Hundreds of civilians are being killed or seriously injured in artillery and gun attacks as the Sri Lankan army attempts to finish off the last Tamil Tiger rebels trapped in a shrinking pocket of land.
Injured civilians lucky enough to get out have told of carnage in this so-called "no-fire zone" - a 17 sq km strip of coast where the Tigers are penned in with their backs to the sea.
The memos about torture released by the Obama administration are horrifying to read. Nothing new, here, but they are like a punch in the stomach all over again. This is my country? This is the nation that stands for freedom and decency?
I understand why President Obama doesn't want to prosecute those who believed they were acting under laws written by the Justice Department. But that is not the only policy he and other Democrats can pursue.
On Thursday, April 16th, in response to a lawsuit initiated by the American Civil Liberties Union, President Barack Obama released four redacted Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memoranda from the Bush administration to the CIA justifying torture or cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment. (The CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques were modeled on the Chinese Communist coercive brainwashing program against Americans captured in the Korean War to induce false confessions).
In his statement
announcing the release of the Bush administration's torture memos
Thursday, President Barack Obama ruled out prosecuting whoever was in
the room during the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" sessions. "In
releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried
out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the
Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution," he
said.
JERUSALEM - Israel has informed the United Nations it will refuse to cooperate with a probe of war crimes allegedly committed during the military offensive in the Gaza Strip, a senior official said.
"Israel has informed the UN Human Rights Council it will not cooperate with an investigation based on a biased resolution," the official, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
He said a letter to this effect was sent last week.
Israel had claimed earlier the probe sought to tarnish Israel's reputation.
The appointment of Richard Goldstone to head a
United Nations fact-finding mission to the
Gaza
Strip represents an important first step toward ending Israel's
impunity from international law. Mr.
The prose of the recently leaked report of the International Committee
of the Red Cross on torture seems colorless. It is at the same time
obscene - almost pornographic.
The 41-page ICRC report
depicts scenes of prisoners forced to remain naked for long periods,
sometimes in the presence of women, often with their hands shackled
over their heads in "stress positions" as they are left to soil
themselves.
At a time when Western
governments refrain from using their power to stop Israel's ongoing
violations of international law, many civil society organizations
silently watch the moral corrosion of their governments. At the "Israel
Review Conference" in Geneva this month and the Russell Tribunal slated
for early 2010, however, civil society will use its power and call
Israel to account.
Add
to the list of President George W. Bush's failures his inability to
straighten out what he regarded as one of the top national security
needs, a more effective U.S. intelligence community.
Following up on the latest extremist Cheney/Addington/Yoo arguments
advanced by the Obama DOJ in order to shield Bush lawbreaking from
disclosure and judicial review -- an episode I wrote about in detail
yesterday, here
-- it's worthwhile to underscore the implications of Barack Obama's
conduct. When Obama sought to placate his angry supporters after he
voted for the Bush/Cheney FISA-telecom immunity bill last June (after Posted in torture, war crimes
