I had thought that it was the height of stupidity that the Bush administration sanctioned torture techniques known to be used to extract false confessions and not so much reliable intelligence (as in, totally unreliable). But now there are indications that it may not have been stupid at all: it may have been much worse than that. It’s beginning to sound like false confessions were exactly what they wanted.
With the release of the Senate Armed Services Committee report reviewing torture under the Bush administration, the possibility is raised that the torture was motivated by the Bush administration’s desire to link Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein even if it was through false confessions. It’s bad enough that torture was considered acceptable, but it is just evil that torture may have been used to support a political agenda. Then again, it would fit right in with the attitude of the Bush administration, which had consistently acted as if wishful thinking is a substitute for reality.