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I never thought I'd see the day where discussions about torture would go very far. Torture was one of those things that we accused others of - our enemies. Torture was one of those unthinkable acts that clearly defined the difference between US and THEM - you know, the bad people, our enemies. Americans defeated torturers. The decision was simple - torture is disgusting and wrong - what else is there to talk about? Read on.
Today I came across (CLICK) this article From the article:
" Alberto Mora says it’s “politically unthinkable” to criminally prosecute the top Bush administration officials who sanctioned torture. He also says it’s “legally unthinkable” not to hold them accountable."
Suddenly things become complicated. In today's America it isn't that simple. Now we have to contend with pros and cons, those who gave the order vs. who followed the orders, left vs. right politics and on and on. We can't, it seems, take action because the consequences will "tear the country apart." Meanwhile the criminals responsible escape stage left.
What about those who've been directly involved in torture, or the observation of torture? What happens to these folks? Are they all bad? I found (CLICK) this story of Alyssa Peterson. From the linked story:
"Appalled when ordered to take part in interrogations that, no doubt, involved what we would call torture, she refused, then killed herself a few days later, in September 2003."
Who will take action on her behalf? Who will make sure history won't repeat itself? Perhaps Shepard Smith, of all people, expressing what once was, in this once great country, where torture was so clearly wrong... (warning - appropriate offensive language)
Today I came across (CLICK) this article From the article:
" Alberto Mora says it’s “politically unthinkable” to criminally prosecute the top Bush administration officials who sanctioned torture. He also says it’s “legally unthinkable” not to hold them accountable."
Suddenly things become complicated. In today's America it isn't that simple. Now we have to contend with pros and cons, those who gave the order vs. who followed the orders, left vs. right politics and on and on. We can't, it seems, take action because the consequences will "tear the country apart." Meanwhile the criminals responsible escape stage left.
What about those who've been directly involved in torture, or the observation of torture? What happens to these folks? Are they all bad? I found (CLICK) this story of Alyssa Peterson. From the linked story:
"Appalled when ordered to take part in interrogations that, no doubt, involved what we would call torture, she refused, then killed herself a few days later, in September 2003."
Who will take action on her behalf? Who will make sure history won't repeat itself? Perhaps Shepard Smith, of all people, expressing what once was, in this once great country, where torture was so clearly wrong... (warning - appropriate offensive language)
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UPDATE MAY 3, 2009 Historian Alfred McCoy: Obama Reluctance on Bush Prosecutions Affirms Culture of Impunity-with Video
UPDATE MAY 3, 2009 Sen. Patrick Leahy - agreeing we need the truth - but not tough enough on the administration
UPDATE MAY 3, 2009 Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity - Open Letter to Obama
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UPDATE MAY 3, 2009 DEFINITION OF TORTURE?
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UPDATE MAY 4, 2009 America's Shame - Eric MargolisFrom the article:
"When I served in the US Army, I was taught that any illegal order, even from the president, must be refused and that mistreating prisoners was a crime.
President Obama must show the world that America upholds the law, rejects torture of all kinds, and that no officials are above the law. Otherwise, there is no other way to prevent the recurrence of torture in the future."
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UPDATE MAY 4, 2009 US Torture History-AJ Langguth
UPDATE MAY 5, 2009 Condi Rice stumbles when kid asks about torture -with video
UPDATE MAY 6, 2009 Bush Officials Try to Alter Ethics Report
UPDATE MAY 8, 2009 Democrats were routinely briefed on Bush torture techniques
UPDATE MAY 13, 2009 FBI Whistleblower
it's astonishing how few people in this country care enough about this issue, Jack Rabbit. Yep, I know, the economy is in the toilet, jobs are disappearing every day, homes are being foreclosed on, savings are dwindling, etc.. This is a fundamental cornerstone issue for this nation, however, no matter how many people can turn their backs on it or look away from it.
ReplyDeleteWe allowed people to rape children, and sodomize them, while in our custody. It was done under the supervision of the C.I.A. in some cases. These people knew what Articles of the Geneva Conventions they were violating.
yet the beat goes on. the Obombanation refuses to set the tone for hearings, and in-fact, has gone so far as to promise that no Central Intelligence Agency or Military personnel (obviously he meant HIGH RANKING as some have already been hung out to dry as 'scape goats' now for this stuff) would be punished for this.
I guess he needs to turn loose Grainer and England and all the rest of the alleged 'bad apples' who were only following orders, doesn't he? After all, he did say nobody would be punished.
I don't know what's worse, living in a nation that condones torture, or living in a nation that ignores and condones it. Until every single person UP THE CHAIN OF COMMAND is punished, I just don't see how we ever recover from this.
it's "move on, nothing to see here, let's not look backward" b.s. that is both incredibly astonishingly sad, and somehow, indicative of; "well, we tortured, we murdered, we invaded, we occupied, all ILLEGALLY, but hey, it was a legitimate error so let's all join hands, sing a few rounds of cumbaya and let bygones be bygones now, okay?"
this is not cutting it, Jack Rabbit. It's not.
these fuckers need to all be identified, indicted, and stand trial. no b.s. tribunals manned up by the likes of cover-up artists Zelikow or Hamilton. This needs to be fully prosecuted to the maximum extent of the laws they broke, and the HI-PERPS brought to punishment for what they have done in our name.
otherwise, this nation is over with. There can be no recovering from this banality without closure, and that closure comes in form of Nuremberg style hearings, and hangings.
it's time we demanded this, and told the Obombaton; "look sucker, we'll take away your keys to your new car if you don't uphold the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, and other U.S. Anti-torture statutes."
Thanks anonymous above,
ReplyDeleteI too am bewildered with this attitude propagated via corporate media. Although I've spoken to a small few who rationalize reasons for monstrosities like torture, most people I know are looking at each other, and wondering - why isn't somebody DOING something about this? WHO occupies THE position of power with the duty to ACT against torturers on behalf of the public? WHY do they still have their job? WHEN will arrests begin? The sad truth it seems is that we have no such leadership. What we have instead are front-men for big business, the military-industrial complex and myriad others running this made-for-TV nightmare. The difference is that this isn't TV, and the names are changed to protect the guilty.
Excellent post. Thanks so much. It's maddening and comforting all at the same time. Maddening because of the feeling of helplessness this issue can bring, yet also comfort from the fact that there are other people - lots of other people, who feel the way you do, and we have to keep up the drumbeat to get something done about it this time!
ReplyDeleteHere's another great blog post about this issue, and it also really got me going regarding this subject:
http://smokingmirrors.blogspot.com/2009/04/torture-other-red-meat.html
Thanks again!
Thanks Medusae for your participation and the link.
ReplyDeleteAmerica needs to torture to protect the unalienable rights of Wall Street to steal us blind;
ReplyDeleteTo protect the Pentagon's vastly overinflated budget to keep generals like Betrayus in snazzy looking medals and ribbons and letting him live live a rock star.
And to keep We the People scared shitless with tales of al Qaeda boogiemen, who want to kill us just for the hell of it.
So we'll support more wars for the Pentagon and be too occupied scanning the skies for a hijacked airliner instead of keeping a wary eye on that pirates cove AKA Wall Street.
Robert 'sedro-wooley' Gates made a few overtures towards the masses recently, more or less talking about downsizing a few programs and then, in the same breath, said; "y'all better pass this new war spending budget for me, or else I'll start to cry and hem and haw and throw hissy fits.." (loose quote). Some in the Pornogon are asserting that the oh so much a misnomer 'defense' spending is a real boon to jobs in the U.S. at a time when the stimulus plan just isn't really working very well at all.
ReplyDeleteBack in 2001, Cynthia McKinney was grilling the comptroller of the Pornogon as well as Rumsfeld himself, over the 'loss' of 2.4 TRILLION bucks they couldn't account for, and of course, as most of us cannot begin to envision what even 1 TRILLION bucks looks like, there's a nice 'link' on line to show you comparatively speaking, how much funny money that truly is. For almost '3' times that amount to go 'missing' and be presumably gone to Israel via Dov Zackheim's meathooks that helped abscond with this vast amount of taxpayer's generosity, this is, to put it bluntly, quite astonishing.
some would argue, which came first, the 'chicken' or the 'egg', the apparent disclosures about the Sept. 10, 2001 'missing 2.4 trillion' or the attack on the U.S. by 19 arab hijackers wielding box cutters and flameproof'd passports?
right now, we're seeing another case of 'swine flu' overshadowing the 'torture' and the 'torture' overshadowning 9/11 truth about who carried out the attacks, all the way down to the S.E.C. cover-up that Spitzer was getting to the bottom of with Madoff's embezzlement, again, going to Israel.
all of these things are like spokes on a hub. the hub is Israel. The spokes lead to various U.S. foreign policy misdeeds to the effect of shipping huge amounts of U.S. currency to Israel, and the 'torture' in C.I.A. detention centers and black sites, all are just spinoff's of this 'hub' in the middle.
If more people knew that Abu Ghraib had contractors, who allegedly worked for Israeli intelligence, and if more people knew that 3 dancing Israeli's celebrated the fall of the WTC buildings on Sept. 11, 2001, and if more people knew that a lion's share of the 2.4 trillion dollars that Zackheim and Rumsfelt scammed via the Pornogon went to Israel, as did much of Madoff's embezzled billions, I think we'd all suddenly have total, utter 'clarity' about what these other manifestations all were indicative of, what they pointed back to.
all of this stuff, at least for the past 9 or so years, leads to Israel and an effort by agents of that government to either indicrectly or directly manipulate U.S. foreign policy objectives via A.I.P.A.C., or simply to steal as much money as they could electronically ship to Israeli bank accounts at U.B.S. in Switzerland.
the torture is just another diversionary tactic at best, and at worst, a sadistic and quite disgusting sideshow to make, as the one guy who posted above put it; "scared shitless" when the main objective has always been the financial looting of the U.S. by Israeli agents and conspirators like Madoff apparently was.
that's the most likely reason why the investigations will never go forward, uncovering the perpetrators of the torture is the 'moot' point in all of that. It leads to a deeper and more clandestine path of skullduggery and deception and thievery by Israel, and this is precisely why Eric Holder's JUST US dept. refuses to pursue the A.I.P.A.C. spying and espionage treason, because so many U.S. lawmakers like Jane Harmon and Nancy Pelosi, were in on the looting.
Military Industrial Complex was just a 'useful tool' to get these objectives accomplished.
According to Linsey Graham, after examining the evidence, it's about rape, murder and torture. Whoever ordered this, carried it out or covered it up, should be prosecuted and imprisoned for life. Imprisoning a child is a war crime. We have to prosecute. The 9/11 evidence is in as well, we have to prosecute those evil son of a bitch's also.
ReplyDeleteQuestion for Readers: WHO specifically is duty-bound in their current position to ACT on behalf of the public against the torturers?
ReplyDeleteWe The People are. and there's the rub.
ReplyDelete'they' know there will be no mass outcry against the torture. 'they' know that there will be no nation-wide strike by We The People.
and 'they' also know that if they put troops into the streets to suppress any domestic disturbance or 'outcry' over the 'torture' that a significant number of vichy citizens will fall into line and not do anything further to rock the boat.
after all, they wouldn't want to miss 'american idol' now, would they?
I remember reading about Alyssa Peterson. If I recall correctly, she told her family she was afraid of the intelligence CONTRACTORS. And to answer your question, I believe military/intelligence people swear to defend against all enemies domestic and foreign. I await the day we see any signs that our entire government hasn't pledged its allegiance to Israel. Within my lifetime, I've watched as our congress was compromised by them, they got nuclear weapons from us, they took over the media, they screwed us financially, they rigged the elections and - as we will see again next week - they even now humiliate our representatives with their treason in public. Oh, and they will make saying this illegal. Our freedom gone, our wealth gone and no one says anything except you're an anti-Semite if you fight back. Oath don't mean much, apparently. People just keep cashing their checks.
ReplyDeleteForget sending torturers and those who signed off on it! Execute the MF'ers! They are sick degenerates that do not perform any thing useful for society. The pro's of letting their sick minds sit in jail the rest of their life DO NOT OUT WEIGH the con's of them potentially getting freed or running things from a jail house. Execute them and be done with it! These people are the scum of the earth!
ReplyDeleteThe perps should all be hunted like the lowly dogs that they are. One by one , take them out , until someone starts to get the message that the BS stops here. It can be done. They will not be safe anywhere. How do you find them? Just follow the money trail. It will eventually expose them all.
ReplyDeleteTake out the Federal Reserve that empowers these lowly dogs to do as they do , and solve most of the current ills.
Identify , and expel all unregistered Foreign Agents. If that does not work , take them out with the other lowly dogs referred to above. They are all most surely related in some way.
This problem is not that difficult to solve. What is difficult is to awaken all the millions of sheep to the fleecing. 'We The People' let this happen , as we found it too inconvenient to get stressed-out , or risk our 'job' , or 'It has not come to my front door yet' mentality , the list goes on. We are to blame as much as anyone for the current state of affairs.
When do we do something about it? For an individual to rise up alone is foolishness , and will surely result in defeat. How to unite the people against the Treason and Tyranny? This is the most difficult question.
"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
ReplyDeleteAnd then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
GO HERE FOR DETAILS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...
To answer your earlier question , as to who is duty-bound to prosecute? The Unites States Attorney General , for one. ANYONE duty-bound by their oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies , both foreign , and domestic , also have an obligation to pursue exposure , investigation , and subsequent prosecution.
ReplyDeleteIt will take someone very well known , and public , to elevate this to the next level , with no attachment. Too many in our government are complicit by direct or indirect involvement.
Eric 'ah hepped cuvvah up O.K.C.' Holder is the main law enforcer of the land. He's been instructed by B.H.O. to not do anything to investigate the torture, or the Bush cabal criminality, or any other wrongdoing. However, Ahole Sphincter who just jumped ship from the GOP slime to the DINOCRAT slime party, really wants to get to the bottom of steroid abuse by baseball players and other professional sports people.
ReplyDeletelong time ago, a mythological story about Rome's emperor NERO, was that he sat and played a lute while Rome was on fire.
the United States is on fire. the nearest hydrant is too far away to get a hose to, and the bucket brigade is US. You, Jack Rabbit, everyone who posted on here. We're the bucket brigade. We need help getting the other 278 million lazy and lackadaisical and out of touch with reality citizens off the couch and into the street to help us put this disastrous fire out.
my gut feeling is that we're going to burn. Eric 'cover up boy' Holder, Barack H. Obama, and 535 or so members of Congress are going to see to it that our eyes are not on this fire and that we worry more about professional baseball players on steroids, or dogs fucking on city streets, or any number of goofy, way off the mark issues that don't mean anything to us.
Our nation is burning. Our government is as if it were taken over by space aliens that popped out of pods and took over their bodies.
we cannot count on the political system, or the courts, to do anything.
if we can't mobilize a few million people to converge on the 'Israel House' at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, D.C. 20510, then we're really going to burn. We will burn all the way to the ground. There will be no survivors from this crash.
either we saddle up, or we are over with. it's time to pack the bedrolls and get the vehicles onto the roads, and I do mean, millions of us, all at the same time.
if we don't...we will all rue the day we sat on hour collective hands and acted like spectators to this fire that is consuming our nation.
We need a statue of Allyssa Peterson in Wash.DC. She is perhaps the only real hero among the US military in Iraq. To offer one's life for the principle of morality is the ultimate sacrifice. She is certainly with God in heaven.
ReplyDeletethanks profnasty,
ReplyDeleteThere is also Lt. Watada - refused to fight an illegal war in Iraq - offered to fight the one in Afghanistan, but the military decided to make an example out of him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehren_Watada
I'd kindly like to remind everybody that there is no empirical evidence of a 'deity' that you call 'god', and that referencing people being with a fictional character or deity is about as absurd as tossing pennies into a fountain, putting teeth under your pillow, or believing in santa claus. however, Alyssa Peterson, in my opinion, did something few in this country would ever do, and that was choose death over dishonor.
ReplyDeleteas for Watada, same principle, only he didn't kill himself, he refused to fight an amoral and illegal war for a dictator.
there are tons of Winter Soldiers who could be enumerated and cited here, as well. even a few politicians who had enough principles to resign rather than follow a tyrant dictator.
standing on the sidelines and cheerleading these people is good, but it is no excuse for not getting off one's fat arse and getting to Washington, D.C. in a massive, unprecedented protest. If you honor these people, as well as Rachel Corrie, and hosts of others, then it behooves everyone to quit making weak assed excuses and getting their own butts into gear.
otherwise, accept your fate like the lemmings you obviously all are or have become.
Thanks previous commenter: But what have the protests accomplished? No television coverage results, which in this country, means it never happened. Unless, of course, the protests are overwhelming.
ReplyDeleteI'm not in disagreement with protests, it just seems they can't penetrate the fake news apparatus that in many cases demonizes the protesters by misrepresenting them on TV.
It seems to me the end game is for our representatives to act or be forced out.
what you're saying is that we are 'hopelessly stalemated' then, right? you know the ballot box, the telephone, the fax machine, and the e-mail to your 'alleged' representatives doesn't work, either. so now what?
ReplyDeleteI think we are writing ourselves excuse notes to present to a non-existent schoolmarm.
what I am saying is this; "if an organization, on a grass roots level, said to MOUNT UP AND BE IN WASHINGTON D.C. in a WEEK" and they called every able bodied american to the event, and told everyone; "IT IS NOW OR NEVER, PEOPLE", I think that this just might get a couple million pissed off sheeple off their couches and out there in their faces.
the other option is armed revolt. I'm not trying to be an advocate of this policy just yet, but at some point, it will be the only alternative to being totally subjugated in a POLICE STATE without RULE OF LAW.
so, the choices, I see, are very clear. Either we form a grass-roots coalition and go there IN FORCE to Washington, D.C., or we sit on our hands, collectively, and rock back and forth in anxious agony, or we get our fat asses packing our stuff for a cross country journey by the millions, to Washington, D.C. If we have to sleep in the streets, so be it. Better now than in the dead of summer or in the middle of winter.
Encircle the Whore House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue until they meet our demands for RESTORATION OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION and RULE OF LAW, and SEVERANCE OF ISRAELI PROXY STATE MURDERS.
or we just wait. and wait. and wait.
at some point, the armed revolt becomes an absolute, bloody necessity. I don't want to believe every citizen is such a coward that they will consent to the tyranny of a TOTAL POLICE STATE without putting up a fight.
if this is the case, I'm so ashamed to be amongst you all. Cowardice is more sickening than inanction due to genuine fear. It has a terrible price, to be a coward and to lay down in compliance with TYRANNY and unchecked crimes against humanity. There is a price for that.
Thanks anonymous. You are right - at what point will a critical mass of the public ACT? You are also right that if waiting continues one must take into consideration the words of John F. Kennedy:
ReplyDelete"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. "
though I wasn't exactly enthused about John F. Kennedy's inability to keep his pecker in his pants while he was President, he was perhaps the last real 'statesman' who had a different view about what America's course would be. He got a lot of credit for backing down the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis, yet nobody seems to remember that the U.S. Air Force had, prior to that, moved an entire missile battery of Jupiter C, nuclear tipped tactical missiles, a mere 80 or so miles from the Russian border, in Turkey. This was likely the straw that broke Kruschev's back and forced the counter-move of the U.S.S.R. to put their missiles right on our doorstep in Cuba. In a real world, 'cause and effect' kind of physics there.
ReplyDeleteback to the options narrowing issue, however, there is very little doubt that the people on the other side of the chess board are playing a carefully calculated game that, in effect, paints the citizens of this nation into a proverbial 'corner' whereupon at some point, either we cower in fear in the corner, awaiting our demise at their hands, or we stand up and we fight for our freedom again.
Wearing a uniform and going into harm's way sometimes does funny things to your way of thinking, and what it had done to mine is that I absolutely know that "hell indeed will FREEZE OVER" before I cower in the corner and wait for them to squash me into non-existence or tail between my legs, mute compliance.
they're turning the temperature up on the frog, but they're hastening it in a fashion that just might make this frog decide to leap.
"all that is necessary for EVIL to TRIUMPH is that all good men do NOTHING" seems to come to mind. A whole lot of german citizens to this day, based on my personal knowledge of them from visiting their country years ago, said this; "we would certainly have done something if we'd have known that Hitler was in-fact, such a bad, bad man.."
another german said; "he helped employ a lot of out of work german friends of mine with his highway rebuilding and his war machine construction programs, so yes, some of us were on board with him, the jobs gave us food on our tables.."
food on the table? jobs? cowering in fear in utter compliance?
there's a very nearly invisible line one crosses somewhere in that mix, whereupon you either recognize you are part of the regime because you tacitly support it's policies, or you do whatever you can to condemn and damn the regime because in your heart of hearts, you know that it is wrong and what it is doing is, in fact, criminal and murderous and in-fact, torture.
some of us already have decided we won't cross that line, under any circumstance. judging by the ambivalence here, my guess is that a lot of you are either quite frightened of the regime, or you don't in fact see it as being a criminal enterprise, capable of genocide, mass murder, invasions of sovereign, non-beligerent nations, and those who have done nothing to merit having their civilians bombed by drone strikes carried out by a rogue organization within the government called the Central Intelligence Agency.
I just hope those of you who can and will condone it can live with what you are allowing to go on in your names, with your assistance, and your quiet, voiceless consent.