Rove 'proud' of US waterboarding terror suspects

A senior adviser to former US President George W Bush has defended tough interrogation techniques, saying their use helped prevent terrorist attacks.

In a BBC interview, Karl Rove, who was known as "Bush's brain", said he "was proud we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists".

He said waterboarding, which simulates drowning, should not be considered torture ...

Mr Rove has just written a memoir, Courage and Consequence, in which he defends the two terms of the Bush administration as "impressive, durable and significant".

BBC NEWS  12 Mar 2010    A Violent Aggressive Culture    Torture

'Proud that waterboarding made world safer'

Currently, with the possible exception of Turkey, Islamic communities take their political thought from the Koran, demanding the implementation of "Sharia Law".

Democracy is, under Sharia Law, regarded as offering a licence 'to sin'.

The notion that one should draw political policies from the Bible - apart from the influence of the Sermon on the Mount on early socialists - is one which would meet with incredulity in most European post-Christian nations.

However, there are Christian groups who still believe that the Bible does provide explicit information which should influence policy.

In the case of one government, this is drawn from an unlikely source: The Book of Revelation.

There are differing views as to the meaning of the Book of Revelation - it has been argued that it is a coded attack on the Roman Empire - but it has been possible for the more credulous to read into it almost anything they fancy might become true. It's a Biblical alternative to Nostradamus.

The suggestion that when the Jews returned to Israel, the Second Coming of Christ to establish His Kingdom on earth would be imminent, has a strong appeal in Washington:

For four years, Americans have lived under an administration that holds twice-weekly bible classes in the White House and daily prayer meetings at the Department of Justice. The Christian right is no stranger to Washington's corridors of power.

But an unholy combination of a born-again president, a burgeoning family-values movement, and the canny political strategies of Karl Rove has delivered to today's Christian fundamentalists an unprecedented influence over American government.

As Esther Kaplan shows in this fast-paced investigation, no condom fact sheet or obscure drug advisory panel is too small to escape the roving eyes of Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, or the many other political advocacy arms of the evangelical right.

While organizations that promote family planning and sex education are the targets of relentless audits, church groups receive hundreds of millions in federal dollars for programs promoting sexual abstinence, faith-based social services and marriage training, especially for the poor.

Religious considerations even shape the government's foreign aid policies and its war on terror.

Thus Amazon.co.uk's synopsis of the following book:

How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House, Esther Kaplan

Follow this link to Amazon.com for an intriguingly different review of:

... The Book of Revelation refers to "a thousand years" several times, and end-timers have thought that this is a clue that the Rapture will occur around the time of the millennium. Revelation also gives a special role for the city of Jerusalem and these two things help bring about this alliance, overcoming what one might think is an unbridgeable chasm. As Lyons says "Ironically, given American fundamentalism's historic ambivalence about Jews, it was the 1948 founding of Israel, coming as it did near the end of the millennium, that gave the End Times prophecy industry a boost." The true believers see this conjunction of events as a sign of the beginning of the end.

As a result, Christian fundamentalists have become some of the strongest boosters of Israel and the most implacable foes of Islam, supporting even Israel's most hard-line policies on settlement expansion, seeing all these things as fulfillment of Biblical prophecy that the end times are near. Belief in the rapture and seeking to hasten its arrival trumps everything else. At the broadcaster's convention, Hedges says that:

The [American] Christian writer Kay Arthur, who can barely contain her tears when speaking of Israel, professes that although she loves America, if she had to choose between America and Israel, "I would stand with Israel, stand with Israel as a daughter of the King of Kings, stand according to the word of God." She goes on to quote at length from Revelation, speaking of Jesus seated on a throne floating about Jerusalem as believers are raptured up towards him into the sky." ...

Mano Singham's Web Journal

Imperial theology and Corporate fundamentalism, February 19, 2007

By Preston C. Enright

Hedges does a great job of exposing how the Christian Right serves fascism - fascism defined as the marriage of corporate power and the government, along with beligerent nationalism and the utilization of state violence.

There's no better example of that marriage than our massive military industrial complex and the growing prison industrial complex.

It can be difficult to get normal, healthy human beings to support invasions, overthrows, economic injustice and global class war; but when people like Pat Robertson and James Dobson are there to put a smiley, pious face on it, then "good" Americans will rally behind the cause of Christo-fascism.

Hedges isn't the only one sounding this warning, Michael Weinstein's "With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in the US Military" touches on the same themes.

While Weinstein has first-hand experience as a member of the US Air Force, Hedges' experience comes from living in the countries that have suffered the violence of our so-called Christian nation.

He has been to Guatemala, El Salvador, the Occupied Territories, Iraq and many other parts of the world where our investment in war and our training of proxy armies has killed thousands upon thousands of people.

Pat Robertson has been particularly supportive of dictators that the US likes, such as Charles Taylor in Liberia, and Rios Montt in Guatemala. Robertson was also in Nicaragua to support the terrorist Contra army that the US created.

Not surprisingly, the high priests of Christo-fascism, people like Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager and others spend countless hours on this nation's airwaves to rally the troops.

Oftentimes accusing our victims of the sort of terror and plans for world domination that our masters of war have been implementing for generations.

That's one aspect of this pseudo-Christian movement Hedges should've spent more time on, the role of right-wing talk radio to misinform an intellectually vulnerable segment of the US population.

Then again, there are those who simply want to be deceived, since they are the ones who have been pulling the triggers on the Apache attack helicopters and the .50 caliber machine guns.

As Sinclair Lewis said, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross."

It's here.

For some hopeful suggestions as to what to do about it, I read journals like Sojourners, Utne Reader and Yes! magazine, and support progressive media efforts like "Democracy Now!" and "Head on Radio" with Bob Kincaid.

Amazon.com 19 February 2007