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The time is now 10:35 pm
You last visited
April 23, 2024, 8:32 pm
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Eastern Time (GMT-5:00)
Change you CAN'T believe in
Published:
The Torture Ban that Doesn't Ban Torture: Obama's Rules Keep It Intact, and Could Even Accord With an Increase in US-Sponsored Torture Worldwide.
If you're lying on the slab still breathing, with your torturer hanging over you, you don't much care if he is an American or a mere United States - sponsored trainee.
When President Obama declared flatly this week that "the United States will not torture" many people wrongly believed that he'd shut the practice down, when in fact he'd merely repositioned it.
Obama's Executive Order bans some -- not all -- US officials from torturing but it does not ban any of them, himself included, from sponsoring torture overseas.
Indeed, his policy change affects only a slight percentage of US-culpable tortures and could be completely consistent with an increase in US-backed torture worldwide.
The catch lies in the fact that since Vietnam, when US forces often tortured directly, the US has mainly seen its torture done for it by proxy -- paying, arming, training and guiding foreigners doing it, but usually being careful to keep Americans at least one discreet step removed. ...
That is, the US tended to do it that way until Bush and Cheney changed protocol, and had many Americans laying on hands, and sometimes taking digital photos. ...
For every torment inflicted directly by Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and the secret prisons, there were many times more being meted out by US-sponsored foreign forces.
Those forces were and are operating with US military, intelligence, financial or other backing in Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Jordan, Indonesia, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Colombia, Nigeria, and the Philippines, to name some places, not to mention the tortures sans-American-hands by the US-backed Iraqis and Afghans.
(the rest)
www.allannairn.com/2009/01/torture-ban-that-doesnt-ban-torture.html
or www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=2594
Any "loi-ya" worth his fee knows it's all in the wording - letter of the law, they call it.
Comments
Without giving my opinion, let me just ask if you think a retired Brigadier General, who also has a Law Degree and served in Viet Nam. He was on the Judge Advocate General's Corp (also known as JAG) and he applauds our new President. Here is what he thinks:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/24/nyregion/24about.html?em
Sarah Cleveland is an international human rights expert and Professor of Law at Columbia University. She says "The executive orders are very impressive and encouraging in their boldness, in their prominence, with the speed with which the administration moved to address the issue."
Yes, for the next 4 or 8 years Obama has an awful lot to do & even he said it won't be easy. Closing Guantanamo was a step in the right direction. Maybe it's a step instead of a leap, but some people want to knock him down before he's even gotten started. Rush Limbaugh even said "I hope he fails" with no regard for our country and the effect it would have on the average American. I just want us to move in the right direction, and this is a beginning. There's much more to do, but nobody can undo 8 years in 5 days. After all, he isn't God, and making the world even took Him 6 days. :-)
Should have said "...and served in Viet Nam understands the wording.
With regard to General Cullen, I think he sums up what many people will be saying in 4 to 8 years when he says “I wanted to believe thatâ€. :-) He sounds like a guy who would take "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is" as a perfectly acceptable answer. My view is that the next 4 to 8 years are NOT going to be an "undo" of the last 8 (or 16, if you care to go back that far), but rather an extension. You are going to get more of what you thought you just got rid of. ;-) The difference will be in smoothness of delivery.
I support the troops but not the war, I support Obama but not his executive orders, ask the ten terrorists that were killed crossing into Afghanistan thursday.
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