Reply #78: I agree, and if they knew that the US was violating

[sabrina 1]

International and domestic laws back then, why did they not do their duty and report those crimes? I think Holder should now bring them in for questioning.

The investigation, if they are right, needs to be way broader than we first thought but if they ARE right, it is necessary.

What better time than now, to go all the way back and thoroughly investigate what we now have reason to believe, was a policy of torture through several administrations, including and especially, the Reagan administration.

Time also to finally shut down the abhorrent School of the Americas, a demand that has been ignored from so many citizens of the countries who suffered at the hands of graduates of this medieval atrocity which appears to be fully supported by this government, no matter which party is in power.

'Never Before!' Our Amnesiac Torture Debate by Naomi Klein

http://www.soaw.org/newswire_detail.php?id=983

In Latin America the revelations of US torture in Iraq have not been met with shock and disbelief but with powerful d?j? vu and reawakened fears. Hector Mondragon, a Colombian activist who was tortured in the 1970s by an officer trained at the School of the Americas, wrote: "It was hard to see the photos of the torture in Iraq because I too was tortured. I saw myself naked with my feet fastened together and my hands tied behind my back. I saw my own head covered with a cloth bag. I remembered my feelings--the humiliation, pain." Dianna Ortiz, an American nun who was brutally tortured in a Guatemalan jail, said, "I could not even stand to look at those photographs...so many of the things in the photographs had also been done to me. I was tortured with a frightening dog and also rats. And they were always filming."

Ortiz has testified that the men who raped her and burned her with cigarettes more than 100 times deferred to a man who spoke Spanish with an American accent whom they called "Boss." It is one of many stories told by prisoners in Latin America of mysterious English-speaking men walking in and out of their torture cells, proposing questions, offering tips. Several of these cases are documented in Jennifer Harbury's powerful new book, Truth, Torture, and the American Way.

It's rare that I agree with anything any Repug has to say, but I think, however unintentionally it was, these two would-be blackmailers, actually have raised a very important point.

I hope Holder agrees with them also and begins the process of ridding this country of its policy of torture that apparently has gone on for decades, even while our 'leaders', such as Reagan, were publicly denouncing it.

Klein points out in this article that the Bush administration's main innovation regarding torture was not that they did it, but that they did it openly, whereas their predecessors kept it secret all these years.

As Naomi Klein asks:

Other cultures deal with a legacy of torture by declaring "Never again!" Why do so many Americans insist on dealing with the current torture crisis by crying "Never Before"?

Who knows? Shelby and Alexander could be the catalysts for what appears to be the way-too-late beginning of the end of the long decline of this country towards totalitarianism.

I really hope Holder takes them at their word instead of caving in to what they perceive to be a threat.

But, I won't hold my breath ~