1.27.2009

Time's Up Obama - Yes Already - on Torture

Obama was elected to restore America's place as our world's beacon of Hope. Will he? I suppose it depends on what one hopes for. Let's start with torture. Torture is sick. Torture (CLICK) doesn't work. Torturers who've stained America must be brought to justice. I hope those who've chosen torture will be brought to justice by Barack Obama - immediately. Failure to act resolutely and swiftly with actions demonstrating that America is better than torture will be part of a myriad of small cuts that eventually bleed America to death.

This is easy - torture is not an American value. I don't care what the reason, circumstance ... anything - not only is torture something Americans don't do - torture is something Americans (CLICK)sacrifice their lives to prevent and stop! Did you hear that? Torture is contrary to everything American starting with the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

Can we find precedents from American history to demonstrate our founders really meant what they said by backing it up with action? Perhaps a snippet from (CLICK)A Military Journal During the American Revolutionary War, from 1775 to 1783 by James Thacher M.D. would help show that torture is un-American (not to mention sick) from page 67:
"A number of Hessians and Waldeckers have fallen into our hands. The German officers and soldiers, by a finesse of the British, to increase their ferocity, had been led to believe that Americans are savages and barbarians, and if taken, their men would have their bodies stuck full of pieces of dry wood, and in that manner burnt to death. But they were very agreeably disappointed, and much pleased, on meeting civil and kind treatment. "

So even during the Revolutionary war there was no need to torture prisoners. But there is now? Why?

Perhaps a more recent (CLICK) reference would be helpful. In this piece from Raw Story we find:
"A few weeks ago, George Washington University Constitutional Law professor Jonathan Turley, while appearing on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, essentially said that the Obama administration would "own" any war crimes -- such as the reported waterboarding of 9/11 suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- if it chose to look the other way."


I've heard from Obama supporters I know personally how smart Obama is regarding law. Time to show us how smart you are Barack! Show us what a great leader you are. Show us how you will bring change we can believe in. Actions, not words, are needed to show not only Americans, but the world, that America will not stand for human rights violations.


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UPDATE Jan 28, 2009
(CLICK) Torture strengthens our "enemies'" resolve
UPDATE Jan 28, 2009 Raw Story...Holder made deal not to prosecute for torture?
UPDATE Jan 28, 2009 Cernig: Nixon's Lawyer Are We Civilized Enough to Prosecute for Torture?
UPDATE Feb 1, 2009 (CLICK) Link from reader Ian - thanks Ian
Detainees continue to rot
Ridge says torture was wrong - defends endless undefinable "War on Terror"
UPDATE MARCH 9, 2009 Thomas R. Eddlem from AntiWar.com
UPDATE MAR 16, 2009 Red Cross graphic report: Torture methods explained
UPDATE APRIL 10, 2009 Hope Abandoned - Obama prevents access to torture memos
UPDATE APRIL 16, 2009 Obama will do NOTHING
UPDATE APRIL 17, 2009 BUSH admin used Bugs to torture? SICK - Obama does NADA
UPDATE APRIL 17, 2009 W - The Torture Decider - McGovern

7 comments:

  1. Obama already issued executive orders, one, that any interrogations will comply with the army field manual and the Geneva conventions. (IE, there will be no more torture) Two, that Gitmo will be closed within a year. Three, any CIA secret prisons are to be closed immediately. Have you not been following the news? I'd say Obama had a damn good first week when it comes to treatment of prisoners.

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  2. Are you sure?
    http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12041

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  3. Have you been following the "news?"

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  4. The following article is highly relevant to this subject:

    http://www.friendsjournal.org/torture-and-impunity

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  5. Obombaton isn't going to prosecute a fucking thing, except maybe set up and hang a few suspected 'terrists' as boy george called them, and then ship their asses to bitch mccornhole's gitmo, to show the shivering in fear proles here on U.S. turf that 'he be da man' still.

    if you want to know what lies ahead for all of us, just watch how corporations will continue to consolidate their power, the bankers will be allowed to further loot all of us and those of us yet to be born into slavery, and there will be no relief in sight for the average working class american citizen. no single payer healthcare, no jobs, no shit.

    if you want to see what Obombaton has in store for you all, take a look at this:

    http://revolutionarypolitics.com/?p=641

    that's what the fucker has in store for all of us proletariat class slaves.

    there's not going to be any prosecution of wrongdoing by the bush bastards, torture and murder of detainee's will be ignored by Eric Holder, under Obombaton's strict orders to not do a fucking thing.

    the international community, on the other hand, is another game altogether. I fully expect them to hand down indictments and subpoena's to these filth, try them in 'absentia' and then sentence them all, to at the very least, 'life inprisonment without parole' and or 'death' as is mandated by International Law such as the Geneva Conventions and other statutory instruments that prohibit torture and murder of detainees and citizens who for the most part, had done nothing to merit their illegal incarceration in Gitmo or Bagram Air Base or any number of C.I.A. black sites in Poland and the Czech republic.

    Obombaton is going to go down in history as the 'second worst' puppet who aided and abetted in the further destruction of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta, and Habeas Corpus.

    don't expect this liar and slick politician to do anything to stop the steady march into dictatorship. It isn't going to happen that way.

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  6. Cossiga is right. as are members of the Japanese parliament, as well. Nation after nation has been making noises about this 'inside job' because they've all been watching the U.S. fuck the entire world over in this fanatical bullshit whereupon the very badly acting president(s) think that drone strikes into infinity, with infinite numbers of dead civilians, not to mention the either intentional or unintenional (former, not the latter) destabilization of Pakistan and Waziristan, with these incursions by U.S. troops and illegal airstrikes inside a sovereign nation, all can go on forever. The world has had enough, I think.

    the United States all crusader force in Afghanistan and now in Pakistan, should be expelled by the United Nations Security Council, regardless of the U.S. bribing or trying to buy off other Security Council members.

    Cossiga's voice is just one of a wilderness full of them that are now screaming and demanding a formal, World Wide investigation into the United States and Israel's conspiracy to 'false flag' operationally strike New York City and Washington, D.C. to create the 'excuses' for the illegal incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq.

    this must come to a head. Obombya is not going to be able to put this fire out that he's keeping lit with his own illegal war mongering and murder of civilians using C.I.A. drones.

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  7. an interesting thing happened tonight in the blogosphere, relative to a story that came out about Seymour Hersh asserting that Dick Cheney's 'murder squad' ordered the assassination of Pakistan President Benazir Bhutto.

    now, on RawestStory, my name for them, there's a hastily put up retraction to this.

    why is this not really really really smelly, Jack Rabbit? I mean, the story pops, and though it's entirely questionable as to the exact motive to kill Bhutto other than to keep her from making another "Osama de Boogey Man is dead" statement to another journalist like David Frost, whom she told intially about this.

    now, everyone listen closely here. We know that Osama has been very very dead for a very long time, since 2002 actually. The U.S. is ramping up troop levels in Afghanistan and doing something that only sporadically happened under Bush, regarding Pakistan, and that is the seemingly endless litany of drone launched 'murders' happening, killing a lot of civilians.

    do you smell the Cheney yet (Rat) here? I sure as hell do.

    first off, there's a concerted effort in the blogs to DISCREDIT HERSH and try to destroy his assertions about the McChrystal run 'hit squads' of U.S. military who took their kill orders from then sitting VICE president Dick Cheney. That was not apparently working too good, though you could see really vehement; "oh hersh, he's not a journalist" attacks in the blogs.

    now tonight, this comes out. and then is 'recanted' immediately by RawStory.

    either we are getting really close with Hersh's reporting that they want to totally 'destroy' by putting out false information about his story, or the coverage about Bhutto's assassination being ordered by Cheney and his boy, McChrystal, may not really be too very false after all.

    introduce a little doubt, then stir vigorously.

    voilla! Instant Sy Hersh character assassination. End of scrutiny on Afghanistan and Pakistan destabilization by Obombaton and his boy, McChrystal, the 'death squad' leader.

    smell the Cheney yet? Not yet????

    c'mon folks, look at this sudden and violent uptick in U.S. fomented mass murder in Afghanistan and Pakistan, right at the same time that Hersh has leaked that Cheney ran the hit squad that murdered in more than 18 countries world wide, probably even in the United States.

    Smell the Cheney yet????????

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