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Troy Davis Executed, While CEO Responsible for Deaths of 29 Miners Sails Free
Last night at 11:08, Troy Anthony Davis was executed in the State of Georgia for the 1989 murder of a police officer. Much doubt existed in the case as seven of the nine witnesses recanted their testimony (one even claimed that an eighth murder witness was guilty) and no DNA or other physical evidence linked Davis to the crime.
Monica Barrow of California and other protesters outside the Jackson State Prison react to news of the US Supreme Court appeal decision to refuse a stay of execution for Troy Davis on September 21, 2011 in Jackson, Georgia. (Photo by Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
Former FBI Director William Sessions wrote, “The evidence in this case—consisting almost entirely of conflicting stories, testimonies and statements—is inadequate to the task of convincingly establishing either Davis’ guilt or his innocence.” Davis maintained his innocence up until his death, telling the family of the murdered police officer, “I was not the one who took the life of your father, son, brother.”
Last year on April 5, 29 miners died in a methane explosion caused by poor ventilation at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, W.Va. A report by the Mine Safety and Health Administration ruled that the event that caused the explosion could have easily been prevented by Massey Energy, which was well aware of a long history of safety problems in the mine. In the year leading up to the explosion, the Upper Big Branch Mine was cited 458 times for safety violations, with 50 of those violations being willful violations of the law—nearly five times the national average for citations of a single mine.
An investigation by the Mine Safety and Health Administration also revealed that Massey kept two sets of books—it recorded a clean safety record in one log book, which it provided to mine inspectors, while maintaining a private, internal log of known safety problems and the efforts made to fix them.
Despite this evidence of the willful violation of safety laws that could have prevented the miners' deaths at Upper Big Branch, and despite evidence of widespread lying to federal investigators by Massey officials, CEO Don Blankenship is a free man allowed to enjoy the splendorous life of a multi-millionaire.
Only two Massey Energy officials, one foreman and one former chief of security, have so far been indicted—not for their responsibility in the deaths, but for lying and concealing documents from federal investigators. Another 18 executives, including longtime Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, refused to be interviewed by federal investigators, pleading the Fifth Amendment as protection from self-incrimination.
Even if company officials like Blankenship are prosecuted, it is unlikely that any will do jail time. Since 1970 more than 360,000 workers have died on the job in safety accidents, while only 84 cases have been prosecuted for the willful violation of safety rules that resulted in a worker's death. Even if convicted, the penalty for wrongfully killing a worker on the job is only 6 months. Quite often company officials are not jailed, but merely fined if found responsible for willfully violating safety laws that lead to a worker's death. The maximum penalty for a major safety violation is a mere $7,000—a price many companies are willing to pay for the death of a worker on the job. In 2010 alone, 4,547 Americans were killed on the job.
While many right-wing politicians, such as GOP presidential contender Rick Perry, will use the execution of Troy Davis to affirm their support for tough penalties for those convicted of killing people, few will say anything about the workers who are killed by corporations in preventable work accidents every year. But as easy as it would be to say that the issue of innocent men being killed is ignored by Republican politicians, the Democrats aren't much better.
President Barack Obama refused to issue a statement on the execution of Troy Davis; likewise, he refused to move steadfastly earlier this year to implement a revision to federal law that would prevent children as young as 12 from operating potentially deadly farm equipment. (Minors working in agriculture are six times more likely to be killed in accidents than minors working in other industries.)
After three years of efforts, the Department of Labor, about a year ago, finally issued an internal proposal to revise federal law to prevent minors from working in dangerous farm occupations. Typically, rules like this are supposed to be reviewed within 90 days of their proposal to allow for quick implementation, especially rules related to life-and-death safety rules. But under heavy industry opposition, President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget held up the rules in review for nearly nine months—an “unnecessary delay,” according to Justin Feldman of Public Citizens’ Worker and Public Health Safety Advocate.
While big agriculture was busy unnecessarily delaying these rules, two 14 year old girls were electrocuted to death working on a farm in Illinois. Finally, only after the deaths of these two children and public protest from worker safety advocates, the OMB allowed the Department of Labor to take its next step.
Power and influence have clearly distorted the scales of the justice system when men like Troy Davis are executed in the face of questionable evidence of their guilt, while corporate CEOs like Don Blankenship, who evidence shows clearly and willfully disobeyed safety laws that caused the deaths of 29 workers, are allowed to go about sailing on their yachts.
I only wonder what would have been the Supreme Court's reaction to a request for stay of execution, had the petitioner been a rich white man named Don Blankenship instead of a poor black man named Troy Davis.
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35 Comments so far
Show AllBlankenship committed a crime, what he did wasn't just negligence its was a premeditated avoidance of safety protocols and willfully providing a lethal environment for his employees. He is just as guilty for the deaths as if he had dilberately set off a bomb in the mine. Life in prison would be appropriate. The fact that he is NOT in prison and that Troy Davis has been sacrficed on the altar of racism, injustice and poverty speaks volumes for how wealth, race and influence can overrule 'justice'.
American justice is not like the lady that is holding the scales blindfolded, it is more like a very rich, white lady peeking through the blindfold to see what color and how wealthy you are. It may be trite, but is still true: American justice is based on the golden rule; the man with the most gold makes the rules. Or the man that owns the mine, gets away with murder, while his employees get the shaft. A poor black man is executed and is probably innocent, while war criminals like Bush, Cheney, Condi and Obama who are immutably and unequivocably guilty of torture and the murders of thousands and should all be in prison go scott free.
“I was not the one who took the life of your father, son, brother.”
I don't know if protocol for execution is that the victim's family gets to watch, but I hope those words and the sight of Troy Davis fading into death haunt them for the rest of their natural lives.
The families of both victims (the murdered and condemned) were present. There is no report on the murder victim's family's reaction to Mr Davis death, but there is very little to suggest they will now find the solace they thought they would find in the judical killing. They no longer have the execution to look forward to, no longer can they long for justice, no longer can they complain about how long it took to eventually see Mr Davis die. All they have now is their pain and grief and perhaps at some point in the future the knowledge that they watched the wrong man die. What they won't accept is the possibility that the actual murderer of Mr McPhail is free and that possibility is chilling.
I thought I heard- while following the live coverage on Democracy Now!- that the Davis family was not allowed to witness the execution. When you say they "were present," I think it means they were in the vicinity-- but I thought I'd heard that Georgia, or at least that prison in particular, does not allow the condemned's family members to witness his execution.
In contrast, the son of James Byrd, Jr., who was dragged to death by white supremicists objected to their execution:
"You can't fight murder with murder," Ross Byrd, 32, told Reuters.
Exactly.
To oppose the death penalty is to speak out vigorously against it even when the most repugnant individuals face execution. So, considering this, all this emphasis on Troy Davis's possible innocence does a dis-service to the cause of abolishing executions.
Quite right.
Maybe this, in conjunction with the forthcoming "no" vote on the Palestine state in the UN, will be enough to flush that racist murderous psychopathic piece of shit Obama down the toilet once and for all.
Compared to Obama, Bill Clinton looks principled, decent and humane. During his first campaign for the presidency he reassured White voters by executing a brain-damaged Black man who didn't understand what was happening to him. But at least Ricky Ray Rector had really killed somebody. Obama can now add Troy Davis to the mountain of black and brown corpses over which he is clawing his way towards a second term - or failing that, to a future presidency for Hillary Clinton and maybe even Michelle Obama after that.
People tell us that we have no choice but to vote for Obama because the alternative is the crazy barbaric Republicans like Rick Perry. But this dynamic of "least-worse-ism" means that the Democrats become ever more right-wing as the Republicans become ever more insane. And it is not even clear that the working class would be worse off under a Republican Administration. Because under a Republican Administration, the Democrats act like an opposition party and as such they sometimes defend the rights of the working class. When the Democrats are in power, on the other hand, there is nobody to speak for the working class. Obviously the Republicans won't do it. No Republican president could eliminate Social Security and Medicare, because the Democrats will resist it. Bush II tried to eliminate Social Security and failed. But now Obama is doing it, with nothing but support from the Republicans. Just as, in the past, no Republican president could have eliminated Welfare. It took a Democrat like Bill Clinton to do it. I'm willing to take my chances with President Rick Perry. I think the only thing that could make me vote for Obama would be if the Republicans ran Hitler himself as their candidate in 2012.
Not to dismiss the racial undertones surrounding this whole miscarriage of justice but let's harken back to the OJ Simpson trial. Much more solid evidence against OJ. Also a much larger bank account to provide for his defense team. This is clearly another salvo fired in the class war at the poor. Shut up and obey or you could get the same.
Yes, of course a rich Black person can buy justice just like a rich White can. If Troy Davis had had as much money as O. J. Simpson he would be alive and free today. But that's like saying Blacks are free to use the same water fountains and eat at the same lunch counters as Whites. To make that observation is to miss the point. Yes, we've eliminated petty apartheid, but the structural racism, of which of which Troy Davis - along with several anonymous people in Africa and Asia who will fall victim to Obama's drones today, is one of the latest victims - remains. It isn't just about racism, of course. It's also about the ruling class' need to periodically execute people in order to keep us scared and obedient. If not for the structural racism, a higher proportion of Whites would be executed for that purpose. For the record, I am not categorically against the death penalty. I favour it for two crimes only: aggressive war and genocide.
The argument has little merit, apples and oranges.
nice little troll, but you've got to work harder at it. I'll only give this one a 4/10...
It's easy, just common sense, try it, thanks
Agreed, this article is mixing separate issues.
But this article brought to mind how conservatives used to publish these estimates of the "death toll from communism" - which broadly sweep into the tally widely different dictatorial regimes - all lumped as "communist" as well as broad economic causes.
Well, I'd like to see a similar broad-criteria survey of the total death toll of capitalism - from bottom-line driven industrial accidents, to speculative food-market driven starvation, to overwork and poverty wages, to profit-driven lack of access to health care, to illness from bottom-line-driven pollution and hazardous consumer products, to especially, the hundreds of pro-capitalist dictators and anti-union/anti-socialist death squads around the world, and finally, to business-interest driven US wars - the latter two categories alone have killed on the order of tens of millions over the past few decades.
Paraphrasing Dylan/Levy:
________________
Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While death pulls out Troy Davis from his ten-foot cell
A railroaded man in a living hell
I was looking for something to say, but everyone before me has said it pretty eloquently (except for the little troll.) I think Mike Elk choose a good comparison (Davis vs. Blankenship) to show how high the deck is stacked against "nameless" individuals seeking justice from a system that favors the privileged class.
Don't forget the 11 men who died in the British Pet. Spill. No real investigation. No real penalties. Just very real deaths.
One can also make the parallel between war criminals such as GW Bush and Cheney and Rice and Rumsfeld and members of the Obama administration remaining free while a poor black person like Troy Davis is tried and executed for the most specious of reasons. Who will be lined up next as an example of how the the establishment will not tolerate any doubt in their flawed belief system? Perhaps it will be Mumia Abu Jamal and/or Leonard Peltier.
Troy Davis should have been granted clemency at the very least based ONLY on the fact that evidence in his case created more than a reasonable doubt as to his guilt. It is not to be taken as a judgment on the death penalty overall.
I personally feel that if you take a life with malice and forethought, or in a manner utterly deprived of even the most basic humanity, you've forfeited your life. At that point, it doesn't matter who kills you, as long as you die. The law shouldn't always be eye for an eye, but sometimes, people gotta lose an eye. But if someone IS going to lose an eye, you have to be damn sure they deserve to, and that just wasn't done in Troy Davis' case.
Also, if you think there will ever be a President of this country who will not be responsible for the deaths of people, you're delusional. Death is a part of life. It's going to happen. War is going to happen. You cannot just hide under a rock while others take life. Violence isn't always the answer, but sometimes it's the only course of action. If you don't realize that, you're living in a fantasy world where war is never necessary and we could all just get along if we sat down and talked it over. Now I'm not an advocate for war, and I'm not someone who thinks the death penalty should be tossed around lightly, but I do strongly feel that both options do need to exist and ought to be exercised when the time is right.
Now to address the flipside of Troy Davis' case with the example the author of this article used. Don Blankenship should be in a jail cell. This idea that corporations are people when it comes to campaign donations and election policy, but are NOT people when it comes to corporate accountability in cases like the mine incident is just as much a lunatic idea as thinking that war is never necessary. It's not a new idea though. The powerful are usually able to escape justice. It's just the way things work, even in the United States. Better get used to it, and realize that in other countries, there is even less chance of justice against the rich than there is here.
I find your declaration that "War is going to happen" as well as claiming that "Violence isn't always the answer, but sometimes it's the only course of action" to be quite fatuous, to say the least. Are you attempting to say, in your cryptic way, that the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are somehow justified? Since any reasonable and intelligent person would instantly recognize that neither of those two countries posed any kind of serious threat to the the largest military on the face of the earth, it then follows that your belief, if I am understanding you correctly, that wars are sometimes justified is simply erroneous as well as, to quote the late writer Barbara Tuchman, wrong-headed.
I suggest that you pick up David Swanson's extremely well reasoned book War Is A Lie as it completely eviscerates the notion that violence and war can sometimes be the "only course of action" available to countries especially when it is repeatedly shown, as Swanson does, that the reasons why countries choose to go to war are inevitably based upon lies and falsehoods.
I wasn't talking specifically about Afghanistan or Iraq, but rather speaking in general terms. My personal stance is, Afghanistan was warranted as they were very much harboring Al Qaeda. Iraq, on the other hand, was almost certainly as you put it "based upon lies and falsehoods". It does not matter whether the official military of Afghanistan was a threat to the United States or not. What matters is that the country was harboring a terrorist organization that was. I don't agree with Bush's preemptive war shenanigans but in that case of Afghanistan, I do not believe that was preemptive war.
I will check out the book you mentioned, however, I can tell you right now if his premise is that war is never necessary, he is likely going to find me disagreeing with him. I'm not a warmonger or a pacifist, but a realist, and I don't believe in absolutes aside from once you're dead, you're dead. I generally favor a middle of the road approach unless a situation presents no other option but to be extreme. I would never be so foolish as to take war off the table entirely, or to get back to the point of the original article here, the death penalty. It's a sad reality that sometimes, if you're not willing to go as far as your enemy, you're going to lose and your way of life will die with you, even if resorting to the "eye for an eye" mentality robs you of your humanity. Sometimes in life, to protect what you love and what you believe in, you don't always have the luxury of being diplomatic and accommodating. When I was younger, during the Bush years when the torture debate was fresh and hot, I always advocated that this country should not torture under any circumstances. I have revised that position. There is evil in this world, pure evil, that to quote Alfred from The Dark Knight, "just wants to see the world burn". Sometimes, the only option left is to burn the forest down.
As a Vietnam veteran I suggest that you read the book first before stating that you already disagree with his positions. I also suspect that you would not be taking a middle of the road approach if, as in Afghanistan, your family and loved ones were being slaughtered and maimed and crippled at wedding parties and funerals due to 500 lb. U.S. bombs being dropped down upon them for no justifiable reason whatsoever. It is quite easy for you as an American "not to take war off the table entirely" since Americans have consistently been the ones who have oppressed and invaded third world countries especially since the end of World War II. Bill Blum's classic work Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, which I also recommend, basically confirms the validity of Swanson's point.
I will admit, I have no first hand experience with war. I don't pretend to know what it's like, or to be able to empathize with someone who's been through it. I would expect anyone that's experienced it, or worse yet, suffered personal loss because of it, would be very against it. But that doesn't change anything. Being an American doesn't mean I automatically agree with everything the government of my country has done militarily. The U.S. Government probably has a lot to answer for. Even taking that into consideration, it still doesn't mean that wars should never be fought. It's just foolish to assume that, no matter how brutal war is. It does mean that wars should be avoided unless they are absolutely necessary. It does mean that you should exhaust every attempt at a more peaceful resolution of differences before war is undertaken. But if tomorrow, the U.S. goverment announced that war was no longer an option for the country, the USA would be worse off for it.
I honestly cannot begin to imagine the horror of war. Saying that I could even partially understand what you and other veterans went through during your service would be an outright lie. Perhaps experiencing it myself would change my stance, I don't know. I do know that there are certainly some very legitimate conversations about US aggression in situations where it wasn't warranted, but I still stand by my statement that taking the option of war off the table entirely is foolish. That would only work if everyone else agreed to do the same, nation and non-state terrorists combined.
Legally defining corporate 'person-hood' as meaning unrestricted corp money for campaign contributions [legalized bribes] = free-speech, yet corps aren't 'personally' responsible & or accountable when their policies & action injure & kill people - Is Not Lunatic behavior - Its Sociopathic [ala Psychopathic- if Corps were Really Persons] behavior!
On Afghanistan & Al-Qaeda. First- The Bush / Cheney / NeoCon cabal had plans for attacking Afghanistan BeFore 9-11. 2nd: The Taliban offered to turn Bin Laden over if Bush showed them some proof that Bin Laden was responsible for 9-11 [Bin Laden denied any involvement] & initially the Bushites said proof would be forth-coming - which of course never happened. Then when the Bushite attack on Afghanistan became imminent - the Taliban offered to turn Bin Laden over to the Pakistanis &/or Saudi's w no other pre-conditions. Of course the Bushites refused that offer because they had already decided to attack Before 9-11. 3rd- Bin Laden's Al Qaeda was a branch of the Afghan Mujahideen fighters from the 1980's war against the USSR's invasion which the US backed & armed & for which Bin Laden as a key player & asset to both the CIA, Pakistans ISI, & the Saudi's Intel Agencies.
In other words there's much more to the 9-11 story than Al-Qaeda attacked the US from Afghanistan. The 'alleged' 9-11 hi-jackers didn't even come from Afghanistan [nor Iraq]. They came to the US from Hamburg Germany, Kuala-Lampur Malaysia, & Saudi Arabia [15 of the alleged 9-11 hi-jackers supposedly were Saudis {as was Bin Laden}, 2 allegedly came from the United Emirates {a Saudi Arabian Sub-Kingdom}, and Atta & Ayman al-Zawahiri were/are Egyptian]. So why did the Bushites give so much cover [protection] to the Saudi's [the Bin Ladens are one of the most powerful families in Saudi Arabia out-side of the Royal family] - Yet attacked Afghanistan & Iraq??!!
Even now the official CIA / DoD estimates of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan = just 50 - 100 guys tops! So why are 100,000 troops + 50000+ Xe type contract-killer Mercs in Afghanistan [if it takes 150,000+ guys to find &/or kill only 50-100 guys - that sounds like really bad math to me]?! Plus w the Bin-Laden Legend having been 'officially' killed off in May's 'Bin-Laden Kill Episode' in Pakistan [Not Afghanistan], why is the US & NATO still there killing so many Afghan people??!! IMHO- Al-Qaeda was the Excuse but Not the Real Reason the US went into Afghanistan!!
Nixak...
Very well said. I was too tired to respond to him again. Hopefully your cogent observations will clear up the misconceptions that he has about U.S. foreign policy.
I thought you said you are a pragmatist. Putting aside trivialities like morality and law, let's be purely pragmatic. Most successful specialists in intelligence gathering believe that torture results in bad information. The person being tortured will say anything to get it to stop. It validates torture as a legitimate means, to be applied against "our" side. (John McCain's point). Then there is what it does to the soul of the torturer, makes him or her unfit for family life. When you torture someone's brother or son, is a great recruiting tool to build resistance to the occupying force.
All good points. I'm still not convinced that torture is a valuable means of obtaining information, but I can't imagine that it's never produced results or it wouldn't make sense to do it, especially taking the public flak that they did for it. There is nothing to really gain from torture except information, and when you have the press, the public, and foreign governments and organizations all attacking you for your torture policies, there has to be a tangible reason why you would keep them in place if they aren't producing any results for you. My guess is, torture produces a mixture of results. It almost certainly leads to situations as you've described, but it's also likely produced credible evidence. When you say that the person will say anything to get it to stop, that doesn't help them if the evidence they give you doesn't check out. Then you get tortured some more only now you've pissed off the people torturing you. No, I have to believe that torture has produced enough results to justify, at least to those government officials, it's continuation.
As far as my not being cogent of US foreign policy, I will be the first to admit that I do not have all the information. Regardless of that, and regardless of how I feel about any specific war, I stand firmly by my stance on war always being an option. Even if every action involving the US military in the past has been wrong, conclusively and without a doubt, it would STILL be foolish to remove war as an option. This might appear to you as me being stubborn and refusing to see your facts, but that's not the case. I cannot refute, nor will I try to, anything that either of you have said regarding US foreign policy. There is a very good chance that you're right. But that doesn't anything. Whether you like the United States or not, and whether you agree with it's foreign policy or not, is irrelevant. If you were the leader of a country the size and scope of the U.S. and you announced to the world that war was never going to be an option for you, you have just given a de facto invitation to every one of your enemies to take advantage of you. Your folly would be laughed at around the world and rightly so. Pacifism only works if everyone is on board with you, or if you're small and not a target like Switzerland. It doesn't work when you're one of the top powers in the world. You both seem to be well informed and educated individuals, I would think this would be obvious to you.
Historically torture has be shown reliable in extracting one thing only- that's False Confessions! Much of the 9-11 {c}Omission reports narrative on Al-Qaeda's alleged involvement in 9-11 was based on 'confessions' by the alleged KSM [the alleged 9-11 so-called 'master-mind'] & alleged his accomplice Abu Zubaydah. Yet KSM was water-boarded at-least 183Xs & Zubaydah 83Xs for over a month's time! Thus all of the 9-11 {c}Omission's info based on supposed 'confessions' by KSM & Zubaydah were Extracted by Torture [which 'technically' is not allowed in a Court of Justice {but tortured confessions are actually often used in the US' Criminalized {in}Justice System]! Darth Vader Cheney claims that they got 'Valuable actionable intel' this way that 'Saved many lives' in '24' style 'ticking time-bomb' scenarios. Yet, according to them, it took over 30 days worth Torture Sessions' to get the 'intel' they were looking for - so much for the alleged 'ticking time-bomb' 'race against the clock' hype [Lie]! Plus if this alleged KSM was the number 3 in Al Qaeda w direct access to Bin Laden & Ayman al-Zawahiri -&- they allegedly caught KSM in 2003 & got such good & accurate Intel from KSM thru Torture- why did it take 8 yrs for them to even claim they tracked down bin Laden this past May - & haven't caught or killed al-Zawahiri Yet??!! Even if you accept their claims about KSM, Al-Qaeda, Bin Laden, et-al; some basic evaluation tells you that these torture sessions were Not about getting accurate / reliable info, it was about extracting False Confessions to bolster the 'official' 9-11 was done by Al-Qaeda Legend [in conjunction w Saddam Hussein] & the Saddam had WMD's Lie! And this torture went beyond 'mere' water-boarding, sleep-deprivation, extreme hot & cold exposure, etc. The Abu Ghraib scandal showed just a glimpse of how the Bush / Cheney / Rumsfeld /NeoCon approved torture got into sadomasochistic sexually perverse depravity!
But 9-11 wasn't the beginning of all of this- this kind of thing has been going on for a Long Time in the US' Criminalized {in}Justice System / Prison Industrial Complex! If OJ had been just a plain ole 'Homeboy' from the 'Hood' that notorious perjuring racist thug ex-cop Mark Furhman [& crew] would have likely simple beat a confession out of OJ [but because OJ Was OJ they tried to be 'clever' & plant evidence]. But lets not just be hypothetical... In the latter 1990s into the early 2000s a situation arose that caused then IL Gov George Ryan, a conservative Repub & Death Penalty proponent, to order a moratorium on the Death penalty in IL [all prisoners on Death Row automatically had their sentences change to life in prison]. Why did he do it?! Because out 25 guys who were on IL's Death-row at the time [nearly all of them Black &/or Hispanic] 13 of them were proven to be Not Guilty or even Completely Innocent! How Was This Possible?! Because many, if not most, of them were rail-roaded onto death-row by politically ambitious DAs & prosecutors [Note ex Mayor Rich Daley Jr was Cook County's DA at the time] &/or by way of 'confessions' extracted by torture! Enter the recently convicted notorious Lt of Detectives Jon Burge [Chicago PD's version of Mark Furhman or rather Furhman was LAPD's version of Burge]. Burge's favorite techniques for getting 'confessions included: suffocating suspects w plastic type-writer bags often while beating them upside the head w phone-books & also using electric cattle prod shocks on the gentiles &/or up the rectum [the sadomasochistic sexually perverse depravity connection to torture again]! This explains why it was all so easy for the 'Good Ole' USA to open torture camps at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Bahgram, etc. Many of the Xe type security contractors are ex-correction personnel [Note: ex-NYPD Chief & notoriously corrupt / recently convicted Bernie Kerik had a lucrative contract running Iraq's detainee system].
The Point is Torture is [& was} almost Never about getting good & accurate info / intel - it has been & still is about Extracting False Confessions!
I don't advocate torture in any cases except when it comes to possible threats to national security. By saying that torture only leads to false confessions, your premise is that suspect and enemy combatants that have been brought into custody are NEVER hiding anything or refusing to divulge information that would incriminate others or put their operations at risk? They tell their captors everything they know right away and never hold anything back? I find that more hard to believe than I do the existence of Santa Clause. I am not saying that the opposite is true either, that every one of those individuals is always holding something back. The truth almost certainly is somewhere in the middle. If information can be obtained that can be used to protect the lives of innocent people, and torture is the only means, then it must be on the table. You may say that nobody is innocent, especially us Americans and are superiority complex, but I would argue differently. The men and women who died on 9/11, they were innocent. The children were innocent. You want to strike back at someone, you strike back at soldiers, and the military. You don't target civilians. The minute that was done, the need for torture became larger. You may so the US has been responsible for civilian casualties and you'd be right in saying so, but it does not specifically target them(other than the case of rogue or mentally unfit soldiers, which is going to happen in any military).
Look, torture is very serious, and should only be used in the most dire of circumstances, but like war, taking it off the table as an option is just pure folly. I don't know what world you live in, but compared to what lengths people will go to in fighting, the US is not the most extreme. To truly protect it's people, maybe the answer is not a drawback but an increase in the lengths they're willing to go. I don't want that to happen, I don't think that benefits anyone, and that's not the world I want to live in, but if you think the alternative is to be softer and weaker, that's not going to happen either.
So you're justifying all of the crimes of the Bush / Cheney Cabal, apparently because you truly believe in their 'Official 9-11 Conspiracy Legend' & all of the Phony 'War on Terror' hype! YET- The Bush / Cheney Cabal, as far as I know, has Not named one actually Confirmable [not hypothetical or just plain hyped] instance where so-called 'Extreme Interrogation Techniques' [IE: Torture] has stopped even one eminent terror plot! But I can & have named numerous specific times that torture has produced false confessions [& Junk Info = Crappy Intel]- whether during the Spanish Inquisition, at Gitmo, or in the US' Crimalized {in}Justice System / Prison Industrial Complex! Enough Said!
No, I'm not justifying anything, and certainly not everything they've done. All I'm saying is that the world is not cut and dry, and making a blanket statement that torture never produces anything but false confessions is a little naive. Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. It just doesn't make any sense that they would torture, even with the intent of getting false confessions to justify whatever they were doing, because they could have just made the whole thing up without the torture, and without the controversy and loss of US reputation that came with it. You have definitely provided some examples(specifically the ones dealing with the government) of torture producing false confessions, but you have no way to verify what percentage of the people tortured that is of. You have no context to frame your anecdotes. You can't just judge things on what evidence is available when it comes to this type of thing because the government can and will withhold a lot of information from the public. They very likely want you to believe it's never successful so that people don't think they're getting information, and therefore, may know about planned operations and other intel.
I do not believe 9/11 was a conspiracy. I believe Al Qaeda put a plan in motion and that plan resulted in what happened that day. Seems pretty direct to me.
Your Quote: 'I do not believe 9/11 was a conspiracy. I believe Al Qaeda put a PLan in Motion and that Plan resulted in what happened that day....'
-> DUH-UH- That does describe a conspiracy! The Official 9-11 story Is By Definition a 'Conspiracy Theory'.
Your Quote: 'You can't just judge things on what evidence is available when it comes to this type of thing because the government can and will withhold a lot of information from the public... Because they [the Gov't] could have just made the whole thing up...'
-> Yeah like what really happened on 9-11, & what really happened last May in that Pakistani House Raid, & what really happened to Bin Laden & KSM....
Your Quote: 'It just doesn't make any sense that they would torture }if it only gets} false confessions because of the controversy and loss of US reputation that came with it....'
-> Thats why the Bush / Cheney / NeoCon Cabal the spent first half of their tenure Lying & Denying that they were using torture- & then when the evidence became undeniable- the rest of their time [till even Now] justifying using torture because, so they claim- 'It produced actionable Intel that saved lives...'! So what doesn't make sense, since torture is a Serious War-Crime under both US & UN Law, is for them to Fail to Produce even One Verifiable Case where their approval of torture, actually did what they claimed it did! Plus- We already know they don't have a problem leaking classified info when it suits them -Because- They Outed Covert CIA Agent Valerie Plame Didn't They!
There is no supreme court. Supreme court is an illusion. The supreme court that give us politic money can buy. The same supreme that decide Bush v Gore. Wake up american, the supreme court will have to work very hard to be called supreme court.. The name is tanished.Good luck to America. and God Bless America.
Blankenship should have been handcuffed and led from the job site. When they found two sets of books, he should have been charged with premeditated murder. Instead he was given a fat check and retired. Justice, in our America. Troy Davis was killed last night.