Books – Philippe Sands has a new book out - Torture Team - which investigates the top down decision to negate and circumvent the Geneva Conventions on torture. Thus, the author suggests that US lawyers worked in concert with this administration to justify and condone methods that have been outlawed for over 50 years.
Did you watch / read the Bill Moyers interview last week with Philippe Sands? He has very thoroughly researched the chronology of when and how the administration decided to allow torture.
He said that the administration lawyers were deeply involved in the decision making process.
"The most important people are the people whose signatures are actually appended. They are the politicians who actually decided the issue. But in this case, without the lawyers, they would never have had a piece of paper to sign."
Here is the link for the transcript of that interview --
One of the few in Congress willing to take a stand against what this administration has done, at the time it was done, was Obama. http://usliberals.about.com/od/extraordinaryspe...
This is one of the reasons I voted for him. He risked the ire of his constituents when fear permeated the nation, and opted to say what needed to be said anyway. And he did it as a new Senator, with little clout and ran the risk of alienating other Senators for future alliances. He has also said one of his first acts will be to review all policy set up by this administration, and discard that which subverts the Constitution.
Y'know, I tried the argument, "what if these prisoners were members of your family" ? I got, "if you don't do nuthin' wrong, you gots nuthin' to worry about" in return.
Baaa-aaah..
I suppose anonymously naming a few hundred of these sheeple as "enemies of the state" and watching them "herded" off to detention camps might persuade a few of them differently.
Hey, don't say it can't happen ! Gimme a couple hunnert grand in da right pockets and we's gonna get 'er done !
Man, I for one will be satisfied change can happen when I hear someone actually use the word "liberal" to describe an acceptable difference of philosophy rather than a political organization in disagreement with another and when liberal ideas like a Constitution are actually considered as rules to live by because they protect all of us.
Nah..never happen in Halliburton's or Exxon's world.
Nothing in the article talked about smashing prisoners' teeth out with a rifle butt or making the prisoners eat their own feces.
These are just two of the dandies that Hussein's boys practiced on captured coalition soldiers during Desert Storm.
If we can just get the rest of the world to sign up for a no torture program then I would support 100%, the banning of torture.
You don't hear about too many American soldiers taken prisoner in Iraq, do you? Any guesses why? They know that they will be tortured, maimed, and have their heads sawn off. So the word is out. Fight to the death and don't get taken prisoner.
If every other country kills every citizen when they reach the age of 60, does that mean that America should start doing that?
The "everyone else does it" argument is fallacious. And, it is dishonest.
A BUNCH of wrongs to NOT make a right.
Just because other countries may torture their prisoners, that does NOT justify Americans torturing ANYONE.
What you condone is America LOWERING its standards to fit everyone else's, instead of CONTINUING the higher standards that make our country one to be admired and respected.
What you condone is wrong - period.
You seem to have figured it out. What do you suggest as an alternative?
...do the harder right you damn fool!
So you don't have any suggestions either. You know what not to do but you don't know what TO do. How do you come up with an action plan only knowing what not to do.
I suggest NO torture.
Treat a prisoner as a prisoner - question them, confine them as anyone would be confined at a standard prison in America.
The people that condone torture just will NOT accept the mounds of proof that it doesn't work.
The HUGE irony of McCain' endorsing Bush's policy on torture is that HE was tortured and he STILL LIED to his captors. He told them what they WANTED to hear so that they would stop the torture.
McCain knows - FIRST HAND - that torture doesn't work. Yet he throws out his integrity by supporting the very thing he knows is wrong.
Hey Jump. got no scrupples at all guy!
So do unto others what they do to you even if you have lived and agreed to the Geneva Conventions up to Dumya!
Dumya called the war on terror an ideological battle, but you already want to give away the high moral ground! You are Un-American and an unscruppled fool too!
Great to also know that the Lawyer who approved the Bush torture memo is now a federal judge too. The actual drafter of the original torture memo told a debate at Notre Dame University that we are justified in crushing the testicles of the son of a "suspected terrorist" to get information... how low can we go under the Bushies and repugs? By the torture memo, those tortured to death will never be able to tell us how much we've lost our values. Then to deny habaus corpus, a foundation of western law for 800 years! Yes Jumpmaster, you area fool to support such vile human behavior!
Just further evidence that the Repug party is the terrorist party of american and should be banned! Dumya and his cohorts should be rotting in a foriegn jail guilty of war crimes against humanity!
donald5150,
I am sorry that you have to rely on the government to define your values. The values in this country have deteriorated at the individual level and it is just convenient to blame it on the government.
You can shout me down all you want but I think you have been a life long observer and never a participant.
By the way, scruples has one "p" not two. What the heck are "scrupples"?
Albionperfides -
Yes, it is a bit garbled. I was addressing multiple peeves and only partially hit the subject matter of the thread.
It's not a good thing to become your enemy when you're trying to convince others you're better than your enemy.
Does that make sense albionperfides ?
I'm still upset about the loss of habeas corpus and a couple of other Constitutional Amendments we've lost but, that's not for this thread.
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This administration hired the lawyers who would give them the answers they wanted. We will have 150 of these clowns in the Department of Justice when the new administration takes over. All of them graduates of that third rate 'law school', Regents University, owned by a right wing religious wack job.