Bush: "We do not torture"

[moghrabi]

Bush: "We do not torture"

By Tabassum Zakaria 21 minutes ago

The United States will do what it takes to protect itself but "we do not torture," President Bush said on Monday in response to criticism of reported secret CIA prisons and the handling of terrorism suspects.

Bush defended his administration's efforts to stop the U.S. Congress from imposing rules on the handling of terrorism suspects.

He did not confirm or deny the existence of CIA secret prisons that The Washington Post disclosed last week and would not address demands by the International Committee of the Red Cross to have access to the suspects reportedly held at them.

"We are finding terrorists and bringing them to justice," Bush said at a news conference with Panamanian President Martin Torrijos. "We are gathering information about where the terrorists might be hiding. We are trying to disrupt their plots and plans. Anything we do ... to that end in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law."

Vice President Dick Cheney has been spearheading an effort on Capitol Hill to have the CIA exempt from an amendment by Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners.

The exemption would cover the secret prisons that The Post said were located in several eastern European democracies and other countries where key al Qaeda captives are being kept.

"We do not torture and therefore we're working with Congress to make sure that as we go forward, we make it more possible to do our job," Bush said.

He said he was confident that when "people see the facts, that they'll recognize that we've got more work to do and that we've got to protect ourselves in a way that is lawful."

'TERRIBLE MISTAKE'

Bush spoke a day after Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record) told ABC's "This Week" that the Bush administration was making a "terrible mistake" in opposing the McCain amendment.

"Why in the world they're doing that, I don't know. You've got 90 senators out of 100 and that includes many Republicans opposed to it," Hagel said.

Hagel cited the Bush position as an example of the need for the president to widen his net of advisers as a way to regain his credibility with the American people amid sagging poll numbers over the Iraq war, soaring gasoline prices and other troubles.

The Senate voted 90-9 for the McCain amendment to prohibit the use of torture and abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody, adding it to a $440 billion defense spending bill despite a White House veto threat.

The House of Representatives did not include the detainee rules in its version of the bill, and House and Senate negotiators are working out differences for a final bill.

The White House position is that international treaty obligations already on the books governs the treatment of suspects and that the United States is observing those rules.

"There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again. And so you bet we'll aggressively pursue them. But we will do so under the law," Bush said.

(Additional reporting by Vicki Allen in Washington)

 

[moghrabi]

RE: Bush: "We do not tort

Sure the US does not do torture. And my mother was a man.

 

[Jo Canadian]

 

[Ocean Breeze]

PANAMA CITY, Panama Nov 7, 2005 — President Bush vigorously defended U.S. interrogation practices in the war on terror Monday and lobbied against a congressional drive to outlaw torture.

"There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again," Bush said. "So you bet we will aggressively pursue them but we will do so under the law."

He declared, "We do not torture."


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Over White House opposition, the Senate has passed legislation banning torture. With Vice President Dick Cheney as the point man, the administration is seeking an exemption for the CIA. It was recently reported that the spy agency maintains a network of prisons in eastern Europe and Asia, where it holds terrorist suspects.

The European Union is investigating the reports, which have not been confirmed by the White House. The story was first reported by The Washington Post.

"Our country is at war and our government has the obligation to protect the American people," Bush said. "Any activity we conduct is within the law. We do not torture."

Bush pointedly noted that Congress as well as the White House has an obligation to protect U.S. citizens.

Not only is the Republican-controlled Congress challenging an element of Bush's policy, but the Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider a challenge to the administration's handling of military tribunals for foreign terror suspects. The case, which won't be decided for months, is a major test of presidential wartime powers.

The United States is holding hundreds of foreign terrorism suspects, also, at the military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Bush spoke at a news conference with Panamanian President Martin Torrijos on last day of five-day Latin America trip. Bush was ending the day in Virginia, where he was to campaign for Republican gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore just ahead of Election Day.

On another issue, Bush ducked a question about the CIA leak investigation, declining to say whether he has lived up to his campaign pledge in 2000 to abide by the spirit of federal ethics laws.

and he says this with a straight face. :evil:

 

[Twila]

RE: Bush: "We do not tort

Maybe the US should elect Pinocchio for president? At least then they'd have the irrefutable, obvious as the nose on his face evidence they obviously require......

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Torture: It's the new American way

By Rosa Brooks

11/05/05 "Los Angeles Times" -- -- 'WE WILL bury you," Nikita Khrushchev told U.S. diplomats in 1956. The conventional wisdom is that Khrushchev got it wrong: The repressive Soviet state collapsed under the weight of its own cruelties and lies while democratic America went from strength to strength, buoyed by its national commitment to liberty and justice for all.

But with this week's blockbuster report of secret CIA detention facilities in Eastern Europe, cynics may be pardoned for wondering who really won the Cold War.

According to Dana Priest, the Washington Post investigative reporter who broke the story Wednesday, it all started on Sept. 17, 2001, when President Bush signed a secret executive order authorizing the CIA to kill, capture or detain Al Qaeda operatives.

There was only one problem: The CIA didn't know where to put the people it detained. Those detainees thought to be of "high value" needed to be kept somewhere … special. Somewhere impregnable, like Alcatraz. And somewhere secret, far from the prying eyes of reporters or Red Cross officials. Because these high-value prisoners — so-called ghost detainees — were going to be subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques."

That's Orwell-speak for what's known in English as torture. The list of enhanced techniques is classified but reportedly includes such old favorites as "waterboarding" (feigned drowning) and feigned suffocation. Authorized techniques also may have included the "Palestinian hanging," a "stress position" in which a detainee is suspended from the ceiling or wall by his wrists, which are handcuffed behind his back.

It was this enhancement that preceded the death of Manadel Jamadi, an Iraqi who died in CIA custody at Abu Ghraib in November 2003, according to government investigative reports. When Jamadi was lowered to the ground, blood gushed from his mouth as if "a faucet had turned on," said Tony Diaz, an MP who witnessed his torture. Later, other guards posed with Jamadi's battered corpse, and the leaked photos shocked the world.

That's not the kind of publicity a freedom-loving democracy needs, so the CIA reportedly opted for secret "black sites." It's not as easy as you might think to find a spot where you can torture people in peace. Abu Ghraib is full of camera-clicking reservists, and the Marquis de Sade's castle lies in ruins. The Tower of London's dungeons still boast an excellent range of enhanced interrogation equipment, but they attract too many giggling children.

CIA operatives apparently considered uninhabited islands near Zambia's Lake Kariba, but interrogators didn't much like the idea of catching one of those nasty local diseases so prevalent in Central Africa. Marburg hemorrhagic fever? No thanks.

Thailand worked for a while, but the Thai government got cold feet when press reports outed the existence of a local CIA site. And Guantanamo's CIA interrogation facility had to be closed when the Supreme Court pointed out that Guantanamo is not a law-free zone.

Remember the flap last spring when Amnesty International called Guantanamo an American "gulag"? Maybe that's what gave the CIA the idea of locating some black sites in Eastern Europe. ("Hmm, gulag, gulag … that reminds me of something…. Hey! Maybe there are some leftover Soviet-era detention facilities we can use for our enhanced interrogations!")

At the request of "senior U.S. officials," the Washington Post declined to identify the locations of the Eastern European black sites. But Marc Garlasco, a military analyst at Human Rights Watch, says that host countries may include Poland and Romania.

Human Rights Watch examined flight records showing that on Sept. 22, 2003, for instance, around the same time several high-value Al Qaeda detainees were transferred out of CIA facilities in Afghanistan, a CIA-linked Boeing 737 with the tail number N313P flew from Kabul to Szymany Airport in Poland. The next day, it landed at Mihail Kogalniceanu military airfield in Romania. Released Guantanamo detainees have corroborated the use of this plane as a prisoner transport, and rights groups and journalists say witnesses also have reported seeing hooded prisoners being loaded and unloaded from the same plane at various other locations.

During the Cold War, we thought we knew what distinguished us from our Soviet bloc enemies. We did not have a gulag; we did not imprison and torture our enemies. But the war on terror has distorted our national values. We have used some of the same tactics we once decried. The Soviet Union's legacy of terror lives on, its tactics embraced by some of our leaders. Vice President Dick Cheney continues to insist that the McCain amendment, which prohibits U.S. personnel from cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners, should not be applicable to the CIA.

Somewhere in Moscow's Novodevichyi cemetery, Khrushchev is probably laughing inside his grave.

fecking liers. :evil: each and everyone.......starting from the top...

 

[Gonzo]

Hearing Bush talk is torture. He should be tried along side Sadam.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Can you imagine? Bush told a crowd, "We don't torture." CNN asked for letters on this to caffertyfile@cnn.com
I wrote:
Bush is lying. How many pictures from Abu Ghraib do we need to see, and we haven’t even seen the ones that horrified congress yet?. How many low level non-coms must the military convict to try to shunt the blame from Bush and Cheney? Bush and Cheney should be tried for crimes against humanity. Their torture policies have put our troops at horribly greater risk and they have set a new low standard that the worst tyrants will imitate.

Best,

Rob Kall

one wonders what planet the bloke lives on....... as it sure ain't earth. OR.......he is one hell of a pathological lier. :evil:

a bit on pathological liers. ( symptoms to look for......dynamics)

http://www.healthyplace.com/Radio/articles/pathological_liars.htm

 

[Ocean Breeze]

The Torture Test

By Ray McGovern, TomPaine.com. Posted November 7, 2005.


Recent revelations of CIA-run secret prisons abroad has put the issue of torture front and center once again. Tools

The next several days will show whether our Congress has slipped its moral moorings. Seldom have moral lines been so clearly drawn. The issue is whether American armed forces and intelligence personnel should be permitted or forbidden to torture detainees. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are expected to decide whether to ban torture against all prisoners held by the United States, to merely ban torture for some of those prisoners, or to reject outright any attempt to legislate a new ban on torture. The White House and the CIAare lobbying to exempt detainees held by the CIA from an amendment-- sponsored by John McCain and endorsed by nearly all senators--that would ban "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment for all detainees held by the United States.

The context for the White House position is key. After the publication of the Abu Ghraib photos in 2004, the administration released a raft of documents claiming these documents showed that there was no policy allowing the abuse of prisoners. It was surreal; the documents showed just the opposite. It was as though the White House thought we couldn't read.

Most striking was a memorandum of February 7, 2002, signed by President George W. Bush, on the treatment of Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees. That memorandum records the president's unilateral determination that the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war "does not apply to either al Qaeda or Taliban detainees." This decision is of dubious validity because there is no provision in the Geneva conventions that would countenance a unilateral decision to exempt prisoners from Geneva protections.

I will spare you most of the torturous language offered by the president's lawyers. Suffice it to say that paragraph 3 of his February 7 memorandum contains a gaping loophole that, in effect, authorizes torture:


As a matter of policy, the United States Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva. (emphasis added)

How Did We Stoop So Low?

President Bush and Vice President Cheney set the tone. According to counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, it began on the evening of 9/11.Immediately after the president's 8:30p.m. TV address to the nation, he met with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Clarke in a bunker under the East Wing of the White House. In his book, Against All Enemies, Clarke describes the president as "confident, determined, and forceful":


I want you all to understand that we are at war...any barriers in your way, they're gone. Any money you need, you have it...I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.

At a joint hearing of the House and Senate intelligence committees on September 26, 2002, Cofer Black, then-head of the Counterterrorism Center at CIA, emphasized the need for "operational flexibility," adding that intelligence operatives cannot be held to the "old" standards. Addressing torture, Black said, "This is a highly classified area, but I have to say that all you need to know: There was a before-9/11 and an after-9/11. After 9/11 the gloves came off."

On Wednesday, the Washington Post delivered fresh evidence that, within days of 9/11, Bush and Cheney told then-CIA director George Tenet to set CIA interrogators free from the customary restrictions. In her article on the mini-gulag system of secret CIA-operated prisons overseas, Post reporter Dana Priest reported that on September 17, 2001, Bush signed a secret "finding" giving the CIA broad authorization to disrupt terrorist activity, including permission to kill, capture and detain Al Qaeda members anywhere in the world.

Authorization for "rendering" detainees to other countries for interrogation, as well as the establishment of secret prisons abroad, were probably subsumed under such a broad presidential "finding." Still, one can assume that Tenet and, indeed, the president himself would seek reassurance that they would be legally protected from prosecution in the future. And this would account for the flurry of lawyerly activity in early 2002.

Why were then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez and David Addington, then counsel to Vice President Cheney (and recently appointed to replace I. Lewis Libby as chief of staff) and their counterpart attorneys at Justice and Defense at such pains to square the circle to make torture "legal?"

Addington reportedly took the lead in drafting the famous memorandum sent by Gonzales to the president on January 25, 2002, which described as "quaint" and "obsolete" some of the Geneva provisions, and reassured the president that there was "a reasonable basis in law" that--if he exempted Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees from Geneva protections--he could still avoid possible future prosecution for war crimes. And so, Bush signed the February 7 memorandum, and Tenet's hired thugs could feel more at ease employing so-called "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"--including "water-boarding," during which a detainee is repeatedly brought to the point of drowning.

In her report, Priest made it clear that only the chair and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees were briefed on the secret prisons, and this is probably what happened with respect to other quasi-legal activities as well. But there is a problem. Members of Congress, however much they may enjoy being privy to real secrets and as prone as many are to give intelligence activities a wink and a nod, they cannot make illegal activities legal. And that's the rub.

Enter The Straight Man

Earlier this month, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who knows torture up close and personal, was joined by 89 other senators in voting for legislation that makes unlawful "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of persons under custody or control of the United States government." The McCain initiative took the form of an amendment to this year's $440-billion defense authorization bill, which includes about $50 billion needed for operations in Iraq.

It will come as no surprise that Cheney is leading the fight against the amendment. It is an unseemly spectacle. Here we have a parvenu regarding things military--with multiple draft deferments to escape the war in Vietnam--importuning the highly decorated officer and torture survivor McCain to allow torture to continue in Iraq and elsewhere. No matter. Cheney descended on McCain and other senators last July and tried to twist their arms to put the amendment aside. Cheney was rebuffed, as he apparently was once again last week, when he and CIA chief Porter Goss made another attempt to dissuade McCain.

A few CIA professionals were angry enough to protest, but were assured by Goss' Office of Congressional Affairs that Goss is on record as forbidding the use of torture by CIA officers. This disingenuous reply came even as Goss joined Cheney in lobbying on the Hill to modify the McCain amendment so there would be no legal problems for CIA personnel engaging in torture--or for the CIA director who condoned it.

Yesterday, the president's own United Methodist Church's Board of Church and Society, in an almost unanimous vote, protested against the "unjust war in Iraq" and appealed for return of our troops. The Board also issued a strong statement against torture, urging Congress to create an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate detention and interrogation practices at Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan. The Methodist bishops may issue a similarly strong statement next week.

Until now, the lukewarm mainstream churches have not been able to find their voice--a throwback to the unconscionably passive stance adopted by the Catholic and Lutheran churches that were co-opted by Hitler in the 1930s. Let us hope that other churches start paying attention to what is going on and follow the good example of the Methodists.

Otherwise, our government's view will prevail. As described by one former CIA lawyer that is "the law of the jungle. And right now we happen to be the strongest animal."

House and Senate conferees are to meet this week to reconcile the two versions of the defense bill. The fate of the McCain amendment, which is included only in the Senate bill, hangs in the balance. Three of the nine Republican senators who voted against the amendment are on the Senate/House conference committee. What emerges will be a moral barometer. It will be interesting to see if the barometer keeps falling.

 

[Colpy]

Good for McCain. I admire the guy, and the stand he took in Hanoi many years ago.

I do not believe that prisoners captured under arms in Afghanistan qualify as POWs.

However, there is no excuse for government sanctioned torture - EVER. Period.

I would support McCain's bill.

The only problem is the definition of inhumane treatment.

What is torture, and what is not?

Is solitary confinement torture?

Is sleep deprivation torture? If so, how much must you allow a man to sleep?

Is agressive questioning by a interogation team torture?

Is the use of scantily clad women to question strict Islamists torture?

The guards at Guantanamo reportedly smeared Islamists with red ink, telling them it was menstrual blood, most unclean to a Muslim. Torture?

Is the denial of religious books, or practise of religious rites torture?

Exactly where is the line? I imagine this question is what troubles the Bush administration.

 

[Reverend Blair]

The definitions of torture and inhumane treatment are pretty clearly spelled out at the UN site, Colpy. Since the US signed the papers there, those are the rules they are required to follow. They have been breaking those rules which makes them guilty of war crimes.

The prisoners captured in Afghanistan are either POWs or criminals under international law. There is no such category as "illegal combatant." The United States can either give them full rights under the Geneva Conventions, give them the legal rights of American citizens and try them, or turn them over to the ICC for trial. That Bush refuses to do that makes him a war criminal.

 

[Jo Canadian]

 

[Ocean Breeze]

given the bush regime's propensity for new terminology .......what do they call it??? :? 8O

 

[PoisonPete2]

without a war there would be no prisoners taken. The people who take up arms in defence of a cause are armed combatants and, if they are taken prisoner during that conflict, they are 'prisoners of war'. Simple and straight, without Bush babble.

If Bush did not allow for torture he would have procecuted those who fascilitated it to happen on his watch and he would not threaten to veto legislation that would only serve to echo his repugnance toward torture.

 

[GL Schmitt]

Re: RE: Bush: "We do not torture"

. . . The only problem is the definition of inhumane treatment. . . Exactly where is the line? I imagine this question is what troubles the Bush administration.

That you feel it necessary to ask that question exposes you as either a Neocon apologist, or else a failed human.

In order to sincerely ask that question, you would need to have had your humanity so distorted as to have nearly left the species.

Neither answer bodes well for you.

You should immediately cease to heed whoever is teaching you your ethics and morality, and instead seek guidance from practically any other source.

I feel confident that Bush and his cohorts know exactly what torture is. They set about instituting a cosmetic correction of the legal impediments which kept them from sinking to torture, immediately, before they even had a prisoner.

I feel certain that the only ethical trouble experienced by the Bush Administration, is what would happen to them if they were ever turned over to the world court.

Since, as a group, they seem unable to conceive of their previous failures, it is quite possible that they are equally unequipped to conceive of this possibility.

Thus, they experience no trouble with torture at all.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: Bush: "We do not torture"

. . . The only problem is the definition of inhumane treatment. . . Exactly where is the line? I imagine this question is what troubles the Bush administration.

That you feel it necessary to ask that question exposes you as either a Neocon apologist, or else a failed human.

In order to sincerely ask that question, you would need to have had your humanity so distorted as to have nearly left the species.

Neither answer bodes well for you.

You should immediately cease to heed whoever is teaching you your ethics and morality, and instead seek guidance from practically any other source.

I feel confident that Bush and his cohorts know exactly what torture is. They set about instituting a cosmetic correction of the legal impediments which kept them from sinking to torture, immediately, before they even had a prisoner.

I feel certain that the only ethical trouble experienced by the Bush Administration, is what would happen to them if they were ever turned over to the world court.

Since, as a group, they seem unable to conceive of their previous failures, it is quite possible that they are equally unequipped to conceive of this possibility.

Thus, they experience no trouble with torture at all.

well stated GL. !! ( the fact that they experience no trouble with torture diminishes them as the humanoids they claim to be)

 

[Ocean Breeze]

THE DARK HEART OF DICK CHENEY

WASHINGTON -- Dick Cheney is, by all accounts, probably the oddest -- and the most dourly ambitious -- duck in the administration's pond of wing-flapping, sky-diving and prideful birds.
He rarely speaks, running things quietly and secretly from behind the White House's closed doors, where he maintains his own administrative staff (roughly 60 persons, almost as many as the president's). When he does speak, it is usually either a sarcastic observation or rejoinder. As to his knowledge of Iraq, many remember how, on "Meet the Press" just before the Iraq war, he told Tim Russert, "I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators."

He is an enigma to many who have known him. President George H.W. Bush almost pleaded with a friend of mine, a journalist, in Houston recently: "Please -- tell me -- what has happened to Cheney?"

There was always a brooding, Hobbesian Cheney just beneath the misleading openness he learned in his native Wyoming. But this week, the vice president took a turn into the deepest heart of human darkness. This week, unprecedented in history, an elected vice president of the United States of America proposed that Congress legally authorize the torture of foreigners by Americans.

The Washington Post titled its devastating editorial "Vice President for Torture." I would say that the deceptive man from sunny Wyoming has become the Marquis de Sade of America. Think about it -- he is insistent upon making torturers of many of our young soldiers -- your children.


In both the Afghan and the Iraq war, the U.S. has been involved -- as never before in ANY war -- with carefully conceived methods of torture -- "waterboarding" or simulated drowning, mock execution, beatings until death, the deliberate withholding of pain medication, the burning and desecration of enemy bodies, and every possible form of sexual perversion.
These acts were the direct outcome of the president's, Cheney's and Donald Rumsfeld's errant dismissal of the Geneva Accords, to which we are a signatory, of an international treaty against torture negotiated and ratified by the Reagan administration and, not least, of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids "cruel and unusual punishment."

Although such directions would HAVE to have come from the top, not one top-ranking general or officer has been punished. Only the privates from West Virginia and the Carolinas, who would be protected by a responsible military from debauching their service -- and themselves -- with such sick acts, are in jail.

But now the grand inquisitor Cheney, who took five deferments in the Vietnam War rather than experience it for himself, wants more. Sen. John McCain, who DOES know what war is all about, put forward an amendment to the $440 billion military spending bill banning the military and all government agencies from engaging in torture. Ninety senators voted for the new law, including 46 Republicans. So Cheney stepped in with a further amendment to the McCain amendment, which transfers torture to the CIA to use against the many foreign prisoners it is secretly holding abroad. These men have "disappeared," just like they do in the old banana republics and the gulags of the totalitarians.

"I suspect what Cheney's been saying to McCain is that we've got a few people who know the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and the others," political scientist Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institution mused with me. "That we've got to use any means necessary to get information from very specific people. He's looking toward short-term goals without any understanding of the long-term consequences, which gets to the underlying reason why McCain is pushing ... The rules are in place to protect US. If this becomes official policy, then the enemy says that they can do the same thing."

But anyone who has studied the use of torture knows it doesn't work. Prisoners will tell their tormentors exactly what they want to hear. Among Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, too often, torture has become the "sport" of sociopaths. (According to Cherif Bassiouni, the renowned human rights and international law professor at DePaul University in Chicago, with fully 30 percent of our army recruits being kids with criminal sentences who were allowed to work their way out in the military, we are already courting trouble.)

Bassiouni told me that he has been called in as an expert witness on some of the trials of the foreigners held at Guantanamo. "You look at them," he told me with a deep impatience, "and you see how insignificant they are! One guy was a driver in Kandahar for one of the terrorists -- for a week. In my No. 2 case, the fellow operated a video shop."

Bassiouni then told of the private contractors who operate wholly on their own. He outlined how team after team of interrogators comes in. The first team says they "got something," so the second has to "get something," too. They charge $200 per hour per person to interrogate, and more than likely, they draw out their time clock by torturing prisoners. For four men for four hours, that's $3,200 of taxpayer money paid for the ugly demeaning of everything America once stood for. With the neocons and Cheney and their dark lusts, we are eating our own principles alive.

"America has lost its capacity for being indignant," Dr. Bassiouni summed up. "Where has our capacity for indignation gone? When a nation loses its respect for the Constitution and its treaties, what is next? And leaving even that aside, the next American serviceman who is being tortured -- and we can't go to his rescue -- will show us exactly what we have done."

 

[earth_as_one]

I'm reviving this old discussion in light of recent revelations of US torture and murder as official American government sanctioned policy.

References:

The CIA's post-torture profits

Architects of a shameful chapter in the agency's history now reap rich rewards in the private sector. They must be held to account

Tim Shorrock
guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 25 August 2009

...The CIA report, however, is the official word on the Bush-Cheney "war on terror". In gruesome detail, it shows how untrained CIA interrogators and private contractors, blessed by their superiors, inflicted detainees captured in the Middle East with "enhanced interrogation techniques" that ran the gamut from mock executions to threats to kill family members to waterboarding. While the intelligence provided important details about al-Qaida and some information about possible attacks, the report concluded that the interrogations violated US commitments to human rights and showed that the CIA "failed to provide adequate staffing, guidance and support" to those involved....

The CIA's post-torture profits | Tim Shorrock | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

The above story has a pdf link to the declassified report.

US prosecutor to probe alleged CIA abuses
12:57 AEST Tue Aug 25 2009

...Durham will investigate whether CIA officers and contractors broke US law when trying to scare terror suspects detained overseas.

The Department of Justice revealed details of a report by a CIA inspector general showing that interrogators at secret CIA prisons threatened to kill the children of September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Other detainees were threatened with the rape of family members, execution, shooting and torture...

US prosecutor to probe alleged CIA abuses

CIA Had Program to Kill Al-Qaeda Leaders
Agency Didn't Tell Congress About Bush-Era Plan to Use Assassins

By Joby Warrick and Ben Pershing
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, July 14, 2009

The CIA ran a secret program for nearly eight years that aspired to kill top al-Qaeda leaders with specially trained assassins, but the agency declined to tell Congress...

CIA Didn't Tell Congress About Program to Kill Al-Qaeda Leaders - washingtonpost.com

I think the above is just the tip of the iceberg regarding the US government's policy of torture and murder. In fact, everything in the news recently tends to support previous claims that American soldiers actually raped, tortured and murdered people of interest, their family members and innocent civilians.

References:
Abusing children to make people talk:

July 14, 2006 | Congress has demanded that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hand over a raft of documents to Congress that could substantiate allegations that U.S. forces have tried to break terror suspects by kidnapping and mistreating their family members. Rumsfeld has until 5 p.m. Friday to comply.

It now appears that kidnapping, scarcely covered by the media, and absent in the major military investigations of detainee abuse, may have been systematically employed by U.S. troops. Salon has obtained Army documents that show several cases where U.S. forces abducted terror suspects families. After he was thrown in prison, Cpl. Charles Graner, the alleged ringleader at Abu Ghraib, told investigators the military routinely kidnapped family members to force suspects to turn themselves in....

...interrogators grew frustrated when the boy's father, Zabar, wouldn't talk, despite a 14-hour interrogation. So they stripped Zabar's son naked and doused him with mud and water. They put him in the open back of a truck and drove around in the frigid January night air until the boy began to freeze. Zabar was then made to look at his suffering son...

U.S. accused of kidnappings in Iraq | Salon News

Links to translated testimony of prison rape
Abu Ghraib: Male Rape Witness Statement from Taguba Report:

...Seymour Hersh (The New Yorker) says the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."

(I transcribed some of his speech from this streaming site. Hersh starts at about 1:07:50.)...

http://radio.weblogs.com/0107946/2004/07/14.html#a1922

Around the same time that Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse photos showed up on the internet, photos of American soldiers allegedly raping and abusing innocent civilians were also posted on a porn site. The US government immediately claimed the photos were staged and the photos were removed. Some anti-war websites still post copies of the original photos, which are extremely disturbing. You can judge for yourself if they are staged or not:

WARNING EXTREMELY DISTURBING IMAGES OF RAPE AND ABUSE
Universal Community of Friends - Prisoner Abuses by U.S. Military

Some photos look real. Some look staged. Staged photos could have been released to discredit the real photos.

I'm not claiming that Americans or American soldiers are immoral. On the contrary, I would claim that most Americans are moral and so are most American soldiers. I think that during war, bad stuff happens including rape, torture and murder. In the case of the Iraq war, torture and murder appears to have been official government policy.

Americans and American soldiers still have an opportunity to demonstrate their morality by coming forward with what they know and demanding that the individuals responsible be held account accountable for their actions.

 

[ironsides]

Warning, very graphic: You want to know why, or have we forgotten so soon, most of this started at the beginning. What is morality, and who's morality do we follow. You see this and do nothing, then when we do something harmless like water-boarding you complain. Where were you when this was happening.


Camera/Iraq
iraq: Beheading


Liberals do a lot of complaining, but do nothing to correct the problems.

 

[earth_as_one]

Waterboarding is not harmless. When its committed against Americans, your government considers it to be torture.

Regarding the rest of your post, I'm not sure I understand your point.

Are you saying that since your adversaries are barbaric, you support American soldiers committing rape, torture and murder against their adversaries, their families including children and innocent civilians????

Did you ever consider what these soldiers will consider normal behavior when they come home?