If a Former President Admits to a Warcrime, and the Media Ignore It, Is It Still a Warcrime?

George W. Bush's casual acknowledgment Wednesday that he had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed waterboarded -- and would do it again -- has horrified some former military and intelligence officials who argue that the former president doesn't seem to understand the gravity of what he is admitting.

Waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, is "unequivocably torture", said retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years.

"As a nation, we have historically prosecuted it as such, going back to the time of the Spanish-American War," Irvine said. "Moreover, it cannot be demonstrated that any use of waterboarding by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life."

Irvine told the Huffington Post that Bush doesn't appreciate how much harm his countenancing of torture has done to his country.

"Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," Bush told a Grand Rapids audience Wednesday, of the self-professed 9/11 mastermind. "I'd do it again to save lives."

But, Irvine said: "When he decided to do it the first time, he launched the nation down a disastrous road, and we will continue to pay dearly for the damage his decision has caused.

"We are seen by the rest of the world as having abandoned our commitment to international law. We have forfeited enormous amounts of moral leadership as the world's sole remaining superpower. And it puts American troops in greater danger -- and unnecessary danger."

Granted, America has been fucked up for quite some time, but the fact that a president can unabashedly admit to torture and committing a warcrime, and hardly anyone bats an eye, speaks to how incredibly degenerate we have become.

I almost feel obligated to call my federal representatives, to shout in the streets, to write letters to the editor, to make a giant fuss about this, but then I realize how fruitless it would be to focus on this single outrage when there are SO MANY OUTRAGEOUS THINGS done in the name of the USA that it all becomes overwhelming and practically paralyzing.

HOWEVER, the one thing you can say about this Bush incident is that it is so blatantly wrong, so blatantly outrageous even by official standards, that anyone who denies this is clearly part of the problem.