Bush’s torturers follow where the Nazis led

[G_j]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article2602564.ece

From The Sunday TimesOctober 7, 2007

Bush’s torturers follow where the Nazis led
Andrew Sullivan

<snip>
George Orwell would have been impressed by the phrase “enhanced interrogation technique”. By relying on it, the White House spokesman last week was able to say with a straight face that the administration strongly opposed torture and that “any procedures they use are tough, safe, necessary and lawful”.

So is “enhanced interrogation” torture? One way to answer this question is to examine history. The phrase has a lineage. Verschärfte Verneh-mung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the “third degree”. It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.

The United States prosecuted it as a war crime in Norway in 1948. The victims were not in uniform – they were part of the Norwegian insurgency against the German occupation – and the Nazis argued, just as Cheney has done, that this put them outside base-line protections (subsequently formalised by the Geneva conventions).

The Nazis even argued that “the acts of torture in no case resulted in death. Most of the injuries inflicted were slight and did not result in permanent disablement”. This argument is almost verbatim that made by John Yoo, the Bush administration’s house lawyer, who now sits comfortably at the Washington think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.

The US-run court at the time clearly rejected Cheney’s arguments. Base-line protections against torture applied, the court argued, to all detainees, including those out of uniform. They didn’t qualify for full PoW status, but they couldn’t be abused either. The court also relied on the plain meaning of torture as defined under US and international law: “The court found it decisive that the defendants had inflicted serious physical and mental suffering on their victims, and did not find sufficient reason for a mitigation of the punishment . . .”
<snip>

[killbotfactory]

1. Birds of a feather... n/t

[Richard Steele]

2. They are the same mindset, following the same game plan. recommended

[WinkyDink]

3. Grampa Prescott would be proud.

[pretty_lies]

4. That's Andrew Sullivan, Pro-War Pro-Bush Apologist

His name should be mud everywhere.

[mod mom]

8. Stiil glad to read his followers have turned.

[Trajan]

11. I think Sullivan has turned ....

Quite a while ago now ......

I am almost certain of it ..... and he is now furious with the whole debacle .....

NOT a fan of his, but I'll give it it's due ....

[pretty_lies]

14. He's Just A Whore.

Sully was a neocon when it was cool among the media to be a neocon. He called antiwar folk traitors.

Now he's against Bush because that's the new consensus.

No principles whatever. Kind of like most of the Democrats really! (Sure, the GOP are outright evil bigots, but at least they respect their 'base' of Christianist bigots. The genuinely moral Democrat antiwar base gets treated with nothing but contempt!)

[G_j]

12. I agree

though still worth noting his 'revelation'

[Flabbergasted]

5. Same name; same techniques.

[ixion]

6. can you say "homeland" ... they've been borrowing from the Nazi lexicon for years

"homeland" and "czar", in particular, have always creeped me out.

[tom_paine]

7. People can't just make that final intellectual leap, can they?

It's just too horrific to contemplate, isn't it? The mind turns away in disgust and denial...

The Bushies have mentally created a Nazi-like mentality in their followers, though it is less violent (but one day will likely become more violent as their victims fight back). It isn't just Bushie Torturers who make the same justifications and lies about their atrocities. It is Bushie Vote Stealers and Stuffers, who have the identical attitudes of Nazis towards free elections and losing them. It is Bushie Corporatists and Aristocracy, who like Fritz Thyssen, applied their money and power generously (Keny Lay in a new face in the Caymans, anyone?) to bring these tyrants to power.

The entire Bushie Infrastructure is patterned by Karl Rove after the mental patterns and constituencies of the Nazis. And we'd better all be able to swallow hard and figure this out QUICK, because little fleabites around the edges of the problem, as this article is, cannot galvanize the number of people who would be glavanized if they saw what's going on.

And like alcoholics, the longer we fail to recognize the problem, the harder and further our fall will be.

[havocmom]

13. And the PR guru HRC hired is oh, so Goebbles in method

Same Shit, Different Politician.

[G_j]

15. so true

Thanks for your input.
You are absolutely correct, and the lame ass Congress better wake up too...or maybe they just don't care! Some of them have seen worse pictures than the public has of torture. Aren't they covering up a crime? You bet they are.
:shrug:

[mwb970]

9. The bush regime reminds me of *all* of America's enemies.

Think about it. First America fought for independence against a single-ruler monarchy of the type bush is trying to establish now (despite the efforts of the right-wingers of the time). Then we fought the Civil War against racist slaveholders with ideas easily discernible in today's Republican party. The similarity to the Nazis is discussed in this thread and elsewhere. The overwhelming secrecy of the government, coupled with unprecedented spying on our own citizens, rigged elections, etc., matches the Soviet Union I was taught to hate as a child. Now we torture people (while lying about it), just like the worst of the "Islamic jihadists" or whatever we are calling them now.

Every enemy America has ever opposed, all rolled into one disgusting slimeball and elevated to total control over the country. Now there's a legacy!

[originalpckelly]

10. I would suggest the fact that the CIA used former Nazis back in the '50s...

and the fact that SAVAK was known to have been trained in torture by those Nazis, says that the CIA was also probably trained.