Monday, December 22, 2014

NYT: "Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses"

Bravo:
Since the day President Obama took office, he has failed to bring to justice anyone responsible for the torture of terrorism suspects — an official government program conceived and carried out in the years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
He did allow his Justice Department to investigate the C.I.A.'s destruction of videotapes of torture sessions and those who may have gone beyond the torture techniques authorized by President George W. Bush. But the investigation did not lead to any charges being filed, or even any accounting of why they were not filed.
Mr. Obama has said multiple times that “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” as though the two were incompatible. They are not. The nation cannot move forward in any meaningful way without coming to terms, legally and morally, with the abhorrent acts that were authorized, given a false patina of legality, and committed by American men and women from the highest levels of government on down.
Americans have known about many of these acts for years, but the 524-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report erases any lingering doubt about their depravity and illegality: In addition to new revelations of sadistic tactics like “rectal feeding,” scores of detainees were waterboarded, hung by their wrists, confined in coffins, sleep-deprived, threatened with death or brutally beaten. In November 2002, one detainee who was chained to a concrete floor died of “suspected hypothermia.”
These are, simply, crimes. They are prohibited by federal law, whichdefines torture as the intentional infliction of “severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” They are also banned by the Convention Against Torture, the international treaty that the United States ratified in 1994 and that requires prosecution of any acts of torture.
We may never get justice for 9/11, but prosecuting these criminals is a kind of surrogate justice, given how intimately they were associated with the crime of 9/11.

#warcrimes #torture #Bushadministrationwarcriminals

Friday, December 12, 2014

Senate Torture Report Released

Kudos to Diane Feinstein (for a change), for actually releasing the report (as far as it goes of course -- which is not far enough since it leaves intact the lies of 9/11).

Interesting how in the report-- it repeatedly refers to 119 suspects in the CIA "enhanced interrogation" program. 119 - 911.

Still, it is a small step of progress, and it's good to see how much news this report has generated.

War-crimes trials seem out of the question for now, and if they are not going to prosecute for torture, they sure aren't going to do anything about 9/11.

The main thing this report does is show clearly how sick, corrupt, evil and incredibly dishonest the CIA is.

And of course, Cheney lied his fucking pathetic evil ass off on Fox two days ago, about torture.



But this was no isolated incident either--  
torture and evil inhumane treatment is indeed who we are as Americans

The ideal, of course, is to work to be better -- and not shove bad news under the rug and apologize for wrong-doing.