If Torture is Not Punished, Charles Manson Should be Freed

[Joanne98]

I'm a bit confused about this whole torture ordeal we're currently going through.

It seems as if the people who were actually doing the torturing, the foot soldiers, so to speak, will not be prosecuted at all. They get set free. Basically, they are not expected to have ever read our Constitution nor the international laws and regulations that we, in good faith, abide by. We will operate on the assumption that they couldn't have known that what they were doing was torture. I think they were also expected to be totally ignorant of history, a history that had our own country going after other countries for using similar or identical torture methods on us. These people apparently did not have the moral compass portion of their brains operational, common sense was short-circuited; they were the blind being led by the self-blindfolded.

We are also told that there are too many problems facing us and we should not focus on prosecuting anyone at all, and just let go of what has gone before. They say that if we pursue Bush and Cheney's Little Shop of Horrors, all we are doing is creating a new "witch hunt," and there is just too much going on right now for us to get bogged down by this.

Let's move forward and let go of the past, they tell us.

The only thing is....I have a feeling that there are quite a few people in our overcrowded prisons that can make that same argument. If we're going to let the aristocracy get away with breaking the laws, then let's also let Charles Manson go. And all of the Nazi war criminals. And the murderers and the rapists. The bank robbers and the wife-beaters. I mean, we're moving forward, aren't we? Leaving the past behind? Isn't it the same logic? That for reason X, we should let criminals get away with crime Y? Criminals who can justify to themselves that what they were doing was right?

And one more thing. The term "which hunt" has taken on a certain feeling of sympathy, of unjust prosecution because of the whole Salem ordeal. A fanatical society went after innocent people who were not actually "witches" (baby killing evil minions of hell, as they put it) at all. They burned the witches and marred our history books with their ashes. It's just that we now know that the "witch hunt" was unjustified; those poor women were not witches.

I don't know if the term "witch hunt" can be applied to the torturers of today. Unlike the women of Salem, these guys actually are the "witches", they did do what they are accused of. They have all admitted to it. They even swear by it.

So, if they didn't know any better, they were just following orders, or they thought they were doing the right thing, then I think overcrowding will not be a problem in our prisons

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/faridoon-david-baqi/if-torture-is-not-punishe_b_191974.html

[KansDem]

1. I think I see what you're saying...

We look at the higher echelons of power and tend to believe their members are "the best and the brightest" our society and cultural can offer. Yet, we see them breaking laws regularly without accountability.

It's almost as if we used to look at an item in a store and said, "It would be wrong for me to steal that," but now we might ask ourselves, "If I took that would I be caught?"

It's almost as if we used to confront someone who's upsetting us and say, "It would be wrong for me to strike you," but now we might ask ourselves, "If I kill you, will I be caught?"

It's almost as if we used to do our taxes and say, "It would be wrong to cheat on my taxes," but now we might ask ourselves, "If I didn't declare this income, would I be caught?"

We no longer have "role models" to show us tolerance and respect. And who observe the law. It's as if our only moral foundation for holding our society together is the question, "...will I be caught?"

[pat_k]

2. "They have all admitted to it. They even swear by it. "

. . .And the only moral, rational, lawful response to crimes committed "in plain sight" is prosecution.

The web of bizarro-world http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=5447507#5448828">group think driving the beltway denial of this reality is mind-boggling. (To paraphrase Turley what they are doing is akin to calling a bank robbery an "alternative method of cash withdrawal.")

We know the key conspirators. We know who participated in the cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of captives (it's all in government records). The only open question is whether or not a given suspect has a legitimate "affirmative defense."

The proposition that any CIA agent who participated in the "bush program" actually believed, in good faith, that slamming a captive's head against a wall 30 times; keeping them awake for a week and a half; or subjecting them to water torture did not constitute cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, is absurd on it's face.

But, even if it were not absurd, it is the role of the court, not the prosecutor (let alone a pre-judging president), to be the finder of fact on such matters. While "just following orders" might conceivably be a defense in a given case, it mustn't be allowed to be institutionalized as a blanket "get out of jail free card" by either prosecutorial discretion or presidential fiat.

The devastating consequences of their dereliction isn't limited to the mockery they are making of criminal justice.

• It makes Obama a benevolent dictator who can "take away" or "give us back" the Constitution; who may opt to "ban" or "continue" the torture of persons in U.S. custody at whim. (When high officials violate law, the required response is to prosecute to enforce the law, not issue executive orders that duplicate the law.)


• It puts the men and women of our armed services at risk. (They are stripped of the protection from mistreatment afforded by our adherence to treaty.)


• It makes ALL CIA agents war criminals in the public mind. (Even if a vast majority opted to "just say no," the assertion that suspending and prosecuting those who participated would somehow destroy the CIA's ability to "protect us," implies that most were either involved or approved.)


• It validates Cheney's "position" that their criminal program was (or could be) "legal." (If it were so clearly a crime, bush and cheney would certainly be in the dock by now -- and would have been impeached years ago.)


• It politicizes criminal justice (a very real consequence), while legitimizing the meme that prosecution would (or could) "criminalize policy" (an outcome our criminal justice system is designed to eliminate.)


• It promotes the torturers' propaganda that prosecution would be "retribution." (Which requires one to believe that the rules of criminal procedure are a joke and incapable of producing a verdict that is free of passion and prejudice.)


• It endorses the fascist fantasy that cruel, degrading, and inhumane treatment is not worthy of judicial determination, and should rather be left as a matter of political opinion (open to "discussions" and "debate" and "agreements to disagree").


• It tells the victims of torture -- or for those who died in the process, the families they are survived by -- that we don't consider the horrors they were subjected to in our name to be worthy of the "distraction" of a full public accounting. It extends their ordeal.

Given the destructive consequences of their immoral and irrational refusal to even acknowledge that the crimes are crimes, it's hard (impossible?) to imagine what horrible consequences they imagine would result from prosecution. And like with Saddam's WMD, the "Chicken Littles" describe no mechanism by which this "political mushroom cloud" would "tear the nation apart."

The Obama administration's attempt to protect the perpetrators from prosecution doesn't even accomplish that goal -- it merely shifts the obligation to the other parties to Article III of the Geneva Conventions and the U.N Convention against torture.

If our so-called "leaders" don't wake up to reality, the ordeal of having to watch in shame as other countries deal with "our war criminals," is a disgrace this nation may never fully recover from.