The bottom line is water boarding is torture. We tried and convicted Japanese military personnel for doing it during World War 2, and we called it a war crime when they did it. They want to call it 'enhanced interrogation' when we our CIA and military does it? It suddenly becomes all right when it's done by non Asian people? Bull shit. If it was wrong for the Japanese to do it to our men, it's wrong for our country to do it to 'terrorists.' They fact is they, John Yoo, Bybee, and the rest of the Bush lackeys, changed the definition of torture so their idiot leader George W could parse his hypocritical words and say what we were doing wasn't torture, but it was. Everyone knows it was and the full light of disclosure needs to be shone on the whole mess.
And then what needs to happen is that the Obama administration needs to prosecute all of those involved, that is to say the ones who gave the orders and who came up with the twisted definitions of torture, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. This notion of not doing it because we need to look forward and not backward is nonsense. How can we look forward if we remain blind to justice and the rule of law? The previous administration broke the law, they didn't just change a policy as Karl Rove and the rest of the pundit village claim they did, the broke the law, they broke with hundreds of years of precedent, they took a shit on the law and they rubbed our noses in it and they need to be brought to justice for doing that. And thank goodness there are some in Congress who are calling for just that, and here's one of them:
Oh how I wish spitfire Debbie Wasserman Schultz was my Congress person. Or Dennis Kucinich, or Maxine Waters, oh if only I had someone who had the balls (or ovaries as the case may be) to stand up to the banality of evil that was Bush/Cheney/Rove and call for their prosecution.
People like Schultz, Waters and Kucinich almost make up for the craven cowards like Stenny Hoyer and Jane Harman who said that damn it we had to let Bush and company spy on us for our own good. Now when it comes to light that the NSA was listening to Jane Harman's phone conversation's she and Hoyer suddenly find some outrage? Bullshit. If we'd listened to Wasserman Schultz and Kucinich then maybe Bush's illegal spying wouldn't have gotten so out of hand and maybe they could have done something about the torturing too.
It's comical now to see Dick Cheney claim that the torturing he did worked. As usual, the old ghoul is wrong. It didn't work. If it did then they would have had to water board those guys over 180 times. If it had worked then the war on terror would have been over years ago when all that intelligence they got was used to round up Bin Laden and all the members of his terrorist organization. If it had worked then all the terrorist groups in the world would have thrown their hands up in resignation and they would have surrendered and Cheney would have shot them in the face for fun, like he did to his hunting buddy.
The fact is torture doesn't do anything but create more terrorists and more hatred for the USA. It only serves to make us look bad and it made us sink to the same level as the North Koreans and the Serbs. If we want to regain any shred of credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world or if we want to regain a tiny morsel of the high ground we used to live on, then the Obama administration needs to stop pussyfooting around and they need to go after the people in the former administration who committed the war crimes. They've got to stop continuing the Bush era policy of claiming state secrets prevent the fair and open trials of the so called terrorists and they've got to let those men defend themselves in open court. If they don't then they're just as bad as Bush and Cheney, in fact they will be their accomplices in war crimes.
7 comments:
i get the feeling that the administration is waiting for the cries for investigation hit a fevered pitch.
then they can say they had no choice but to listen to the will of the majority.
not right but smart politically and in the meantime cheney just keeps yapping away and digging a deeper hole.
sure is putting a damper on the bush/cheney rewrite history/legacy bit!
Great post, Monkey, and I sure hope Sherry is right.
This is where I knew I would have quibbles with the Obama administration.
I can understand why they have political concerns about taking this on and prosecuting, but doing the right thing takes bravery.
Do it, Obama. Yes, you can.
Couldn't agree with you more. How much time and money was spent impeaching a president for perjuring himself over consensual oral sex? If we couldn't as a country move forward til we slapped Bill Clinton on the hands then we sure as hell can't move on until we've prosecuted all those who orchestrated and executed a torture program.
Thank you so much for adding to the chorus of people who see torture for the evil that it is. There is a special room in hell for those apologists who are attempting to re-write history. By speaking out and defending the wrongness of their position will only insure the kind of show trial that their crimes deserve. I say "BRING IT ON!"
I know Olberman had his nuts in a twist over torture (no pun intended) a few weeks ago, but I say watch what Obama does, not what he says. He may say look forward, the economy is job one, blah, blah, blah, but what is he doing? He's releasing a metric ton of memos and documents that, like Sherry said above, are going to force the issue of war crime trials here in the U.S. to a head.
It has been hard to watch the complicity of most Congressional Dems over the 8 years of BushCo. Yes, they were/are complicit. Yes, failure to prosecute for torture is continuing to be complicit. I am not holding my breath that the current administration will act as they should. Their failure to do so infuriates me. When a Seven Eleven is robbed or a murder committed, no one suggests that prosecution is "looking backwards." The victims of Bush-era policies deserve to see justice served -- or at least an attempt.
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