 |
| — The Holy Goat of Sincerity — |
DUBYA AND THE NEO-CONS have got a lot to answer for, according to SLATE's Larry Siems, whose article, "How America Came To Torture Its Prisoners", is a fascinating over-view of the whole criminal process of this sad slide to fascism. High crimes and misdemeanors, indeed. The question remains: will anybody ever be called to account?
Our highest government officials, up to and including President Bush, broke international and U.S. laws banning torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Worse, they made their subordinates in the military and civilian intelligence services break those laws for them.
When the men and women they asked to break those laws protested, knowing they could be prosecuted for torture, they pretended to rewrite the law. They commissioned legal opinions they said would shield those who carried out the abuses from being hauled into court, as the torture ban requires. “The law has been changed,” detainees around the world were told. “No rules apply.”
Then they tortured. They tortured men at military bases and detention centers in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Guantánamo, and in U.S. Navy bases on American soil; they tortured men in secret CIA prisons set up across the globe specifically to terrorize and torture prisoners; they sent many more to countries with notoriously abusive regimes and asked them to do the torturing. At least twice, after the torturers themselves concluded there was no point to further abuse, Washington ordered that the prisoners be tortured some more.
They tortured innocent people. They tortured people who may have been guilty of terrorism-related crimes, but they ruined any chance of prosecuting them because of the torture. They tortured people when the torture had nothing to do with imminent threats: They tortured based on bad information they had extracted from others through torture; they tortured to hide their mistakes and to get confessions; they tortured sometimes just to break people, pure and simple.
And they conspired to cover up their crimes.
When the men and women they asked to break those laws protested, knowing they could be prosecuted for torture, they pretended to rewrite the law. They commissioned legal opinions they said would shield those who carried out the abuses from being hauled into court, as the torture ban requires. “The law has been changed,” detainees around the world were told. “No rules apply.”
Then they tortured. They tortured men at military bases and detention centers in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Guantánamo, and in U.S. Navy bases on American soil; they tortured men in secret CIA prisons set up across the globe specifically to terrorize and torture prisoners; they sent many more to countries with notoriously abusive regimes and asked them to do the torturing. At least twice, after the torturers themselves concluded there was no point to further abuse, Washington ordered that the prisoners be tortured some more.
They tortured innocent people. They tortured people who may have been guilty of terrorism-related crimes, but they ruined any chance of prosecuting them because of the torture. They tortured people when the torture had nothing to do with imminent threats: They tortured based on bad information they had extracted from others through torture; they tortured to hide their mistakes and to get confessions; they tortured sometimes just to break people, pure and simple.
And they conspired to cover up their crimes.
4 comments:
It wasn't new.
The School of the Americas did not come newly minted out of Bush/Cheney's flagrant disregard for restraint. Throwing it in the public's face while claiming known torture procedures were in fact not such was aggravating because falsehood was not even a credible lie.
And the TV show '24' conditioned people with a fictitious scenario 'justifying' something that would not happen in real life.
Some background - and note the report indicating Abu Ghraib was the result of a change in command structure away from professional military police interrogators.
http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/iraq/tagubarpt.html
From Documents in http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.ca/p/topical-index.html Also see Law
If Hookers in Columbia were part of the torture they would be right on it. I am still trying to think of all the people who lost their job over 9/11.
Called to account?! Not without a complete system(ic) reboot.
Let's face it. What's coming is more likely to punish the critics than the crooks.
ICC's Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo is deciding to summons Harper, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He may be tried for crimes against humanity, for his negligence of the F.N. People, as well.
Harper is no Conservative. He is a Neo-Nazi Reformer of his, Northern foundation Party from 1989. The skinheads organized Harper's party for him.
People should read: Harper gives a speech in New York, at the Council of Foreign Relations, Sept 25/2007. Harper made his evil agenda, abundantly clear. Watch out, for the border talks, of the U.S, Canada and Mexico.
Post a Comment