"At least someone is owning up to the awful legacy of Mr. Bush's illegal detention policies," their editorial concludes, after discussing the decision from the British government to compensate former detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The settlement payments could run over a million pounds in one case.
Time To Call It Torture
The New York Times is finally calling it torture--when someone else has admitted to it.
Nov 19, 2010
The New York Times is finally calling it torture--when someone else has admitted to it.
"At least someone is owning up to the awful legacy of Mr. Bush's illegal detention policies," their editorial concludes, after discussing the decision from the British government to compensate former detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The settlement payments could run over a million pounds in one case.
But the Times shouldn't be so quick with the finger-pointing or the congratulations. The British settlement, for one thing, comes with "no concession of liability" for torture. Instead, Cameron's government is paying taxpayer dollars out in order to avoid going to trial and facing liability. There's video available of the treatment of UK prisoners, which the Guardian published and you can see on our Facebook page, but the US news? Not so much.
Our own torture tapes erased in 2005, earned nary a peep from the big media outlets last week, when the statute of limitations on filing charges against the erasers expired. That means that the investigation into who destroyed videotapes of CIA interrogations is effectively over and no one will be held accountable.
Where were the strongly worded condemnations from the Times then? About where the coverage of those tapes, as opposed to the preemptive settlement is now.
Our friends at FireDogLake kept the pressure on while the clock ran out on our torture tapes, but it is ironic to see the Times wagging its finger at the government when it missed an excellent opportunity to hold them accountable itself.
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Laura Flanders
Laura Flanders interviews forward-thinking people about the key questions of our time on The Laura Flanders Show, a nationally syndicated radio and television program also available as a podcast. A contributing writer to The Nation, Flanders is also the author of six books, including "Bushwomen: How They Won the White House for Their Man" (2005). She is the recipient of a 2019 Izzy Award for excellence in independent journalism, the Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award for advancing women's and girls' visibility in media, and a 2020 Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship for her reporting and advocacy for public media. lauraflanders.org
The New York Times is finally calling it torture--when someone else has admitted to it.
"At least someone is owning up to the awful legacy of Mr. Bush's illegal detention policies," their editorial concludes, after discussing the decision from the British government to compensate former detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The settlement payments could run over a million pounds in one case.
But the Times shouldn't be so quick with the finger-pointing or the congratulations. The British settlement, for one thing, comes with "no concession of liability" for torture. Instead, Cameron's government is paying taxpayer dollars out in order to avoid going to trial and facing liability. There's video available of the treatment of UK prisoners, which the Guardian published and you can see on our Facebook page, but the US news? Not so much.
Our own torture tapes erased in 2005, earned nary a peep from the big media outlets last week, when the statute of limitations on filing charges against the erasers expired. That means that the investigation into who destroyed videotapes of CIA interrogations is effectively over and no one will be held accountable.
Where were the strongly worded condemnations from the Times then? About where the coverage of those tapes, as opposed to the preemptive settlement is now.
Our friends at FireDogLake kept the pressure on while the clock ran out on our torture tapes, but it is ironic to see the Times wagging its finger at the government when it missed an excellent opportunity to hold them accountable itself.
Laura Flanders
Laura Flanders interviews forward-thinking people about the key questions of our time on The Laura Flanders Show, a nationally syndicated radio and television program also available as a podcast. A contributing writer to The Nation, Flanders is also the author of six books, including "Bushwomen: How They Won the White House for Their Man" (2005). She is the recipient of a 2019 Izzy Award for excellence in independent journalism, the Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award for advancing women's and girls' visibility in media, and a 2020 Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship for her reporting and advocacy for public media. lauraflanders.org
The New York Times is finally calling it torture--when someone else has admitted to it.
"At least someone is owning up to the awful legacy of Mr. Bush's illegal detention policies," their editorial concludes, after discussing the decision from the British government to compensate former detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The settlement payments could run over a million pounds in one case.
But the Times shouldn't be so quick with the finger-pointing or the congratulations. The British settlement, for one thing, comes with "no concession of liability" for torture. Instead, Cameron's government is paying taxpayer dollars out in order to avoid going to trial and facing liability. There's video available of the treatment of UK prisoners, which the Guardian published and you can see on our Facebook page, but the US news? Not so much.
Our own torture tapes erased in 2005, earned nary a peep from the big media outlets last week, when the statute of limitations on filing charges against the erasers expired. That means that the investigation into who destroyed videotapes of CIA interrogations is effectively over and no one will be held accountable.
Where were the strongly worded condemnations from the Times then? About where the coverage of those tapes, as opposed to the preemptive settlement is now.
Our friends at FireDogLake kept the pressure on while the clock ran out on our torture tapes, but it is ironic to see the Times wagging its finger at the government when it missed an excellent opportunity to hold them accountable itself.
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