Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiWASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush on Saturday vetoed legislation passed by Congress that would have banned the CIA from using waterboarding and other controversial interrogation techniques.
Lawmakers included the anti-torture measure in a broader bill authorizing U.S. intelligence activities.
"Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists," Bush said in his weekly radio address. He added that the vetoed legislation "would diminish these vital tools."
The House of Representatives approved the legislation in December and the Senate passed it in February despite White House warnings it would be vetoed.
CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress last month that government interrogators used waterboarding on three suspects captured after the September 11 attacks.
The simulated drowning technique has been condemned by many members of Congress, human rights groups and other countries as a form of illegal torture.
The U.S. Army Field Manual prohibits waterboarding and seven other interrogation methods and the bill would have aligned CIA practices with the military's.
In a message to CIA employees on Saturday after Bush's veto, Hayden said the CIA would continue to work strictly within the law but said its needs were different from that of the U.S. Army and that the CIA needed to follow its own procedures.
"There are methods in CIA's program that have been briefed to our oversight committees, are fully consistent with the Geneva Convention and current U.S. law, and are most certainly not torture," Hayden said.
In his remarks, Bush did not specifically mention waterboarding.
But he said: "The bill Congress sent me would not simply ban one particular interrogation method, as some have implied. Instead, it would eliminate all the alternative procedures we've developed to question the world's most dangerous and violent terrorists."
It is unlikely that Democrats, the majority party in Congress, could muster enough votes to overturn Bush's veto. The bill passed the House and Senate on partisan votes, short of the support needed to reverse the president.
© Reuters 2008
109 Comments so far
Show All"distasteful and unproductive"? You are twisted. And if you think that there wasn't high level collusion you are very naive.
It is also kind misguided to think that military personnel are the right people to discern who should be tortured or not. Firstly there are so many twisted people in military intelligence. Secondly, they get it wrong usually. Even if there are secret cases we don't know about where they get it right they definitely get it wrong enough times for it to be worrying and a war crime. Why, we must ask, do so many people released from Guantanamo never get charged with anything when they are sent back to Britian or Australia, despite the fact tat the US gvt thought them so guilty they needed to be tortured? Why hand over people to Syria for torturing if they are terrorists? No, it is screwed up.
At the end of the day you either support torture of innocent people - which means you are happy with the idea of your own wife being plucked off the street and tortured by the US military - or you take a humane sane view that torture is only ever counter productive. I know which camp I am in, but then I don't like the idea of my loved ones being tortured.
blessthebeasts - I do not punish the Labrador with a two-by-four. That would be wrong and sadistic. Also, I would not call myself dangerous, at least not compared to others I know.
andrewr-let's get one thing straight. what happened at abu ghraib was distasteful and unproductive. That was abuse pure and simple perpetrated by some low level military personnel.
barely human - "it would be exceedingly naive to believe military personnel in the chaos of a combat zone would be able to discern who's guilty and who isn't", you are absolutely correct and I agree with you.
That's why the interrogation should be left to people that were trained in interrogation techniques. That's what the bill was going to outlaw.
Tom Edgar - I never said everyone was evil beyond suburbia. I have met the people you describe. Most of them trying to make a living, some of them just trying to survive another day. They are not the problem. They will actually be the answer once they figure out they can stand against tyrants who are manipulating them.
Wasn't it McCain who said waterboarding was torture and against the Geneva Convention only a few months ago?
Didn't he say that if we used that method it could be used on any of our soldiers, if captured?
Now he backs Bush in saying it's okay?
McCain is a total flip-flopper if I ever saw one. I guess the Bush endorsement must have done the trick.
THE TIME TO IMPEACH IS N O W !!!!
WE CAN'T WAIT 10 MORE MONTHS !!!!
Seven or eight years ago this would have been a surprise. But I don't see how anyone could be surprised today. Some say Bush is a tyrant. Others say he is a dictator. Additional folks say we have a fascist government. They all might be right, but I would describe the USA gov't as "The Mafia."
Bush has thumbed his nose at the Constitution, and international law, turned the so-called JUSTICE DEPARMENT into a criminal org., and turned the military into an INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST ORG. So the only surprise is that some on this board seem surprised that Bush vetoes the anti-torture Bill.
Chameleon--Do you use the two by four method on your dog if she doesn't obey you? How about the wife? You sound like a dangerous character. Hopefully, our wonderful government has its eyes on you to protect the rest of us and keep us safe.
Barely Human - yes you are right to point out that it is terrorism - 90% of those people who were in Abu Ghraib when the torturing was happening - including almost all of those tortured by American soldiers - were released. (The ones that lived that is). Chameleon2 thinks that that is fine. But I call rounding up innocent people, like his wife for example, and torturing them terrorism
i hope barely human was joking when he called me an aq sypathizer.
Well, what we're really talking about is a form of terrorism. As the people who have been waterboarded have not been tried or convicted of any crime, we must assume most of them are innocent. After all, it would be exceedingly naive to believe military personnel in the chaos of a combat zone would be able to discern who's guilty and who isn't more effectively than the U.S. judicial system and law enforcement.
So why publicly refuse to take torture off the table if not to terrorize potential political opponents?
Is there anyone out there who has knowledge of law and can explain what steps a citizen can take to start International War Crimes proceedings against Bush and Cheney?
Is there a way for citizens to start impeachment procedures without dealing with obstruction of justice from Congress?
Oh, what a sad country you poor Americans live in.
canuckchuck, Our wonderful Mr. Harper, and Stockwell Day, walk hand in hand with Bush on this one, and any other way that they can bend over for him. Bush's frustrations, definitely do not come from a lack of a receptacle for his Mr Johnson.
The USA has aknowledged BRUTALLY MURDERING more than 100 POW's/"detainees" and random people from off the street in Iraq and Afganistan so far by TORTURING THEM TO DEATH, under orders from Herr Bush & Cheney...God knows how many more they have NOT acknowledged..... As much as I am against killing the retarded, Bush's legacy should and WILL be a short rope and a long drop....Cheney, on the other hand, should get a taste of what he has handed out...
HANG YOUR HEADS IN SHAME AMERICA...YOU ARE NO BETTER THAN SADDAM'S IRAQ OR SOME 'STAN WARLORDS HELL-STATE....
LAND OF THE FREE AND HOME OF THE BRAVE MY ASS
USA...LAND OF THE COWARD AND HOME OF THE TORTURER
I really thought the first submission by "Chameleon" had be written ironically. Sadly I was wrong.
So he and I have something in common. I too spent a few years in the Middle and Far Eastern countries. Seems we actually saw different people. The ones I met were invariably, charming, decent people with similar aspirations to my own.
Maybe the old saying is true. "You get back ten fold what you give." Negativity,Arrogance, Superiority. All of these, very often displayed by many people, but notably by Americans, will always receive a corresponding return of serve.
So torturing another human somehow elevates the torturer to loftier idealism than the tortured, and in turn will make that person respect his tormentor and admire the beautiful idealistic country from which the methods emanate. Rather convoluted thinking to my mind. Of course Police Forces, world wide, but especially in the U S A have always favoured the strong arm to the strong mind in the past (In the past?)
If somebody tortures his beloved Labrador because it defecated on the public sidewalk. Will he accept it as a perfectly justifiable method of re-training? Maybe the chameleon would change his colour then.
tomedgar@halenet.com.au
I feel sorry for the guy who has to climb to the top of Bush's elephant turds to deposit this dropping.
The air must be getting a little thin up there.
i hope barely human was joking when he called me an aq sypathizer. In return to that joke i offer another one (i bet it's gonna fire some people up). While I'm pretty sure that myself and my wife are not aq i am sometimes worried about my labrador. she puts her front paws and head down and raises her butt up a 5-6 times a day. maybe she should be waterboarded and let us know which side she's on.
curmudgeon99 i definetly was not guy in front you at the airport. i think that dog any pony show before each flight is totally useless as well. if it's less than 400mi i prefer to fly myself than go thru that charade. also, if that incident really happened the guy was a complete moron and should be exiled to Cuba.
Well, I hope W is stupid enough to vacation in Vermont. At least then we'd be able to arrest the ba**urd (misspelling is intentional). I would like to know when Congress might deem this commander in chief to have crossed the threshold to qualify for impeachment?
chamelion2 - you must be the man who was in front of me in the security line the last time I flew. It was a long wait and in the interest of making a joke to lighten the time, I commented facetiously "Boy, don't you feel safer?"
Your reply was startling to say the least. You grabbed my hand and shook it heartily while exclaiming - seriously " At last someone who feels like I do. Nothing wrong with the extra security. I don't mind giving up some rights as long as Im safe."
It was my turn to be dumbfounded. I could think of no other comeback, except "whatever."
Well, if they are doing this only to terrorists, and then only to terrorists who know about 'important/deadly-stuff', I don't see the Problem...?
Besides, the CIA/Military have _always_ done this sort of thing in 'similar-circumstances' that protect Americans (it used to be that Viet-Cong literally-'rained' from our helicopters, for example).
iowairish:
Take heart. It aint over til it's over.
Yogi B
Calling people names doesn't really work; on the other hand, rules are made to be broken by those who know them.
Two words come to mind to describe our president. He is a twerp. He is a cockroach.
He reminds me so much of a woman who came to a poetry reading at Wake Forest University right after the 9/11 tragedy.
We were invited to write a poem or read anybody's poem, and to participate in reciting the full names of known 9/11 victims.
The quality of relevant offering was high. One woman, however, was the pathetic author of chauvinist jingles, which, mercifully, I can't remember word for word.
They all went something like this:
"They came and dropped bombs on us. Well, we'll show them."
Her understanding of the problem of terrorism-- and maybe of all problems-- was shallow and neurotic.
As we learn more and more about waterboarding, specifically this week from an illustrated article in the New Yorker magazine, we discover that the victim, characteristically, "puffs up like a toad."
Characteristically, also, the waterboarders then jump up and down on the victim's body to expel water in order to make room for more.
These are two new questions for journalists to ask President Bush about the torture he supports.
1. Does every victim puff up like a toad?
2. Do the approved CIA operatives then jump on the belly, lungs and esophagus to make room for more water?
In the early years of the W. Bush presidency, we were constantly told that we had underestimated the man.
Clearly, however, the American people have overestimated him throughout.
The moral people in this country do not wish to be classified with all the torturing countries in the world. They feel so strongly on this point that they would rather die first.
These are the best Americans.
So, any chance the congress will have some guts, and just stand up and hold the line on the bill?
Bush is great at playing chicken because no one ever takes him on.
Come-on democrate - one more chance for you to earn my vote.
You roll on this, it will be very hard for me to ever vote democrat again.
Can we now assume that when American service men are captured that it is okay for their captors to waterboard or otherwise torture them? I understand the inquisition had some very effective techniques in their handbook.
Bush vetoing this says volumes about his character. Make sure that this is part of his legacy every time his name is mentioned from now on. Let Bush's humiliation be a lesson to every future President.
And let the fact that Congress passed this piece of legislation only to have Bush veto it be part of each of these anti-torture Congressperson's wiki-entries. Let history read that Congress did not march lock step with Bush and Cheney.
RE: - Is this the Law of the Land or
just American Family Values?
Seems a bit unfair at the moment to compare them to Addams Family values - since Wednesday's idea of fun seems more gentle by comparison.
It would be the law of the land if Bush did not use his veto to kill it.
RE: - McCain can't over-ride Bush's veto. His lips are locked too tight on George's ass.
You make Bush sound like a Tim Horton's cup - what is their slogan again - oh yes - "roll up the rim to win."
I am not sure one can over-ride a veto, since the legislation would have already been killed (as Congress probably knew it would be). HOWEVER, there is no law saying that Congress could not pass identical legislation in the near future and hope that the new President does not veto it.
RE: - Bush did not mention his real reason for vetoing the bill… it did not guarantee immunity for his co-conspirators in the Telecom industry.
It doesn't guarantee immunity from charges of war crimes either - though international cowardice does. As Klein says in the Shock Doctrine, torture is about breaking resistance - a deterrent to protest.
BTW - do Wright and Benjamin still have the right to vote in American elections? There is something in your rules of not being able to vote if one has been charged with something?
RE: - By the way, have you heard about the Hillary/Barack Wedding?
Have you heard then Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter MacKay and Condi Rice talk about their love affair in their own words yet (near the middle)?
http://www.airfarce.com/seasons/season14/061231.html
Belinda won the CNN Political Play of the weak for dumping Peter and the Conservative Party on the same day and becoming a Liberal. Peter's father, Elmer MacKay, has the notorious distinction of still being friends with both former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber (ie the Airbus Affair).
RE: - Karl Rove prefers "waterboarding" because it sounds like a really cool recreational sport the whole family might enjoy the next time they're out on the lake.
Makes me feel glad that I can't afford to go to the lake. I remember my dad commenting about Shock and Awe just before he died - saying how "Americans" are in such awe of themselves.
COMarc-
if there were war crimes trials on this, bush and his bushies would be untouchable because while cheney was working for the DoD back in the day he refused to sign a document allowing americans to be tried as war criminals, but allowing them to try war criminals.
convenient that we can deal out judgement to the whole world, and never be held accountable for our actions.
Of course he vetoed it. This the guy, when he was a kid, put firecrackers up a frogs ass and lit the fuse. Business as usual.
1776Freedom1776 -- Please clarify your over-generalized comment: "Dude the guys in the orange jumpsuits are fascists thugs from the group "the world can't wait". Who here would want to live under their rule?"
1. If you're referring to the pix above at the top of the article, that dude is a demonstrator (e.g. an innocent).
2. Because our system of justice assumes the rights of individuals accused of crime, as being innocent until proven guilty, than only those orange wearing dudes on the exit side of a courthouse would appear to apply.
3. On the other hand, if all that it takes is wearing orange to become a "terrorist", and to thereby become eligible for torture (and your disdain) - then I would be very careful next time you go out hunting with your buddies for ducks (or whatever) wearing your "don't shoot me I am another hunter _O R A N G E _ hats and vests"
Namaste
… … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … & … ML King … … Inspiration … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed »
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — MLK
Not waterboarding, but written around the time of Fallujah.
Perhaps it is Time to Break the Wheel
Blood, burned bodies hanging.
Outrage! Revenge! Barbarians! Savages!
Kill them until they surrender!
Give them no quarter!
Music to Bush and Company's ears,
This cry for revenge and destruction.
If this is the people's mood,
His forces may kill at will.
What of the Iraqi, holding a burned body,
That represents his hopes and dreams?
He sits on the ground before a burned out home,
Cradling wife or child and watching the soldiers.
What may be passing through his mind?
Outrage! Revenge! Barbarians! Savages!
Kill them until they surrender!
Give them no quarter!
Thus is this horror perpetuated
In war after war, year after year,
From Richard CÅ“ur De Lyon
To the current tragic bloodbath.
Steve Osborn
10 April 2004
Nothing seems to change, does it?
Here follows a very incomplete list of some of those idealists that were ready for utopia
(including of course many of the posters here on CD)
...Medger Evers, Nelson Mandela, Dennis Banks, Russell Means, Angela Davis, Frederick Douglas, Malcom X, the Berrigan Brothers, Betty Friedan, Steve Biko, Cesar Chavez, Mahatma Ghandi, the Dalai Lama, Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa, Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, John Muir, Aung San Suu, Bono,
Noam Chompsky, Rachel Carson, Elie Wiesel, Martin Luther King and Rigberta Menchu.
I go to a small Calvery Bible Church.
_____________________________________
1776Freedom1776: With all due respect, Mr. Huckabee-- I know you have a lot of time on your hands since you dropped out of the race, but I think you'll feel more comfortable in your small church with its small pasture and small minds to match.
"They will get water in their nose?" is like characterizing your idol's crucifixion as, "He'll get stuck with a couple of tacks?"
But thanks for playing.
1776Freedom1776
Well, let us read the Declaration of Independence, then our Constitution/Bill of Rights, and start from there.
BY HEPHZIBAH ALFRED
Want to meet someone interesting? Communities are a great way to meet other like-minded Residents. Feel at home in a welcoming social environment. Thousands of real-life friendships, romances, and business partnerships have started in Second Life. Below are a few communities you can join today. Take a look, pick one, and start exploring Second Life with some ready-made friends. If you would like to start on Linden Lab's Orientation Island, click the "Skip This Step" button, or just take me to Linden Lab's Orientation Island.
BY HEPHZIBAH ALFRED
The Great Plains, which makes up more than 15% of the USA's land area through 10 states but holds barely 3% of the nation's population, is going through another transformation. The more rural parts of the region gradually are adapting to a century of decline in farming and the steady exodus of young people. Scattered corners of the Plains that have suffered economic setbacks are adjusting partly by reverting to nature: land preservation, eco-tourism, wildlife products, hunting grounds and recreational ranches.
All I can say is that America must have a plethora of bad karma to have this Prez for 8 Years that is guilty of the highest treason and war crimes. What happens if our brave and patriotic soldiers are captured and waterboarded? Sounds more like a crime family than a government to me!
Impeach the little sniveling fascist thug.
Is it intrinsic to man that we are aggressive? Is it in the cards that only the most strong and cruel will survive? Can we put all the evil/suffering back into Pandora's box?
The United States Government needs an enema, sort of water torture.
Maybe we can start by boycotting all games/videos/television that are associated with violence and prohibit our children from being indoctrinated into the corruption/fantasies/militarism of our corporate/military complex. Also try to remove from office (while we still can) any congress person who does not vote against the torture legislation. And above all, try to remove the corporate interests and their lobbyists out of our government. We need to keep pressure on whoever is elected to push for less corruptible campaign financing reform.
Every day, every hour we let this administration stay in power, we lose more of the freedoms we are barely clinging to right now. If they stay in power until November, they'll most likely stay in power past November.
I don't think we'll come to torture citizens of the US. However, once our government labels us "terrorists" for speaking out, our citizen rights are stripped and we will be subject to torture.
I far more fear what our government in the US is turning into than what the terrorists are doing.
It's already against the law anyway. So just enforce the law. Arrest those creeps and put them on trial. Geneva conventions are the law of the land... enforce them.
Look, the solution is simple. Find some reason to invite BushCheney to Vermont. They've passed a resolution there to arrest the two of them for war crimes if they ever visit the state. A true exercise of states' rights if ever I heard of it!
So pack 'em off to Vermont to be tried as war criminals. Remember, Vermont was one of the original 13 colonies, and the revolutionary spirit still lives on there!
Does this really surprise you? Let the facts speak for themselves:
As governor of Texas, our current leader executed over 112 prisoners-more than any other governor.
http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/More_George_W__Bush_Crime.htm
As President, issued 263 executive orders, including EO 12919, which allows him to singularly issue martial law:
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/wbush.html
One out of every 100 Americans is now imprisoned:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-02-28-prison-record_N.htm
As an American, what's happening before our eyes to our country is equally sad and unbelievable.
Let the People stand up and take action!
Pope John Paul II was right, Bush is the antichrist. In the meantime, Democrats continue to fool voters into believing they're any different.
ANDYUK
here's something to cheer you up......'the world without us' by alan weisman. recommended by ezeflyer on another thread. just search by title on the internet..........cheers, coco. p.s. i'm truly sick and tired too.
What ever happened to taking the high road and having a few morals????? Or do these fascist Christian's have any idea what the high road and morals are anymore????? I have serious doubts anymore. Our founders should be rolling over in their graves about now. At how far in the sewer this country has gone under one arrogant twit who wants to play Caesar.
America has more to fear from the bush White House and george bush than from any terrorists. The bush White House has done more damage to America than any group of terrorists ever could.
It will take years to undo the damage from this current administration.
I had just written a long thread and in the process of submitting it, it has dissapeared, so instead of rewriting I'll simply mention my main point.
Where are the voices of the leaders of the Catholic Church? Have they nothing to say about legalized torture?
But look at who is the leader of the Catholic Church: one Joseph Ratzinger.
Not only have the three branches of the United States all but ceased to protect and uphold the Constitution, but those behind their front man Bush have managed to get their man into the Vatican.
Somewhere way back in this thread, revolution was mentioned. Are we even capable of that anymore? Is it even possible?
The future looks grim.
See, the US doesn't torture, except when it tortures. And when it tortures, it isn't torture, because it is the US. Perfectly clear.
Why aren't these people in prison?
Why aren't they in front of the International Criminal Court?
I didn't vote for the Chimp-tard. In either election. I voted for the Democraps in 2006 to clean that scat on a hill, and they basically ran scared or slept on the job.
Scared? Maybe I could understand. I wouldn't put it past Bush/Chaney to do something sneaky and nasty to someone who crossed them. Poison tea anyone?
Remember, the Air Force Cover-Up of That Minot-Barksdale Nuke Missile Flight ...? Have all those nukes been accounted for? If nukes can go missing, why not a little arsenic?
It's really unfortunate that posters such as Chameleon (thankfully in a minority), still see it as the God given right of the US to be the World's policeman.
This is the very attitude which has caused many of the problems in the World today, the US meddling, threatening and then killing other people, often in the name of "freedom" and "democracy".
The answer to this is quite simple (and Matti touched on this, whilst talking about "nation states being outmoded"), never let single powerful states dictate to the rest of the World. The UN needs restructuring, and it needs the power of veto removed from a select few, because having that power seems to have corrupted some states beyond belief.
We, the so called civilised Western World, designed many of the great acts of legislature which are meant to uphold decency and human rights, such as the Geneva Convention. As Paul Bramscher has said "so much" for them, because we no longer practise what we preach.
I am genuinely very depressed by the whole situation, particularly the reaction following 9/11. There is no restraint or diplomacy any more, and we are living in the 21st century. By putting a label, such as "terrorist" on another state, it somehow gives you leave to commit any number of atrocities, and with the help of our biased media, you will convince the public that we are defending our country.
I am truly sick and tired of this World.
"The Death of Nation-States is apt to get a bit ugly, the U.S. will likely be first and worst.
I'm looking forward to it, you?"
Hey, go for it. I live in Northern California. We have way more food than we need and natural walls like nobodies business. The US is going to fizzle like a wet firecracker when the rest of the world realizes we can't do crap without imported Chinese parts and that our money is worthless paper.
How'd that house flip turn out for you? Don't worry you still have that Dow Jones mutual fund right? Chest pains? You're having chest pains? You have health insurance right? Drive you to the hospital anyway? In this Chevy? Dude, it won't start; out of gas anyway.
Well it's a good thing we don't make cell phones in the US; or laptops.
-militantliberal- is correct.
This bullshitting on torture is an attempt to confuse the facts.
Subverting the law to the degree that this government has is punishable by execution in this Republic.
The dems in congress are nearly as complicit, and so they do not pursue the matter.
Nation-States are an outmoded form of Human Organization, but they are highly benificial to Elites, since they were created by Elites.
The Death of Nation-States is apt to get a bit ugly, the U.S. will likely be first and worst.
I'm looking forward to it, you?
-matti
So much for the 8th Amendment, Army Field Manual, Geneva Conventions or our national image. Leaders move us forward. Scoundrels drag us down. How the hell did we ever get saddled with this mob?
I'm going to really earn my name now, at least in print. The only cure for this return to the pre-Enlightenment era is to repeal the Military Commissions Act immunity blanket for executive officials who violated the 1996 torture statute; charge Bush, Cheney and all other high officials for violating it; after a full and fair trial, and if convicted, execute them all. Of course it won't happen for real; the Democrats are there to stop laws from being upheld, but one can dream.
"Oh yeah? Well, if you're not gonna let me torture, I'm not gonna listen to your phone calls. So there!"
> whoever says no good info come out of torture probably did not use the procedure correctly..
Innocence is not the correct answer for a torturer. Torturers will seek to justify what they do and not stop until a justification is created. The idea that torture can be "correct" is ludicrous. The idea that "well they do it too!" doesn't wash either. Unless you firmly believe that police should be allowed to rape, murder and steal - criminals do, so preventing police from 'correctly" raping, murdering and stealing is to prevent them from doing their job. Upholding the law and all that.
Over a year ago, abused Iraqis were found within the Defense Ministry. The US military started to do the right thing, inspect prisons. The first few, they found more evidence of torture. Then they stopped inspecting. Months later, Rumsfeld told a reporter that what Iraqis did to one another was not a problem for US troops. Right.
If the local police, trained/supplied/protected by a foreign country, tortured my family - it's going to be very much someone's problem. Yet Americans expect Iraqis to suck it up.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/05/08/alistair_horne/index1.htm...
Alistair Horne wrote "A Savage War of Peace'. Later he went to interview Augusto Pinochet:
"He started off the interview by saying how much he'd liked it. I thought, this is not something to be missed. So I said, 'Well, of course I don't have to tell you that the French army won the battle of Algiers through the use of torture, but it cost them the war.' Pinochet looked me absolutely straight in the eye and said, 'Well, yes, but in Chile we never tortured.'"
There is a story about an American officer who met one of the VC officers after the war. The American said "you never won any of the battles". The Vietnamese officer thought about it. "It doesn't matter. You lost the war."
65% of people support Bush in this Western Maryland area. Some of the local cops have already completed two tours in Iraq. Maybe Bush should retire to Cumberland, MD. The Chamber of Commerce might even make him mayor.
Is it any wonder that when Dubya pontificates about human rights in Cuba,
China, Iran, or North Korea(which is also ruled by the spoiled offspring of
a former leader) that the world laughs. I live in America; I am not laughing.
I hope the International Criminal Court is preparing charges.
Well, this proves once and for all that the christian right, or that majority the still support Bush, are willing to raise the representative of hell as their leader. Advocating torture in this way is just pure evil.
Any moral standing the US may have had in the world is gone today. Any right to honor the people serving in the US military is gone for they, every man and woman, swore to uphold the US Constitution AGAINST ALL ENEMIES FORIEGN AND DOMESTIC.
We all know who the greatest enemy of the US Constitution is and where he lives. George W. Bush, 1600 Pennslyvania Avenue.
If he is free the US armed forces are cowards and cravens to a man.
Another bear craps in the woods...
So, is there any outrage left that this chimp has yet to commit? He's not nuked anyone, yet anyhow. He orders torture, but won't do that himself (since his frat days anyhow); he orders war, but won't join the infantry; he orders others to be democratic, but won't insist on safeguarding the ballot box; he orders others to tell the truth, but wouldn't know the truth if it hit him with a two by four.
Pathetic scum sucking worms are a higher form of life than is the president of the United States. Hitler was a better man than G. W. Bush.
I have evidence, which I can't reveal due obvious to National Security concerns, that chameleon2 and his wife are Al Qaeda sympethizers and possible operatives. I strongly suggest the operators of this website report his IP address to the Department of Homeland Security so he and his wife can be located and interrogated.
If chameleon2 is innocent he has nothing to fear, and I'm sure he would trust the government to believe him after a little waterboarding.
Tomgram: Alfred McCoy on the CIA's road to Abu Ghraib: By 1967, just four years after compiling a torture manual for use against a few top Soviet targets, the CIA was operating forty interrogation centers in South Vietnam as part of its Phoenix Program that killed over 20,000 Viet Cong suspects. In the centers themselves, countless thousands were tortured for information that led to these assassinations....
At least twice during the Cold War, the CIA's torture training contributed to the destabilization of two key American allies, Iran's Shah and the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos. Yet even after their spectacular falls, the Agency remained blind to the way its torture training was destroying the allies it was designed to defend....
The CIA's torture experimentation of the 1950s and early 1960s was codified in 1963 in a succinct, secret instructional booklet on torture -- the "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation" manual, which would become the basis for a new method of torture disseminated globally over the next three decades. These techniques were first spread through the U.S. Agency for International Development's Public Safety program to train police forces in Asia and Latin America as the front line of defense against communists and other revolutionaries....
At the Cold War's end, Washington resumed its advocacy of universal principles, denouncing regimes for torture, participating in the World Conference on Human Rights at Vienna in 1993 and, a year later, ratifying the UN Convention Against Torture. On the surface, the United States had resolved the tension between its anti-torture principles and its torture practices. Yet even when Congress finally ratified this UN convention it did so with intricately-constructed reservations that cleverly exempted the CIA's psychological torture method....
While other covert agencies synonymous with Cold War repression such as Romania's Securitate, East Germany's Stasi, and the Soviet Union's KGB have disappeared, the CIA survives -- its archives sealed, its officers decorated, and its Cold War crimes forgotten. By failing to repudiate the Agency's propagation of torture, while adopting a UN convention that condemned its practice, the United States left this contradiction buried like a political land mine ready to detonate with such phenomenal force in the Abu Ghraib scandal....
Today the American public has only a vague understanding of these CIA excesses and the scale of its massive mind-control project. ...There is, in sum, an ignorance, a studied avoidance of a deeply troubling topic, akin to that which shrouds this subject in post-authoritarian societies....
As my Papaw always says, "Bush is the anti-Christ"...
What'd you expect?................ I feel way safer!
Well, at least the Crawford Creep can't say we do not torture because he just made it legal. I guess it's torture if anyone else in the world does it, but it's OK if the good ole' USofA uses it. Some example we have become since this bastard was
given control, and 59 million idiots (with a little help from some voting machines in Ohio) re-elected him.
I travel to dirt poor developing countries too, Chammie. There was a time when a broad majority of people in those places admired the US because we aspired to rise above vindictive, unproductive practices such as torture. Iranians admired us until we kept screwing around endlessly with their government, over oil. The days of looking up to the US are over, thanks to George Bush's barbarism. So you may join the dark side, I would rather not.
I propose that your family is safer in a country that is not known for torture.
This contradicts the American rant, particularly of Bush, Condi Rice, Cheney, that America does not practice torture. What has been hidden so far, is atlast in the open. Probably America is the only country in the entire world that has legalised torture. The myth of America being "a city on a hill" and a "light to the world" is demythologised.
What is it that America wants to achieve by legalising torture?
The primary nature of torture and pain is that it destroys language of the victim and thus bringing about an immediate reversion to the sounds and cries of a human being makes before language is learned. This inexpressibility has political consequences. The torture victim is reduced to prelanguage screams and moans that are not heard and acknowledged by anyone. Torture becomes the visible manifestation of power. It shatters the person's voice and makes language itself ineffective. The purpose of torture and its concomitant interrogation is not the elicitation of confessions or information from the victims, but to destroy the prisoner's voice and language. The intense pain the prisoners experience destroys their connection to their world and makes both questions and answers insignificant because links to friends, family, community and country disappear in the all-encompassing world-destroying presence of pain. Torture is a primary means of destroying any sense of solidarity with a community or country. Pain annihilates everything but itself. Torturers humiliate victims, exploit his human weakness through the mechanism of pain, until he does take the role of filth, confessing his lowliness and betraying cause, friends, family, community, and country. The victims are made to speak the words of the American empire, to replace their own reality with that of the empire, to double the voice of the empire.
Isn't this what America and Americans have been involved in. Some of the Americans, who try to push the blame completely onto their government, fail to realise that the government is elected by majority of Americans. The political representatives are elected by majority of Americans. Therefore, the entire country is involved (directly or indirectly)in practising and perpetuating torture in order to destroy the voice and language of the victims and thus promote its own "master narrative": America is "a city on a hill" and "a light to the world".
Chameleon2:
Do you really think the rest of the posters on this site don't know perfectly well that the world is not necessarily a nice happy place? You can't believe that. The people here are reading the articles on this site nearly every day, articles that outline to them clearly that this is not the case, so they're better informed about this than most Americans. And how do you know everyone here has led a safe little idyllic life in suburbia?
I don't even get your point. Are you trying to say that it's okay for the US to torture people because they're not as nice as we are? The US is the world's leading exporter of weapons of mass destruction. It is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons on living humans. We have killed millions of people in the Middle East with our bombs. The vast majority of cluster bombs are Made in America. We have blown up little children, a whole lot of them. Is it okay to do this if the blown-up children don't live in idyllic suburban utopias like the ones you seem to think everyone here lives in?
I mean, what are you trying to say? That we don't value your family's life because we think torture is wrong? How are those two things connected? I don't get it.
chameleon2, if you use that same phoney patronising tone on your wife then she doesn't need the chameleon2-approved torture from the CIA. She knows all about leading a tortured life already.
Illegalizing one form of torture was a redundant and meaningless act.
Torture is illegal already. It's part of our Constitution and certain protections extend to non-citizens regardless of location. Our
compliance with International treaties such as the Geneva Convention are also mandated by the Constitution.
Congress gave quasi-lawful validation to the Executive by presenting this legislation to be "vetoed." Impeachment is the correct procedure.
The damn president doesn't have the authority to veto clear Constitutional mandates.
Torture, violence, death, evil
.... this only creates more
.... Torture, violence, death, evil
Its an illusion that this is the answer. It only creates more problems. We can't kill them all. So, every time we kill or torture or mutilate, we leave angry people behind. We leave behind a kid who knows his brother or his cousin was tortured to death by US. Guess what, that's the kid that's going to be the suicide bomber that strikes back at us.
Its a myth that this is the answer. It only leads to escalation. After that kid who's brother we tortured strikes back, we decide we have to get tougher to make it stop. We decide we have to kidnap and torture more people to 'send a message'. We bomb more. We imprison more.
And all we do is create more suicide bombers. All we do is create more people who want to kill or torture us.
Its all just bs to justify evil. Adding evil to evil only creates more evil.
SO let me get this straight,bush vetoed the bill which required that the cia line up its interrogation techniques with the army fiels manual? is this the same bush whose approval ratings are lower than nixon's when he resigned ? why can't this veto be overridden? the other day on democracy now,amy g asked a retired general to comment on our ag's unwillingness to define water boarding as torture-his reply "that's astonishing." to paraphrase abe lincoln "if water boarding is not wrong than nothing is." i don't care if our congress is made up of wing nuts and those who coddle them -any legislative body with a modicum of self respect would override this damned veto.
Maybe it's time to step up the action..say Kidnap a local notable figure..maybe say..someone known to be a member of INFRAGARD the FBI snitch and special little paranoia/business nightmare...kidnap em, and then Waterboard em, get them to say ANYTHING..because that is what happens, and then send it to the media and make it that weeks little drama..but at the same time..MAKE A POINT...SHOW Americans the REALITY of what TORTURE is, and how it really works...and ALSO..give a little..uhhh..HEADS UP to those that SUPPORT this kind of..INSANE reality we are seeing more and more as.."normal" in these here "united" states..a little heads up that this is what they support and that..well..it could happen to them..(the reality of "unity" is the guy tailgating you on the highway...yeah..he really cares what you think..)
Finally..as I say over and over again..
DOES THIS REALLY BOTHER YOU? BECAUSE GUESS WHAT? YOU ARE PAYING FOR IT..YEAH THAT'S RIGHT..IT'S NOT YET TO THE POINT WHERE THESE SCUMBAGS ARE DOING THIS FOR FREE! NOT QUITE..THEY GET PAID..BY YOU..TO DO THIS..TO BREAK AVERY LAW AND FORM OF "JUSTICE" WE HAVE HELD DEAR IN THIS COUNTRY UNTIL 2000, AFTER THE MILITARY COUPE' ALL THAT IS SACRED IN AMERICA IS DEATH. SO IF YOU ARE REALLY SERIOUS...REALLY ACTUALLY DO NOT WANT THIS DONE IN YOUR NAME..THEN STOP PAYING THE SALLERIES OF THE ACTUAL PERPETRATORS, THE BUSH APPOINTED RIGHT WING CORPORATE FASCIST THEOCRATIC JUDGES THAT THEY HAVE DONE EVERYTHING TO INSTALL..EVEN FIRING OTHER JUDGES...YOU ARE PAYING THEIR SALLERIES..YEAH YOU!
LOOK AT IT HTIS WAY...WHAT IF 100 MILLION OF YOU DID NOT PAY IN APRIL...JUST SAID.."NOT IN MY NAME"...THINK ABOUT IT..THIS IS THE LAST ACTUAL "POWER" WE HAVE IN THIS COUNTRY..THE ONLY REASON THAT THEY HAVE NOT DECLARED MARTIAL LAW..BECAUSE WITHOUT THE SALLERIES YOU ARE PROVIDING..THEY DO NOT HAVE THE LOYALIST ARMY OF THUG-RUNTS TO COMMIT THESE HEINOUS ACTS, TO KIDNAP, TORTURE, MURDER (BECAUSE IF YOU THINK THAT HAS NOT HAPPENED YOU ARE AN IDIOT..SORRY BUT IT'S TRUE..) TO PASS UNCONSTITUTIONAL "LAW'S" AND ON AND ON AD NAUSEUM...SO STOP PAYING FOR IT..JUST DO NOT PAY...DON'T DO IT...YOU DON'T HAVE TO PAY INCOME TAX ANYWAY..THERE IS NO LAW THAT SAY'S YOU DO...SO JUST DON'T...PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTHS ARE...IT IS THE ONLY WAY TO STOP WHAT IS GOING ON..THE POWER OF THE PURSE IS ALL WE HAVE LEFT..
REMEMBER WHAT DER JUNIOR SAID AFTER 911...HE SAID 'JUST GO OUT AND SHOP'..THAT MOMENT WAS THE DEAD GIVE-AWAY..THEY CAN ONLY DO WHAT THEY ARE DOING WITH YOUR MONEY...AND NO OTHER...SO DO NOT PAY..DO NOT PAY..DO NOT PAY...
An like that..
If there's ever real war crimes trials after this, Bush just signed his guilty plea. He's now officially on record as telling the CIA to torture people.
barely human, thanks for not valuing my family's life. I hold no grudge against you.
Edward, I really do believe what I said and here's why:
Been reading this site for more than 3 years now and I see the people who post here are idealists. i assume a lot of them post from the US in their nice quiet suburban homes. lemme give you an update: the world does not end at the shopping plaza at the intersection of Grand St and Ellison Ave (totally made those up). It does not even end outside the little town you live in, where you yake your daughter to soccer practice.
Outside that cozy little place you call home, outside the US there are some places where people think differently, they do not value human life as you do. I agree it would be nice if were all abig happy family but that's not the case. Those people do not understand the "kind word" I metioned in my original post. You gotta use the two-by-four from the same post. I am thankful here are some around that still understand that.
And, yes I have been to some of those places and seen some really unpleasant things. That's why I think we as human being are not ready for the utopia that most of posters on this site envision.
"Thank you, Mr. Bush. Now if you could just stand over there... yes... there... that's right... in front of that grassy knoll..."
To continue the unConstitutional war on terrorizing everyone the President's minions must be allowed to torture anyone.
Evil to support evil.
And the Democrats will whine a little and roll over, as usual.
re : surrender -- check out page 12 of the March 10th Newseek (cover page : Mr. Right, RIP)
On page 12 is a little blurb about military patches. The one of the alien holding the B-2 bomber is definitely interesting, but the one on the bottom left is really scary : a hissing dragon with stars-and-stripes wings, clutching the globe. It's tail is wrapped around a crystal. Maybe THAT should be our new flag, so everyone can see what we're really all about.
As for waterboarding -- I grew up on a lake, and my older brother (much bigger and stronger than me) took great pleasure in holding my head under water until I was on the verge of passing out. I learned early on not to struggle. It was sadistic. But I didn't dare tattle, he would have said I was making things up and then devised some new torture. I finally brought this up to him a few years ago and he got furious, said I was making it all up. He has NEVER seen anything wrong with this behavior. Neither does Bush, it's useless to try to appeal to reason or empathy. I think the relevant word is 'psychopath'. (And, by the way, my brother is has been a very popular and successful MD for many years now -- so go figure.)
The ONLY way to reverse this trend is public outrage. My silence at home bought me many more years of deranged treatment because guys seemed to sense that they could get away with it. That is where we are as a country today.
I've no words. And I've no energy to try to stop this. The avalanche of the destruction of humanity, our communal humane-ness, has too much force. It can't be stopped. It can't even be lessened.
It's sapped all of my will. I've no anger. I've no outrage. I've no fight left in me.
Their mission is truly accomplished.
Maybe since the swastika isn't taken anymore, the U.S. could put it where the stars currently are on the flag?
Just override his veto, you goofballs!
Will someone please arrest that idiot already? Damn. Can the population of Washington DC just storm the White House gates and take these traitors into custody? What up America? Impeach. Arrest. Imprison. Thank goodness 2012 is right around the corner because I can't take much more of this nonsense.
Note to Reuters:
There is no such thing as "waterboarding."
There is only WATER TORTURE. Karl Rove prefers "waterboarding" because it sounds like a really cool recreational sport the whole family might enjoy the next time they're out on the lake.
If iced tea is used, it's ICED TEA TORTURE, not iced tea-boarding. Coffee? That would be COFFEE TORTURE, not coffeeboarding. Urine? URINE TORTURE, natch, not urineboarding.
Work with us over here, Reuters - we're tryin to save a damn country!
chameleon2, you said, "...whoever says no good info come out of torture probably did not use the procedure correctly or abused it."
The procedure is ALWAYS abused. That is why it is called torture.
Chameleon, if you advocate torture then you have to accept the fact that it is something that can be applied to your wife (and knowing the numb-nuts at the CIA, probably your dog too.) So basically saying it is okay for someone you are saying it is okay for your wife to be tortured. Nice.
chameleon2:
I hope that you really don't believe what you wrote.
Once torture begins, where does it stop? Is the next step using a Black & Decker on kneecaps? Or do we have some intermediate step like a hose up the rear?
An absolutely despicable disgrace, the current administration has continously embraced barbaric activity. A pinnacle of sorts, a Machiavellian twist over the edge that probably even gives some right wing elders pause, if only to consider the particularly savage US vitrol post 9/11. No amount of "look what they'll do, if we don't" makes any amount of sense, but is remarkable fear fortifying propaganda.
As for young monkey, he seems to be artificially giddy towards the end of his employment, obscenely inappropriate. Any ambivalent, a-political young American must have seen something uniquely different when a sitting President smiles as he recalls a crude video of an enemy being asphyxiated until death.
I don't value chameleon2's dog or wife as much as he does. I'd be fine with outlawing torture and letting them die.
If the American People do not respond and insure that waterboarding is illegal, then morally, they have no beef if waterboarding is used on them, and it will be. Consider that we now have eight hundred new prison camps and the unitary decider can designate anyone a terrorist, and that he belongs to a religious faith that has a history of torture and genocide.
Let's watch closely and determine "who" the Democrats are that fail to vote to overide this hubris.
It's OFFICIAL: Fascism is here.
Waterboarding is NOT simulated drowning. Waterboarding is the beginning of drowning and when carried too far is murder.
Bush's only recourse is to keep to his policy of doin whatever he thinks is the law.
David,
He has all the Guns and people who are trained to kill to protect his sorry criminal Ass.
That scares lots of folks in government too.
We remember what they did to JFK, MLK, RFK and others not so big.....
So yes there is fear here in America.. It is gonna get bad Depression time is closer and the change will speed up.... I may be delusional but it looks to me that strange things are happening.... Just like in the history books.