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Showing Original Post only (View all)Obama Reluctance on Bush Prosecutions Affirms Culture of Impunity [View all]
![](http://i.imgur.com/Geqdw2n.jpg)
Alfred McCoy explained why on Democracy Now, way back on May 1, 2009:
Historian Alfred McCoy: Obama Reluctance on Bush Prosecutions Affirms Culture of Impunity
EXCERPT...
AMY GOODMAN: Well, talk about President Obamas approach, on the one hand, releasing the torture memos and Id like you to respond to specifically whats in those torture memos
ALFRED McCOY: Sure.
AMY GOODMAN: but then saying he will not be holding the interrogators responsible, people involved with it; we have to move forward, not move back.
ALFRED McCOY: Right. Thats exactly how you get impunity. Thats whats happened every single time in the past. For example, in 1970, the House and Senate of the United States discovered that the Phoenix Program had been engaged in systematic torture, that they had killed through extraditial executions 46,000 South Vietnamese. Thats about the same number of American combat deaths in South Vietnam. Nothing was done. There was no punishment, and the policy of torture continued.
In 1994, for example, the US ratified the Convention Against Torture. There was no investigation of past practice. So, when that ratification went through, it was done in a way that in fact legalized psychological torture, because when we ratified that convention, we also, if you will, passed a reservation, which then got codified into US federal law, Section 2340 of the US Federal Code. In that code, we said that psychological torture, which is actually the main form of torture practiced by the United States since the 1950s, is basically not torture.
And we defined, very cleverly, under that code, what psychological torture is. We simply said its four things. Its extreme physical pain, forced injection of drugs, threats against another, or doing that to a third party. OK? Thats all that psychological torture is. In other words, everything in those torture memos, all those techniques of belly slaps, face slaps, face grabbing, waterboarding, is, under US law, supposedly not torture, because when we President Clinton ratified the UN Convention Against Torture, he didnt look into the past, he didnt discover what the nature of American torture was. And so, were now at a moment where if we dont prosecute or dont punish or dont seriously investigate, that this will be repeated again.
Another thing that emerges from the memos is, in fact, that the Bush Justice Department is very well aware. If you read the May 2005 memo by the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Steven Bradbury, he says, Look, I cant assure you that waterboarding is not torture. You know, the courts may find that it is torture. But dont worry about it. Because you know what? The courts arent going to rule on this. So in other words, dont worry about the law, because the law doesnt apply to you. The law will not be brought to bear. And thats the problem of President Obamas procedure. The men were assured that they could torture, because it wouldnt come before the courts.
Theres another problem with those memos, as well. Those memos argue again and again that the most extreme of all the authorized CIA techniques, waterboarding, is not torture, because it does not violate that same Section 2340 of US Federal Code. But it does. Waterboarding is the most cruel, the most extremely cruel form of torture known to man, very simply because of this and people dont understand, I think, waterboarding. Amy, if you and I were riding in a car, and we went off a bridge in January here in Wisconsin and crashed through the ice and went down to the bottom of the Ohio River, within three minutes you and I would be dead from drowning. If there were an infant in a car seat behind us, that infant could survive for twenty minutes under water. A weak, fragile three-month-old infant could survive twenty minutes under water, be plucked by the rescue crew from the waters and suffer no brain damage, be perfectly fine. Alright? How can this happen? Its the mammalian diving reflex. The human being is so afraid of death by drowning that we are hardwired into our biology, into our
JUAN GONZALEZ: I want to
ALFRED McCOY: brains with this bizarre mammalian diving reflex. So, therefore, waterboarding, which induces this primal fear of death by drowning, is the most painful form of torture you can concoct. Thats why its existed for 500 years.
CONTINUED...
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/1/torture_expert_alfred_mccoy_obama_reluctance
For whatever reason, President Obama has allowed Baby Doc Bush, Sneering Dick Cheney, and their fellow traitors get away with war crimes and who knows what else. McCoy's warned us that it's business-as-usual for Empire and it will happen again -- unless it's punished and those responsible held accountable.
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Obama Adviser Cass Sunstein Rejects Prosecution of ''Non-Egregious'' Bush Crimes
Octafish
Mar 2014
#10
You have to be pretty fucking naive to expect an american president to prosecute
CBGLuthier
Mar 2014
#3
then go on the nearest streetcorner wearing a sandwich board calling Obama a war criminal.
dionysus
Apr 2014
#26
I didn't write the penalties or the law, if such was a bridge too far then why ratify?
TheKentuckian
Apr 2014
#31
for some reason, a bunch of DUers think the public would get behind trying the bush admin for war
dionysus
Apr 2014
#28
The reason is simple..it's so HE won't get held to account for the drones etc after HE leaves office
truebrit71
Mar 2014
#12
I was told right here on DU, TWICE yesterday, that there is no way a US President can be prosecuted
sabrina 1
Mar 2014
#18
Some days it's easy to imagine living in the Wiemar Republic in 1938...k&r n/t
bobthedrummer
Mar 2014
#23