We sentenced Japanese for this

[teach1st]

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/10/22/Columns/We_sentenced_Japanese.shtml">We sentenced Japanese for this
Robin Blumner, St. Petersburg Times, 10/22

<snip>

No presidential signing statement accompanies this bill. Bush got the despotic powers he wanted, or as White House spokesman Tony Snow explained it: "They did a really good job this time," meaning that you don't have to confiscate power by rewriting a law when Congress hands it to you.

In touting the measure, Bush declared that the "CIA program" would now be allowed to continue and interrogators could return to performing "their duties to the fullest extent of the law." He presumably means that the CIA will once again be free to use reported techniques such as water-boarding - in which a prisoner is made to feel like he's drowning - or forcing shackled prisoners to stand in one place for 40 hours or more, or exposing naked prisoners to 50-degree temperatures and drenching them with cold water.

Bush was strident in asserting that the CIA chamber of horrors or "program" could be open for business again. But at the same time, the president gravely assured us: "The United States does not torture."

Interestingly, we weren't nearly as blithe about waterboarding when it happened to our own guys during World War II. Then, we considered it a war crime and a form of torture.

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/10/22/Columns/We_sentenced_Japanese.shtml">More

[Demit]

1. Excellent column! As Blumner says, here's the utter shame of it—

'...According to Fred Hitz, former CIA inspector general and veteran CIA operations officer: "There's nobody out there in the CIA that I can imagine who wants to be governed by a set of standards that is different from those in the Army Field Manual." Under that manual, abusive techniques are strictly barred.

So it's really the president and vice president and their minions who are pushing for interrogation techniques that Dr. Allen Keller, who directs a program for torture survivors in New York, calls "torture" and the infliction of "serious physical or mental pain and suffering." ...'

Thanks for posting.

[peacebird]

2. you know what's sad? I thought we could sink no lower after Abu Ghraib

then came Fallujah.
then came stories of "willie pete" being used on civilians.
then came stories of CIA secret rendition programs.
then came a law legalizing torture.

a law which gives bush and rummy the right to declare people the enemy and lock them away for all eternity. A law legalizing a gulag system.

democracy is a system based on law, checks and balances... this one law could be a stake through the heart of democracy.

[IndyOp]

4. this one law could be a stake through the heart of democracy...

[EST]

3. Thought provoking article.

My only quibble comes from the ill informed nature so prevalent among writers.
This particular point has to do with water boarding.
It seems that all reporters or other writers always want tho refer to the practice as "pretending to drown" the prisoner or "making the prisoner think he's drowning."

This begs the truth and lets the perps off with nothing more than an admonition, as well as allowing the crooked brained enablers to get away with weasel wording.

The process of water boarding actually DOES kill the victim...but he is not allowed to die. He is killed and brought back again and again. This horrid practice is not being given the serious appreciation it deserves.
The horrors from hell who do this nasty practice are guilty of far worse than they are being held responsible for.

I am not in favor of capital punishment, but the perpetrators of this putrid practice as well as their noisome enablers should be tried and executed.

[IndyOp]

5. You are saying that the person actually drowns - passes out,

takes water deep into their lungs and will die if great effort is not taken to resuscitate them?

This is the first time I've heard this.

[EST]

8. I don't want to come across as some kind of mysterious know-it-

all with all sorts of spy novel contacts and all that crap.
The person I talked to told me that the victims were often, perhaps usually, unconscious when the water stopped. Extraordinary measures to get the victim's lungs cleared enough to get his motor started again included a tube inserted to suck out water and mucous and often beating on him to aid in the clearing.

When I expressed shock and disbelief, his answer was to the tone of, "if the subject was reasonably sure he was meant to survive the ordeal, it would transform the whole thing into a horrible but survivable experience.

I am afraid to out this person so I have no proof at all that circumstances are as advertised but, when I spent some time thinking about it, it made sense.

My fondest hope is that we take at least one chamber so that we can subpoena some of the torturers and shed some light on this horrid brand of human cruelty.

The only torture they can use that produces this awful motivator is water boarding, as anything else would almost certainly kill the victim permanently.

[IndyOp]

6. I believe you should write a very clear description of what you are saying

and post it independently. I am really shocked that I had not understood this - do you have links to back up your interpretation?

:mad:

[EST]

9. Please see reply to #5, above.

We have some sick, sick puppies running this parade.

[havocmom]

7. The very fact that this bill was suddenly so important to the junta,

in my guesstimation, is not so much their fear of being charged with war crimes as it was a means to turn back a likely 'mutiny' among CIA agents and military INTEL personnel who may have stood up and said 'No, sir, I will not follow those illegal orders to torture!'

Think back to how enraged bush was when he was speechifying 24/7 to get the people and Congress worked up to pass this measure he deemed so essential 'to our security' He made reference to the need for clarity... for the young intelligence officer who needs to know that these methods are legal The frat brat, so used to always getting his way had run into people of honor and with backbone and he was mad as hell. It was a most telling period, seeing him so furious, bellowing about 'clarity'. The boy heard the word 'NO!' and he was gonna make damned sure everybody knew he was the boss of them!

The junta was being challenged on its illegal orders by those people who were asked to carry them out, mark my words! When the junta talks about 'our security' they aren't referring to America and Americans, they don't give a shit about either. When they use words like 'our' and 'we' they are referring only to their little club. No one else merits consideration in their world view.

Some of the spooks were balking at the orders coming from the junta, and they were standing on VERY FIRM legal grounds... bet ya dollars to donuts that was the REAL reason the junta rammed this bill up America's ass.

Hell, what worries do they have about their own illegal activities? They have disregarded the rule of law from the get-go. We all recall Nov 2000? And they are firm in their view that no one has the authority or power to make them obey any law.

It was about forcing honorable men and women in service to the nation to do what is illegal. It was about 'the clarity'.

[Benhurst]

10. Honorable men and women in service will still refuse to do

what is clearly illegal according to international law.

Just because the U.S. House and Senate went along with the Bush Crime Family does not provide any cover internationally.

American law -- what a joke.

Nuremberg Trials, anyone?

[havocmom]

11. Yes, they will. But now, bush can have them tossed in the brig

and charged with mutiny. Unless the international community steps in to enforce international law, those brave and righteous patriots will rot in the brig for taking a stand. That will tend to discourage others from doing the right thing.

bush/cheney/rumsfeld junta needed a club to beat honorable men and women to their knees. The US Congress gave it to them.

Our military personnel and public servants in other departments deserve for us to protect them as they have protected us.

Until a UN posse rides in and institutes regime change here, throwing the war criminals in the Hague, I don't see much help for our people who want to obey international law now that the US Congress has let the junta toss it all out, along with our Bill of Rights.

[Benhurst]

12. Sadly, good Americans have now been placed in the position

of decent Germans during the Third Reich.

[havocmom]

13. Yeah. And may Prescott Bush and all his progeny be damned

For such people, I wish I believed in hell.