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11.14.09 - 8:56 PM
Abuse Photos Blocked
A sketch by Thomas Curtis, former Reserve M.P. sergeant, showing how a detainee in Afghanistan was allegedly chained to the ceiling of his cell.
Invoking newly granted powers allowing him to circumvent the Freedom of Information Act, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has blocked the release of photos showing US soldiers abusing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. Alex Abdo of the ACLU said the argument against release "sets a dangerous precedent" that the government can conceal evidence of gross abuses of power.
"This principle is fundamentally anti-democratic. The American public has a right to see the evidence of crimes committed in their name."
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35 Comments so far
Show Allwell..what else is it but the USA's way of avoiding its complete exposure for being utterly, READILY, easily, completely
ABLE to commit the very inhumanities it often accuses others of.
that's all there is to it.
it's a way of insisting that it RETAINS the "righteous, moral PRIMACY" in the world simply by refusing to BE SHOWN in full evidence what it actually likely commits ............
QUITE NATURALLY and QUITE ORDINARILY....
which is TORTURE people. ..and the self-righteous "american" is just as capable and guilty of the most barbaric acts as those it accuses of .
Physicians for Human Rights report from 2008
http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/documents/statements/len-helsinki-july-08.pdf
land of the free
Since Robert Gates is an old bush cronie it's no suprise. His only purpose in life is to kill people and steal their property. Why should he care about freedom?
Gates reflects classic Republican mentality.
I see that Secretary of War, Robert Gates, has joined the Holocaust Deniers to coverup the Crimes Against Humanity commited by our armed forces. The Few, the Proud, the Sadistic War Criminals...
In banning pictures of Iraqi women being gang raped by GIs in uniform and other horrors, Robert Gates is attempting to avoid his part in these neverending crimes against humanity.
[I see that Secretary of War, Robert Gates, has joined the Holocaust Deniers..]
Contrary to what you have been led to believe, the Nazis did not cover up crimes in the camps, they investigated crimes aggressively and thoroughly. There were trials, convictions, and the worst offenders were hanged. Two camp commandants were hanged. The investigations were led by Dr. Konrad Morgen, he led more than 800 investigations into reported camp crimes. The most famous is the conviction of Karl Koch, commandant at Buchenwald, who was tried and hanged for the crime of having two prisoners killed. For more info see the wiki entry for morgen, and google konrad morgen bloodhound judge
Feel free to contrast this with the US investigations into the crimes at Abu Graib.
in the FAMOUS HOLY WORDS OF RONALD REAGAN:
"MISTER OBAMA -- TEAR DOWN THIS WALL"!!!!
this WALL OF SECRECY!
and while you're at it :
TEAR DOWN THIS WALL STREET
TEAR DOWN THIS CORPORATE PROTECTION RACKET WALL
TEAR DOWN THIS WALL OF OBFUSCATION (we know you're a lawyer but we can see RIGHT THROUGH IT)
TEAR DOWN THIS CAPITALIST FASCISM
TEAR DOWN THIS MILITARISTIC BRUTALITY
TEAR DOWN THIS POLICE STATE
TEAR DOWN THIS HYPOCRITICAL NONSENSE
"in the FAMOUS HOLY WORDS OF RONALD REAGAN"
Who is this man, Ronald Reagan?
It must be "Bed Time For Bonzo."
This Reagan did more damage to the American middle class workers than can be corrected in a century. He was a cold hearted elitist that began the first steps toward dividing America into 'Haves and Have-nots'. The rich elites and the poor doing service jobs without labor union representation.
EXACTLY!!
that's why it's ironic: now to see Obama in the position of doing what the "great holy" reagan intoned , representing the "righteous" USA demands about "openness".....
let's see the POTUS apply it to THE USA itself!
more to the point, regardless of which is the POTUS....
the world has the chance to see the USA apply "HOLY RONALD's"
OWN DEMANDS on Gorbachev upon its Saintly Self.
My uncle knew Reagan personally and he said he was even worse than what you said in your post. AND THIS IS THE MAN THE REPUBLICANS IDOLIZE???
Obama: Change you are not allowed to see.
Obama: Change you are not allowed to see.
wanted: president with a backbone! why can't obama stand up to the generals, to the bishops, to the insurance companies, to dick cheney, or to criminals who commit torture? my theory is that americans will not accept a black president with populists tendencies, because to be rescued by a black man is to admit your inferiority to him. this is a subconscious sort of thing, i'll admit. also, the crusading black is the angry black, the one that might be just a little out of control. look how whites reacted when obama gave a little plug for professor gates. anyway, we on the left need to immediately field a credidble candidate to oppose obama in the 2012 new hampshire presidential primary. his timidity just won't do. i mean, the republicans took the government to the edge of total dysfunction in their quest to remove clinton from office for a sex and lying about sex scandal. but republicans, with impunity, can start illegal wars, torture people, authorize the use of white phosphorous in fallujah, give their private contractors free rien to rip off the government. and then give their senator vitter a free pass for his extensive history of patronizing prostitutes, while elliot spitzer resigns. the guy who could have saved us billions more by fighting wall street crooks is cashiered for paying to get laid? now, there's a country that has its priorities straight!
Do you really expect change.. I jut read that obomba is putting off the climate change decision..
This country had a coup and no one seems to even notice. or care!!
can't understand it. already we have pictures of a gleeful american service woman pointing at a dead arab prisoner preserved in ice so that a dishonest autopsy could be performed the next day. it's published in jane mayer's book on torture. the servicewoman is sabrina harmon, the deceased is manadel-al jamadi. what could be worse? well, maybe, the fact that no one has ever been so much as arested for his death. amazing how cheney has made the torturers out to be the victims. so far , there have been about 130 custodial deaths since the start of our grand wars, but there have been only three arrests. no protests, more die, and it's such old news, that we now just yawn about it. hitler could have done quite well here, or maybe if we hear of the worst things for so long, we become numbed to it all. we know we can do nothing without risking our jobs or community standing, so we just let it happen. some democracy we have here, eh? if people read madison, they would soon see that our founding father and principal architect of the constitution framed it so as to thwart democracy. but then i diverge.
johnny u,
Actually, the little reading that I've done about Madison (Anti-Federalist/Democratic-Republican) shows that he constantly bent in the wind. Most of his positions he, sooner or later, wound up arguing against. He felt the constitution was a colossal failure at one point because it was so much of a compromise. Definitions of "the people" and federal vs State power were left purposely vague, because they feared the strong central government Constitution would not be ratified. His quest to ditch the Articles of Confederation was considered very radical at the time since the Revolutionary War had been about retaining local power. Being "Federalized" had many advantages for the survival of a new nation at that time. But now, I submit, we need to return to that earlier model of a weak central government so that we may regain our civil liberties. But how do we get rid of the "Catch-22" Pentagon Syndicate? That is the real trick.
TJ
"A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to Liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger,have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending,have enslaved the people." - James Madison Speech at the Constitutional Convention - June 19, 1787
The constitution is just a god damned piece of paper.
-- G.W. Bush
He was right, just outdated words on yellow paper.
It's time to start anew.
i thank tj for his comment. the constitution makes it almost impossible to change the government. look at the health care debate. most folks want the public option, but the senate finance committee scrapped it. its deliberations over the summer captivated the country. the other five committees that had favored the public option were ignored. that committee, led by the senator from wellpoint, montana, max bachus, became the total focus of the media, as if its vote was critical to a public option. downplayed or ignored was the fact that it was an unrepresentative committee that elected a "gang of six" as its reporting subcommittee. these six senators (snowe, bingham, bachus, enzi, conrad, and grassley) come from six small states, together comprising about 2.75% of the us population, or 25 of 538 electoral votes. yet, they were able to stall and most likely, probably defeat a strong public option. yes, the us senate is anathema to democracy, as 54% of us citizens live in the nine largest states, but have only 18% of the voting power in the us senate. and, we have to wait six long years before trying to replace one of them. i think the only answer is to call for a new constitutional convention and revisit this totally absurd distribution of power. at one time, it did serve its purpose, but in the modern era, it does nothing but stymie progress and protect entrenched interests. if thomas jefferson were alive today, he'd deport max bachus. he had no idea that his little government would be so overshadowed and overwhelmed by a gargantuan corporate megastructures. by the way, max's contributions from the health care industry just topped 4 million dollars last week!
There's nothing wrong with the Constitution. If the Bill of Rights was honored like it was in the early years of the nation, freedom and Liberty would not be just hollow words. You don't change the engine on your car because the air conditioner doesn't work, O.K? If we let these morons in Congress re-write the constitution, the ten Bill of Rights will turn into the "Ten Corporate Commandments." What I mean is to cut the government's spending by 90 percent and fire all of them.
If the constitution was "just a piece of paper" as some imply, a copy of it wouldn't have been left on the moon. If the constitution was "just a piece of paper" an Aircraft carrier and several NASA spacecraft wouldn't have been named after it. If it wasn't important, the bushmonkey and all other presidents and many many soldiers and government officials would not place their hand on the bible and swear to protect it.
What is missing is accountability. Much of what the Bushmonkey did during his reign of terror is treason. Treason against the country and it's Constitution that he swore to protect. What is missing is the bushmonkey swinging from a rope. What is missing is Dick Cheney swinging from a rope. Never mind their war crimes; it has always been believed that the CIC could take lives when he thought it necessary, so no congress is ever going to prosecute the "Nixon gang" of Bush and Cheney for their bloody deeds of profit. They saw how tricky dick went down and they aren't going to let it happen to them. Just as Nixon did, they've tapped everyone's phones and they probably have dirt on every politician in the USA.
Just like Al Capone though, their prosecutable crime is income tax evasion. They gave themselves a key to the Federal Reserve Bank and counterfeited up trillions of make believe dollars that they lavished on their buddies through TARP scams and Real Estate bail outs of private firms like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Seven thousand, billion dollars were stolen in this way.
Why am I so pissed? Because I have to pay for it. Im a taxpayer see? And a voter. I have a right to demand a public audit of exactly who got these funds and what they did with them. Then I have a right to demand that the three musketeers: Bush, Paulison and Bernache go up the river for looting the US Treasury.
Right?
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
I guess there's now a defence for anyone killing US citizens, they might be a torturer.
Boyz from Ft. Hood?
ACLU's Alex Abdo sez: "The American public has a right ... "
***
Don't tell me you guys are still reading that hoary old "U.S. Constitution".
Rights, indeed.
could they release the negatives?
Face it folks, our Constitution is a relic of the past, trotted out now and then for worship, but the observation of which is purely voluntary on the part of our power elite. All hail the kleptocracy!
Tony Vodvarka
The Constitution was written by the richest men in America to preserve their prerogative--government by the rich, for the rich, and of the rich. Every U.S. Senator is a millionaire. The Founders worked it out pretty well, eh?
Obama: Chains you can believe in.
It's not these photos that put our soldiers at risk,
it's the oligarchs who keep sending them off to foreign countries to steal, pillage and murder in the name of profits for the MIC.
Shame on all of them!! - the entire Bush administration for sanctioning torture; the generals and CIA gooks for directing the torture; and the Congress for sitting on it's collective thumbs and covering it up.
GLAMORIZE, SANITIZE AND HYPNOTIZE, the military mantra of the US.
Not only should they release them, they should make them into textbooks, distribute them to every school student in America, cause them to be broadcast unceasingly on a single advertised national cable channel for a solid year and put them up on every video billboard in the United States for a week every year for the next decade.
Then the photos should be rolled up into a series of immense balls, lit on fire and stuffed up the ass of anyone who thinks keeping things like this secret leads to an improvement of civic life.
i find it funny that the same society that loves nascar wreckage and continual replays of career ending football injuries goes sqeamish when confronted with the pictures of real violence committed in its name. i mean, sports are like acting. there is no real reason to break somebody's leg, unless you're pretending to fight for dominance over a 360' by 160' quadrangle. everyone vacates the land when the game's over. same with nascar. just speed to nowhere. it's just to see how far man can use mechanical forces to tempt the laws of nature. there's no real reason to put everybody at risk, for life would be the same if you forewent racing or football. but, these pictures show real bloodletting caused by real human conflict. we bombed two countries to smitherenes, imprisoned a lot of people who had nothing to do with 9/11, and fomented real violence against innocent people. hell, we wouldn't let the males in fallujah leave before we took to devastating that iraqi city. if these pictures were of germans or japanese, who were tortured after killing jews or chinese, i doubt there would be any problem with releasing them. my personal belief is that these pictures are sealed so they won't serve as exhibits in any future trial the international court might convoke. i bet these pictures represent stress positions and other sadistic acts that yoo said were not torture. if so, let us see them. yoo was bush's counsel, who said that unless there was death or organ failure, it wasn't torture. remember, folks, the cia out and out destroyed the videotapes depicting its treatment of prisoners. again, a boon to the likes of cheney, addington, and rumsfeld, against any of whom a prima facie case of crimes against humanity and perpetuating an agressive war could easily be made.
Those who have the photos need to publish them anyway & shame this shameless Protector-of-Bush before the entire world.
A Vote of Confidence Amendment will give American voters the power to dismiss any federal officeholder at any time.
VOCA, Now !!
FREE AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY
Think sound cannon, micro-disburser, cameras, robo-cops wearing bat belts and swat teams.
Do they care about anyone?