George W Bush has high hopes that history will judge him to be one of the world’s greatest leaders. Well,you can stand on a pile of dung and declare it to be granite but eventually it will start to stink. The fact is that the United States of America has condoned, taught and practiced torture as part of its arsenal since the Viet Nam era. Many in Bush’s administration have been around long enough to be thoroughly desensitized to violence and torture as a state tool. They can’t accept the fact that it is still considered wrong. Bush has consciously made many torture techniques legal, so he thinks he’s safe when he says “We don’t torture”. Bush and his administration can manipulate what is legal, but they can’t seem to tell the difference between right and wrong.
Is it any wonder why no one in their right mind believes Condi Rice’s explanations of extrordinary rendition done under the noses of the Europeans?
The “America is Good” fantasy that is so pervasive in this country has been a flagwaving whitewash for decades. Under Bush that layer has been stretched to a thin vaneer of lies that is so very easy to see through. What is on the other side isn’t pretty, or noble, or even necessary. If America follows the conservative lead on torture and allows it to become widely accepted, what will be the results? How many Americans would be willing to wave flags for a country that thinks it’s ok to indefinetely imprison and torture its citizens for shadowy reasons that never see the inside of a courtroom? Will Grandma someday be waterboarded for running a stopsign? Will every prison have a torture room? A rape room? Conservative thought is rife with harshness and violence against others… from their merciless economics to their twisted religious fears of anything or anyone different from them. I really don’t care why their world view is so selfish, violent, and extremely repulsive . I don’t want to understand conservatives, I want to get them the hell out of government.
Now that American torture is out in the open, this is the time to rid ourselves of it once and for all, not the time to embrace and expand such horror.
Bush’s policies, arrogant, steeped in violence, bereft of conscience, if allowed to continue, will signal the beginning of the end of our grand Democratic experiment. Only a national debate on our torture policies can save us. Not a parsing of words as to what’s legal, an honest discussion of who we are and what is right. We as a nation must decide if we are to be America the beautiful or America the great satan.
Under Bush, torture has gone from the deep cover of black ops in American government to being the pervasive and widespread underpinnings of American foreign policy. These twits think that it is not only OK to torture, rape and murder, they think that torture is a valuable tool in keeping America great. Now that it’s all out in the open, they think they will gradually win widespread support here for such perversity. Once that happens, the gates are wide open for brutal totalitarianism. Such is our choice. Such is our burden.
Thank you for this, but I know all about European governments secretly allowing renditions. My commentary is in reference more to the general populations of the countries in Europe that are involved, and Ms Rice’s own fancy footwork in trying to explain the unexplainable. I should have clarified. The point is, credibility has left the Bush administration, especially where issues of torture and rendition are concerned. They have legally squirmed their way out of accountability by redifining torture. I don’t know enough about the dynamics of European gov’ts to comment on their own duplicity with their people.
whose populations have stormed the torture camps, freed the kidnap victims and arrested the kidnappers is holding steady at zero.
(And I posted the EU deal story in your thread because that seemed to be the best thread to post it in) š
And yet, there’s a tiny group of people who have marched across Cuba to Guantanamo to register their protest. They are camped outside the prison at this time. Jessica Stewart, wife of one of the marchers, wrote about it on Counterpunch today. She and her husband belong to a group of anti-war protesters in Ithaca, NY, and I think the group is called St. Patrick’s Four….
Doesn’t really respond to your query, but we do need to remind ourselves of those who are doing whatever they can in the absence of any large mainstream support.
Ductape,
Your statement; The European Union secretly allowed the United States to use transit facilities on European soil to transport “criminals” in 2003, according to a previously unpublished document. is true. However I do not feel Liberals, progressives and those opposed to torture should use it, nor allowed it to be used.
It sounds way too much like young teenagers saying but everyone’s doing it. Regrettably, it also sounds very much like the typical reTHUGlican and Rovian whining and justification.
By use of this inexcusable justification, we buy into their juvenile talking points. Rather we need to be the adults and say something like “so what!… in Borneo they used to eat their neighbors. Does that make it all right?”
.
Sun Dec 11th, 2005 at 02:32:12 PM PST
MI6 and CIA ‘sent student to Morocco to be tortured
The Observer quoted a senior US intelligence official as saying the CIA was in “deep crisis” following last week’s international political storm over the agency’s transit flights. “The smarter people in the Directorate of Operations [the CIA’s clandestine operational arm] know that one day, if they do this stuff, they are going to face indictment,” the official was quoted as saying. “They are simply refusing to participate in these operations, and if they don’t have big mortgage or tuition fees to pay they’re thinking about trying to resign altogether.”
The Pentagon’s chief adviser on prisoner issues is leaving to take a policy job at the US State Department, Bush Administration officials said at the weekend.
U.S. Army Deputy Provost Marshal General Col. Pete Champagne comments on the role of the military police in detainee operations during a press briefing in the Pentagon on March 10, 2005. Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III, the lead investigator and author of the "Review of DoD Detention Operations and Detainee Interrogation Techniques" also participated. Other briefers included Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Mathew Waxman, and Army Director for Human Intelligence Thomas Gandy. DoD photo by R.D. WardMatthew Waxman will become the principal deputy director of the State Department’s policy planning office. Since filling a position created nearly two years ago to help fix the damage caused by the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse (pdf file) scandal, Mr Waxman has repeatedly clashed with top aides to the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, and senior Pentagon officials.
Colleagues and human rights advocates said that while Mr Waxman had expressed frustration over the internal administration policy fights, he was not being forced out.
“He’s tried very hard,” said Elisa Massimino, Washington director of the advocacy group Human Rights First. “But everybody recognised that he was having to go up against people who both outrank him and were deeply involved setting the policies that he was challenging.”
How America’s Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with
the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Thanks for this, Oui. I didn’t realize that the CIA had anyone left who has a shred of morality after Porter Goss’ purge. Those shackled with a conscience and morals have been quietly resigning from Bush’s government since he came to power.
Conservative thought is rife with harshness and violence against others… from their merciless economics to their twisted religious fears of anything or anyone different from them. I really don’t care why their world view is so selfish, violent, and extremely repulsive . I don’t want to understand conservatives, I want to get them the hell out of government.
I fully agree.