Now they call it abuse

[GL Schmitt]

This isn't the real America
By Jimmy Carter
Nov. 14, 2005
Los Angeles Times

. . . our political leaders have declared independence from the restraints of international organizations and have disavowed long-standing global agreements — including agreements on nuclear arms, control of biological weapons and the international system of justice.

Instead of our tradition of espousing peace as a national priority unless our security is directly threatened, we have proclaimed a policy of "preemptive war," an unabridged right to attack other nations unilaterally to change an unsavory regime or for other purposes. When there are serious differences with other nations, we brand them as international pariahs and refuse to permit direct discussions to resolve disputes.

Regardless of the costs, there are determined efforts by top U.S. leaders to exert American imperial dominance throughout the world. . . .


Complete Article: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10995.htm

Torture’s out. Now they call it abuse

No screaming, no cries of agony, no shrieks of pain. Yes, it sounds much better, doesn’t it?

By Robert Fisk
Nov. 12, 2005
The Independent

"Prevail" is the "in" word in America just now. We are not going to "win" in Iraq - because we did that in 2003, didn’t we, when we stormed up to Baghdad and toppled Saddam? Then George Bush declared "Mission Accomplished". So now we must "prevail". That’s what F J "Bing" West, ex-soldier and former assistant secretary for International Security Affairs in the Reagan administration said this week. Plugging his new book - No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah - he gave a frightening outline of what lies in store for the Sunni Muslims of Iraq. . . .

. . . It was a strange week to be in America. In Washington, Ahmed Chalabi, one of Iraq’s three deputy prime ministers, turned up to show how clean his hands were. . .

. . . It’s like living in a prism in New York and Washington these days. "Torture" is out. No one tortures in Iraq or Afghanistan or Guantanamo. . . .

. . . American journalists now refer to "abuse laws" rather than torture laws. Yes, abuse sounds so much better, doesn’t it? No screaming, no cries of agony when you’re abused. No shrieks of pain. No discussion of the state of mind of the animals perpetrating this abuse on our behalf. . . .


Complete Article: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10992.htm

 

[no1important]

RE: Now they call it abus

What a bunch of dickheads. Trying to justify it and make it sound more acceptable. I will never buy the bs coming from their maggot sized brains.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: Now they call it abus

What a bunch of dickheads. Trying to justify it and make it sound more acceptable. I will never buy the bs coming from their maggot sized brains.

you mean maggot INFESTED brains , don't cha??? :wink:


isn't that their pathetic style?? Give something a new label..name ( wrapping) and present it to the sheeple with a favorable spin........and the sheeple bleet in a unified affirmative.

criminal SOBs........one and all.

 

[Reverend Blair]

RE: Now they call it abus

Their spin isn't working anymore and they know it. Bush's approval rating shows it. They can't help but keep on telling lies though...it's all they know.

 

[tracy]

I find it surprising how many people I work with who AGREE that the US should be allowed to torture detainees. These sentiments are coming even from ardent Bush haters sometimes.

 

[Twila]

RE: Now they call it abus

Just where do they go to school for spin doctoring?

 

[Jo Canadian]

Re: RE: Now they call it abus

Just where do they go to school for spin doctoring?

 

[TenPenny]

Re: RE: Now they call it abuse

I find it surprising how many people I work with who AGREE that the US should be allowed to torture detainees. These sentiments are coming even from ardent Bush haters sometimes.

Just ask them how they would like to be tortured when they're picked up. Picked up because they live in the wrong place, or have the wrong colour skin, or the wrong last name, or the wrong religion.....

 

[tracy]

Re: RE: Now they call it abuse

I find it surprising how many people I work with who AGREE that the US should be allowed to torture detainees. These sentiments are coming even from ardent Bush haters sometimes.

Just ask them how they would like to be tortured when they're picked up. Picked up because they live in the wrong place, or have the wrong colour skin, or the wrong last name, or the wrong religion.....

Unfortunately they all think it could never happen to them. I really don't say anything when politics come up at work since I'm not an American anyways.

 

[GL Schmitt]

Re: RE: Now they call it abus

Their spin isn't working anymore and they know it. Bush's approval rating shows it. They can't help but keep on telling lies though...it's all they know.

I have recently changed my mind about Bush Administration lies.

Maybe I'm wrong.

You can judge for yourself.




The Value of Lies
by GL Schmitt

For some time, I have been getting more agitated by charges that Bush and his administration are still lying to the public.

At one point, that charge was correct, and those who were making it had every reason to level that charge, but this is no longer the case.

To lie, means to present a false impression in a situation which involves deception. This no longer defines the present situation. No one is being deceived, so how can we truly call them lies?

False claims, which everyone knows are untrue, are being repeated, not because they mislead anyone, but because, while they are being promulgated, discussion about the actual situation is preempted.

Twelve-year-old children are taking the time and effort to compose signs which they will carry in anti-Bush demonstrations, protesting what is being distorted by his administration. If twelve-year-old children can see through Bush’s pious platitudes and outrageous misrepresentations, that segment of the country which still mouths Neocon cant, either must be in league with the conspiracy against themselves, or are too oblivious to notice any threat.

Why the Bush administration has bothered to continue repeating threadbare claims, exasperated me, until I was reminded of a political term that has fallen out of vogue in recent years.

That word is “optics.”

There was a time when “optics” was a most important consideration in the politician’s repertoire. Washington pundits were forever referring to the “optics” of any given situation.

When considering “optics,” it was not enough to be doing something worthwhile, you had to be seen doing something worthwhile. Nor did it matter if you were doing something harmful, provided you had a method of misleading the voters to mistakenly see that what you did was correct.

For the politician, “optics” once was more important than actuality.


Journalists don’t write about “optics” much anymore.

The present government doesn’t care how anything they do appears. Nor do they care that no one believes their lies. The present government cares only that they fill the newscycle with repetitions of lies that no one believes, thereby preempting debate about how they are proceeding forward from, what everyone recognizes to be, lies.

Where a previous administration was concerned with “optics,” the present administration seems concerned with creating an effect that is somewhat analogous to “white noise.”

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Rumsey sued........

Former Iraqi Detainees Allege Torture by U.S. Troops
Men Say Repeated Beatings, Mock Execution, Sexual Humiliation Were Prevalent

by Jake Tapper and George Griffin

Two former Iraqi detainees tell ABC News in an exclusive interview that they were repeatedly tortured by U.S. forces seeking information about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction.

Thahee Sabbar and Sherzad Khalid are two of eight men who, with help from the American Civil Liberties Union and the group Human Rights First, are suing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The men claim they were tortured for months, in violation of the U.S. Constitution and international law.

Torture has been the center of controversy lately. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. -- himself a victim of torture during the Vietnam War -- has sparked a heated debate after his proposed amendment to ban torture was reportedly the subject of intense lobbying by Vice President Dick Cheney, who sought an exemption for CIA officers.

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

But after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal -- according to the Pentagon's own investigations -- it is irrefutable that U.S. forces have tortured detainees, many of whom claim they had no involvement at all with al Qaeda or the insurgency in Iraq, but were nonetheless arrested by U.S. soldiers and physically abused.

Sabbar and Khalid say they are two such men.

Khalid -- a 34-year-old married father of four children -- says he worked in the grocery business until July 17, 2003, when U.S. soldiers interrupted a business meeting he was having with Thahee Sabbar, who sold sugar and bananas. U.S. soldiers, they say, interrupted their meeting and arrested them.

"I was very surprised when they arrested me," Khalid told ABC News through a translator. "They did not give any reason why they were taking me. And we asked them, but no answer. The only answer was severe beating."

Khalid says U.S. soldiers tied his hands behind his back, put a hood over his head, and beat him to the point of breaking his tooth and bloodying his nose. Sabbar claims he suffered similar treatment, with soldiers dislocating his shoulder.


Threatened With Lions, Mock Execution
Khalid told ABC News that U.S. soldiers at one point threatened him with live lions.

"They took us to a cage -- an animal cage that had lions in it within the Republican Palace," he said. "And they threatened us that if we did not confess, they would put us inside the cage with the lions in it. It scared me a lot when they got me close to the cage, and they threatened me. And they opened the door and they threatened that if I did not confess, that they were going to throw me inside the cage. And as the lion was coming closer, they would pull me back out and shut the door, and tell me, 'We will give you one more chance to confess.' And I would say, 'Confess to what?'"

Inside the Republican Palace -- the site of Saddam's former office -- Sabbar says troops taunted him with a mock execution.

"I found the other prisoners who had come before me there in the line beside me mocking, in a way as to make it a mock execution," he said. "They all stood up, those of us who could stand up. They directed their weapons towards us. And they shot, shot towards our heads and chests. And when the shots sounded, some of us lost consciousness. Some started to cry. Some lost control of their bladders. And they were laughing the whole time."

After a night in jail at the Republican Palace, Khalid says he was taken to the prison at the Baghdad airport where the torture continued.

"They put us in individual cells," he said. "And before entering those cells, they formed two teams of American soldiers -- one to the right, one to the left -- about 10 to 15 each American soldiers. And they were holding wooden sticks. It was like a hallway, like a passage. And they made us go that hallway while shouting at us as we were walking through and hitting us with the wooden sticks. They were beating us severely."

Khalid says U.S. soldiers deprived him of food, water, and sleep. He claims he began to suffer from stomach ulcers, but was denied medical care.

All the while, Khalid says, soldiers routinely asked for information about Saddam's whereabouts: "I said to him, 'How would I know where Saddam is?' And I thought that he was kidding me. And that's why I laughed. And he beat me again."

Khalid refuses to talk about one other allegation. In his legal complaint, he holds U.S. soldiers responsible for "Sexually assaulting and humiliating [him] ... by grabbing his buttocks and simulating anal rape by pressing a water bottle against the seat of his pants; putting a hand inside [his] ... pants and grabbing his buttocks during a severe beating ... (and) brandishing a long wooden pole and threatening to sodomize him on the spot and every night of his detention."

According to Sabbar, U.S. soldiers used Taser guns and rubber bullets to control detainees.

"They had another kind of torture using electrical shocks, pointing a hand gun towards you that shocks you and causes you to lose consciousness for a while," he said. "That was one of the methods at the airport [jail]. Or use rubber bullets that end up hurting or burning the area where it hits you, and very painful ones."


Mistreatment at Abu Ghraib
Sabbar ended up at Abu Ghraib, the detention center where the abuse of detainees was captured in the now-infamous photographs that shocked the world. However, he was not held inside one of the cell blocks, but rather outside in a courtyard.

"We entered Abu Ghraib and there the behavior of the soldiers was different -- a different type of torture. They put us in different groups. The lack of food -- we could not eat as much as we did before. And if they gave us food, it certainly is spoiled most of the time, so either you die from not eating, or you have to be taken to the emergency [room]."

Sabbar also alleges troops mistreated the Koran, an egregious affront to Islam.

"They would give us Korans as well as the holy Bible, and they would come on purpose to walk or step on the holy Koran, and we opposed or -- protested that. Or they would take it ... and throw it away in front of everybody, the holy Koran. And this was painful to us."

Khalid -- who says he still suffers severe back pain -- was released in September 2003; Sabbar in January 2004. As is the case with many detainees, no charges were filed against them.

As for the torture allegations, both men know it is basically their word against the U.S. military.

"What I am telling you is not from imagination," said Sabbar. "This is my reality, and my pain that I suffered."

"There's some serious allegations in there," said retired Lt .Col. Robert Maginnis, now an Army consultant. "If those, in fact, took place, investigations should ensue and the appropriate people should be punished. ... I don't doubt that we made many mistakes. That's characteristic of the fog [of war] and the confusion of the battlefield."

Human Rights First and the ACLU -- the groups bringing the lawsuit on their behalf -- allege such torture was part of the Pentagon playbook.

"They were basically told that this was a different type of war, and the rules didn't apply anymore," said ACLU executive director Anthony Romero.

"What we have done here is undermining our efforts to win hearts and minds and undermining our efforts to gather strategic intelligence so we can successfully fight and win, not only the current counter-insurgency, but the war on terror at large ," said Deborah Pearlstein of Human Rights First. "This is against our national security interests in the most immediate way."

Both the Pentagon and the Justice Department acknowledged the two men were prisoners but refused to comment on their allegations.

When the lawsuit was first filed, the Pentagon said in a written statement, "We vigorously dispute any assertion or implication that the Department of Defense approved of, sanctioned, or condoned as a matter of policy detainee abuse," but it did not address the specific allegations.

Some conservative legal scholars question if the case as a question of law has much standing. "The facts that they allege really do not tie these horrific events -- these instances of torture and beating and sleep deprivation and dietary manipulation -- to the secretary of defense," says Douglas Kmiec, a professor at Pepperdine Law School and a former Justice Department official in the Reagan administration.

Also problematic, Kmiec says, are the notions of non-Americans suing for rights violated under the U.S. Constitution, or trying to enforce international treaties in a U.S. court. "As a matter of legal theory it's a very difficult case to prove and to convince a court that it has the jurisdiction to actually rule on the question in the first place."

Khalid and Sabbar say they believe their case will prevail, because they say they believe in the U.S. justice system.

"Because it's truth," Khalid said. "And when the American courts will hear my case & I am sure that the American justice [system] will believe that."

...........sure hope they are not disillusioned... 8O

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Iraq detainees found starving...... :evil: :x

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4440134.stm

 

[Reverend Blair]

But the BBC's correspondent says the discovery will be embarrassing for the US military, which has been training Iraq's security services.

What have they been training them in?

A report by pressure group Human Rights Watch earlier this year said methods used by Iraqi police included beating detainees with cables, hanging them from their wrists for long periods and giving electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body.

Oh, that's what they've been training them in.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

But the BBC's correspondent says the discovery will be embarrassing for the US military, which has been training Iraq's security services

don't think it is possible for the US military to be embarrassed. Their callousness ,brutality is well known now.... and their gov't will make every attempt to justify them out of anything they do anyhow. The virtually have carte blanche now.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/11/15/iraq-detainees-051115.html

more on torture, starvation and other US tactics... :evil:


all in the name of "liberation"??? :roll:

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Torture and the Empire
Who We Are
SAUL LANDAU



November 26, 2005

George W. Bush returned from a brief but difficult November learning foray in Latin America: "Wow, Brazil is big." Meanwhile, U.S. citizens grew impatient with his performance. CBS polls rated him at 35% approval in early November. Even his supporters acknowledge that Bush's policies have created enormous ill will throughout the world. More ethically worrisome, cried his critics, those policies don't represent who we really are.

Most Americans, for example, abhor torture. So, on November 7, Bush flatly declared: "We don't torture"--just as front page stories appeared with details of how the Pentagon charged five U.S members of an elite Army unit with kicking and punching detainees in Iraq.

Few Washington insiders expressed shock over Bush's not having heard of the massive evidence compiled by The Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International and the Red Cross about routine U.S. military and CIA torture of prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Nor did he seem upset over reports of secret prisons set up by the CIA in other countries in which methods that the United States and most other nations had agreed by Treaty to never practice. The CIA had stashed prisoners in a series of secret, "black-site" prisons around the world, where U.S. officials "punished" them in ways prohibited by the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. (Washington Post 11/2/05)

CIA interrogators abroad used "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," banned by both the U.N. and by U.S. military law, such as "waterboarding," making a prisoner believe he or she is drowning (WP11/2/05).

The Post also claimed that "a small circle" of White House and Justice Department lawyers and officials "approved this policy" and tried to affirm that "Congress may no more regulate the president's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield."

On November 7, Bush said he didn't want the enemy to know what might happen to them. "There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again. And so, you bet we will aggressively pursue them. But we will do so under the law." (CNN)

Bush dodged military service and Cheney had "better things to do" than risk his life in Vietnam. Senator John McCain, on the other hand, who experienced torture, led the fight to ban it.

"Subjecting prisoners to abuse leads to bad intelligence because under torture a detainee will tell his interrogator anything to make the pain stop," McCain said. "Second, mistreatment of our prisoners endangers U.S. troops who might be captured by the enemy. ... And third, prisoner abuses exact on us a terrible toll in the war of ideas because inevitably these abuses become public."

On October 7, 89 other Senators joined McCain in condemning torture, nine voted for it. Radio bigmouth Rush Limbaugh said the torturers were just "having a good time," getting "emotional release." In his May 4, 2004 show, a caller commented to Rush: "It was like a college fraternity prank that stacked up naked men."

LIMBAUGH: Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?

One day before, Limbaugh called the women soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners "babes." Why, the published photos of this alleged mistreatment looked like something "you'd see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage."

The outspoken radio host even satirized the tortures scandal as something you'd "get an NEA grant for. something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center.maybe on Sex in the City -- the movie. I mean."

This is not who we are? Was the 19th Century torture and massacre of Indians just a bit of venting by frustrated U.S. troops? Did the murder and torture of Filipinos between 1892 and 1932 represent no more than a fraternity hazing party?

Why, journalists should have asked, did Bush want to exempt the CIA from the torture ban? To claim he didn't want enemy prisoners to know what might happen to them appears contradictory to his public statement: "we don't torture." "They," Bush declared, "use violence and torture." We're free and democratic.

In June in Istanbul, I heard a group of students challenge a U.S. academic to explain how democratic people could elect Bush. "Bush doesn't really represent the American people," the American academic replied. The Turkish students pressed him about the Iraqi invasion for oil and demanded to know how Americans could have possibly voted for "the butcher of Baghdad."

"That's not who we are," he assured them.

It's not? Decent people have repeated that line to distance themselves from atrocious crimes since the 17th Century. Henry David Thoreau and Harriet Beecher Stowe insisted that slavery and the massacre of Indians did not define us. After reports that the U.S. firebombed German and Japanese cities and dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan, many citizens said: That's not who we are.

Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson went to Nuremberg to try to ban future wars. "We must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of war, for out position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy." (Aug 12, 1945)

Other legal scholars drafted the UN Charter to maintain peace and helped revise President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms (speech and expression, religion; freedom from fear and want) into the UN Covenants on Human Rights.

Meanwhile, other U.S. officials carried out nuclear weapons tests for use in future wars and helped circumvent the actual Senate ratification of the covenants.

Law vies with lawlessness. The Bush Administration tried to get legal UN cover for its invasion of Iraq before breaking both international codes and Justice Jackson's denunciation of aggressive war. Then he painted a rhetorical veneer of democracy over his naked aggression.

In late September, to show the Middle Easterner who we really are, Bush dispatched Karen Hughes, to promote the real U.S. image in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey.

Hughes found it tough to sell democracy and human rights as reports surfaced of systematic, routine U.S. torture of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. The armed forces tried and convicted more than 200 bottom level personnel. Not a single general or civilian official, including those who authorized torture has faced trial.

As Karen Hughes "sold" Bush's America, alternate salespeople on Al Jazeera highlighted the U.S.' rising deficit and towering debt and featured stories on how poor blacks continue to get the short end of every government stick.

Americans believe they live in a model of freedom, opportunity and prosperity not available in older cultures. The 37 million living under the poverty line shocked them. As do the three-plus million millionaires.

The typical white family has $80,000 in assets; the average black family about $6,000. Some 46 million can't afford health insurance, 18,000 of them will die prematurely because of it.

The U.S. ranks 43rd in world infant mortality ratings. Beijing babies have far greater chances of reaching their first birthdays those born in Washington. The survivors face rotten schools. Reading and math tests for 15-year-olds placed the U.S. 24th out of 29 rich nations.

Meanwhile, 18 corporate executives went to prison for corporate accounting fraud and looting. Bush's Enron pals will also soon face trial for practicing their "greed-is-good" culture.

The war costs $6 billion a month. In five years the conflict will have cost each American family $11,300. Bush will cut programs for the poor to pay for the war, but he will not reverse his tax cuts.

Throughout U.S. history, truly pious and sensible down-home Americans have shared church space with zealous nuts and bigots. Cotton Mather, the Puritan witch hunter and Roger Williams who pleaded for religious freedom in the 17th Century have as their warped descendent Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell who gloat over having one of their own kind running the country. On the democracy and freedom side, William Sloan Coffin and the Berrigan brothers decry imperial aggression and suppression of liberties.

Threads of racism and imperial aggression characterize U.S. growth and expansion from 13 colonies to the world's greatest power. So does democracy. This inextricably interwoven love of freedom developed hand in glove with racism and imperialism.

Who are we? Racists, imperialists and democrats. The struggle now, as in the past, pits those who want the democracy element to prevail and bury the evil that has emanated for the other two threads of our history.

Saul Landau is a fellow of the Institute fr Policy Studies.

Don't cha just love the bush quote about Brazil?? :roll:


such finesse/pinache (not).... 8O