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TechnoratiThe Bogus Torture Coverup
The Pentagon is denying the facts: Photographs of Abu Ghraib torture are even more sexually explicit than first reported, including rape and sodomy, writes The Daily Beast's Scott Horton, who has obtained specific and detailed corroboration of the photos.
The Daily Beast has confirmed that the photographs of abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, which President Obama, in a reversal, decided not to release, depict sexually explicit acts, including a uniformed soldier receiving oral sex from a female prisoner, a government contractor engaged in an act of sodomy with a male prisoner and scenes of forced masturbation, forced exhibition, and penetration involving phosphorous sticks and brooms.
These descriptions come on the heels of a British report yesterday about the photographs that contained some of these revelations—and whose credibility was questioned by the Pentagon.
Click Image Below to View The Daily Beast's image Gallery of Abuse Photos
The Daily Beast has obtained specific corroboration of the British account, which appeared in the London Daily Telegraph, from several reliable sources, including a highly credible senior military officer with firsthand knowledge, who provided even more detail about the graphic photographs that have been withheld from the public by the Obama administration.
A senior military officer familiar with the photos told me that they would likely provoke a storm of outrage if released. The well-informed source confirmed, just as reported in the Telegraph, that many of the photographs are sexually explicit, including those mentioned above. The photographs differ from those already officially released. Some show U.S. personnel engaged in sexual acts with prisoners and each other. In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed. In another, a prisoner is suspended naked upside down from the top bunk of a bed in a stress position.
The Telegraph article quoted retired Major General Antonio Taguba, who directed the official inquiry in 2004 into the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Taguba told the Telegraph that the "pictures show torture, abuse, rape, and every indecency." The Telegraph reported: "At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee. Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire, and a phosphorescent tube. Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts."
In response to the Telegraph account, Bryan G. Whitman, a deputy assistant secretary of Defense, attacked the newspaper. "That news organization has completely mischaracterized the images," he said. "None of the photos in question depict the images that are described in that article." White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, later in the day, widened the assault to a general one against British journalism. "If I wanted to read a writeup today of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champions League Cup, I might open up a British newspaper," Gibbs said. "If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I'm not entirely sure it'd be in the first pack of clips I'd pick up."
In one withheld photograph, not previously described, Specialist Charles A. Graner, Jr., an Abu Ghraib guard, is shown suturing the face of a prisoner, a reliable source tells The Daily Beast. The suturing appeared to serve no ostensible medical purpose than perhaps Graner's attempts to humiliate or terrorize the prisoner, the source suggested. Graner was court-martialed and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment in 2005 for charges that included prisoner abuse. A number of the withheld photographs, according to reliable sources, show Graner engaged in sexual acts with Specialist Lynndie A. England, another soldier assigned to duty at Abu Ghraib. She appears in some of the most notorious photographs disclosed so far, including one in which she walked a detainee on a leash-enacting a regimen later revealed as an authorized technique known as "walking the dog."
Other suppressed photographs show a female prisoner assuming sexually suggestive poses in a chair, while a prison guard appears behind her in some frames. In another series, prisoners are shown hooded in a transport with open copies of pornographic magazines in their laps.
Still other withheld photographs have been circulating among U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq. One soldier showed them to me, including a photograph in which a male in a U.S. military uniform receives oral sex from a female prisoner.
The photographs differ from those already officially released. Some show U.S. personnel engaged in sexual acts with prisoners and each other. In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed.
The Obama administration's decision to challenge the Telegraph account presents a dilemma because many of the photographs have already been leaked, and they match the very images that Taguba described and which Pentagon spokesman Whitman denied. The already leaked photographs can be seen at the Web sites of Salon.com, the Sydney Morning Herald of Australia, the Australian Broacasting Corp. Dateline program, and the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
The suppressed photographs and videos are the subject of a Freedom of Information Act litigation brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU prevailed against government claims of secrecy both in the federal district court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. (Full disclosure: I supplied a legal expert's opinion on the Geneva Conventions, which was cited by both courts in reaching their conclusions.) Yesterday, the Justice Department filed papers asking the court to reconsider its decision directing that the photographs be made public. In its papers, the Justice Department suggested it would seek to have the matter reviewed in the Supreme Court if its motion were to be denied.
The immediate pushback against the Telegraph story from the Pentagon, coupled with the decision of White House press secretary Gibbs to chime in, suggests the sensitivity of the issue. The full-scale strike against the Telegraph, the leading conservative quality newspaper in Britain, broadened into an offensive against the whole of British journalism, suggesting the precariousness of the public-relations effort.
The Pentagon spokesperson, Bryan G. Whitman, who came to prominence during the Bush administration, has drawn on standard operating procedures honed during the Rumsfeld era. Instead of offering correction of supposed factual inaccuracies, he has slammed the credibility of the publication itself. Yet his statement is both sweeping and extremely vague, and the claim that none of the photos reflect the descriptions in the article is immediately belied by an examination of the photos that have already been leaked.
Whitman has used this sort of bludgeoning attack on news organizations before. Ask Michael Isikoff at Newsweek. When Newsweek's April 30, 2005, issue ran a brief Periscope piece referring to an internal report's description of an incident in which a Quran was thrown down a toilet, Whitman launched a dramatic attack on the publication, pressuring it to retract and apologize. The report had, it later turned out, been correct. In 2007, the ACLU secured, through a Freedom of Information Act request, a copy of a 2002 FBI report which documented a prisoner's charge that his Quran has been thrown in the toilet; five other cases of mishandling Qurans were reported, although the Pentagon insisted that none of them amounted to desecration.
The most prominent victim in the past of Whitman's disinformation may have been none other than Barack Obama. On the campaign trail, in Austin, Texas, candidate Obama said he had gotten a message from an Army captain in Iraq who described how his unit had been shorted in munitions and equipment. I learned from reporters that Whitman started a whispering campaign with the Pentagon press corps telling them (not for attribution) that he didn't believe Obama's claims were true. Whitman's game, however, was stopped by ABC reporter Jake Tapper, who tracked down the captain, interviewed him and fully verified the account.
Bryan Whitman remains on the job in the Pentagon today. But the effort to suppress the shocking photographs is already failing, as they leak to the public and reliable sources verify their authenticity. A senior military officer told me that in the months before the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Pentagon officials engaged in strange maneuvers to avoiding viewing the pictures. That, he noted, didn't make the photos any less real. But it apparently made it easier for Pentagon officials to dissemble about them. That process hasn't stopped.
Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national-security affairs for Harper's magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.
86 Comments so far
Show AllChina is waging an intelligent economic war on United States and Western countries and philosophies in general! The cutest part is the Good cop-Bad cop scenario where a rabid-dog insane North Korea rears its ugly head, and the mighty good guy China subdues N.Korea with indifference and mild suggestions for proper behavior, all to the ball busting terror of South Korea, japan and numerous other American allies! GM was de-listed today from the American New York Stock Exchange! GM China, however is alive and well on the Shanghai Exchange in China, using 'Yuan" not American dollars, and we will buy Chinese GM cars in the fall, on American markets! America! Wake up! Stop this obsession with moot points gone by, and see the rape and pillage at home! Obama himself, has been put on notice, by the Chinese minister of finance no less! No more big loans to bail the U.S. out of the debauchery by the 8 year repuglican free for all of deregulation and the rape of the world - Iceland, a whole goddamn country! is bankrupted! because they believed American lies!! outright deception by the Banksters of New York! And you worry about a few jailhouse blow jobs and some minor buggery and a peep-show? Iceland's forced retaliation was to sell strategic land to Russia, to pay off American banksters! and expect more retaliation by a very bitter, depression suffering world, who will never trust Yankee Doodle Dandy and his banksters swindlers, shylocks and his dollars again! There is a movement afoot world wide, to replace the Yankee dollar with the Chinese Yuan, and China is in support of this move! Don't fear America's good name being sullied in Iraq! Read the web! The world stands stunned by the illegal and willful invasion of Iraq to steal their oil! the willful murder of Saddam Hussein was just icing on the cake of corruption! Did his balls really appear on the Bushes mantle, dried and stuffed, or is that just a vicious rumor? so we can run Hummers? and Cadillacs? and SUV's and eat beef every day? Atrocities like this are unprecedented in the world! The spreading of land-mines, the sickest form of punishment ever devised, is American! not Nazi German, not Muslim terrorist, not soviet technique - American! The spewing of country-sides with denatured uranium, a known mutagen and carcinogen, thats us! America did that! in Serbia, in Iraq ! we are culpable and triable in world courts for atrocities against mankind! and you worry about a jailhouse whore and her bared tits? about a few folks treated badly, perhaps tortured and killed? in our names? you want to see these few photos, but ignore the bigger facts pointing directly at you? better to spend your time and money retrieving land mines, paying back good folk the world over who bought your crooked mortgage papers, repairing the damage to millions who bought your planned obsolescence cars in good faith expecting "American Quality" and getting a rusty shaft! Repairing the damage done by Agent Orange, at home to ailing vets and in Vietnam to cripples and the deformed. Shame! America, Shame!
The argument that these photos should be suppressed because their release would endanger American troops is specious. Hiding the photographic evidence does not keep those affected by torture in Abu Graib from knowing about it -- the victims, their families, and their neighbors are aware of the facts of the matter. So hiding the photos only hides it from the American public. Second, it's a new age. Digital data is everywhere, it's viral, and you actually cannot suppress it anymore. Hooray for that! Even though seeing the images, or reading about them, is horrible and upsetting. Have to work up my courage every day to confront truths like these...
When the original Abu Graib images came to light, many of us took to the streets and have maintained a continuous vigil for an end to U.S. military imperialism since that time until today. Not much, maybe not even effective -- but I need to do it in order to keep my sanity.
As for tax revolt, can't you feel it building momentum?
The photos need to be released because the information has been out for some time now, and justice is still not forthcoming, and the right wing is still saying what was done was not just alright, but required. If prosecutions were being pursued there would be no need to show photos, but since they are not, it is necessary to escalate.
Obama very early on once defended force being used by saying that if his daughters were in harms way he'd do anything to stop it.
Obama: "If someone was sending rockets on my house where my daughters were sleeping at night, I would do everything to stop it...."
Well I wonder if Obama ever wonders what he'd do if his daughters were in a place such as these photos came from? - Because sure enough, the people suffering abuse are also sons and daughters of others.
The photos need to be seen by people because for many people they just won't accept things unless they see it for themselves. Even afterwards they often go in denial.
The silence of organized religion and the like upon this in the USA has been rather deafening. I guess it doesn't pay to organize or upset the parish by preaching to the assembled that their political and military saviours in power of any persuasion are just as bad as anything else in history.
And today's sermon will be?
How nice to claim that these photos should not be shown to the world to protect those faces/identities that were tortured. Great BS. The common man in America would not want the photos reveled because they are what we the people of the USofA have become. The people who ordered these acts were and are our representatives. They are the puppets at the end of our strings. They only represent the blood thirsty, resource grabbing people what our own created theology and ideology have created.
Of course you would argue that they not be seen as they have your finger prints all over them. For years now the USofA has been doing this and ordering horrid acts of violence and torture across the globe for corporate profit. From Clinton letting lose cruise missiles wantonly across the globe or Ray-guns invasion of Granada to Bush I and II. they have expressed the will and desire of "we the people". They have represented our thinking and feelings as people of the earth in a place called America, the shining city on the hill.
Dodge all you want but these pictures tell a thousand words all about who we are as people. This is the ideology that we teach our children in school. WHO RAH lets us celebrate the death and destruction that we rain down on those that have our resources in other countries caring not for those we blow up, burn up, maim or torture.
Wake up! These are American family photos of who we are as a culture. Turn your face away, go back to work, ignore it but you, each and every one of us, still own the shame that was done in your name, by your hand because you know that this has been going on for years and you do nothing but return the same blood thirsty monsters to washington to do the same things in escalating patterns of destruction.
Pelosi is the perfect example of we the people who would hide these photos and leave this discussion "off the table".
These acts were done by a representative government at the will of the majority. Deny it and admit that actually someone else is in power or change it.
History will show these photos as the American family photo album representing pictures of the faces of America.It is us that they depict. History will feel sorrow for those afflicted and pity for us who have become Nazis, Kamer Rouge, Edi Amin.
Our choices are clear. Stop the way we act or do nothing. As a democracy our past choices are clearly shown with these acts photographic for all to see. No excuses we the people decide what to do next.
"Of course you would argue that they not be seen as they have your finger prints all over them"
Listen... the only BS is the lack of compassion and consideration you show for re-victimizing people because you lack conscience or decent enough creative powers to convince people that this torture is despicable without having to splash these photos everywhere and think that your way to manage such a turn of events is the superior way, the only way, without bringing, directly, the thoughts of the victims into the conversation. This is equal in impunity and arrogance to the racist and imperialist notions that have the first Black president buying into the notion that we are the only holders of how “freedom and democracy” should be practiced and we have no compunction about massacring whole societies until they acquiesce to our idea.
On a more personal level... I have worked in a field for 25 years where I witness first hand the results of well-minded but narrow do-gooders on a misguided unstoppable mission who believe they have the only way to make things better for people who have been routinely shuffled off into the realm of the permanently disaffected, traumatized and tortured "for the own good". These people rarely ask for input from the victimized, and if they do they rarely incorporate it into the solutions they fashion and as a result, they make the situation worse and they burn out or sell out to anyone who appears to have the resources to support their ill thought-out plans.
True or False: Obama stated before the leak of the photos that "there's nothing especially spectacular about them"?
Have you seen the photos? Would you agree that being being raped and beaten to a bloody pulp, even murdered, is not a spectacle?
Do you agree with Obama's defense of the photos: "One tiny bit of nuance. Photos taken soon after someone came off the battlefield may well show injuries--that have nothing to do with abuse."
Do you trust the government to deal honestly and openly with the public?
Would you deny that torture was an official policy kept (for the most part) hidden from the public?
I can only "hope" that you are in favor of prosecuting Bush and Obama for war crimes.
So, any torture victim who can be located and gives their permission for the publication of the photos - I can only assume you would have no objection to that.
Supposing the victims can't be located or identified from the photos, can they be published as victim John or Jane Doe? Can they be published if any identifying features are blurred?
Assuming that the photos are not released to the public, and permission from the victims is not obtained, or even denied, would you be want to block them from being entered as evidence in a war crimes trial?
What right do we have as Americans to see how our tax money is being spent? What right do we have as Americans to make sure that torture is not committed in our name?
repeat from previous post:
and you can do none of these things without re-victimizing the victims? They must once again pay, but this time to assuage your guilt and the guilt of the entire US? You are willing to be once again responsible for the dehumanization of an entire culture for your benefit? And you can think of no other way to accomplish this than widespread "pornographicization" of their trauma?
I say we take the time necessary to figure out another way to approach this. There is already tons of evidence for war crimes prosecution. And, as I have said, there is no reason the pictures cannot be entered into courtroom proceedings as it is necessary to do so in presenting evidence
Yes, enter the photographs in courtroom proceedings!!
Prosecution is what is needed now. We have plenty of evidence.
Don't let these pictures become fodder for a horrible and bizarre kind of American tabloid curiosity.
Have narrative descriptions of the new torture photos been made available to the public in newspapers or on the television news programs in the US? I don't know. The talk about abuse is probably background noise in many people's lives. And when information DOES surface, there are alot of people who think "someone" is picking on the poor USA who is always trying to do so much good and, somehow, fabricating this photographic evidence.Why would the public believe differently when the Pentagon "questions the credibility" of the photographs? Yes, I agree that those who are tortured are, again, having their rights violated by having the photographs seen, but just look how we already treat people different than us in photographs in newspapers: There's photos of parents holding corpses, body parts all over after explosions, families weeping around dead family members. Do we see photographs of us in similar circumstances? If I were violated and/or abused I would, hopefully, have legal recourse. But these poor people, their own government can't help them and we won't and are happy to hide what we have done and move on. I am tired of using the word "disgusted."
I think it's essential to ask why it is so important to some on the left that these photographs are made widely available.
Why aren't narrative descriptions of these atrocities enough? If you, your wife, son, brother, father were the person who was treated in this manner would you want a photographic record of that torture spread around the world and made available to anyone who wished to see it? Would you want pictures of YOU being forced to insert things up your ass spread around the globe? Wouldn't you at least want to be asked for permission first?
The left's intransigency on this matter is too much like those on the right who insist on long sessions of watching hard core porno so they can condemn it. The reasoning behind the exercise becomes questionable and the motive transparent in its unexamined pathology.
I do not wholly approve of the president's disingenuous stated reason for with-holding these photos from widespread publication; all I know is that if it were me or my family and loved ones in those photos I would at least want to be asked how and where the pictures were to be distributed and for what purpose, and to be able to reserve the right to refuse to allow them to be circulated. If my rights and dignity were abused through the publication of the photos against my will or without my consent I would have absolutely no reason to trust the motives of those who were responsible for it, and probably would see not real difference between those who tortured me and those who insisted the photos of it be widely shown.
Bobv, your argument works just as well for body bags.
"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths," Barbara Bush said on ABC's "Good Morning America" on March 18, 2003. "Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
Pictures of torture, dead US soldiers, dead Iraqis - these should be hidden from the public.
USO tours, parades to support the troops, medal ceremonies - this is what the public should see.
Out of sight, out of mind, no?
I think you are extrapolating my argument beyond its parameters.
Pictures of Body bags of our dead are a different thing than pictures of people we have maimed, massacred and tortured being spread around via our mass media to us, the torturers. The body bags with our soldiers are more anonymous AND THEY BELONG TO US. Pictures of the tortured and maimed are potentially identifiable to the individual victims and they do not belong to us. We need the victims' permission to broadcast them.
Then ask for the permission.
"The left's intransigency on this matter is too much like those on the right who insist on long sessions of watching hard core porno so they can condemn it. The reasoning behind the exercise becomes questionable and the motive transparent in its unexamined pathology."
*sigh*. So, it is now a left vs right thing? Are you arguing that the right believes rape is ethical? RAPE. RAPE. NOT CONSENSUAL.
so you think that the only way to prove that rape is unethical is by showing explict pictures of people being raped? That's the issue. And I do believe in engaging the victims in direct talks, much the same way law enforcement tries to do with rape victims (and some actually do a decent job!)Asking for permission to publish photos of the act might be an end result, but certainly would not be the goal of engaging with the victims. Identifying the perpetrators and starting a healing conversation and treatment might however.
"so you think that the only way to prove that rape is unethical is by showing explict pictures of people being raped? That's the issue."
Actually, that's not the issue, that is an insane statement. I don't think anyone feels the need to prove that rape, or torture, is unethical.
Bush: We don't torture
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/06/eveningnews/main1979106.shtml
Obama: We don't torture.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/30/2557173.htm
Contrary to denials made by the US government, the photos prove that we do torture and it must therefore be prosecuted. We already have evidence that these torture techniques were approved by the Bush administration.
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/torturefoia.html
Out of curiosity, how would you ask permission from the victims of torture when their identities are often unknown because the US refuses to their identities?
Some of the prisoners were tortured TO DEATH. Can we publish those photos?
"Asking for permission to publish photos of the act might be an end result, but certainly would not be the goal of engaging with the victims. Identifying the perpetrators and starting a healing conversation and treatment might however."
How about evidence for war crimes prosecution?
How about enraging the public to the point where we ACTUALLY ban torture? (Are you even aware that despite Obama's proclamation, torture is still allowed under US law?)
and you can do none of these things without re-victimizing the victims? They must once again pay, but this time to assuage your guilt and the guilt of the entire US? You are willing to be once again responsible for the dehumanization of an entire culture for your benefit? And you can think of no other way to accomplish this than widespread "pornographicization" of their trauma?
I say we take the time necessary to figure out another way to approach this. There is already tons of evidence for war crimes prosecution. And, as I have said, there is no reason the pictures cannot be entered into courtroom proceedings as it is necessary to do so in presenting evidence.
bobv May 30th, 2009 7:56 am.....And what of the good that would be done by exposing these atrocities and the possibility of waking up the populace to protest this happening to anyone else? Truth and graphic evidence can be painful, but embarassment and a slight dent in ones ego are small prices to pay to keep this from happening again and possibly punishing the "leaders" who allowed these horrible acts.
How American.... thinking one can do good by sacrificing the lives and dignity of those who stand in the way of our short sighted idea of what Good is and how it effects people who live very different lives than we do.
bobv May 30th, 2009 10:02 am.............And how American to want to keep the truth hidden. Make it all look pretty on the surface and do not hurt anyone's feelings. There are times it may be necessary to sacrifice one's dignity. I believe this is one of those times. I said nothing about sacrificing lives ...our government already handled that one heartlessly and viciously.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/
2009/05/30
You have not been paying attention. How is it that pictures are the only way one can expose the truth? Hurt feelings. Hmph. If we were only hurting feelings that would be one thing... but you are obviously not someone who has been at the receiving end of a violent act or you would think twice about whether having pcitures of it available to legions of strangers without your input is part of a healing act.
" There are times it may be necessary to sacrifice one's dignity." You can sacrifice your dignity all you want... but don't sacrifice mine without my permission... and how do you know if having one's picture as the victim of such a vile act would not result in death, directly or indirectly? You and many Americans seem incapable of thinking outside your culture or your class. This is a huge part of the problem of how Americans are percieved in the world.
bobv May 30th, 2009 10:47 am...You have a better and more feasible idea than exposing the atrocity with pictures, I'm listening! But, as I said...remember most Americans DO NOT READ!
Incidentally, there is no reason to attack our culture. We have been conditioned to be what we are. I do not condone it, but in this particular situation let's deal and work with what we have. Trying to change the culture to come up with an answer for this immediate problem will only serve to slow down an already snail paced justice system.
read my other posts on this issue. Thanks for the spirited discussion.
If we deal with this as a legal issue, a crime, then there would be people, a jury of peers of some kind, litigators, judges etc and so on, that would have access to photographs. Otherwise this merely turns the whole issue into a circus and a money maker for the media... a media that has been largely co-responsible for the whole debacle in the first place. Remember.... the same MSM that has no compunction about hiring one of the lawyers responsible for "legalizing" torture to write for them to boost flagging sales is no doubt drooling at the prospect of having these pics to publish. I say we take the well-being of those who have been victimized into consideration first. We do what is needed to help them heal and cope first. If we are allowed to show pictures of the acts by them afterward fine.
Yes, yes, you make excellent points about the media "drooling" to publish these violent and pornagraphic images!!
It's as if they are getting permission to push the limits on the types of explicitness that will be forever after acceptable in public.
Remember the images and video of Saddam Hussein's hanging a while back?
My eyes still burn- as I suddenly, inadvertantly & unwillingly saw a few seconds of that online.
There is NO limit to the media's appetite for showing human cruelty and degradation if there is a profit to be made.
bobv May 30th, 2009 11:06 am.............Although I have little reason to believe we can create some justice through rousing the ire of We the People, I see no other path at this point. The longer we wait for justice through some yet to be identified method, the more victims are being created with which to deal. My idea is that dignity will follow justice as these poor victims receive some form of equity for their ordeal.
I stick with the idea that, yes, justice is slow in coming and something must be done to spur it on, but making these people's lives a sideshow freakshow is absolutely the wrong way to do it.
That we cannot think of other ways only exposes our own limitations and the limitations of how our culture thinks as a whole... directly linked to the way we inneffectively force leaders of other nations to abide by our bidding or change their global impact by massacreing or impoverishing the people those leaders control (people who often have little to say about how those leaders' control is rendered and who already suffer because of it). We cannot attain justice for them or ourselves by doing more of the same. We must change without using them against their will to be the object and example to spur that change forward.
If we want change in the world the only way we can hope to accomplish it is to change our perspectives and our way of doing things. We cannot hope for change in our leadership by using other people as examples and re-victimizing others to prove to the world or ourselves what is already common knowledge about how we function in the world.
bobv May 30th, 2009 4:26 pm.......Idealism is a wonderful trait in which I find myself languishing at times. BUT, JUSTICE is better served through expediency in this case...and others. Let's put the originators of this policy behind bars as quickly as posssible and fix the system later.
1) It is not the fault of the Iraqis and the victims of our torturers that we voted in the Bush administration not once but twice, they should not keep having to suffer for it or for how we attempt to remedy the deep ethical morass that it unleashed upon the world and exposed in our judicial, cultural, and political foundations.
2) It is not justice to insist that the victims of our misadventures and our resource pilfering be, once again, required to suffer for our benefit... so that we can, as quickly as possible, attempt to fix our ethically faltering political system.
3) Expediency at what cost? What is the exit plan? Is it just to behave unjustly and with a continuing lack of compassion for those who have suffered enough at our hands because we do not want, or aren't creative enough, to do what is necessary to seek justice without continuing to harm those whose dignity and lives we have immeasurably sacrificed already?
4) Why must others suffer so that we can prove our broken system of justice can work? And why are you willing to put this particular group of people back on the chopping block for the benefit of OUR idea of justice? Why not put yourself and YOUR family, friends and neighbors in a potentially risky position; compromise yours and their dignity and well-being to satisfy your push for expediency in this matter?
5) Idealism is an insistence that an inherently complicated and lengthy process can be foreshortened to satisfy the demands of an unproven and unsubstantiated or untested philosophy of action or ideal. The ideal comes before the proof of how it works or does not work. In this way wars can sometimes be the product of idealism. Certainly Bush's catastrophe in Iraq (and Obama’s in Afghanistan) is the product of idealism. It is idealistic to think that re-victimizing the tortured and massacred will somehow redeem our ideal and our system of justice, when it is likely to do just the opposite and without the end product you, as the idealist, wish to expedite, i.e.: getting the perpetrators prosecuted.
bobv May 31st, 2009 8:26 am............I believe we have reached an impasse. Best to agree that we disagree. Good luck with your premise and may the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and any other country the United states has pillaged and plundered find peace, dignity and justice....including We the People of this United States.
We live in a visual society. It is likely now that less than 2% of Americans READ. Unfortunately, pictures...usuallly via TV or movies...are what WAKE PEOPLE UP and get their attention.
So why should we be okay with re-victimizing torture and rape victims because Americans have a problem with reading. That's our problem to fix, not theirs and they should not be held accountable for or suffer consequences of it.
I understand your point, but do not believe we can wait until Americans decide to start reading to allow justice to take it's course.
Nixon broke the law trying to cover up a bungled burglary in which no one was hurt, Bill Clinton was impeached for perjuring himself about consensual oral sex, and Obama has already committed hundreds, if not thousands, of felonies by violating the Convention on Torture's affirmative duty to prosecute. His credibility has dipped, for all thoughtful people, to Nixonian levels and is diving fast towards the Bushy nadir.
I have no interest in seeing these photographs!!
I also question the need to make them more public.
There is a strong case to be made that sharing the photograhps widely among the American people will:
1. Fail to produce any prosecution of the guilty parties.
2. Further humiliate the prisoners who may be recognizable in the pictures. They now must live with the knowledge that their faces & naked bodies are splashed across the Internet.
3. Eventually diminish our own & the public's outrage by "normalizing" the ugly scenes of torture depicted here.
4. Make us complicit (psychologically) in the torture as we fully participate as an extended audience to prisoner abuse.
I rarely see these points discussed.
Most here on CD assume that wide publication is desirable.
I would much rather see prosecution take place- of Bush, Cheney, et. al.
We already know enough to understand that crimes were committed and by whom.
These semi-pornagraphic photographs are overkill in the deepest sense of the word.
I will try to answer your points, from my viewpoint.
1.Those of us who post here on CD certainly agree that crimes were committed, by whom, and that all perpetrators should be prosecuted. How many citizens of the US, agree with this? How many citizens of the US believe that torture is justified? In that recent Pew poll, 49%. People need to be forced to SEE, literally, the realities of torture. People need to be forced to SEE, literally, what has been done in their name, ostensibly to protect them.
2. What if the publication of the pictures leads to outrage, and prosecution of the perpetrators? Would it ameliorate some of your concern if faces of the victims are blurred out? Or if they are consulted about their views on the publications of the pictures?
3. Tt is definitely a concern. The problem is that, at least if the Pew poll is reliable, the public's outrage is already diminished. 49% believe that torture is acceptable. Again, people need to be forced to confront what has happened. Those who support torture need to be forced to try to defend rape.
4. The rape, the torture, was done in the name of (western) civilisation. To ostensibly protect western "values", and "western" identity from the evil Muslim terrorists. As someone who cherishes and treasures actual western values that many have fought so hard for over the centuries, I consider myself already complicit.
Thank you for your thoughful response, rfloh.
On #2: That the victims would ever be consulted, or their faces would be blurred or covered would be to give them a bit of human dignity, which has already been taken from them. A good idea, but doubtful that it could ever happen.
That we are already diminished in our ability to feel outrage (#3) and act on that belief is a true tragedy. We are a product of this culture and its biases (whole lifetimes of corporate media of all kinds, as well as military propaganda) and it's difficult to undo that or rise above it. It takes time to dig for alternate information, then more time for careful & thoughtful consideration.
CD (and other progressive op/ed and news outlets) are great resources, but we Americans are daily swamped with the media's views & lies (not to mention the bloviating right wing mouths that seem to shape so much opinion).
Your thoughts on the idea of complicity (#4) is a good point. I think my own feelings of responsibility (or guilt?) drive my own activism on social justice issues toward finding compassion for all people.
And on #1- the idea that widely disseminating these semi-pornagraphic images of torture (not just the waterboarding) will help the American people feel any outrage, I remain sceptical.
The appetite for violent porn of all kinds is huge here. Just think of advertising campaigns and TV shows that degrade women. They are hugely popular.
Then there are "snuff' films and other kinds of violence-spiked sexuality.
I wonder if Americans will just add these torture pix to their porn menu, without really considering "what" they are looking at.
Encouraging Americans' compassionate responses to the suffering of Iraqis, Abu Graib and Gitmo prisoners may need a completely different tactic.
I think - in part- regularly showing the humanity of Middle Easterners might help- a love of family, children & friends, their dreams and cultural accomplishments (music, poetry, art, dance, architecture).
Then, we need accountability and prosecution for these despicable, criminal actions (that should go without saying!).
We also need to de-demonize our "enemy". Showing photographs of sexualized torture (rape by objects, forced sex acts) seems an ineffective and strange way to do that. I fear that, instead, it will foster a continuing view of them as "animals", and a racism of them as the "other".
We will "blame the victim" - an occurance well understood in social work and social justice circles that have a familiarity with domestic violence.
I'd like to add that with regard to question three, that is the exact reason to release them. Right now we are discussing torture as if it only extended to waterboarding. People are actually trying to justify that. Who will try to justify rape or murder as a legitimate interrogation tactic?
Condi recently said that none of the interrogation was illegal. The public will accept that if they think it only applies to waterboarding.
What is tragic is that we are already comfortable with the idea that waterboarding is acceptable. Why are we asking that they up the ante? It's a slide into more horror being done in our name.
American women enlisted personnel are being raped by our troops and finding little to no support in prosecuting their victimizers. Rape is a very common act against enemy populations- this is all quite acceptable.
So, we are already easy with the idea that rape and murder are legal! It is only the venue that has changed in the current discussion (prisons, not the streets of Baghdad).
And what IS war if it is not wholesale murder?
Collatoral damage is fine with us, too. We seem to be happy with the idea of women and children in Pakistan and Afghanistan being shelled and bombed by drones.
These cruel and inhuman acts- torture, rape, murder- are already being used each and every day- without the outrage by a majority of Americans and a strong move for criminal prosecution that the situation deserves.
I wish I knew what it would take to change this, but I'm unconvinced that the release of these photographs will be the ultimate tipping point.
I happen to believe that if the photos were released it would force conservatives and republicans/democrats to face the truth. How can a person in 'good conscience' deny that rape and sodomy fall well outside the bounds of "enhanced interrogation"? Unless the photos are released the majority of Americans will not understand what really happened.
"How can a person in 'good conscience' deny that rape and sodomy fall well outside the bounds of "enhanced interrogation"?"
You assume that people who either support torture or remain insistent in avoiding any consideration that their tax dollars pay for it are people of "good conscience"
Okay, we locked them up without charges but we didn't torture them.
Okay, we tortured them but we didn't rape them.
Okay, we raped them but we didn't kill them.
Okay, we killed them but we didn't desecrate their corpses.
Wait for it.....
Okay, we.......
damn ctrl-z, it saddens me to think you do not trust and love our dear leaders and their plans for us. Because our government is here to help us, the Earth, and people everywhere on it.
"Support our troops". ?
All of the activities and more are shown here. But the crux of the situation is that these atrocities are committed by (1) hired thugs and/or (2) American soldiers.
A vast boycott should be instituted by refusal of all those horrified by these obscene activites to pay taxes on the financing of these activities. Since we don't know the extent of these costs, all Americans owing money at the end of the year should deduct 20% of his taxes owed as a disapproval of their being spent for mistreatment of others. Those who pay their bills in toto should deduct 20% from the bottom line for the same reason. Perhaps millions of us would be prosecuted, but I doubt it. There is strength in numbers. The money so deducted should be deposited in an account to: (1) deter enlistments of those who are enlisting solely for the money and/or (2) as an expense not approved by the American people under our Constitution. Can the government realistically jail twenty million or thirty million American dissenters? I don't think so. Part of the money should be reserved to defeat any government we elect that includes funds to imprison and/or torture enemy non-combatants or civilians.
Just a desperate idea, but we have to do something to make our government come to its senses -- if possible.
"Can the government realistically jail twenty million or thirty million American dissenters?"
Google: FEMA camps
vdb May 30th, 2009 2:50 am..........These are FEAR tactics. It will never happen, but most Americans will go along with fear tactics as an excuse. They are NOT going to jail MILLIONS of protestors. Have more faith in your fellow American. Do you truly believe they will turn on their own friends and family? And do not tell me about mercenaries. With millions of Americans on the march, believe me, THEY will be the ones in fear. BUT, do not worry...the numbers will not be there...we're simply cowards.....but this is what no one wishes to hear. We sit as children are tortured in our name....how much more proof do we need???
"All of the activities and more are shown here. But the crux of the situation is that these atrocities are committed by (1) hired thugs and/or (2) American soldiers."
Wrong. The crux of the situation is that torture was approved by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, and their lieutenants. Torture was carried out by individual thugs, but the skids were created and greased by the above-mentioned war criminals. To focus on the trees is to close one's eyes.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html
So what are you proposing busterkikki?
That everyone claim 99 exemptions on their W-4 so that withholding does not occur? Interesting Idea. But I can see them simply eliminating the W-4 with the stroke of a pen; and then we are unable to stop paying taxes.
What about this idea? Since they are diluted anyway, stop accepting US dollars as legal tender. Trade garden veggies for tractor work, or trade home preserves for carpentry work. Refuse to participate with the molopolies that have hijacked our government. Barter with the small guy in town. No receipts mean no sales tax.
Once the government honors the constitution and gives "redress of greivances" we would again accept worthless paper dollars that are backed up by nothing.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
If you're continuing to have taxes withheld from your paycheck, you must ask yourself, Why? The federal government is mostly dysfunctional, and needs to be drowned in Norquist's bathtub, but for reasons quite different from his.
...and another thing. Where are all my fellow Christians, no matter what denomination or none, in all of this? Too busy shoring up your edifices?... Thank God for Bishop Desmond Tutu.
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
What does that mean? "The Daily Beast has confirmed the photographs of abuses..." I don't see the photographs that go with the descriptions in the article. Who took these photos and why and where are they and why can't everyone see them? I don't really want to see them, but we must all face this. I am so disgusted and horrified, but what about other Americans who do not dig into alternative news sources? Isn't there some way these photographs can be forced on the public? Ignorance is bliss.
snydly
And all for oil.
OIL.
snydly May 29th, 2009 7:18 pm.........Oil is big part of it, amigo...but it goes beyond that.......one of the many pieces of the DEVIL'S JIGSAW puzzle........
http://www.israelshamir.net/Contributors/
Collateral_Damage_911.pdf
www.israelshamir.net/Contributors/
Collateral_Damage_Part_II_26122008.pdf
Come on, Obama supporters, who wants to defend him now?
Come on, Craig "this is our moment!" Brown, tell us how to make Obama end torture and prosecute the torturers. Because right now he's doing the opposite.
Everyone who felt Obama would listen to progressives (the old "hold his feet to the fire" argument) tell us what your plan is now? Because Obama is ignoring you.
The same goes for the kind folks advocating "People Power" and parades. It's not working. So what's your plan now?
Because Obama is ignoring you.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”
like - voting . . .
These guys are so desperate for a real war! Not that tit for tat stuff, no a real one -- like world war two -- where everyone gets involved.
Wait for it!!!!! Korea!
North Korea will be the catalyst that will throw us into a major confrontation and possibly WWIII with China and Russia.
With the silence of American people on their side, they will likely get that war sooner or later.
War=Torture. Why even be shocked? War makes people crazy, that is one of it's natural effects. Why are we so wanting to see pictures of what these monsters have done to their victims? We know that War is Torture on a massive scale. People are so good at seeing things in the micro, it's a bit more difficult for us to wrap our brains around the macro, but lets be real, here. War cannot be seperated from the horror that it is, specific acts should come as no surprise. It is, indeed, sickening, and good hearted people like nicholas101 feel so horrible about it, and so powerless to stop the agony and destruction, that it makes us sick and guilty and self condemning. Nicholas, You would never hurt someone the way that these f.g monsters are hurting them and us, you would never kill someone, or starve them, or deny them the rights that they should be afforded as humans.. why blame yourself? This situation is perpetuated because we know that our government could blow us up, or put drugs in our food and water, or inject our children with carcinogens, or round us all up and put us into camps. We already have the highest percentage of people locked in prison in the world, and they could do it to all of us. We are clearly not dealing with normal, humane, or kind individuals. These are crazy people. It isn't supposed to make sense to us, it is supposed to make us ill and scared and feeble. To blame ourselves is retroactive. It isn't my fault, and it isn't yours. We have to become stronger than that, blame is not the answer, growth, coordination, and action are.
Peace, Commondreamers!
WE might not need to see the pictures, but half the country thinks torture is OK.
A few gruesome photos will force them to confront this reality. That's why the Pentagon is so adamant about keeping them hidden. The visceral effect on people will be disgust, shame, and horror.
As Rev says, these people aren't normal. They are insane; drunk with power.
The US ruling classes are the most dangerous people on earth and nothing can stop them.
I think you underestimate the nefarious thought process that makes torture okay in some eyes. There is a good possibility that the photos will reinforce their view.
Bobv.
Yes, I know, you are right.
There are definitely some people who will not have a problem with torture, ever.
But, I think it will anger and repulse a majority of people who so far have refused to accept the evil enormity of what actually happened.
then we must come up with another way to make them aware other than re-victimizing the victims.
Then make them defend rape. PUBLICLY. Make those who believe that torture is acceptable, defend rape in public. Make them argue that rape is necessary to protect western society, western values, western civilisation.
I can see these torture photos replacing baseball cards.
Collect the entire set; trade them with your friends and neighbors.
exactly
Good point Reverend,
But we need to bring out the guilt of these despicable acts so that the "Bush-Corporate-Cannibal-Tribe" can be exposed for what it is. You are so right, that once they get away with it overseas, that it is a shorter trip back into a domestic government job where they can practice more of the same on unsuspecting US citizens.
War for profit is not a birthright. Even if you are a Skull and Bonesmen.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
"War for profit is not a birthright."
not unless you're the USofA.
The American government has always maintained the right of its citizens to ship arms to belligerents. President Washington took this position when France protested against the sale of arms to England in 1793, the answer being that "the exporting from the United States of warlike instruments and military stores is not to be interfered with." - Theodore Roosevelt's "Fear God..."p.160
Gun runners from the getgo!
What is wrong with "bearing arms"? Or selling them for that matter?
The second amendment guarantees citizens this right to keep and bear arms.
No citizen that I have ever heard of can "ship arms to belligerents" as you claim. That is the realm of corporations.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
That is not my claim - the words were those of Teddy Roosevelt.
The right to bear arms does not make it right to bear arms.
(Those are my words - from a good conscience.)
There will come a day when this truth will be enshrined not only in law but in common sense.
You raise another point:
Due to a 19th century clerical error, corporations have enjoyed all the privileges of personhood, but with none of the responsibilities.
So vdb, you want a world, if I understand you correctly, where only the gov is armed.
Absolutely against the common sense of the founding fathers. They knew, as I know, that if law enforcement feels they can get away with abuse, they will do so routinely. Guns must be local. They must be in the hands of the common citizen.
From wiki:
Views on the carrying of arms
Jefferson's commitment to liberty extended to many areas of individual freedom. In his "commonplace book," he copied a passage from Cesare, Marquis of Beccaria related to the issue of gun control. The quote reads, "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."[48][49][50]
View on corporations
Jefferson in 1816 wrote to George Logan,
“
In this respect England exhibits the most remarkable phenomenon in the universe in the contrast between the profligacy of it's government and the probity of it's citizens. And accordingly it is now exhibiting an example of the truth of the maxim that virtue & interest are inseparable. It ends, as might have been expected, in the ruin of it's people, but this ruin will fall heaviest, as it ought to fall on that hereditary aristocracy which has for generations been preparing the catastrophe. I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it's birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.[51]
”
Views on the judiciary
Trained as a lawyer, Jefferson was a gifted writer but never a good speaker or advocate and never comfortable in court. He believed that judges should be technical specialists but should not set policy. He denounced the 1803 Supreme Court ruling in Marbury v. Madison as a violation of democracy, but he did not have enough support in Congress to propose a Constitutional amendment to overturn it. He continued to oppose the doctrine of judicial review:
“
To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.[52]
”
Views on rebellion to restrain government and retain individual rights
After the Revolutionary War, Jefferson advocated restraining government via rebellion and violence when necessary, in order to protect individual freedoms. In a letter to James Madison on January 30, 1787, Jefferson wrote, "A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical…It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."[53] Similarly, in a letter to Abigail Adams on February 22, 1787 he wrote, "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all."[53]
Concerning Shays' Rebellion after he had heard of the bloodshed, on November 13, 1787 Jefferson wrote to William S. Smith, John Adams' son-in-law, "What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."[54] In another letter to William S. Smith during 1787, Jefferson wrote:
“And what country can preserve its liberties, if the rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms."[53]
- Thomas Jefferson
How much longer will we tolerate allowing war crimes to go unpunished? Not only our torture, but our wars of aggression and retaliation/collective punishment and our occupations are war crimes.
Obama and all who refuse to prosecute these crimes are accessories after the fact. And by funding these illegal wars and occupations, our Congress is complicit in these crimes.
When a president and most of both chambers of Congress are complicit in war crimes, and do nothing to stop them from continuing, government of law, let alone democracy, is dead.
Why are we NOT in the streets, shouting and banging on pots, as so many South Americans did when their governments descended into lawlessness?
"A senior military officer told me that . . . Pentagon officials engaged in strange maneuvers to avoiding viewing the pictures."
Shouldn't that read "Pentagon officials engaged in strange maneuvers WHILE viewing the pictures."?
One might wonder, mow amd then, why, despite our sexual hangups, it's worse to rape a child than to burn him up with white phopherous, blow his arms and legs, blind him, shoot him, starve him, or do any of the other large numbers of atrocities inflicted on children -- many of them quite deliberately and methodially. This criminal and sociopathic horror the US has pursued -- continues to pursue -- is not truly appropriate for comparing this atrocity with that one.
It may be the greatest indictment of Americans that cries of outrage depend on offending one's own particular sensitivity instead of having an empathetic ability to see and hear what the victims have been expressing all along. So, dear reader, would you prefer to be raped or have your face torn off? Doesn't seem like much of a choice to me.
Yes lets keep our eyes on the continuing slaughter.
Every USA soldier should refuse to be a War Criminal in Afghanistan and Iraq.
How can someone who ran a flawless campaign be totally stupid when it comes to protecting the Neo Con War Criminals?
because those neo-con war criminals helped to put him in office.
The only thing that will prevent this from happening again is if the whole world and particularly the American people get to see what our government does when they think they can get away with it. Most people in Germany today, as far as I can tell, are quite conscious and sensitive about protecting the right of others could be attributed to the fact that they were forced to look upon what once took place. Now we are more like they were before their awakening. Protecting our country from the criticism that is due us will not make the world a safer place to live, nor will it make the American people safer. Already many of our rights and freedom have been taken away. Our right to hear and see the truth about what our government does behind our back is now on the chopping block.
Yes and we stood by impotent and did nothing. So there were some mass protest from time to time, some supported the other choice in 2004, we are all guilty! I am too. You are also. We didn't do enough - putting a cup of water on a burning house and saying "well I done my part" is no excuse.
This begs the question "Are those with greater knowledge more responsible to do more in times of crises?" I would say yes we are. I am sick with anger, crying without tears, still with profound sadness as an American who stood by and looking back did so little to stop the horrors perpetrated by my government, in my name, for their greed.
Worst of all this nightmare has not stopped, the wars are still raging strong, folks are dying, babies, kids, old people, disabled, and the extreme poor are being raped of their future as I write this. I feel sadder thinking about all that is horribly wrong with America and me!
Very well put, nicholas101! There's been plenty of blame thrown around: People who voted for Bush, people who voted for Nader, people who voted for Congressional Democrats who enable Bush, people who voted for Obama, and people who don't vote. All of this is counterproductive as it misses the point that we are all responsible.
nicholas101, your integrity runs deep.
I too am ashamed I've done nothing. Acts of kindness within our borders ameliorate not the misery and death the US inflicts with the Aid of Our/My personal Silence and Failure to ACT.
CommonDreamers, will ANYONE meet me in SF and be willing to get arrested for our beliefs? Block traffic, protest, the Chronicle will cover it, maybe a wire-service would pick it up.
I know 50 committed people could make national headlines, raise consciousness without violence, felonies or anger. And the misdeamenor charges would be dropped.
50 people. 6th & Market. 8:00 am, march, cops get wierd, step up on the sidewalk, hand them flowers, tell 'em to join us and step back in the street....... veterans would join us, others.
ANYONE who would follow up on my sf thought can email me at jcotton21 at gmail.com. Late summer? We'd get processed out then could party & strategize. I would bring some refreshments, a legal pad and ideas. Peaceful but powerful ideas.
Help! joe....
The cover up of these photos has NOTHING to do with keeping our troops safe. It has everything to do with keeping bush admistration officials from facing war crimes prosecution.
The cover up of these photos has NOTHING to do with keeping our troops or the American people safe. Who would cruise the Med on the Achille Largo now? It has everything to do with keeping bush admistration officials and their congressional supporters from facing war crimes prosecution.
The fallout from the Bush error will be long, painful, & taint everyone associated with it, no matter how tangentially. This episode is a prime example of that. The most damaging aspect will be the taint on the American people, because this was done in our name and funded by our tax $$.
And remember to send the same bunch of bottom feeding scum-bags back to Washington next election day.
mary Bush/CheneyObushma Was Rape,Sodomy, part of Enhanced Interrogation? The World is asking is this what America means by spreading democracy? Forced penetraion using brooms and phospherus sticks. John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the Pres. from ordering torture of a child in custody including crushing his testicles.Do Americans or Politicans have a moral conscience? Others are saying No they are savages and killers. Gruesome. Done with our tax dollars, and our name.