U.S. Torture Truth Commission Needed

In this morning's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof calls for the establishment of a Truth Commission to document and investigate the human rights violations of the United States government under the Bush administration.

Kristof writes:

The first step of accountability isn’t prosecutions. Rather, we need a national Truth Commission to lead a process of soul searching and national cleansing. ... Both Barack Obama and John McCain should commit to impaneling a Truth Commission early in the next administration. This commission would issue a report to help us absorb the lessons of our failings, the better to avoid them during the next crisis.

Good idea on not prosecuting the perpetrators, as any rational accounting could sensibly hold most of us reading these words accountable. And that's not so realistic.

So, let's establish the Truth Commission and take the folks directly responsible for conceiving and carrying out the despicable American torture program: George Bush, Dick Cheney, John Yoo, David Addington, the whole stinking lot of them; subpoena the bastards, grant total immunity save the vow to prosecute any lie or half-truth left out under testimony.

As for Kristof's suggestion that we stack the proposed commission with military personnel--forget that, let's stack the commission with human rights activists, investigators, and journalists who have a demonstrated history of reporting on human rights violations.

Allan Nairn, human rights activist and journalist, would be the model.

Some resources on human rights:

- United States Constitution
- Fourth Geneva Convention (full text)
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- Physicians for Human Rights Report on American Torture

Waterboarding Is Torture: Hitchens' First-hand Account

Christopher Hitchens, on assignment from Vanity Fair, arranged to be tortured by waterboarding and write a first-person account. He lasted for 17 seconds during the exercise.

From Vanity Fair (video follows below here), Hitchens writes:

Here is the most chilling way I can find of stating the matter. Until recently, 'waterboarding' was something that Americans did to other Americans. It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva Conventions. But it was something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict.
[Read the entire piece at Vanity Fair.]

The video is not for children to watch, but very much for adults to watch and act against this obscenity of our government.

One can only guess how many innocents have suffered at the hands of the modern-day Torquemada: America under Bush and his assorted chickenhawks.

I have not been a fan of Hitchens' writing the last several years, but Hitchens deserves credit for his first-hand account exposing the cowardice and betrayal by the Bush administration.