Torture Nation
I'll have much more on this as the week goes on.
"Torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."
In keeping with tristero's advice to keep talking about the immorality of torture, I thought I would reprise some of my earlier posts on the subject. There are, sadly, many of them.
In case anyone's wondering about the specific torture methods that are considered legal in the various gulags we now have around the world, there has been some work done on this by Human Rights Watch, even before Abu Ghraib. They found that at the "detention centers" in Afghanistan, torture as it was defined under the Geneva Convention was used routinely, often against innocent civilian...read on
I"m tired of waiting for congress to get of their collective asses and do something! We are not just doing this for our reputation, we have to for our nations soul! Americans better realize what they have done. To travel, already people are claiming they are Canadian. If we let this administration to get away with this. Our reputation will be permanantly damaged.
This kind of thing has been tried for many many years. In the John Adams Docudrama Prt 6, they were trying to do this stuff in the late 1700 and into the early 1800's but at that time we had leaders who followed the Constitution to the letter, not the traitorous, treacherous, treasonous, unconstitutional types (NeoCons) that now occupy the highest offices in the land.
If you never read the book "John Adams" I would highly recommend it.
im glad to know that i can break the law, twist the wording to my benefit and get out scott-free!
THANKS BUSHCO!
P.D. @ 1:
I own many shirts that say Italy (my second language) and claim that heritage many times, just to avoid the embarrassment this idiot in office has caused.
Dick Cheney to Star in ‘Torture Club’ (A Production of 14th Century FOX)
Don Davis @ 5:
Great picture of who we need to remember for war trials.
♣Bangkok Bob♠ @ 6:
Don Davis @ 5:
Fredo must be under the table taking "care" of Dick.
the united states of america~
the land where concerns about boxers v briefs trumpet concerns about foreign policy; the land where 'who are you wearing' is a crucial question; the land where the populace is more knowledgable about american idol contestants over the presidential candidates; the land that substitutes watching for doing; the land that elevates the likes of paris hilton to fame; etc....
we are the torture nation, and a tortured nation. and we have seen that as long as you have enough apologists and the favor of the msm you can truly get away with anything. laws? hee hee, that is soooo 20th century.
our apathy and ignorance seems to have come home to roost.
Congress needs to investigate. Those who approved the torture should be punished for war crimes. Our judicial system should step up also. The Repubs should be the most outraged, because their party is now the party of torturers.
crap, 'knowledgeable'... not the best word to butcher...
Bangkok, This is unprecidented. Americans ashamed? It's so depressing, I can hardly bear it. And just think if McCain wins. I think I'll drink Drano.
below_me @ 3:
NO, you (being the average citizen), cannot break the law with impunity. Let us hope they (being our woeful leaders) have not broken the law with impunity.
Let the war crimes tribunal begin.
by this definition, rape would not be torture.
And people in the United States wonder why there is such a thing as terrorism. The torture stated in the article is a good way to drive a person to it out of revenge. I can only imagine the vicious hatred those detainees and others that know it is happening must must feel.
Thanks John, Digby, for keeping this issue on top. This unitary executive government is a whopper. As candidates spar, none is asked what his/her justice dept. will look like, what his/her AG will do to retroactively prosecute and rescind what the current gang has done. The lifetime judicial appointments made by Bush should be considered invalid given confirmation of what we have known for years now. Who will do it?
Bush is in a fight to cover his ass.
We cant believe we have to even discuss this.
No Torture. No Exceptions
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2008/0801.torture.html
The media isn't even reporting this. All we have is the 'bitter' controversy(???). The MSM is so bad anymore, I find myself looking at old episode of 'Married with Children'. WTF!
So when will the oh-so-righteous booscho bring back crucifixion?
The Smiths @ 16:
I find it torturous to even discuss boosh's pimpled wrinkled up ass.
G "Dubya" B: "It's not torture if the President does it."
Joe O. @ 14:
which might just be the most uber-frustrating aspects of this whole crime.
of course, the reichwing has NO idea what it is doing nor talking about when it comes to terrorism, its causes and its spread...
...my dream is to combine the fast food concept of the McDonalds' "value meal " and global police state torture, then nestle it on a toasted bun with secret sauce and serve it proudly to the world .....................with my head held high
If I hear anymore about this 'Bitter' bullshit I'm going to scream! Meanwhile it is reported (on internet) that 10 soldiers died today. I swear if I didn't know any better, I'd swear the media's trying to manipulate me? Just a thought.
NO form of torture is ever appropriate. Srsly. If the interrogators can't get answers to their questions they should just get off their lazy asses and find it elsewhere. Do local police departments use torture? (usually?) No of course not, they get off their butts and interview the public and investigate. The CIA is just too damn lazy to go to where the terrorists live and interview their friends & family.
This doesn't matter, c'mon. After all, Obama "slandered" small town folks. THAT's where the outrage is!!!
Innocent civilians are not the only ones permanently injured by torture. Just ask anyone who has been to PTSD groups in the VA, and you'll find kids who will never be normal again. The former Army interrogator in my group returned from Afghanistan so messed up, I don't know if he'll make it.
If anything would make the draft-dodging conservatives who started these wars start to reconsider their stupidity, it might be this article.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR200702...
Send it to your biggest "supporter" of our troops.
gkam @ 26:
Thanks for the link to that article. I know one particular person that really could use a slap in the face. I've tried to warn him as I have been in the service myself (Infantry MOS) but he still wanted to be an Army Interrogator.
Authorizing and ordering torture IS a capital crime under US law!! Is it really 4 years that I've been screaming that now?
Speaking of the CIA, I so often hear about how Republican and Democratic candidates have strong messages on the campain trail on some subject or another and then you hear a story about how shortly before they take office some CIA dudes show up at their house and show them that they're really just pawns in the new world order.
WTH? I thought Clinton was going to be relaxing the immigration laws when he entered office, but the CIA showed up and he didn't. I thought Bush was going to stop the US from subsidizing the Israeli government, but he didn't either.
I really wish we could get a President who would just tell the CIA to go [expletive omitted] and let them make up their own foreign policy.
Dr. Acula @ 25:
All weekend long and so far today, I've not heard a word about torture, instead the "Obama words" are being talked about as though that was torture. I cannot understand this. If the president of France had made the admission that bush did, it would be nonstop on tv.
Where is Obama and Hillary on this issue? Why aren't they hammering McCrazy on this day in and day out? The only way the msm will cover any of this, is if Hillary and Obama start making it a public issue. Dems need to demand that Obama and Hillary make it a issue.
emphasa @ 29:
This story cannot be covered enough. As horrible as they've been on other matters, I think war and torture remain the worst abuses of the Bush administration.
Isn't it about time we start seeing G.I. Joe torture accessory toy sets?
It could be called the "Freedom Series" toy kit.
Joe O. @ 27:
Not going to help. The die-hard neo-cons won't believe anything they hear or read unless it comes from Faux news.
emphasa @ 29:
OH REALLY???
Dr. Acula @ 36:
Yeah. For the life of me I can't find where I saw this recently, but I'll try to provide a citation for my assertions. (Assuming the source I read it from was accurate.)
P.D. @ 11:
Wow, lost everything here for a while. I could get local Inet but not the news-groups. I'm guessing the anonymous servers went off for a while. most ex-pats use them here, other wise you can't get to places like You-Tube and also you can't be traced.
Any, yeah PD, things are like that now and have been for the last few years. Americans hide their real ident.
Batocchio @ 33:
The msm doesn't have time to cover things like torture, they have to cover that very important issue, about what Obama thinks about folks in small town america
emphasa @ 29:
something about that just doesn't sound accurate....
just sayin'
What qazplm said. So good to know rape is now a valid interrogation technique in Republican eyes. Did any woman ever participate in these torture talks?
(I mean a woman who has had sex. With a man. oh SNAP!)
How can we possibly talk about Bush-approved torture, when Obama said the word "bitter"?
Samson- @ 40:
P.D. @ 23:
Uhh! Mission accomplished.
emphasa @ 43:
i would be curious to read that article you mentioned.
substitute 'corporate thug' for 'CIA' and you're on to something
Bah, I screwed up the Blockquote above, what I meant to say was:
Meh. You’re probably right, cuz now I can’t find where I read this recently. Maybe I just imagined it because I’m so mad about all the presidential candidates. oy… I need to chill out.
Dick Cheney = The sadistic neighbor kid from Toy Story, Sid.
Samson- @ 40:
Ya think?!
Of the two big news stories that broke April 11, one had legs, and the other apparently did not: President Bush confesses he's a war criminal, so let's change the subject to Barack Obama's elitism. You would think that John McCain and Hillary Clinton could have spared a few words about White House crimes that made everything for which Richard Nixon faced impeachment seem like child's play, but apparently they were too busy piling on.
Is this torture?
Wait for it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpDRl2uD3_c
Has anyone ever bothered to understand exactly WHY the US practices torture? They're not stupid--they know it only extracts false confessions, which they don't need anyway in their kangaroos secret Tribunal courts,and has made a global pariah out of the US. So exactly why does it still do it?
The only person I know of who has given the most compelling answer is Naomi Wolf in "The End of America"--she says convincingly that it is for the same reason all the other dictatorships practiced torture: Not to punish, or for revenge etc, but to use as a defense if ever charged with war crimes, and the more (false) confessions they have the better their defense, or so they believe. It always starts out with "them", leaving the civilian population complacent even feeling safer. But it slowly involves the general "normal" population with time.Always, she says.
There must be war crimes tribunals. Everybody from Bush and his crew down to the gaurds who are disgracing their uniforms and their respective military services, must be brought to justice. There is a shit stain on this country that will never otherwise be removed.
mystic @ 51:
which might not be a good tactic if they were put on trial FOR torture... might backfire.
Pelosi and Reid will do nothing as they favor all that Bush does. Since they do absolutely nothing to stop him, they must be 'for him' and not 'against him'.
Although I don't mean it, I am tempted to recommend that we don't try these folk for torture - that would not allow us to use it on them to get to the bottom of what has happened to our country.
Paul @ 52:
Though the way the world sees it at the moment, it's that country that is the shit stain on the world......
qazplm @ 13:
Plenty of that going on in Iraq, though it's OK they killed the whole family to cover it up ..........
P.D. @ 11:
Samson- @ 8:
ashamed ? ........ that would take acceptance and understanding ....... which would be a first, though if all that voted Bush and who are voting McCain were water boarded with Drano, that might go some way to helping.
Like you couldn't possibly imagine, and it's going to get a LOT worse. The rest of the world is on damage limitation mode now, and just has to keep americons at home and not spreading that ignorance and apathy around the world when they flee the ship.
P.D. @ 1:
And by proxy it's insulting to Canadians, I'm lucky I live here at the moment (though I'm not North American) so when I meet americons travelling and lying about it, I call them on it. The ones that come up here shouting about how great they are and how all should bow before them, then throw US dollars at people in bars/shops etc .....
Though as for admitting what you've been doing for you years, I don't think will ever happen from the country, irregardless of a few individuals who've actually read a book. The US is wholly based on finger pointing and blame now (i.e. Karl Rove approach to "discussion"), humble/modest/introspective aren't words in the US dictionary and part of the reason why the people are going to pay dear when they travel for it, and rightly so.
Good luck !!
You people are totally naive to think that torture and other repressive measures have not been a part of US military culture WELL before Bush. It was JFK after all who convinced the French government to send senior officers who had developed torture and other counterinsurgency methods in Algeria to Fort Bragg, NC, in 1961. Coincidence that the situation in Southeast Asa was beginning to heat up? I think not. Spare me the hyperbole about "the last eight years" because this type activity has gone on for fifty years and no one has given a damn, including the Democratic Party.
DS @ 57:
So You think it's a partisan issue? Really? Please GOD save Me from thoughtless morons! Dems did it so it's OK? IS THAT wahy You are saying?
And by the way,I LOVE the premise 'You people'. It's a dead giveaway to NEOCON Land.
DS @ 57:
'We people' say it's WRONG. Anytime Anywhere. Period. Over and Out. Is THAT plain enough?
David Hawes @ 60:
And bye the way-'this type activity (as You call it) has gone on as long as Humans have been on earth. Native Americans routinley tortured their captives. So .....Shall the Human race go beyond destroying Itself? Or Use the brain it Has to carry on?
David Hawes @ 59:
Actually I'm Canadian and support the NDP; my party would never vote to demolish the constitution or support the Iraq war like some Democrats did. Furthermore, I'm not an idiot - I understand that these types of practices have gone on for a long time; I would just add that I think its completely hypocritical for people to point out that Japanese officials were prosecuted after WWII for waterboarding, and yet never mention that the American military performed the same actions in the Philippines forty years earlier. My point was that this has been institutionalized within the United States military, starting with Kennedy's decision (yes, a Democratic President) in 1961 to open the Psychological Warfare Training Center at Fort Bragg. And yet I hear nothing from Democrats about this fact. If you want to have a dialogue about torture, the House Oversight Committee should immediately convene an inquest into the use of torture by the military: when has it been used, but more importantly, when did it start? But this will never happen, just like Vietnam - let's all sweep it under the rug and feel good about ourselves.
FRANCE RULES!
France was right all along. And the USA all wrong, all the time. Heckuva job Yanks!
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