How America Came To Torture Its Prisoners
 

Our highest government officials, up to and including President Bush, broke international and U.S. laws banning torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Worse, they made their subordinates in the military and civilian intelligence services break those laws for them.

When the men and women they asked to break those laws protested, knowing they could be prosecuted for torture, they pretended to rewrite the law. They commissioned legal opinions they said would shield those who carried out the abuses from being hauled into court, as the torture ban requires. “The law has been changed,” detainees around the world were told. “No rules apply.”

Then they tortured. They tortured men at military bases and detention centers in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Guantánamo, and in U.S. Navy bases on American soil; they tortured men in secret CIA prisons set up across the globe specifically to terrorize and torture prisoners; they sent many more to countries with notoriously abusive regimes and asked them to do the torturing. At least twice, after the torturers themselves concluded there was no point to further abuse, Washington ordered that the prisoners be tortured some more.

They tortured innocent people. They tortured people who may have been guilty of terrorism-related crimes, but they ruined any chance of prosecuting them because of the torture. They tortured people when the torture had nothing to do with imminent threats: They tortured based on bad information they had extracted from others through torture; they tortured to hide their mistakes and to get confessions; they tortured sometimes just to break people, pure and simple.

And they conspired to cover up their crimes. They did this from the start, by creating secret facilities and secrecy regimes to keep what they were doing from the American people and the world. They did it by suppressing and then destroying evidence, including videotapes of the torture. They did it by denying detainees legal process because, as the CIA’s Inspector General put it in a 2004 report, when you torture someone you create an “Endgame” problem: You end up with detainees who, “if not kept in isolation, would likely divulge information about the circumstances of their detention.”

They managed all this, for a time, through secrecy—a secrecy that depended on the aggressive suppression of two groups of voices.


Read the whole thing here: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...s_.single.html

The only problem with our torture is that we are too soft. Their form of torture was no more harmful than playing patty cake with the enemy.

I don't know what I expected people to say about this, or why I expected anything more, but it is a little sad that perhaps one of the worst, most disgusting occurrences in the history of our country elicits nothing more than a predictably ignorant reponse from jhns. Propaganda and media manipulation from the PTB have successfully made this practically a non-issue. Americans should be outraged and embarassed by this.

I am embarassed it, worst thing is that it wasn't even work.

This is way beyond the death penalty, as torture is often worse than death. I think there are people who can't understand this without seeing the videos or suicide attempts.

We're the richest and most powerful nation on earth - by condoning torture, we've set an example for humanity.

The sad thing is, we gain nothing. It's not even effective,
http://www.livescience.com/4651-tort...y-working.html

I'd re-post this thread as an attack on Obama. He hasn't held a single Bush Administration official accountable. By doing nothing, our president has effectively legalized torture. I think that would get people talking.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0FT_g2b2ox...mo_cartoon.jpg

http://www.disinfo.com/2012/04/ex-ci...led-torturers/

Ex-CIA Officer Who Destroyed Waterboarding Videos: Torturers ‘Disgusted’ at Being Labeled ‘Torturers’

Agree, I'm disappointed more wasn't done but at the same time I'm not surprised. But at least the Obama admin has changed our policies on torture.

Oh?

I have seen no evidence of this.

A simple google search will reveal hundreds of articles on the subject. Here's just one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/us...pagewanted=all

Yes. OK. But you are ignoring the fact that Obama -- like Bush -- insists on the "right" to kill American citizens without a trial -- if the government decides that so and so is a terrorist.

In other words- - there is no more habeus corpus and no due process. Any peace activist like me could be imprisoned indefinitely if Obama decides I am a threat -- They can throw away the key.

This is the action of a dictator.

No doubt -- the US also continues to use torture. If the CIA does not want to dirty its fingers- they simply pass on a prisoner to the Saudis -- or some other ally -- and let them do it for us. But its the same deal. It's still torture -- in our name.

In short -- any changes are cosmetic. Guantanamo is still there --

@tonyR

Outsourcing torture doesn't absolve the issue that it's endorsed.

^ Just to be clear to both you and Gaff I'm not arguing otherwise on either of your points, and in fact I agree with what both of you said above. My only point was that the Obama admin changed the policy on torture.

Well....maybe not:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=12041

Conclusion



The loopholes in President Obama’s executive order on torture may permit cruel abuses of prisoners to continue, using a legal parlor trick. Labeling detainees the product of counterterrorism operations rather than of armed conflict, or holding detainees in detention facilities operated by entities other than the CIA, may allow government agents and private contractors conforming to the letter of the president’s order to continue practices most would consider torture. The president should close these loopholes or explain to Americans why he won’t.


add in the crack down on whistlebowers - and well...yeah.

OK, TonyR, I hear you.

Here's another great piece on the issue by PCR:

A fish rots from the head
Trials Without Crimes Or Evidence

By Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle31179.htm

Anyone who thinks we aren't still torturing sometimes is naive. LOL at least Obama stopped the torture. What a joke that is. There are CIA cells Obama doesn't even know about.

We are bombing and shooting people regularly. You are worried about "torture". It shows how retarded many of you are.

Clearly you're naive to the huge ramifications of both the perception and the politics. You're massively oversimplifying the issue. Under Bush the official stance the country communicated and supported was that it was okay, allowable, and policy. Now, just the opposite is true.

Sigh. If you can't see the difference then, as is often the case with you, you really don't even belong in the discussion. Youth is a good excuse for ignorance, but not stupidity.

I see a huge difference. One is killing and maiming people. Even completely innocent people. This includes women and children. The other is making them feel uncomfortable for a while. That is a huge difference. But, both are a part of war. We aren't winning wars by tickling the enemy with feathers...

Torture is not an effective method of gaining information - this is backed up by our own CIA. It doesn't matter what "they" do - we're talking about America's own behavior here.

I never argued what other countries do. If I did, it would be pointing out that they actually hurt people when they torture them.

Then why did the CIA do it? We will never know what information they gained. It just seems silly to fight over torture, and act like we are better than that, as we mutilate and kill innocent people all the time. This countries form of torture is like a nice day at the park compared to what those in the war zones are going through.

The 'official stance' isn't what's important - the important thing is for us to do the right thing - which according to all sources, currently doesn't vibe with the official stance.

You are right. Now I bet our prisoners taken by Al Queda get treated much better. Errrrrrr!

Obama only changed the torture issue by having other countries do it instead, which isn't much of a change since that has been done for decades anyway. Obama is a fraud and a fake, but he gives nice speeches saying the same things over and over again, so it's ok. We put panties on terrorists and we should be ashamed, while the other countries boil them in oil and cut off body parts.