…it can turn you into a raving maniac, like soldier Joshua Tabor, who was found wandering around his neighborhood wearing a helmet and threatening to break people’s windows. Back inside his home, he beat his four year old daughter, and then waterboarded her because she couldn’t say her alphabet.

He’s an army of one, he is.

Condoleeza Rice was already infamous for deceiving Congress about the nature of the briefing given to George W. Bush just before the attacks of September 11, 2001. Now her name will be forever linked to torture.

At a meeting with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Colin Powell that was approved by George W. Bush himself, Condoleeza Rice gave her strong endorsement to the use of torture by CIA agents against prisoners.

Rice told the CIA, “This is your baby. Go do it!”

What kind of sadist would refer to torture as a “baby”? The Condoleeza Rice kind of sadist.

If John McCain chooses Condoleeza Rice as his running mate, we’ll know that he is that same kind of sadist as well.

More than that, George W. Bush has now admitted that he approved those torture techniques for use by agents of the American government.

By approving torture, George W. Bush was in violation of domestic federal law, and in violation of the Geneva Conventions, a treaty approved by Congress with the force of law within the United States. That makes President Bush a criminal – but more than that, a war criminal.

There is no question now – George W. Bush has acknowledged that he participated in activities that are obviously high crimes.

Don’t let anyone ever say that it’s a mystery what happened at Abu Ghraib. George W. Bush knew that torture tactics had been approved, because he approved them. Remember when George W. Bush said that the torture by Americans at Abu Ghraib had been due to just a “few bad apples”? Well, there were bad apples, that’s for sure, but what President Bush never said is that he knew very well that the most rotten apples of all were right in the White House.

The policies that led to the Abu Ghraib torture came right from the top – from George W. Bush himself. That fact is beyond dispute now.

Impeachment by Congress is not enough. George W. Bush should be handed over to an International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, put on trial, and sent to prison for the rest of his life.

Explaining why he vetoed legislation from Congress that would have explicitly outlawed waterboarding and other forms of torture, George W. Bush said that “The bill would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror.” With that statement, President Bush is on the record as saying that torture is regarded by his White House as among the “most valuable tools” against terror.

Americans who know how to think will regard this statement as strange, given that the purpose of torture is to encourage compliance through the creation of terror.

So, the Bush White House is using terror as a tool in the War on Terror. That suggests to me that the War on Terror is not really a war against terror at all. We ought to call it a War For Terror or a War Of Terror instead.

Case in point: The LED Incapacitator.

The LED Incapacitator is a special kind of flashlight that is designed to emit light in certain patterns and wavelengths in such a way as to force people to vomit.

The blog Mind Modulations says of the LED Incapacitator that it could be used to bring “a bad guy” into custody.

Substitute “criminal suspect” for “bad guy”. This LED Incapacitator may be nonlethal, but it is a form of physical and psychological attack.

The same blog relays the idea that a larger could be used against “a mob”.

Substitute “group of protesters” for “mob”, and you see another way in which this kind of attack technology can go terribly wrong.

We know that our government follows the Joseph Lieberman school of torture: That so long as you don’t leave a permanent mark, you can inflict whatever kind of suffering you want to against prisoners and criminal suspects.

The LED Incapacitator is one more instrument of torture that can be used by the Homeland Security goons against us.