Torture
Thursday, November 24th, 2005
While flying back from Los Angeles I read A Deadly Interrogation, an important and disturbing New Yorker article by Jane Mayer about the C.I.A. using torture outside of the United States.
I urge you to read this article. Now. It’s important that all of us in the US consider how our role in the world is changing and what the ramifications will be in the future. This is very serious stuff.
In response to John McCain’s amendment outlawing torture by the C.I.A. or any other American agency, on or off American soil, President Bush said emphatically: “We do not torture.” He said this while Vice President Dick Cheney was lobbying the Senate to back off on the McCain amendment. They are both liars. We do torture.
How are they justifying this, if not publicly then to themselves?
1. Terrorists are not “people” who are protected by the Geneva Conventions’ anti-torture statutes.
2. It’s against US law to torture people on our soil and we do it in Cuba and Eastern Europe. (McCain’s ammendment would make it illegal for an American to torture anyone anywhere.)
I am furious about this.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest of this “worst in history” administration are not only hateful and mean-spirited but not one of them has ever served in the military and not one of them has the slightest idea of what torture means. They should all be brought before the same court that is hearing the Saddam Husein trial. All of them are war criminals.
My prediction, and I feel nauseous making it, is that if the US continues to torture people as we are, any time a US citizen is captured by terrorists in Iraq or anywhere else, they will be tortured and we will have no legal, ethical or moral leg to stand on.
Note that I said “we” and not “they.” We elected these guys to represent us. Whether we voted for them or not (I did not) they are making US policy that is rapidly changing our place in the world.
I recommend that we push hard to impeach Bush before he does any more damage.
I read with horror the story of a Canadian man who was picked up while transfering flights through the US. He was hauled away without any process whatsoever, taken to a military base and transfered to the a middle eastern country where he was interogated and tortured for more than 6 months with no access to representation.
He wasn’t a terrorist, he was only on a terrorist watchlist because they thought he might have information since he had come into contact with people who had been associated with people on the terrorist watchlist years ago.
I believe he’s now suing the american goverment but without any support from the canadian government who seems to be perfectly happy for its citizens to be snatched and tortured by the americans.
It’s all so hideously pathetic, so many of this administration’s abuses are in the open yet nothing is done, no one is held responsible, there are no consequences, and things just keep rolling along as if nothing had happened. The press is effectively muzzled, the population in general scared into trust and faith.
A house of cards that will hopefully just take a gust of wind to completely collapse.
Miles: It seems like it’s now damaged and if memory served, the early days of Watergate looked like this too. Few took notice of Woodward and Bernstein’s columns in the very early days but after a while they got traction.
Even if the current movement produces an impeachment, for me the issue is how so many Americans voted for this guy the first and second time. He uses fear and intimidation quite effectively but some of us saw through it while he was governor of Texas. How so many people bought the crap he was selling is beyond me and it does not paint a great picture of the American public.
The other related point is that this administration is out to overturn Row v Wade. Why? They believe in life. Well, what the hell are people who believe in life doing torturing people. When Bush was governor of Texas he executed more people than any governor in history. Some belief in life.
I heard first hand the horror stories that have come out of cuba envolving the U.S. Goverment. And not only the military but the people that control the military are involved. What we dont understand when it comes to terrorism the United States is just as guilty as the people we are holding in Cuba right now. We know full well that these people are just guilty of following their goverment like we are.
Ross: right, good points. The military would not be using torture if Rumsfeld and Ashcroft didn’t approve it and recommend it and if Bush didn’t have a double standard on who “people” are.
This is one more example on a larger scale of “you’re either with us or you’re the enemy” and if you’re the enemy you’re a terrorist and we torture terrorists.
I wonder how many US citizens they consider terrorists and how many US citizens are being tortured? Timothy McVeigh was a terrorist and even though we executed him, I doubt we ever tortured him to get more info on who else was involved in his plot.
That is a great point I hope it gives people here somthing to think about
Hi Richard. I think you’re right about the resonances with Watergate. Thing is, this is much worse, and so much damage has been done not only to individuals but to whole countries and to the very credibility of democracy itself, so sullied has the word become under your present administration.
And I feel that the very things that made America great, and admired as a defender of the good, have disappeared behind the clouds of war for the sake of war profits. Every good American has been damaged by your current Government’s actions.
You know my feelings about this, looking in from the outside, and articulated in a post once on the Alphasmart community forum, and how saddened I am to see it.
But as a nation you have another problem, also brought on by Bush and Co to a great extent, and written very clearly in this Alternet post.
Brian, I’m well aware of our debt time bomb. Isn’t it amazing how stupid Americans are. Clinton got our debt as low as it’s been since we’ve had debt, totally balanced the budget and made us feel fat and secure. Bush comes in and overturns all of that because Clinton was stupid enough to have a blow job in the white house.
The problem here is that the middle ground who voted for Bush because of a moral problem with Clinton was not smart enough to realize what they were getting. That’s the part I’m still not happy about and this I can’t hold against Bush: he made very clear what he was going to do and did it. I dind’t like it but the middle ground wasn’t listening and voted for him anyway not really “processing” what he was saying about Iraq, tax cuts, and the like.
Now, they are souring on him but it’s much too late. A lot of damage has been done that will take more than a single presidency to overturn. And, I’m not convinced that if there were an election tomorrow the right person would run opposing him and that Americans would vote for that person.
So, you might ask what I think the cause of this decline is. IMHO the biggest contributor to the dumbing down of America is television.
Because I occasionally take a look at Fox, I can understand that in news terms. But there’s a lot of really good TV out there, both news and public affairs, and in the entertainment and documentary areas, produced in many cases by American broadcasters.
It might be more accurate that it is the TV that people are watching, just like the ‘red top’ tabloid newspapers that they are buying on this side of the world, which is the main culprit.
And for that you have to blame the choice of the people. Which echoes what you feel about the choice of government, I guess.
Don’t know if we’re any better over here, either.
Of course, I don’t blame TV the medium but it seems that many people watch poorly produced content including the crud that fox puts together.
Of course, we watch the NewsHour, Nova, Frontline and more but we’re in a minority, most people watch commercial TV and a lot of it. And, when they’re watching they’re not reading.
The chicken-egg piece of this interests me: did the people who write and produce TV start making more crud and people got used to it or did people’s ability to pay attention diminish enough so that producers and writers had to go further and further into outrageousness to get their attention?
Here’s a very strong alternative to the Fox-style journalism.
Brian: absolutely incredible. Oh my. Thanks, I think.