posted on October 26, 2005 09:20:24 AM
Once again this is coming from the party that supported moral values. Since when is torturing prisoners a moral value
VICE PRESIDENT Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans. "Cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the United States. The State Department annually issues a report criticizing other governments for violating it. Now Mr. Cheney is asking Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of torture.
His position is not just some abstract defense of presidential power. The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention centers abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors. Its prisoners have "disappeared," like the victims of some dictatorships. The Justice Department and the White House are known to have approved harsh interrogation techniques for some of these people, including "waterboarding," or simulated drowning; mock execution; and the deliberate withholding of pain medication. CIA personnel have been implicated in the deaths during interrogation of at least four Afghan and Iraqi detainees. Official investigations have indicated that some aberrant practices by Army personnel in Iraq originated with the CIA. Yet no CIA personnel have been held accountable for this record, and there has never been a public report on the agency's performance.
It's not surprising that Mr. Cheney would be at the forefront of an attempt to ratify and legalize this shameful record. The vice president has been a prime mover behind the Bush administration's decision to violate the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and to break with decades of past practice by the U.S. military. These decisions at the top have led to hundreds of documented cases of abuse, torture and homicide in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Cheney's counsel, David S. Addington, was reportedly one of the principal authors of a legal memo justifying the torture of suspects. This summer Mr. Cheney told several Republican senators that President Bush would veto the annual defense spending bill if it contained language prohibiting the use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by any U.S. personnel.
The senators ignored Mr. Cheney's threats, and the amendment, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), passed this month by a vote of 90 to 9. So now Mr. Cheney is trying to persuade members of a House-Senate conference committee to adopt language that would not just nullify the McCain amendment but would formally adopt cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as a legal instrument of U.S. policy. The Senate's earlier vote suggests that it will not allow such a betrayal of American values. As for Mr. Cheney: He will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on October 26, 2005 11:04:03 AM
The whole bush administration supports torture, says a lot about their total lack of morals. They call other terrorists and then adopt terrorist standards ???
Dingleberries approve of torture despite FACTS that terrorism continues even AFTER torture by Americans and the FACT, backed by experts, that say torture produces no positive effects. It's for the cruel, sick, and sadistic......our government.
Yup, showing disrespect for Muslims (one of the most populous religions in the world) is always a good idea to discourage hatred of Americans and terrorism DUH
posted on October 26, 2005 11:28:01 AM
I wonder how Cheney would feel if other countries treated our captured soldiers in the same manner that he is proposing.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on October 26, 2005 12:18:03 PM
" I wonder how Cheney would feel if other countries treated our captured soldiers in the same manner that he is proposing."
We haven't fought anybody that played by any rules for 60 yrs.
As silly a statement as mingo's "facts" (probably derived from the collected musings of Ramsey Clark)
Intelligence derived by physical coersion has been a "fact" since the days when people wore animal skins and fought with sticks.
To paraphrase Sherman, war is a terrible business, and bringing about its cessation in the fastest possible way should be the ultimate goal.
It IS useless to abuse the Quran in front of the counterman at the local camel repair shop, but peeling Zarquawi's skin off might indeed save many lives.
posted on October 26, 2005 01:13:02 PM
Thank-you Mingotree. I don't think it matters what comes out of this administration anymore because, not only do republicans not find any of it alarming, they don't seem to think any of it's unusual. It doesn't matter how many are killed, how many are undocumented prisoners, how many are suffering, etc. This is the world the republicans have created and they're quite happy with the results.
posted on October 26, 2005 03:16:00 PM"Oh yeah, the Germans, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese. They all treated our people so well when they captured them."
That's the whole point, Washingtonebayer. If a country can't learn by the horrors another country imposes on prisoners and ends up doing the same thing, it makes them no different.
posted on October 26, 2005 03:26:06 PM
All of this left wing bs is based on the premise that everything is the same. In other words, you're walking down the street and a mugger jumps you but you can't pick up a pipe and hit him with it because he "might get hurt".
It's far simpler. If you don't want to get hurt, don't jump people. If you do, too bad.
posted on October 26, 2005 03:34:37 PM
Defending yourself against a mugger can't be compared to a government refusing to follow international guidelines that prohibit the use of torture to extract information from prisoners of war.
posted on October 26, 2005 03:53:53 PM
Does the end justify the means? I can't really condone actual torture, except maybe in extreme situations with certain individuals, however there must be a place where you draw the line between it being advanced interrogation techniques and it being torture and i see no reason why the interrogation techniques shouldn't be pushed as close to that line as possible with most prisoners. Of course this brings up the question about where exactly that line is drawn.
posted on October 26, 2005 05:02:49 PM
Desquirrel since it seems like you believe no country plays by the rules, wouldn't it have been easier to have the US send in a team of special forces or some "special group" to assinate Saddam instead of waging a war?
Yes this is against worldwide diplomatic policy but the U.S. could have easily denied any role in it.
I brought this up last year and there were some on the right were totally against it because it was against U.S. policy. Now all of a sudden it appears as if the "right" doesn't want to change the rules as the war wages on.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on October 26, 2005 06:14:35 PM
DUH ""As silly a statement as mingo's "facts" (probably derived from the collected musings of Ramsey Clark)
Intelligence derived by physical coersion has been a "fact" since the days when people wore animal skins and fought with sticks. ""
Torture has been around since the beginning of PEOPLE for no toher reason than people are people.! Torture does NOT work efficiently for intelligence gathering. Torture is the tool of the sadistic, the weak, the unintelligent, the desperate, the cowardly, the mentally ill, the terrorist.
If you think it works please give an example of valuable information gleaned from torture.
posted on October 26, 2005 07:55:41 PM
You should read Alistair Cooke's "A Savage War of Peace" about French intelligence gathering in Algeria .
The effectiveness of "torture" is measured in an aggregate process.
Now, our lefty buddies are saying ripping a guy's fingernails off will make him say anything and hence the info is unreliable. This is absolutely true. This is torture for its own sake. It's the Saddam method. You chop somebody's hand off whether he knows anything or not.
But when torture is applied systematically in aggregate and the information is cross checked, you save lives.
The US military instructs its personnel NOT to resist torture.
Is torture ever justified in a post-9/11 world? FRONTLINE gathered a group of legal thinkers to answer this question. Several of them had studied the torture question together for a joint project between the Harvard Law School and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. That group issued a report, "Preserving Security and Democratic Freedoms in the War on Terrorism," which attempted to establish some limits and a process for oversight and accountability for the use of "highly coercive measures" -- tactics sometimes called "torture lite."
What tactics would be justified in what's known as the "ticking time bomb" scenario?
Would a recent amendment proposed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) solve the problem of prisoner abuse?
What can we learn from the experiences of other countries that have grappled with the torture question?
DUH