.

Note (2/2): Cenk Uygur considers it rational to be "generous" with former Bush administration officials (i.e. "he's one of the good guys") at the "expense" of other antagonists (e.g. Dick Cheney), when the actual "good guys" fought Armitage's propaganda meant to sell aggressive war, the supreme international crime, under which "subservient" war crimes, including torture, took place (e.g. Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse).

LINK (1/1): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snpjg4J_2X0

READ (6/7): Former Bush Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (2001-2005) Douglas J. Feith relates a State Department policy paper (“The Future of Iraq”) was distributed by Richard Armitage at the "Deputies Lunch" on July 25, 2002, several months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq ("Shock and Awe").

READ (7/7): "The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which followed World War II, called the waging of aggressive war 'essentially an evil thing... to initiate a war of aggression...is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.'"^[1]