Among the many things we won't miss from the Bush administration: Torture.
From this morning's Post:
These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse.
I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology -- one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information. ...
It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.
Showing posts with label United States human rights violations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label United States human rights violations. Show all posts
Nov 21, 2008
More Worst of Worst Going Free
Update: See McClatchy's Guantanamo: Beyond the Law series for a close look at administration lawlessness, and its utter inhumanity toward the innocent.
From the Times, Judge Orders Five Detainees Freed From Guantanamo:
The Bush administration feared the consequences of innocents asking for a look at the evidence in federal court.
As human rights attorney, Scott Horton, writes: "... (T)he Bush Administration’s claims about the prisoners were revealed to be a sham not backed by serious evidence. The Bush Administration’s incarceration of five of the six petitioners was pronounced an unlawful, and indeed possibly criminal act."
Par for the course for this administration that is the single worst enemy to the cause of freedom in modern American history.
Obama has promised to close the camp, the beginning of a reversal of the Bush administration's horrid record on human rights and individual liberty.
From the Times, Judge Orders Five Detainees Freed From Guantanamo:
In the first hearing on the government's justification for holding detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, a federal judge ruled Thursday that five Algerian men were held unlawfully for nearly seven years and ordered their release.Bush and Cheney had called these innocents the worst of the worst, who are so evil and dangerous that we just had to throw out habeas corpus.
The Bush administration feared the consequences of innocents asking for a look at the evidence in federal court.
As human rights attorney, Scott Horton, writes: "... (T)he Bush Administration’s claims about the prisoners were revealed to be a sham not backed by serious evidence. The Bush Administration’s incarceration of five of the six petitioners was pronounced an unlawful, and indeed possibly criminal act."
Par for the course for this administration that is the single worst enemy to the cause of freedom in modern American history.
Obama has promised to close the camp, the beginning of a reversal of the Bush administration's horrid record on human rights and individual liberty.
Jun 19, 2008
Human Rights
Bush does torture.
- AP: Exams prove abuse, torture in Iraq, Gitmo
- General who probed Abu Ghraib says Bush officials committed war crimes
- The U.S. isn't likely to try Bush administration officials for war crimes-but it's likely that a European country will.
- Torture from the Top Down
- CIA Played Larger Role in Advising Pentagon Torture
Human Rights Groups and Documents
- United States Constitution
- Fourth Geneva Convention (full text)
- Human Rights First
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- AP: Exams prove abuse, torture in Iraq, Gitmo
- General who probed Abu Ghraib says Bush officials committed war crimes
- The U.S. isn't likely to try Bush administration officials for war crimes-but it's likely that a European country will.
- Torture from the Top Down
- CIA Played Larger Role in Advising Pentagon Torture
Human Rights Groups and Documents
- United States Constitution
- Fourth Geneva Convention (full text)
- Human Rights First
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Jun 17, 2008
American Concern for Human Rights Waning
McClatchy's America's prison for terrorists often held innocent men piece yesterday ought to have produced screaming headlines and constant chatter about the crimes that the Bush administration had committed at Guantanamo.
The findings by the comprehensive, unprecedented McClatchy interviews "...conducted with former Guantanamo detainees by a U.S. news organization" and US officials talking on background produced nothing of the kind, telling us much about the politcal culture.
In sum, the administration tortured innocents who they knew to be innocent, devised a legal framework to shield the US government from being held accountable, and broke the international laws on human rights self-consciously and shamelessly.
Among the findings:
- A series of White House directives placed 'suspected enemy combatants' beyond the reach of U.S. law or the 1949 Geneva Conventions' protections for prisoners of war. President Bush and Congress then passed legislation that protected those detention rules.
- In 2002, a CIA analyst interviewed several dozen detainees at Guantanamo and reported to senior National Security Council officials that many of them didn't belong there, a former White House official said.
- Despite the analyst's findings, the administration made no further review of the Guantanamo detainees. The White House had determined that all of them were enemy combatants, the former official said.
- Rather than taking a closer look at whom they were holding, a group of five White House, Justice Department and Pentagon lawyers who called themselves the 'War Council' devised a legal framework that enabled the administration to detain suspected 'enemy combatants' indefinitely with few legal rights.
The threat of new terrorist attacks, the War Council argued, allowed President Bush to disregard or rewrite American law, international treaties and the Uniform Code of Military Justice to permit unlimited detentions and harsh interrogations.
- The group further argued that detainees had no legal right to defend themselves, and that American soldiers — along with the War Council members, their bosses and Bush — should be shielded from prosecution for actions that many experts argue are war crimes.
- With the support of Bush, Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the group shunted aside the military justice system, and in February 2002, Bush suspended the legal protection for detainees spelled out in Common Article Three of the 1949 Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, which outlaws degrading treatment and torture.
Today a Washington Post piece, Report Questions Pentagon Accounts,
Officials Looked Into Interrogation Methods Early On, contains similar revelations.
The findings by the comprehensive, unprecedented McClatchy interviews "...conducted with former Guantanamo detainees by a U.S. news organization" and US officials talking on background produced nothing of the kind, telling us much about the politcal culture.
In sum, the administration tortured innocents who they knew to be innocent, devised a legal framework to shield the US government from being held accountable, and broke the international laws on human rights self-consciously and shamelessly.
Among the findings:
- A series of White House directives placed 'suspected enemy combatants' beyond the reach of U.S. law or the 1949 Geneva Conventions' protections for prisoners of war. President Bush and Congress then passed legislation that protected those detention rules.
- In 2002, a CIA analyst interviewed several dozen detainees at Guantanamo and reported to senior National Security Council officials that many of them didn't belong there, a former White House official said.
- Despite the analyst's findings, the administration made no further review of the Guantanamo detainees. The White House had determined that all of them were enemy combatants, the former official said.
- Rather than taking a closer look at whom they were holding, a group of five White House, Justice Department and Pentagon lawyers who called themselves the 'War Council' devised a legal framework that enabled the administration to detain suspected 'enemy combatants' indefinitely with few legal rights.
The threat of new terrorist attacks, the War Council argued, allowed President Bush to disregard or rewrite American law, international treaties and the Uniform Code of Military Justice to permit unlimited detentions and harsh interrogations.
- The group further argued that detainees had no legal right to defend themselves, and that American soldiers — along with the War Council members, their bosses and Bush — should be shielded from prosecution for actions that many experts argue are war crimes.
- With the support of Bush, Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the group shunted aside the military justice system, and in February 2002, Bush suspended the legal protection for detainees spelled out in Common Article Three of the 1949 Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, which outlaws degrading treatment and torture.
Today a Washington Post piece, Report Questions Pentagon Accounts,
Officials Looked Into Interrogation Methods Early On, contains similar revelations.
Dec 2, 2007
Canadian Federal Court: U.S. Does Torture
Karl Rove, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are ideologues of different abilities and temperaments.
But one thing they all share in their rigid, authoritarian ideology is their enthusiasm to torture people, and then lie about it.
Human rights attorney and Harper's writer Scott Horton reports on a key decision announced last Thursday by Canada’s Federal Court.
Writes Horton: "Here’s the short version: '''We do not torture?' That claim has been formally reviewed by a court and found to be a lie."
Horton's longer version (and the work of Professor Jaya Ramji-Nogales) are worth reading, if you object to torture and our government lying about torturing, especially innocent people.
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But one thing they all share in their rigid, authoritarian ideology is their enthusiasm to torture people, and then lie about it.
Human rights attorney and Harper's writer Scott Horton reports on a key decision announced last Thursday by Canada’s Federal Court.
Writes Horton: "Here’s the short version: '''We do not torture?' That claim has been formally reviewed by a court and found to be a lie."
Horton's longer version (and the work of Professor Jaya Ramji-Nogales) are worth reading, if you object to torture and our government lying about torturing, especially innocent people.
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