The stories about our own torture gulags were out there for anyone to find, so long as they were willing to look, unflinchingly, at the evidence--and ignore the cheerleading media.

I have heard (I don't watch TV, the most effective mind-control device ever deployed) that Joe Scarborough and others maintain that "torture has obtained good information and saved lives."

Perhaps. Leaving aside the fact that the folks who ought to know (Generals, CIA, FBI) state unequivocally that torture causes the tortured to say anything that will make the torture stop, to me, it matters not at all if torture produces "good information"--even if it does save lives.

When we torture, we have lost our souls. We have lost our humanity. We have lost all validity in life and in this world. When we have been reduced to torture, the question is not--as the scum who torture and approve of it maintain--about keeping us safe. It is about changing the world to one where terrorism (or whatever crime we are torturing to allegedly solve/prevent) is eliminated. It is about creating a place where such actions are not employed because people, on the whole, are happy and tolerant of each other.

The other world, this world, the one where the USA tortures and lies and commits mass murder on a scale that would embarrass Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the rest, is a world I would gladly depart, speedily, on my own terms.

At least I'd still be human.

But I'm afraid such things have been going on for decades, via the School of the Americas and via police departments (LA, Chicago, New York, etc) for many years. There are many many people, all around you, who would only too happily staff the gulags, the torture chambers, the rape rooms and the gallows.

I don't pray, specifically, but there are times when I believe an asteroid impact may be our best hope. The malevolence of the human mind will eliminate itself, eventually, but billions of innocents will suffer thereby.

Here's hoping I'm utterly, totally, laughably wrong.

Peace.

I've always maintained that Gitmo facilities have done nothing more than ensure a very predictable script: (This)...that the prisoners are incubated in a painful, hate-filled environment that fosters a detainee to carry out terrorist aggression, if ever they leave the facility in an upright fashion. This administration antagonizes innocent people into desperate acts. This applies to common people, involved in daily living, paying taxes, providing sons and daughters for the killing fields of the corpo establishment.
It's scripted to ensure pain and death over this land, and the world. Heck'uva job cheney/boosh/congress!

Puffin: "There are many many people, all around you, who would only too happily staff the gulags, the torture chambers, the rape rooms and the gallows."

We breed'em by the long ton. Many are just waiting for their chance to interrogate women and young boys. Like the inquisitors of old, "If they scream, they are possessed by the devil. If they bleed they are lying. They all scream. They all bleed. Ha-ha-ha-hah! Next!" But only for the good of the Republic.

America, land of the Free, home of the Brave. Yubetcha. Genocide, human slavery, and child abuse takes guts and the freedom to kill with impunity. We gott'em both.

Puffin; you got it in one. Do you think that any of these now 'highly motivated' prisoners will be released alive?
They will be leaving their places of higher education feet first, only.

What "Creeping Fascism?" - it's full blown, led by the Nazis on the supreme court and fed by the likes of Bush, Cheney, the criminal Republicans and the complicit Democrats.

What kind of people are we that our society acts in this way? Neither torturer nor victim be, to paraphrase Camus. We must develop a sense of shame in the face of such behaviors and a sense of courage to resist.

Ok.. and now what? Who's going to take these torturers to task? Who will hold the Administration accountable? Certainly it won't be Congress or the Supreme Court.

"To understand how we got here, Hajjar notes, it's important to appreciate that the Bush administration goal has been to roll back the legal constraints on the executive branch put in place in the wake of Watergate."

The US has rolled back farther than Watergate. The Magna Carta has tire tracks on it.

how did we become a nation or toture? how could congress or the people allow this to happen? we have handed our childrens future over to the 10% of scum who have no moral or ethical foundation, and allowed them to drag us all down.

We all could see this coming from the day the first troops returned from Gitmo speaking ot torture 'lite' and every airport was turned into a checkpoint.

9/11 was our "Reichstag Fire" (1933-4?) equivalent.

Just look at the the similarity in erosion of liberties and humanity in a supposedly modern and enlightened democratic state. "creep by creep"

Sean Gonsalves closes his insightful article by asking a fundamental question about the effect of the gulag experience upon the prisoners, when (or if) they are eventually released: doesn't America's embrace of torture as official policy create more terrorists than it deters, reinforcing the twisted polemic that such a brush with martyrdom is a predictable rite of passage for those righteously waging jihad against the infidels? Two torture survivors that I can think of (Zwahiri in Egypt, Zarkawi in Jordan) would certainly agree.

The second shoe to drop is equally dark and disturbing: when those in charge of running the torture gulag rotate back into civilian life at the end of their military tours of duty, doesn't that ensure there will be plenty more future torturers, as well as torture victims? One can only assume that if deputy Barney Fife had gone through such a life experience, he wouldn't be nearly so comical towards Mayberry's jail inmates when he came back home.

Bill from Saginaw

Remember how back when there were all the phony terror alerts? And how they kept changing the color status? And how we were all supposed to go buy duct-tape and plastic and be prepared to mummify ourselves in case of an imminent terror attack.

My guess is that all of that came from bad info gained from torture.

Sure, its served our criminal politicians well. What they want is fear. So they were perfectly happy to take bad info and stand up and announce it like they were saving the nation.

But in the long term, it made any terror warning announcements from the US gov a joke. After awhile the only people paying attention were Leno and Letterman and Stewart as they looked for material for their routines.

That's what you get from torture.

"Who's going to take these torturers to task? Who will hold the Administration accountable? Certainly it won't be Congress or the Supreme Court."

There are going to be many top officials from this administration who are going to need to constantly consult a lawyer before traveling out of the country once they leave office.

One thing to remember is that this is not new to this administration. The only thing that's 'new' is their willingness to openly say that this is what we are doing.

Just a few data points along the way.
-- Manuals I believe from the School of the Americas discuss torture techniques.
-- The CIA has long trained other security services in how to torture. The Shah's Savak service comes to mind if you want a reminder why the Iranians view us as 'the Great Satan'.
-- during Vietnam, torture was used. The Phoenix program comes to mind. First off, we killed tens of thousands of people under that little initiative. It is also well known that we took people up into helicopters and threatened to throw them out if they didn't talk.
-- during the 1980's in Central America, the CIA worked closely with the intel services it had trained and tortured those who resisted our totalitarian allies in the region. They played Clinton-esque legal games where it would be our allied intel services that actually did the torture, while the CIA agent would stand in the room and 'observe' and make sure the questions they wanted answers to were asked. This technically let them say they were not torturing themselves.

That's a short list off the top of my head. I'm sure others can add to it. But, the key point is not to make the mistake of thinking this is all new with Bush\Cheney et al. This has been American policy for quite some time, under Democrat and Republican Presidents and with both Democrats and Republicans in control of Congress.

PS ... and the above discusses torture in foreign policy. Torture has also long been used by US police forces to obtain confessions.

The Miranda ruling that made the police inform someone who's arrested that they don't have to speak and that they can ask for a lawyer to be present is an attempt to control police torture. This of course has been massively hated by many levels of power in the US ever since. Thus the Clint Eastwood message complaining of how cops are tied up in 'red tape' and 'technicalities' that prevent them from keeping us safe.

There are also plenty of reports around about mistreatment by police depts and the prison system.

Remember, many of the prison guards at Abu Ghraib were formerly US prison guards.

One of the great shames of our country is certainly our embracement of torture. It seems that anytime we take our eye off the sociopaths who run our country, religions or corporations...there is hell to pay.

Veteran '66-68

Impeach, try and CONVICT these traitors. They don't represent US. We will not let them retire quitely to their country clubs and golf courses. We're going to send them to the Hague...kicking and screeming on a citizens chartered PUBLIC Rendition flight.

Oh, the naievete displayed on these pages.
Impeach? Thereis no legal remedy for a dictator who makes the law himself.
Try? Dictators suffer no accountability.
Conviction? Conviction is as scarce in this country today as wooly mammoths in Kansas. No one is willing to stand up for freedom any longer. The dream is dead; the experiment over. The United States exists in name only and has become the Fourth Reich, led by corporatists and facists for the benefit of the wealthiest of the wealthy.

When they come for you, I may speak up. When they come for me, there will be none save little facists, and they will speak up only to cheer the disappearance of another democrat.

The United States of Evil

IF YOU ARE NOT OUT IN THE STREETS SCREAMING ABOUT THIS YOU ARE SILENT. IF YOU ARE SILENT YOU ARE COMPLICIT. IF YOU ARE COMPLICIT I FEEL SORRY FOR YOU, BUT NOT SO SORRY THAT I WON'T GENTLY, LOVINGLY, REMIND YOU THAT IF YOU ARE NOT OUT IN THE STREETS......

They have been doing this shit for hundreds of years, perhaps thousands. Go back to the Catholic church and the Kings of old. Control thru violence.

"It seems that anytime we take our eye off the sociopaths who run our country, religions or corporations…there is hell to pay."

By God you got that right.

Oh Canada. You had the chance to look south and do the right thing, oh Canada. But you let your own brand of neocons co-op your country. You could have been contenders.
Shame. Disgust. Revulsion.

The main reason for torture:

Deceit: Torture does not yield truthful information. It can, though, be an excellent way to obtain the untruthful information you may wish to acquire. All you really need to know is what you want the victims to "confess" to, and torture them until they say what you want them to say.

This is a remarkably valuable tool if you aspire to mislead a population as to the rationale for sending their soldiers, and spending their wealth on a war.

Torture works. The purpose of torture isn't to gain useful information. Everybody, from the neocon elite who, out of necessity incorporate it into their battle plan to hold power, down to the sadistic hillbilly in uniform who implements It with a smile knows that torture isn't to gain information. The purpose of torture is to intimidate and silence a group of people who have not given their consent to be governed. Torture of others is to let you know that if you don't shut up it will happen to you, or your children.

"...Republicans have never given up their belief in an imperial
presidency."

Unfortunately, it's not just Republicans. The flaccid Democratic congress has never made even a modest attempt to challenge the imperial power grab and never will. They are fairly drooling hoping to install an emperor of their own.

It is my personal belief that Stephen Harper should be sharing the prisoners dock at Bush's Crimes Against Humanity trial.

We were suckered into Afghanistan by a PM who didn't want to appear weak to Bush. Two PM's later, we are still dying, acting as spear carriers for the US invasion of a sovereign nation that nothing to do with 9/11, and did not attack either the US or Canada.

In my humble opinion, Canada now is now better, and no more than Vichey France under the rule of the Nazis.

I was over at Little Green Footballs to check out what the freaks were saying, and it happened to be the day the video of Omar Khadr that Gonsalves links to in the article was released...

The comments were not to be believed.

Remember, this kid had tossed a grenade at American troops, so he is not necessarily our friend, but he did act against what were/are indisputably invaders of his country.

But the LGF crowd mocked him, and prayed for his long and painful death by torture, among other things.

How can anyone feel safe in this country anymore? Will this comment be used as a basis to rendition my ass to solitary confinement and a date with the electrodes, the waterboard...or to do the same to my family while I'm forced to watch after my eyelids have been pulled off with pliers?

I only hope that the apparently anaesthetized people in this country will rise up against the traitors and torturers in our midst, and defeat them, somehow, without becoming them.

These truly are the times that will try men's and women's souls. We have more to fear from our own people than we ever had to fear from the likes of that 16 year old kid who fought the literally jackbooted thugs who came to kill and maim his people.

Peace.

1) Do you know who established and ran the Soviet Gulag??

2) Do you know who, in vast disproportion to their numbers in Russian society, ran the dreaded Cheka??

3) Do you know what Lazar Kaganovich was, and what he did?

4) Do you recognize the names of Radek, Kaminev, Trotsky, Sverdlov, Yagoda?

5) Do you recognize the names of Perle, Feith, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Frum, Wurmser, Kristol??

It's purely coincidence that I'm reading The Gulag Archipelago right now, having found a paperback copy in a thrift store. What's most amazing to me is how the Soviet people could have put up with this for over 50 years. I guess historians who specialize in such things have theories about why the people got fed up with the tsar, but then endured Stalinist terror for so long.

Here are some key passages from the Archipelago:

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs...."

Solzhenitsyn says he too kept silent and did not resist. "Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself."

Yesterday, Gwen and I debated how long Americans would put up with creeping fascism before deciding to resist. I don't know the answer, but just remember it gets harder the longer you wait. Better to nip the dictatorship in the bud.

Here are 2 things we can do to resist now and today:

(1) Support impeachment. Support it by contributing to candidates who support it. Support it by voting for pro-impeachment candidates. Call the House Judiciary Committee and ask them to hold hearings on all 36 of Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment. Contact your own representatives and ask them to support impeachment.
(2) Support the Green Party's candidates, including McKinney-Clemente. Nader is a worthy candidate, but 5% for McKinney will help build the Green Party into a meaningful ("viable") opposition party, which America lacks at the moment.

John M. Wages, Jr.
US House Candidate, MS-01
www.VoteJohnWages.com

The puffin, I like your style---and your attitude.

America, land of the free - a joke nothing more.
what a pity...

Nietzche, et al--

I'm just an unarmed, underemployed, overeducated intellectual who has done far too little to change things.

But thanks, for sure. It is good to know that not everyone simply considers me paranoid and/or unpatriotic.

Peace

george w. bush July 23rd, 2008 9:10 am

I see you've done your homework on the topic.

I hope you are all well armed for when they send in their multi-national troopers into Amerika to haul you and your families off to the FEMA camps they've built for your "re-education"pleasure.

93% of prisoners in the state prison system sooner or later are on the street again.

How would you torture the general population in a hostile country? Throw renters out into the street, even those who are paid in full. Reward the institutions who follow through on this policy by allowing them to help themselves to the treasury, lest cooler heads prevail and disenfranchisement is reversed. Allow credit institutions to charge egregiously usurious rates so that few will ever regain financial footing. Maintain a system of interconnected "credit rating" institutions and tell the people that it's important that their status quo is maintained, even if it hurts, because identity theft is the worst thing that could ever happen, we can't take a chance! Let the people know that THEY are the government, but we can't trust the government, why should we trust YOU?

There are a lot more of "us" than there are of "them".

FREE AMERICA

DIRECT DEMOCRACY

"Das Puffin,

"The other world, this world, the one where the USA tortures and lies and commits mass murder on a scale that would embarrass Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the rest, is a world..."

Please, I respect and endorse most of your commentary. This one's comparing a whole society to known disgusting and criminal individuals.

First off, Hitler, 6 million plus not counting his civilian and military forces our and our allies deaths of over 15 million, Note: In the commission of a crime if an innocent dies by your hand, the police's hand or just has a heart attack, you, as the perpetrator of said crime is guilty of murder. Even if all you did was steal a candybar.

Next up, Stalin was it? Personally directed the slaughter of over 20 million of his citizens.

Oh, yes Mao! He came to power in China during WWII, by 1947, he was in complete control. You don't really want to know, but in the 1960's and the "Cultural Revolution" carried out by his "Youth Brigades," alone, cost the lives of at least 15 million Chinese.

Pol Pot? He was the baby of the bunch, at least 2 million. Remember the movie "The Killing Fields?" He called it "re-education."

Now, Bush is definitely guilty of probably close to a million innocents, and Clinton, we now know, of 500000 Iraqian children through starvation via "blockades." And I will never defend either of those two so-called Americans. And I know the entire ugly history of this country, and the better part, too.

In summation, try not to compare apples to tomatoes. Unless you want to compare the histories of each country as opposed to criminal leaders being compared to a country.

Country to country, we still come out like 10th probably when comparing historical stupidity. At least up until Bush.

Just don't compare me via Bush with the animals you seem to think are made less infamous by your opinion.

Thanks.

Dogleg:

You left out the native Americans, African slaves, Vietnam, the Phillipines, Cambodia, Latin America, Japan, and others who were killed via what are most accurately described as war crimes.

But at least I know what you're drinking.

Kool Aid.

And if I'm comparing "you" by making the above statements regarding governments, then you should turn yourself in immediately, to the Hague, should you wish to avoid the Death Penalty.

Pre-coffee kidding aside, you apparently hew to the demonstrably false and morally strange position that we are 'good' or somehow 'not as evil' because...we torture, maim and kill less than the other guys?

My point--literally bloody point--remains, undiminished. Sorry I was unable to make it clear to you, but it is your type of reasoning that allows these atrocities to occur in the first place.

Peace.

"I don't watch TV, the most effective mind-control device ever deployed"

Someone has probably already commented on this, but that's the exact reason why I *do* watch TV. And I would pay attention to the telescreen, too, if I lived in Oceania. Not enough to have my brain mashed by it, but enough to know what other people are hearing.

Well, and because I keep holding out hope that they will make another show as good as Arrested Development. but alas. :(