Time Magazine reports on CIA coverup of torture in Iraq:
CIA interrogators apparently tried to cover up the death of an Iraqi ‘ghost detainee’ who died while being interrogated at Abu Ghraib prison, Time magazine reported today, after obtaining hundreds of pages of documents, including an autopsy report, about the case.
The death of secret detainee Manadel al-Jamadi was ruled a homicide in a Defense Department autopsy, Time reported, adding that documents it recently obtained included photographs of his battered body, which had been kept on ice to keep it from decomposing, apparently to conceal the circumstances of his death.
The details about his death emerge as US officials continue to debate congressional legislation to ban torture of foreign detainees by US troops overseas, and efforts by the George W. Bush administration to obtain an exemption for the CIA from any future torture ban. source
the CIA should not be exempted from laws on torture. There are of course many other reasons too.
First let me say that I think the WOT is nothing but smoke and mirrors, distracting us, redefining the world as an impossibly dangerous place, even for Joe and Jane in Topeka. Please, like those folks should worry about anything like that.
But let’s pretend, for now, it’s all as scary as we’re told:
Against torture? Don’t you watch ’24’? We are forever catching these nasty terrorist types who can only be coerced into talking by shooting them in the leg and stuff. I mean, like, duh?
Look, I agree that torture should not be a policy, or even given a legal loophole for any agency to jump through. but I also have to admit I can think up with more than one scenario where it could be effective, as a last resort (No, Scooter, there won’t be rapist bears). Just the credible threat of it could be effective. But I can’t support the policy of allowing it carte blanche for the same reasons everyone is going over lately. The most important reason to me is that we can’t really complain too much now if someone tortures an American.
To be honest, if a situation was so important and critical that torture is the only recourse, then the person in the position to gain information that way probably should go ahead get that info, AND face real legal consequences. If a man would take a bullet for his country, why not serve time?
I know that’s a real moral relativist thought, but we have a political reality that doesn’t mesh with morality. You could serve your country from the brig, knowing that your sacrifice saved the Brooklyn Bridge or whatever, AS WELL AS our national reputation..
Or we could just de-fear and de-pressurize and learn to live with the idea that we, the famously fatted American Public, have to face some real risks to return to our position of moral leadership in the world.
I honestly think that Bush’s (over/mis) reaction was that of a seriously frightened guy, and a bigtime pussy at that. Just look at the size of the budgets and the daisycutters he threw around!
I mean, what is so strong and brave about ordering the vaporization of 19th and 20th century armies with 21st century weapons, and all from a safe distance? What is so brave about spending billions and billions on the DHS so they can hunt down a few hundred bad guys (I can still count the terrorists they’ve capture domestically on my digits)? I mean don’t you think there might have been a more efficient, James Bondish way of dispatching these folks?
George Bush is a Half-Trillion Dollar Pussy! Say it Again!
I am of the same mind. I am living now in Germany. Europeans are no stranger to terrorism; Baader-Meinhof, Red Brigades, etc. Except here, it is a POLICE FUNCTION, not a military one, to round them up. I don’t believe in this so-called WoT, there is no need for it except to create a huge bureaucracy to keep tabs on it’s own citizens. Europe does just fine with the police capturing terrorists, yea some get through, the Van Gogh murder is an example. But again, it is the police who handle it, the intelligence agencies work hand in hand with the police to round criminals up. And you know what? PEOPLE AREN’T AFRAID HERE. No one is pandering fear. Just watched Outfoxed again last night, the fear pandering is just amazing.