At the end of the day on Mar. 29th, Total Coalition KIA between Afghanistan and Iraq stood as follows:

Afghanistan: 2 KIA for a Total of 103

Iraq: 6 KIA for a Total of 83

So, the Earliest Bush could have received an Official Report that there were 183, or more, Total KIAs between Afghanistan and Iraq would have been the Morning of March 30, 2003.

How about Bush’s Idea of Revenge?

Total Coalition KIA in Afghanistan – 2001 thru March 2003: 104

Total Coalition KIA in Iraq – thru March 2003: 92

For a Total of 196 thru the end of March 2003.

Since we invaded Iraq beginning March 19th, the -

Total Coalition KIA in Afghanistan and Iraq would have been 183 – Sometime in Late March, 2003.

Well, Daddy Bush headed up the CIA for awhile. Did he tell Jr. about those things?

I’m inclined to think that a lot of people knew about the techniques though.

They may have wanted false confessions and show trials, but they also wanted intel, and they got some, too.

Both the North Koreans and North Vietnamese were not really concerned about getting “intelligence”, since most of the valuable stuff was compartmentalized away from those most likely to be captured in combat. They wanted confessions and show trials for propaganda purposes. The old “name, rank, and serial number” limitations resulted in dead soldiers, and a collapse of morale.

They may have wanted confessions and show trials, but they also wanted confessions, and they got some, too. I’ll produce the evidence in an article quite soon here at FDL.

If the torturers said, early on, that the waterboarding would only stop if and when the victim tells them what they want to hear, then a combination of wanting to be consistent and/or mere you-vs-us stand-off machismo would make them keep going.

Ever heard a parent say “we’ll sit here until you [e.g.] eat your vegetables”? Same thing. Smaller scale.

You don’t waterboard someone 183 times simply because you’re looking for a false confession. You do it because, to a sadist, torturing someone over and over again is a lot of fun. If the actual torturers/sadists escape any kind of criminal accountability (as appears likely, since everyone appears to want to give them a pass, as long as we can nail the lawyers and Cheney, Rummy, Rice, et al.) then we will continue to employ a gang of sadists in the C.I.A. — sadists who, in 15-20 years, will be running the C.I.A., or, as we see in the cases of Cheney and Rummy, sadists who will take their positions at the highest level of our government.

The entire criminal operation should be cleaned out from top to bottom. If not, torture will always be an option for future presidents (and their enablers) to consider when they need a short-cut for extorting confessions — or when, as is the case with Bush and Cheney, they enjoy inflicting pain on helpless people.

The English legal historian James Stephen explained these matters well over a century ago:

“During the discussions that took place on the Indian Code of Criminal Procedure of 1872 some observations were made on the reasons which occasionally lead native police officers to apply torture to prisoners. An experienced civil officer observed, ‘There is a great deal of laziness in it. It is far pleasanter to sit comfortably in the shade rubbing red pepper into a poor devil’s eyes than it is to go around in the sun hunting up evidence.’ This was a new view to me, but I have no doubt as to its truth.”

–J.F. Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England, Vol. 1, 442, n.1 (1883)