"Those rules are antiquated and don't apply."

[JohnyCanuck]

When he was first ordered to soften up detainees, "it didn't seem so weird," Ben says; nothing in the war zone was normal. "You don't think about what you're doing until later." He was asked to stand in on dozens of interrogations, to help intimidate the subject: one more body, one more gun. The small room was usually crowded with guards, military-intelligence officers, and ogas. They were told to wear T-shirts, not uniforms that would signal their rank. Under the single bulb, the interrogator would loom above a prisoner seated in a child-size chair. Sometimes the room suddenly went dark and strobe lights flashed on. Other times the soldiers would bang pots and pans in the detainee's face, blare loud music, blast air horns and sirens. The sounds were meant to disorient, but also to mask the screams. More than half the time, even if they were cooperative the detainees were beaten, kicked out of their chairs, punched in the windpipe or gut, pulled by the ears—blows that wouldn't leave lasting marks. Occasionally things got out of hand, but with their medical training, the military-intelligence officers could stitch up or bandage injuries, avoiding a call to the medics and an entry in the logbooks that the Red Cross could read.

The first time Ben saw a detainee get beaten, he took the lead interrogator aside afterward to ask, "Was this stuff really allowed? Didn't it violate the Geneva Conventions?"

"These aren't pows; they're detainees," he was told. "Those rules are antiquated and don't apply. You can't get any information without breaking that stuff." Ben asked other officers, but "it was basically like, 'Dude, you're actually worried about how we're treating them? They wouldn't afford you the same respect.'"

If there is anything Ben hates, it's not having all the information. Like most, he hadn't listened when the Geneva Conventionswere covered in basic training. But as it happened, when first arriving in country he'd asked a military lawyer for a cd-rom of various documents, just to have on hand. Now, scrolling through the text on his laptop, Ben saw what anyone could: All prisoners—civilians and combatants—are protected against violence. There is no separate category for unlawful combatants. "Outrages upon personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment" are prohibited. Abuses like those at the Tiger base were "grave breaches." War crimes.

SNIP

In the summer of 2003, the interrogators threw a detainee against a concrete wall, punched him in the neck and gut, kicked him in the knees, threw him outside, and dragged him back in by his hair. For the entire two-hour ordeal, the prisoner wouldn't talk; Ben later found out he spoke Farsi and couldn't understand the interrogators' English and Arabic. Afterward, Ben hid behind a building and cried for the first time since his dad's death. "It was like a loss of humanity. Like we were trading one dictator in for another. I had to weigh my integrity against my duty. Why couldn't I stand up more? Why was I hesitant?"

http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?url=http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/03/am-i-a-torturer.html

[Richard Steele]

1. K&R

[gratuitous]

2. Yep, they're war crimes

And there's no statute of limitations on those, as the Nazis have found out in more than 60 years since World War II ended. The Neocons and their military tools had better get real serious about holding onto power for a long, long time. Trouble is, what tactics do you turn to when you're already damned for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity?

[shraby]

3. These actions make me physically ill and

mentally very very sad that our country could stoop to such levels and the greatest travesty is that congress sits on their hands and closes their eyes to the war crimes. They are complicit and guilty also if they don't take action against the person(s) who okayed and instigated torture.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

4. That sentence, "Those rules are antiquated and don't apply."

It may be used in ways the powers that be will find less pleasant. Just saying.

[bdamomma]

5. yes, the same way that they are implying that the FISA law

has to be rewritten, what total BS. Also terrible that we are committing such heinous acts against humanity, when will those who initiated this be held accountable for their crimes??:-(

[Winterblues]

7. Isn't that what Bush* said about FISA

:shrug: Those rules don't apply anymore, at least to his administration..

[Solly Mack]

6. K&R

[magellan]

8. "They wouldn't afford you the same respect."

If that were a traditional American viewpoint, the Nuremberg War Crime trials would never have happened.

The conservatives have sunk this country into an abysmal black pit of lawlessness and immorality.

[Scriptor Ignotus]

9. this is a common argument made by conservatives

I've heard it many times, more so back in 2003-04. Just shows their ignorance of international law and world history.

[truedelphi]

10. Some time ago (End of 2003?) Mike Malloy

Asked his radio audience for their help in his deciding what created a Holocaust.

After several hours of discussion -- it came down to this: Once you tortured one human being,
in a seriously injurious way, you had a holocaust.

Because after the regime had tortured one, the rest of the torturees-to-be were just a matter of degrees. An extrapolated, exponential of that first number.

You torture one - you can torture six. You torture six, you can torture twelve,

Then 144.

Then 19,000. Then...

[Mnemosyne]

12. Dehumanize the "enemy"and

killing becomes much easier to many.

I am so pleased knowing there are no statutes of limitation on war crimes.

I feel sick.

[countryjake]

11. Kick!

[Laelth]

13. Done in my name.

:(

-Laelth

[JohnyCanuck]

14. True Stories of the Terror War

Three-Stomp Blues: Vets Tell True Stories of the Terror War

Written by Chris Floyd
Monday, 03 March 2008

I. Absence of Evidence
There are many things that the American people are forbidden to know by the immensely profitable organizations that control the dispensing of information in the United States. Some things will simply not be reported, others will be distorted or sugar-coated or shellacked with fabrications until they bear only the most tangential connection to the actual events being "reported."

One of the most forbidden topics of all, of course, is the savage reality of the conflicts being fought in the name of the so-called "War on Terror." This global war – launched solely to advance a long-held, openly acknowledged militarist agenda of global domination by an authoritarian, lawless elite – has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people, while corrupting and brutalizing the soldiers ordered, under knowingly false pretenses, to carry out the Dominators' sinister agenda. But the full story – and full force – of the crimes being committed every day in America's name, by American forces, at the command of America's leaders, are hidden from the American public by the American media. It is entirely possible to live your entire life as an active, engaged member of American society, diligently keeping up with the latest news from the most respectable sources, and never once have to confront this horrifying truth. The information-dispensers will not provide it for you; you have to seek it out yourself.

SNIP

II. "All I Saw Were Civilians"
The atrocities began in Iraq at the very start, from the first days and hours when the "mission" was being "accomplished" to a chorus of hosannas from the ex-generals and the war-profiteering commentators like Richard Perle brought in by the networks to provide "expert" analysis of the victorious campaign:

Jason Washburn…fought in the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003 where, he says, he met little resistance. Most people were surrendering. "There were massive amounts of artillery strikes before we even invaded. We saw the results of that. Streets full of bodies – women and children – body parts, extremely indiscriminate. I’m talking about rolling through villages here, not military encampments."

He was told there was a military structure in one village. “I didn’t see it. I didn’t see any army uniforms. Or weapons. All I saw were civilians.”

http://www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1446/135/

[JohnyCanuck]

15. kick n/t

[wildbilln864]

16. kick! nt