It’s astonishing to me that this is even a subject for debate in this country. Torture. The very word is vile and is the epitome of everything that stands in complete opposition to American values dating back to Washington and the Revolutionary War. Here is Washington speaking to the troops:
“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.” – George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary
Force, Sept. 14, 1775
I recently watched the documentary; ‘Torturing Democracy’ , which won the 2009 RFK
journalism award. It isn’t easy to watch. It will force you to absorb the enormity of what has been done in our name as Americans by the previous administration. The film was funded in part by the Ford Foundation.
I find it a problem for any political party to lay claim to being the party of “values” and yet defend this kind of thing at the same time. What kind of values are these? They aren’t American values. Not by the standards of the father of the country himself.
Does the argument that “9/11 changed everything” mean that it changed who we are? I’m sorry but I guess I missed that part of the indoctrination course on how to remove 233 years of American History.
There is a concerted attempt on the part of some to redefine the word torture, into something more acceptable. Simply call it something else and everything is fine and legal. Torture becomes “enhanced interrogation techniques”. And, after all look at all the good stuff we got. By that logic I suppose I could rob a bank, and if I get caught, simply tell the police that I did no such thing. I simply applied “enhanced appropriation of funds”. I doubt that there is any law against something by that name. You can call it what you like…but look at all the good stuff I got.
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense; Frank Gaffney, said the other day, that it’s more
important to take measures that will save thousands of American lives than holding onto to some abstract value. A conservative willing to compromise his values? American values? I was always under the impression that conservatives thought that their values ARE American values.
Torture is NOT an American value. It’s anti-American. For a conservative like Gaffney or Cheney, or Hannity, Limbaugh or any others to compromise their values, and yet go on the radio or TV, and proclaim that they hold onto their values and never compromise them is an example of their blatant hypocrisy and phony claims.
They wave the flag, and beat their chest, and hold their “freedom concerts”, and vilify those that disagree with them without ever realizing what buffoons they come across as to a more rational mind then they have any familiarity with.
I would remind Gaffney or Cheney of what they and others like to tell everyone else. Freedom isn’t Free. It comes with a cost. But when the chips are actually on the table, very few are willing to pay that price. We have deep admiration and respect for those that are willing to pay the price. You can recognize them by the uniforms they wear. There are some things worth dying for. American values are worthy of preserving. This country was founded upon an idea. Man made ideas are fallible and prone to errors. But there are certain values that would seem to be universally accepted as true, and consistent with the rights of man. Torture is a violation of those rights, and it’s something that this country has understood for 233 years.
We’ve fought wars against all kinds of tyranny's in that time, but to allow a small band of international thugs change us so fundamentally is a clear sign of just how far we’ve fallen. But we now see the conservative Theory of Rationality on full display; It's the world of the justificationist.
If only liberal politicians could understand that the Conservatives can never justify their position without appealing to some authority. Make them do it. Force them to justify their claims. Then make them justify the basis for that justification. They will crumble under their own irrationality. You don’t have to prove you’re right. That’s a futile position to take. You may be wrong. You’re fallible remember? Don’t argue over who’s right and who’s wrong. They insist they’re right. Make them demonstrate it. They can’t. Remember…it’s the conservative that knows he’s right. The liberal knows he could be wrong. Which one is closer to the truth?
As most of us know by now; Waterboarding is a method used at the SERE (survival, evasion, resistance and escape) training school in which a small handful of the very best of our military personnel undergo this procedure. These are Fighter Pilots, Special Forces, Navy SEALs and others that would be at high risk of possible capture. It is undeniably the most intense training ever devised in our military history. Those that survive it without being sent home, are among the top 1% of our military personnel. The methods used were taken from Communist China and its applications used on our people during the Korean War to extract false claims for propaganda purposes. After receiving a request for information on the methods of interrogation from the Pentagon in regards to its use at Gitmo, the agency that oversees the SERE school informed the Pentagon that these techniques should NOT be used on prisoners if the desire was to obtain accurate intelligence. It was completely unreliable in that regard. A detainee would say anything we wanted him to say.
Having spoken with someone who went through this program, I was told that water-
boarding is indeed torture, and that it is simply not a reliable means of interrogation.
There are other far more efficient and reliable methods of obtaining information. He would know from first- hand experience.
Former Senator Kit Bond of Missouri, Former Assistant Sec of Defense Frank Gaffney, Conservative David Rivkin, Former VP Dick Cheney, and others seem to miss the point of SERE. They seem astonished to think that we would actually submit our own people to torture. I’m not certain if it’s stupidity on their part, or attempts to justify their position, but the argument they make is one of staggering ignorance. Do they think that SERE is a charm school? Do these people actually think that we, meaning the United States military, would short-change the Special Forces people by putting them through anything less than what they can expect? What kind of preparation would that be? This is exactly why they are called “Special Forces”. They do things that nobody else can or is expected to do. So yes Senator Bond, Mr. Gaffney, Mr. Cheney, we in fact do submit our people to torture. But there is a difference. They volunteer for this. They know what to expect going into it. The procedure is to prepare them for the possibility of having to endure this type of thing. Why this is so difficult for you to grasp is beyond me, but as a US Senator, Vice President, Asst. Sec of Defense, or whoever you may be, I would think that it’s pretty elementary. Even for someone like you.
Let's focus on Dick Cheney.
We have now come to learn that Cheney’s office called for the water-boarding of an Iraqi prisoner of war; a man in uniform, a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. In spite of Cheney’s insistence on using the method, the interrogator's in Iraq chose not to employ these methods. A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under “pressure” to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq. The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.
In other words, we were torturing these people to extract confessions that there was a link between Iraq and al Qaida in order to support and justify the war in Iraq. Kind of like torturing somebody to get them to admit to witchcraft to prove that they are a witch. We’ve resorted to techniques that were common place in the Dark Ages.
On Monday, May 10, 2009, the body of terror suspect Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi was found in his Libyan cell following what appeared to be a suicide. Andrew Sullivan, who has been tracking the relationship between torture and Iraq for some time , wrote:
...Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi was first captured by the US and tortured by CIA surrogates in an Egyptian cell. Apparently, they beat him and put him in a coffin for 17 hours as a mock-burial. To end the severe mental and physical suffering, he confessed that Saddam had trained al Qaeda terrorists in deploying WMDs. This evidence was then cited by Colin Powell as part of the rationale for going to war in Iraq. Al Libi later recanted his confession.
The torture of Abu Zubaydah began only after CIA operatives ascertained this false information about Iraqi WMD from al-Libi. For the record, here’s what then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said about al-Libi in his now infamous speech at the UN:
“
I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al Qaeda. Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now as he, himself, described it.”
And, as we’re all aware, that UN speech outlined the administration’s entire case for connecting Iraq, al-Qaeda and WMD, and thus the case for war. We now know that one of the chief conclusions in the speech was actually formed from the tortured confessions of a man, al-Libi, who was flogged, buried alive, then forced to confirm the administration’s mushroom cloud fantasy. (By the way, I’d like to hear from the cable news and talk radio sadists about whether or not the so-called interrogation techniques used on al-Libi were torture or not. I doubt Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh would submit to being beaten and stuffed in a coffin for 17 hours. )
Using torture to justify evidence for a war which cost over 4000 American lives….is despicable. There’s no other word that I can think of that describes what was done here. Well…criminal works too. Unfortunately we are now in a bind the Bush administration created for us. President Obama, would like to move forward and insure that something like that never happens again. But that won’t really get it. We can’t actually move forward without addressing what happened.
We only drag our issues with us into the future. We did this with the 3/5 compromise at the time of the framing of the Constitution. That was our way of dealing with the slavery issue. Of course about 70 years later, that unresolved issue would rear its ugly head and result in a Civil War costing over 600,000 American lives, and the legacy of slavery and the hate and racism that propped it up, are still with us today. There is no atonement. No accountability and most importantly no assurance that the next administration won’t fall back on these methods and use our lack of holding those that did this accountable, as an excuse to do it again. After all, if we didn’t prosecute those in the past, we set a precedent for not prosecuting the same crimes in the future. The world is watching us to see how we handle this. Do we live up to our own standards, or are we the hypocrites that they see us as?
And don't we really already know the answer to that question?