Torture by any other name is just as vile
Andrew Sullivan
Last week America’s political classes found themselves forced by the Supreme Court to confront the issue of whether the United States has legally authorised the torture of terror suspects in its prisons.
That has been the issue for five years now, ever since the Bush administration unilaterally evaded the Geneva conventions and, on the president’s executive authority, tortured several Al-Qaeda suspects in CIA custody.
*
It blew up when the Abu Ghraib photographs emerged, showing that torture and abuse had spread like a cancer through the ranks of the military, with hundreds of documented cases in every field of combat.
It was almost halted last December by the McCain Amendment, which the president subsequently declined to enforce. It came to a climax last week in a confusing blizzard of legislative verbiage. Both sides are still fighting over what exactly the Senate-Bush deal meant, which means that “the programme” will apparently continue.
Of course, the narrative I have just used is disputed by the president. He stated very recently: “I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorised it — and I will not authorise it.”
So we are reduced to fighting over a word, “torture”. President George W Bush’s preferred terminology is “alternative interrogation techniques” or “coercive interrogation” or “harsh interrogation methods”, or simply, amazingly, his comment last Thursday that a policy of waterboarding detainees is merely a policy to “question” them.
Suddenly I am reminded of George Orwell. One essay of his, Politics and the English Language, still stands out over the decades as a rebuke to all those who deploy language to muffle meaning. One passage is particularly apposite:
“A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.”
It is time to concede that in America right now the atmosphere is bad. Here is Bush defining torture in a speech he gave in June 2003: “The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control.”
So what is “severe physical or mental pain or suffering”? The president does not apparently believe that strapping someone to a board, tipping them upside down and pouring water repeatedly over Cellophane wrapped over their face is severe suffering.
The CIA confirms that most suspects cannot last much more than 30 seconds of the drowning sensation. But no marks are left. So that is not “torture”.
We are then informed that almost all the “coercive interrogation techniques” used by the Bush administration are not torture. One is called “long time standing”. Basically, it entails forcing a prisoner to stay standing indefinitely, by prodding him if he tries to rest, or shackling his wrists to a bolt in a low ceiling or a railing.
At first the detainees in CIA custody were required to be so restrained for a maximum of four hours without any rest. Then a memo from Donald Rumsfeld , the defence secretary, came down the chain of command: “I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?”
Why indeed? It certainly sounds mild enough.
But here is a description of what it actually means in uncorrupted English: “There is the method of simply compelling a prisoner to stand there. This can be arranged so that the accused stands only while being interrogated — because that, too, exhausts and breaks a person down.
“It can be set up in another way — so that the prisoner sits down during interrogation but is forced to stand up between interrogations. (A watch is set over him, and the guards see to it that he doesn’t lean against the wall, and if he goes to sleep and falls over he is given a kick and straightened up.) Sometimes even one day of standing is enough to deprive a person of all his strength and to force him to testify to anything at all.”
What wimp wrote that? Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who documented “long time standing” as a method used by the Soviet Union in the gulag.
“Sleep deprivation” also sounds mild enough to avoid the moniker of “torture”. Here is one account of such an alternative questioning method, in which a prisoner “is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire to sleep, to sleep just a little, not to get up, to lie, to rest, to forget . . . Anyone who has experienced the desire knows that not even hunger or thirst are comparable with it”.
Again, which whiny liberal wrote those words?
The answer is Menachem Begin, former Israeli prime minister and a former terrorist himself. He is also describing the methods used by the Soviets in Siberia, where they imprisoned him in 1939.
We know that one prisoner in Guantanamo Bay was forced to go without sleep for 48 of 55 consecutive days and nights.
He was also manacled naked to a chair in a cell that was air-conditioned to around 50F and had cold water poured on him repeatedly, until hypothermia set in. Doctors treated him when he neared permanent physical damage.
According to the president of the United States, this is not “severe mental or physical pain or suffering”. This is an “alternative interrogation method”. This is not torture. it is “the programme”.
And so Latin words fall upon the West’s moral high ground “like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details”.
If only George Orwell were still alive. If only all of this weren’t actually true.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2371815,00.html
Full Version: “Alternative interrogation techniques”
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77
Torture Nation
25 Sep 2006 09:27 am
Readers will have to judge for themselves what Senator John McCain said on "Face the Nation" yesterday. I'm afraid it confirms my worst fears: there is no legislative brake on the president's use of torture, and the only restriction that has any teeth is that the president may - but may choose not to - publish his torture techniques in the Federal Register. Moreover, there seems to be no actual legal requirement for the president to do so, and no legal time frame cited in which he must provide details in the Federal Register. Can you imagine Cheney volunteering such information? Even if the president were to do so, any Congressional attempt to roll back specific torture methods would probably require a veto-proof majority, as Marty Lederman points out. The "transparency" is therefore transparently opaque.
There is no legal provision to prevent water-boarding, hypothermia, long-time-standing, intense sleep deprivation, or many of the abuses documented at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib - and cited in the "Gulag Archipelago". All of that is left up to this president to decide - and we know what his record is: brutality toward terror suspects, and reckless, ad hoc conflation of the innocent with the guilty.
Ask yourself this question: in the days after Abu Ghraib was exposed, did you believe that within a few years, the Congress of the United States would be formally decriminalizing exactly the techniques depicted in many of those photographs - and allowing the president to use his discretion to order them? Now absorb the fact that they are on the verge of doing just that. If this bill is passed, Abu Ghraib will be American policy, and integral across the world to the meaning of America. That's a devastating self-inflicted wound in this war of ideas.
Here's the key part of the McCain transcript:
This "confidence" rests entirely on McCain's personal trust in this president not to authorize various forms of torture against military prisoners. There is no rule of law in these instances. There is the will of one man - the president - against the confidence of another man - Senator McCain. That's it. The rule of law - on something as critical as torture - is potentially over.
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/
25 Sep 2006 09:27 am
Readers will have to judge for themselves what Senator John McCain said on "Face the Nation" yesterday. I'm afraid it confirms my worst fears: there is no legislative brake on the president's use of torture, and the only restriction that has any teeth is that the president may - but may choose not to - publish his torture techniques in the Federal Register. Moreover, there seems to be no actual legal requirement for the president to do so, and no legal time frame cited in which he must provide details in the Federal Register. Can you imagine Cheney volunteering such information? Even if the president were to do so, any Congressional attempt to roll back specific torture methods would probably require a veto-proof majority, as Marty Lederman points out. The "transparency" is therefore transparently opaque.
There is no legal provision to prevent water-boarding, hypothermia, long-time-standing, intense sleep deprivation, or many of the abuses documented at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib - and cited in the "Gulag Archipelago". All of that is left up to this president to decide - and we know what his record is: brutality toward terror suspects, and reckless, ad hoc conflation of the innocent with the guilty.
Ask yourself this question: in the days after Abu Ghraib was exposed, did you believe that within a few years, the Congress of the United States would be formally decriminalizing exactly the techniques depicted in many of those photographs - and allowing the president to use his discretion to order them? Now absorb the fact that they are on the verge of doing just that. If this bill is passed, Abu Ghraib will be American policy, and integral across the world to the meaning of America. That's a devastating self-inflicted wound in this war of ideas.
Here's the key part of the McCain transcript:
Mr. HARRIS: This whole debate turned on things that I think most citizens couldn't understand. You said you--severe punishment, pain should not be inflicted, but serious pain can--what can that possibly mean in concrete terms?
Sen. McCAIN: In concrete terms, it could mean that waterboarding and other extreme measures such as extreme deprivation--sleep deprivation, hypothermia and others would be not allowed.
Mr. HARRIS: That's what you say. What if the administration interprets it differently, as it is allowed to do under the provisions of this law? What if you disagree with the interpretation?
Sen. McCAIN: If we disagree with the interpretation, the fact is that those interpretations have to be published in the Federal Register. That's a document that's available to all Americans, including the press. And we in Congress, and the judiciary, if challenged, have the ability then to examine that interpretation and act legislatively. These are regulations the president would issue, we would be passing laws which trump regulations.
Mr. HARRIS: If you have confidence that those were--tactics were disallowed, why didn't you get it in the--in the actual law?
Sen. McCAIN: What we did, John, was we called--outlawed certain procedures, including some of those that you might think would be natural--murder, rape, etc.--but also cruel and inhuman--we included cruel and inhuman treatments, not as severe as torture but could still be considered a crime.
[Bob] SCHIEFFER: Well, we look at...
Sen. McCAIN: I'm confident that some of the abuses that were reportedly committed in the past will be prohibited in the future.
This "confidence" rests entirely on McCain's personal trust in this president not to authorize various forms of torture against military prisoners. There is no rule of law in these instances. There is the will of one man - the president - against the confidence of another man - Senator McCain. That's it. The rule of law - on something as critical as torture - is potentially over.
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/
.
QUOTE(Repub_Bub @ Sep 26 2006, 01:26 PM) [snapback]243899[/snapback]
QUOTE(davis¹³ @ Sep 26 2006, 12:06 PM) [snapback]243891[/snapback]
Torture by any other name is just as vile
Andrew Sullivan
Last week America’s political classes found themselves forced by the Supreme Court to confront the issue of whether the United States has legally authorised the torture of terror suspects in its prisons.
That has been the issue for five years now, ever since the Bush administration unilaterally evaded the Geneva conventions and, on the president’s executive authority, tortured several Al-Qaeda suspects in CIA custody.
*
It blew up when the Abu Ghraib photographs emerged, showing that torture and abuse had spread like a cancer through the ranks of the military, with hundreds of documented cases in every field of combat.
It was almost halted last December by the McCain Amendment, which the president subsequently declined to enforce. It came to a climax last week in a confusing blizzard of legislative verbiage. Both sides are still fighting over what exactly the Senate-Bush deal meant, which means that “the programme” will apparently continue.
Of course, the narrative I have just used is disputed by the president. He stated very recently: “I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorised it — and I will not authorise it.”
So we are reduced to fighting over a word, “torture”. President George W Bush’s preferred terminology is “alternative interrogation techniques” or “coercive interrogation” or “harsh interrogation methods”, or simply, amazingly, his comment last Thursday that a policy of waterboarding detainees is merely a policy to “question” them.
Suddenly I am reminded of George Orwell. One essay of his, Politics and the English Language, still stands out over the decades as a rebuke to all those who deploy language to muffle meaning. One passage is particularly apposite:
“A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.”
It is time to concede that in America right now the atmosphere is bad. Here is Bush defining torture in a speech he gave in June 2003: “The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control.”
So what is “severe physical or mental pain or suffering”? The president does not apparently believe that strapping someone to a board, tipping them upside down and pouring water repeatedly over Cellophane wrapped over their face is severe suffering.
The CIA confirms that most suspects cannot last much more than 30 seconds of the drowning sensation. But no marks are left. So that is not “torture”.
We are then informed that almost all the “coercive interrogation techniques” used by the Bush administration are not torture. One is called “long time standing”. Basically, it entails forcing a prisoner to stay standing indefinitely, by prodding him if he tries to rest, or shackling his wrists to a bolt in a low ceiling or a railing.
At first the detainees in CIA custody were required to be so restrained for a maximum of four hours without any rest. Then a memo from Donald Rumsfeld , the defence secretary, came down the chain of command: “I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?”
Why indeed? It certainly sounds mild enough.
But here is a description of what it actually means in uncorrupted English: “There is the method of simply compelling a prisoner to stand there. This can be arranged so that the accused stands only while being interrogated — because that, too, exhausts and breaks a person down.
“It can be set up in another way — so that the prisoner sits down during interrogation but is forced to stand up between interrogations. (A watch is set over him, and the guards see to it that he doesn’t lean against the wall, and if he goes to sleep and falls over he is given a kick and straightened up.) Sometimes even one day of standing is enough to deprive a person of all his strength and to force him to testify to anything at all.”
What wimp wrote that? Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who documented “long time standing” as a method used by the Soviet Union in the gulag.
“Sleep deprivation” also sounds mild enough to avoid the moniker of “torture”. Here is one account of such an alternative questioning method, in which a prisoner “is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire to sleep, to sleep just a little, not to get up, to lie, to rest, to forget . . . Anyone who has experienced the desire knows that not even hunger or thirst are comparable with it”.
Again, which whiny liberal wrote those words?
The answer is Menachem Begin, former Israeli prime minister and a former terrorist himself. He is also describing the methods used by the Soviets in Siberia, where they imprisoned him in 1939.
We know that one prisoner in Guantanamo Bay was forced to go without sleep for 48 of 55 consecutive days and nights.
He was also manacled naked to a chair in a cell that was air-conditioned to around 50F and had cold water poured on him repeatedly, until hypothermia set in. Doctors treated him when he neared permanent physical damage.
According to the president of the United States, this is not “severe mental or physical pain or suffering”. This is an “alternative interrogation method”. This is not torture. it is “the programme”.
And so Latin words fall upon the West’s moral high ground “like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details”.
If only George Orwell were still alive. If only all of this weren’t actually true.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2371815,00.html
This just in.... a new alternative interrogation programme for old taliban detainees........
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy are all behind it!
Learning about manners!
QUOTE(patheticJT @ Sep 26 2006, 09:07 AM) [snapback]243919[/snapback]
Stop that!
There'll be no torture allowed on this thread. 
You have chosen to ignore all posts from: patheticJT.
· View this post
· Un-ignore patheticJT
· View this post
· Un-ignore patheticJT
QUOTE(davis¹³ @ Sep 26 2006, 04:51 PM) [snapback]243939[/snapback]
You have chosen to ignore all posts from: patheticJT.
· View this post
· Un-ignore patheticJT
All: Please delete the pig in panties posts. Somehow, it's trying to plant a marketing tracking cookie on my comp.
OK, I'll trust you and delete it myself. It happened once before that a link screwed some things up.
Thanks. No attempt to plant a cookie when I accessed the page this time.
A Christian on Torture
26 Sep 2006 07:35 pm
A reader writes:
As a Presbyterian pastor, I continue to be stunned by the unthinking support of many evangelicals for a policy that permits torture. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when the so-called "Traditional Values Coalition" decided that torture was among the traditional values that they feel compelled to support.
When Jesus was put on trial and handed over to Pontius Pilate, he rejected violence and said, "My kingdom is not of this world." He was then tortured and brutally murdered (three hours in a "stress position" on the cross, as one of your readers aptly noted). "Caesar", of course, went on to torture and brutally murder innocent Christians who were "threats to the state." Now, 2,000 years later, in their wordly lust for power, Christians are hopping into bed with Caesar and signing off on anything Caesar wants, especially if Caesar takes care of the Christian "base".
In my Presbyterian tradition, we are called to stand outside the halls of power and speak truth to those in power, no matter what party is in control. We are not called to become that power ourselves; Jesus' kingdom is not of this world; his values are not Caesar's values.
Last year on Good Friday, my church had our traditional worship service at which we read the story of Jesus' torture and execution. To make the story more than just a past event, we read three contemporary accounts of innocent individuals who had been tortured. If we were going to shed tears for our innocent Lord Jesus, we also needed to shed tears for other innocent victims of torture. One story we read was about Christians in China - "threats to the state" - including a mother who was brutally interrogated while hearing the cries of her son being tortured in the next room. Interestingly enough, the Christian Right would join me in expressing outrage against innocent Christians.
Another story was of a man who described these conditions:
We read that story last Good Friday. The man's name? Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, who was arrested at JFK airport in New York. He was then deported by the American government via Jordan to Syria, where he was detained in the cell described above. Just last week Arar and his claims of innocence were completely vindicated by the Canadian government. The Traditional Values Coalition would probably respond: an unfortunate mistake, but torture is still a necessary policy.
And What Would Jesus Do?
Jesus wept.
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/
26 Sep 2006 07:35 pm
A reader writes:
As a Presbyterian pastor, I continue to be stunned by the unthinking support of many evangelicals for a policy that permits torture. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when the so-called "Traditional Values Coalition" decided that torture was among the traditional values that they feel compelled to support.
When Jesus was put on trial and handed over to Pontius Pilate, he rejected violence and said, "My kingdom is not of this world." He was then tortured and brutally murdered (three hours in a "stress position" on the cross, as one of your readers aptly noted). "Caesar", of course, went on to torture and brutally murder innocent Christians who were "threats to the state." Now, 2,000 years later, in their wordly lust for power, Christians are hopping into bed with Caesar and signing off on anything Caesar wants, especially if Caesar takes care of the Christian "base".
In my Presbyterian tradition, we are called to stand outside the halls of power and speak truth to those in power, no matter what party is in control. We are not called to become that power ourselves; Jesus' kingdom is not of this world; his values are not Caesar's values.
Last year on Good Friday, my church had our traditional worship service at which we read the story of Jesus' torture and execution. To make the story more than just a past event, we read three contemporary accounts of innocent individuals who had been tortured. If we were going to shed tears for our innocent Lord Jesus, we also needed to shed tears for other innocent victims of torture. One story we read was about Christians in China - "threats to the state" - including a mother who was brutally interrogated while hearing the cries of her son being tortured in the next room. Interestingly enough, the Christian Right would join me in expressing outrage against innocent Christians.
Another story was of a man who described these conditions:
"I saw a cell almost the size of a grave. 3 feet wide, 6 feet deep, and 7 feet high. The cell had no light in it; it only had two thin mattresses (two thin blankets) on the ground ... I was kept in that dark and filthy cell for about 10 months. The worst beating happened on the third day ... they were asking the same set of questions and they would beat me 3-4 times. They would sometimes take me to another room where I could hear other people being tortured ... at the end of the day I could not take the pain anymore and I falsely confessed of having been to Afghanistan."
We read that story last Good Friday. The man's name? Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, who was arrested at JFK airport in New York. He was then deported by the American government via Jordan to Syria, where he was detained in the cell described above. Just last week Arar and his claims of innocence were completely vindicated by the Canadian government. The Traditional Values Coalition would probably respond: an unfortunate mistake, but torture is still a necessary policy.
And What Would Jesus Do?
Jesus wept.
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/
Stop This Bill
26 Sep 2006 04:12 pm
A series of impassioned pleas on Capitol Hill - from the military, Catholic bishops, intelligence experts and others - not to pass a bill allowing the president the right to seize anyone in this country, detain him or her without charges indefinitely and torture them in secret. Please do not look away. Fight back - for your freedom.
Permalink :: E-Mail This :: Trackback (0)
Legalizing Tyranny II
26 Sep 2006 03:34 pm
A reader writes:
The language you quoted isn't the worst of it. It does require "material support," and that would presumably be defined as in 18 USC 2339a:
(1) the term "material support or resources" means any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (1 or more individuals who may be or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials;
(2) the term "training" means instruction or teaching designed to impart a specific skill, as opposed to general knowledge; and
(3) the term "expert advice or assistance" means advice or assistance derived from scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge.
This is harsh, but not out-of-bounds for law of armed conflict. No, the choking point is the second part of the definition in which the Executive simply gets to say who such an illegal enemy combatant is. That is, in its essence, tyrannical. They say "trust us," but why should we? We now see a long track record of people being so classified and held with little or no basis. The exercise of the discretion has, in other words, been corrupt.
The deeper point is that, in this law, the "battlefield" has been extended into every living room in the country, and that without judicial oversight, the entire discretion to name someone an "illegal enemy combatant" is entirely up to one man, the president. And he also has the discretion to torture such a person at will, using techniques once deployed by the North Vietnamese and the KGB. This is the bill now being considered. It is a grave threat to basic liberties.
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/
So a few American soldiers die because we don't interrogate terrorists, we give them religiously sensitive meals, dental care and a soccer field. Big whoop.
Maybe we should just call our Senators and ask if Crucifixion is on the "approved" list. After all, it's official defintion doesn't actually contain the word "torture."
"least those of us calling ourselves "christians" might wish to enquire.
"least those of us calling ourselves "christians" might wish to enquire.
Heads Up
26 Sep 2006 10:01 pm
I'll be on AC360 tonight, discussing the torture and detention-without-charge bill.
Talking and thinking this over, I'm trying to look on the bright side. The bill allows this president to continue torturing detainees (and possibly innocent ones). But it doesn't actually authorize the torture methods. And it doesn't formally breach Geneva. So "the program" continues in the shadows of Bush's shadow government. The truly disturbing part is that the only criterion for detaining anyone without charges - citizen or non-citizen, at home or anywhere in the world - is the president's discretion. If Rumsfeld decides you're an enemy combatant, you can be whisked away into a black hole, tortured, or have to prove your innocence in a military commission while he insists on your guilt. The "battlefield" is everywhere; and the war is endless. This is not, to put it mildly, what the founding fathers had in mind. It is one of the darkest hours for Western liberty in a very long time. And most conservatives are cheering. Watching habeas corpus go down the plughole is not something I ever thought I would have to contemplate. Well done, Osama. You won this one big time.
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/
26 Sep 2006 10:01 pm
I'll be on AC360 tonight, discussing the torture and detention-without-charge bill.
Talking and thinking this over, I'm trying to look on the bright side. The bill allows this president to continue torturing detainees (and possibly innocent ones). But it doesn't actually authorize the torture methods. And it doesn't formally breach Geneva. So "the program" continues in the shadows of Bush's shadow government. The truly disturbing part is that the only criterion for detaining anyone without charges - citizen or non-citizen, at home or anywhere in the world - is the president's discretion. If Rumsfeld decides you're an enemy combatant, you can be whisked away into a black hole, tortured, or have to prove your innocence in a military commission while he insists on your guilt. The "battlefield" is everywhere; and the war is endless. This is not, to put it mildly, what the founding fathers had in mind. It is one of the darkest hours for Western liberty in a very long time. And most conservatives are cheering. Watching habeas corpus go down the plughole is not something I ever thought I would have to contemplate. Well done, Osama. You won this one big time.
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/
Anything but three hots and a cot is torture.
QUOTE(Arturo_Vandelay @ Sep 26 2006, 10:30 PM) [snapback]244080[/snapback]
Anything but three hots and a cot is torture.
So Crucifixion is acceptable?
Maybe if the guards at gitmo read the koran and convert they will like us more.
The islamo fascists have a playbook on what to do when captured. Scream human rights violations at anything that happens. compassionate for victims and bush hating liberals take the bait hook line and sinker everytime
So they can blame booooooosh.
The islamo fascists have a playbook on what to do when captured. Scream human rights violations at anything that happens. compassionate for victims and bush hating liberals take the bait hook line and sinker everytime
So they can blame booooooosh.
QUOTE(Bee @ Sep 26 2006, 07:33 PM) [snapback]244082[/snapback]
So Crucifixion is acceptable?
Torture and murder aren't the same thing, though I can't get the lefties to define torture.
QUOTE(Arturo_Vandelay @ Sep 27 2006, 05:44 AM) [snapback]244176[/snapback]
Torture and murder aren't the same thing, though I can't get the lefties to define torture.
Lefties defining torture?
Not in a million years.............
QUOTE(patheticJT @ Sep 26 2006, 10:47 PM) [snapback]244177[/snapback]
Lefties defining torture?
Not in a million years.............
You can't even discuss defining without being accused of approving. I listen to AC/DC loud enough that lefties would call it torture EVERY NIGHT when I ride.
I have done so several times already, most recently for jt, which he completely ignored.
Torture is defined in the dictionary as well as CA 3 of the GCs. That definition served perfectly well for 60 years, and you folks are part of a minority that think it's "OK" to question them.
As for Crucifixion being murder, it certainly can be. Then again so can most torture. I'd say Crucifixion is one of those things you righties so quaintly label "stress positions."
[disgust]
Torture is defined in the dictionary as well as CA 3 of the GCs. That definition served perfectly well for 60 years, and you folks are part of a minority that think it's "OK" to question them.
As for Crucifixion being murder, it certainly can be. Then again so can most torture. I'd say Crucifixion is one of those things you righties so quaintly label "stress positions."
[disgust]
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Christianism Watch
27 Sep 2006 06:11 am
A reader writes:
I went to the Family Research Council/Focus on the Family/American Family Association "Values Voters" summit this weekend at the Omni.
It is much, much worse than we know.
The first woman I spoke to (from Erie, PA) railed on about how Chuck Hagel is a flaming liberal and John McCain should be tried for treason. I thought that maybe I'd run into an isolated crazy. Oh no - it only got worse from there. The level of contempt for anyone who diverges from the Holy Word of W is beyond description. I was sort of 'undercover' so I could just let people talk to me, not leading the conversation, not baiting, and it horrified me to hear how many were perfectly comfortable with any form of torture in the name of patriotism if the Commander In Chief gave it the ok.
Meanwhile, in the plenary I got to hear from George Allen on how he's been done wrong by the media and watched a ballroom of about 1,700 people seem to feel permission to let their hate for The Gays run wild every time a black minister hit the stage. (I have my own copy of the very popular brochure, "The Rape of the Civil Rights Movement: How Sodomites Are Using Civil Rights Rhetoric To Advance Their Preference For Sexual Perversion.")
There is no room for disagreement, because it is tantamount to evil. Dissent is the same as blasphemy, and everything is approached in orthodox terms. I've always been a conservative because I believe that there is such a think as good and evil and that moral relativism is a crazy road on which logic can rarely stick. I believe in limited government and individual liberty. I know I can do things better than any bureaucracy ever will. But what conservatism has become with these people is horrifying. They'd trade liberty for a handshake from W., compassion for power. And they've got one amazing plan in place to make sure that future generations have a tighter, more limited, and clearly more hostile worldview. I went there hoping to prove myself wrong about what I thought was happening, but I just couldn't do it.
Another journalist friend visited as well. He emailed me about it. 'So you're saying it's as bad as I feared," I asked. "Much, much worse."
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/
Christianism Watch
27 Sep 2006 06:11 am
A reader writes:
I went to the Family Research Council/Focus on the Family/American Family Association "Values Voters" summit this weekend at the Omni.
It is much, much worse than we know.
The first woman I spoke to (from Erie, PA) railed on about how Chuck Hagel is a flaming liberal and John McCain should be tried for treason. I thought that maybe I'd run into an isolated crazy. Oh no - it only got worse from there. The level of contempt for anyone who diverges from the Holy Word of W is beyond description. I was sort of 'undercover' so I could just let people talk to me, not leading the conversation, not baiting, and it horrified me to hear how many were perfectly comfortable with any form of torture in the name of patriotism if the Commander In Chief gave it the ok.
Meanwhile, in the plenary I got to hear from George Allen on how he's been done wrong by the media and watched a ballroom of about 1,700 people seem to feel permission to let their hate for The Gays run wild every time a black minister hit the stage. (I have my own copy of the very popular brochure, "The Rape of the Civil Rights Movement: How Sodomites Are Using Civil Rights Rhetoric To Advance Their Preference For Sexual Perversion.")
There is no room for disagreement, because it is tantamount to evil. Dissent is the same as blasphemy, and everything is approached in orthodox terms. I've always been a conservative because I believe that there is such a think as good and evil and that moral relativism is a crazy road on which logic can rarely stick. I believe in limited government and individual liberty. I know I can do things better than any bureaucracy ever will. But what conservatism has become with these people is horrifying. They'd trade liberty for a handshake from W., compassion for power. And they've got one amazing plan in place to make sure that future generations have a tighter, more limited, and clearly more hostile worldview. I went there hoping to prove myself wrong about what I thought was happening, but I just couldn't do it.
Another journalist friend visited as well. He emailed me about it. 'So you're saying it's as bad as I feared," I asked. "Much, much worse."
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/
QUOTE(Bee @ Sep 27 2006, 03:28 AM) [snapback]244217[/snapback]
I have done so several times already, most recently for jt, which he completely ignored.
Torture is defined in the dictionary as well as CA 3 of the GCs. That definition served perfectly well for 60 years, and you folks are part of a minority that think it's "OK" to question them.
As for Crucifixion being murder, it certainly can be. Then again so can most torture. I'd say Crucifixion is one of those things you righties so quaintly label "stress positions."
[disgust]
Torture is defined in the dictionary as well as CA 3 of the GCs. That definition served perfectly well for 60 years, and you folks are part of a minority that think it's "OK" to question them.
As for Crucifixion being murder, it certainly can be. Then again so can most torture. I'd say Crucifixion is one of those things you righties so quaintly label "stress positions."
[disgust]
Crucifixition is designed to kill people slowly. It's not like Madonna on NBC.
If terrorists start following the GCs I'm all for returning the favor.
We do not base our morals on those of terrorists. That is not the standard.
QUOTE(davis¹³ @ Sep 27 2006, 08:52 AM) [snapback]244297[/snapback]
We do not base our morals on those of terrorists. That is not the standard.
"we" being those folks sitting at home in no danger. Ask your dad if they let Japanese fight by looser rules than Americans used in WWII?
My dad killed them. He didn't torture them. We are the good guys artie. At least we're supposed to be. We set a higher standard. At least we used to.
QUOTE(davis¹³ @ Sep 27 2006, 08:59 AM) [snapback]244300[/snapback]
My dad killed them. He didn't torture them.
You mean they didn't try to take as many prisoners as possible at risk to their own lives?
How many times have we been down this road?
It's like that National Lamppon European Vacation where Griswold gets caught in the round-about.
Look kids! Big Ben!
after 20 times around it's
looook kids ... b-big ben.... <maniacal cackle>
It's like that National Lamppon European Vacation where Griswold gets caught in the round-about.
Look kids! Big Ben!
after 20 times around it's
looook kids ... b-big ben.... <maniacal cackle>
The primary purpose for the GC was to obtain humane treatement of prisoners of war. Terrorists do not abide by the GC and have no authorized membership capable of signing the GC.
This alone should render arguments relating the GC to the treatment of terrorists illogical by definition.
The only connection is the notion that, as "good guys", we should maintain some moral highground which assumes that we can expect decent treatment from terrorists by sheer weight of our example...an equally illogical notion as demonstrated by historical fact.
A normal approach would seem to be a risk/reward relationship for each situation. That is, once a determination is made regarding the intelligence value of a particular prisoner the next step should be to simply determine what extreme is necessary to collect that information.
I, for one, would hate to be responsible for failing to prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans when I had the resources to do so...I would certainly disapprove of action that refuses to prevent those deaths for no logical reason.
This alone should render arguments relating the GC to the treatment of terrorists illogical by definition.
The only connection is the notion that, as "good guys", we should maintain some moral highground which assumes that we can expect decent treatment from terrorists by sheer weight of our example...an equally illogical notion as demonstrated by historical fact.
A normal approach would seem to be a risk/reward relationship for each situation. That is, once a determination is made regarding the intelligence value of a particular prisoner the next step should be to simply determine what extreme is necessary to collect that information.
I, for one, would hate to be responsible for failing to prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans when I had the resources to do so...I would certainly disapprove of action that refuses to prevent those deaths for no logical reason.
Oooooh, there's this dude... he's ughhhh... aaaa TERRORIST!! yeah, that's it... and uhhhhh... I'm a war president 
... uhhhh.... he could uhhhh... blow up Peoria ... biodrones from Mexico!!! WMDs in Iowa!!! mushroom cloud? Dead enders? Suiciders!!!!
You are an idiot.
... uhhhh.... he could uhhhh... blow up Peoria ... biodrones from Mexico!!! WMDs in Iowa!!! mushroom cloud? Dead enders? Suiciders!!!!You are an idiot.
QUOTE(davis¹³ @ Sep 27 2006, 09:54 AM) [snapback]244326[/snapback]
Oooooh, there's this dude... he's ughhhh... aaaa TERRORIST!! yeah, that's it... and uhhhhh... I'm a war president
... uhhhh.... he could uhhhh... blow up Peoria ... biodrones from Mexico!!! WMDs in Iowa!!! mushroom cloud? Dead enders? Suiciders!!!!You are an idiot.
Yeah, you're quite pursuasive davey...guess there is no real problem after all.
It seems to me that there's some things that have not been addressed in regard to "torture"... such as the perspective of the "torturers"... how much of what they do is for altruistic ideals... and how much is done simply because they have or acquire a "need" to do it(to get it out:~)... and actually enjoy it...
Has any one of you ever been "tortured"?... have you ever "tortured"?...
WHat do you actually know from first hand experience about the subject?
Has any one of you ever been "tortured"?... have you ever "tortured"?...
WHat do you actually know from first hand experience about the subject?
QUOTE(CharlieRay @ Sep 27 2006, 12:21 PM) [snapback]244340[/snapback]
Has any one of you ever been "tortured"?... have you ever "tortured"?...
WHat do you actually know from first hand experience about the subject?
I was in a bar where they wouldn't turn off a George Bush speech.
Watching him butcher English should be against the Geneva Conventions.
QUOTE(Pravda @ Sep 27 2006, 01:25 PM) [snapback]244342[/snapback]
I was in a bar where they wouldn't turn off a George Bush speech.
Watching him butcher English should be against the Geneva Conventions.
I hear that!
Funny...
But seriously... I'd like to hear more about the actual topic of the post...
But seriously... I'd like to hear more about the actual topic of the post...
QUOTE
It seems to me that there's some things that have not been addressed in regard to "torture"... such as the perspective of the "torturers"... how much of what they do is for altruistic ideals... and how much is done simply because they have or acquire a "need" to do it(to get it out:~)... and actually enjoy it.
Fair enough. Having never tortured anything--aside from some good-natured teasing-- I can only offer this:
I have the pdf file of the NYTimes/CBS poll on my desktop. 33 pages of questions. One of the questions and responses was:
The survey was done between 9/15 and 9/19.
It seems to me this is a total loser issue for the GOP.
I have the pdf file of the NYTimes/CBS poll on my desktop. 33 pages of questions. One of the questions and responses was:
QUOTE
Do you think it is sometimes justified to use torture to get information from a suspected terrorist, or is torture never justified?
Sometimes 35 Never 56 Depends 5 DK/NA 4
Sometimes 35 Never 56 Depends 5 DK/NA 4
The survey was done between 9/15 and 9/19.
It seems to me this is a total loser issue for the GOP.
That is interesting... but still does not really address my primary questions(nor the secondary questions for that matter:~)... but thank you very much though... and I do agree and hope that it is a "loser issue" for the Reps...
I have to go to bed now... it's after midnight for me and I am very tired and sore... sprained my knee(s) at work last week and started physical therapy this am...
G'day to you friends... and G'night for me.
I have to go to bed now... it's after midnight for me and I am very tired and sore... sprained my knee(s) at work last week and started physical therapy this am...
G'day to you friends... and G'night for me.
QUOTE(Bee @ Sep 27 2006, 11:17 AM) [snapback]244373[/snapback]
Fair enough. Having never tortured anything--aside from some good-natured teasing-- I can only offer this:
I have the pdf file of the NYTimes/CBS poll on my desktop. 33 pages of questions. One of the questions and responses was:
The survey was done between 9/15 and 9/19.
It seems to me this is a total loser issue for the GOP.
If we got a decent definitionn which included means that stop well short of permanent damage I'd answer sometimes, but rarely. I don't trust polls that are so general. Maybe if they asked specific acts and durations.
QUOTE(CharlieRay @ Sep 27 2006, 11:35 AM) [snapback]244376[/snapback]
I have to go to bed now... it's after midnight for me and I am very tired and sore... sprained my knee(s) at work last week and started physical therapy this am...
Good luck on that. Be more careful with your typing fingers.
Sweet Dreams Charlie Ray
If we got a decent definitionn which included means that stop well short of permanent damage I'd answer sometimes, but rarely. I don't trust polls that are so general. Maybe if they asked specific acts and durations.
Like Cucifixion?
I really don't get it beasty. Even Bush said "we don't torture." Of course not.
THIS IS AMERICA.
I just don't see what parsing "stress positions and waterboarding" does, but make us look like jerks. Even Colin Powell thinks this nonsense is hurting the Country.
QUOTE(beasty @ Sep 27 2006, 02:40 PM) [snapback]244378[/snapback]
If we got a decent definitionn which included means that stop well short of permanent damage I'd answer sometimes, but rarely. I don't trust polls that are so general. Maybe if they asked specific acts and durations.
Like Cucifixion?
I really don't get it beasty. Even Bush said "we don't torture." Of course not.
THIS IS AMERICA.
I just don't see what parsing "stress positions and waterboarding" does, but make us look like jerks. Even Colin Powell thinks this nonsense is hurting the Country.
Molly Ivins: Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)
Posted on Sep 27, 2006
By Molly Ivins
With a smug stroke of his pen, President Bush is set to wipe out a safeguard against illegal imprisonment that has endured as a cornerstone of legal justice since the Magna Carta.
AUSTIN, Texas—Oh dear. I’m sure he didn’t mean it. In Illinois’ Sixth Congressional District, long represented by Henry Hyde, Republican candidate Peter Roskam accused his Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth, of planning to “cut and run” on Iraq.
Duckworth is a former Army major and chopper pilot who lost both legs in Iraq after her helicopter got hit by an RPG. “I just could not believe he would say that to me,” said Duckworth, who walks on artificial legs and uses a cane. Every election cycle produces some wincers, but how do you apologize for that one?
The legislative equivalent of that remark is the detainee bill now being passed by Congress. Beloveds, this is so much worse than even that pathetic deal reached last Thursday between the White House and Republican Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The White House has since reinserted a number of “technical fixes” that were the point of the putative “compromise.” It leaves the president with the power to decide who is an enemy combatant.
This bill is not a national security issue—this is about torturing helpless human beings without any proof they are our enemies. Perhaps this could be considered if we knew the administration would use the power with enormous care and thoughtfulness. But of the over 700 prisoners sent to Gitmo, only 10 have ever been formally charged with anything. Among other things, this bill is a CYA for torture of the innocent that has already taken place.
Death by torture by Americans was first reported in 2003 in a New York Times article by Carlotta Gall. The military had announced the prisoner died of a heart attack, but when Gall saw the death certificate, written in English and issued by the military, it said the cause of death was homicide. The “heart attack” came after he had been beaten so often on this legs that they had “basically been pulpified,” according to the coroner.
The story of why and how it took the Times so long to print this information is in the current edition of the Columbia Journalism Review. The press in general has been late and slow in reporting torture, so very few Americans have any idea how far it has spread. As is often true in hierarchical, top-down institutions, the orders get passed on in what I call the downward communications exaggeration spiral.
For example, on a newspaper, a top editor may remark casually, “Let’s give the new mayor a chance to see what he can do before we start attacking him.”
This gets passed on as “Don’t touch the mayor unless he really screws up.”
And it ultimately arrives at the reporter level as “We can’t say anything negative about the mayor.”
The version of the detainee bill now in the Senate not only undoes much of the McCain-Warner-Graham work, but it is actually much worse than the administration’s first proposal. In one change, the original compromise language said a suspect had the right to “examine and respond to” all evidence used against him. The three senators said the clause was necessary to avoid secret trials. The bill has now dropped the word “examine” and left only “respond to.”
In another change, a clause said that evidence obtained outside the United States could be admitted in court even if it had been gathered without a search warrant. But the bill now drops the words “outside the United States,” which means prosecutors can ignore American legal standards on warrants.
The bill also expands the definition of an unlawful enemy combatant to cover anyone who has “has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” Quick, define “purposefully and materially.” One person has already been charged with aiding terrorists because he sold a satellite TV package that includes the Hezbollah network.
The bill simply removes a suspect’s right to challenge his detention in court. This is a rule of law that goes back to the Magna Carta in 1215. That pretty much leaves the barn door open.
As Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet dissident, wrote, an intelligence service free to torture soon “degenerates into a playground for sadists.” But not unbridled sadism—you will be relieved that the compromise took out the words permitting interrogation involving “severe pain” and substituted “serious pain,” which is defined as “bodily injury that involves extreme physical pain.”
In July 2003, George Bush said in a speech: “The United States is committed to worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes, whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit.”
Fellow citizens, this bill throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems it necessary—these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law.
I’d like those supporting this evil bill to spare me one affliction: Do not, please, pretend to be shocked by the consequences of this legislation. And do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200609..._habeas_corpus/
Posted on Sep 27, 2006
By Molly Ivins
With a smug stroke of his pen, President Bush is set to wipe out a safeguard against illegal imprisonment that has endured as a cornerstone of legal justice since the Magna Carta.
AUSTIN, Texas—Oh dear. I’m sure he didn’t mean it. In Illinois’ Sixth Congressional District, long represented by Henry Hyde, Republican candidate Peter Roskam accused his Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth, of planning to “cut and run” on Iraq.
Duckworth is a former Army major and chopper pilot who lost both legs in Iraq after her helicopter got hit by an RPG. “I just could not believe he would say that to me,” said Duckworth, who walks on artificial legs and uses a cane. Every election cycle produces some wincers, but how do you apologize for that one?
The legislative equivalent of that remark is the detainee bill now being passed by Congress. Beloveds, this is so much worse than even that pathetic deal reached last Thursday between the White House and Republican Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The White House has since reinserted a number of “technical fixes” that were the point of the putative “compromise.” It leaves the president with the power to decide who is an enemy combatant.
This bill is not a national security issue—this is about torturing helpless human beings without any proof they are our enemies. Perhaps this could be considered if we knew the administration would use the power with enormous care and thoughtfulness. But of the over 700 prisoners sent to Gitmo, only 10 have ever been formally charged with anything. Among other things, this bill is a CYA for torture of the innocent that has already taken place.
Death by torture by Americans was first reported in 2003 in a New York Times article by Carlotta Gall. The military had announced the prisoner died of a heart attack, but when Gall saw the death certificate, written in English and issued by the military, it said the cause of death was homicide. The “heart attack” came after he had been beaten so often on this legs that they had “basically been pulpified,” according to the coroner.
The story of why and how it took the Times so long to print this information is in the current edition of the Columbia Journalism Review. The press in general has been late and slow in reporting torture, so very few Americans have any idea how far it has spread. As is often true in hierarchical, top-down institutions, the orders get passed on in what I call the downward communications exaggeration spiral.
For example, on a newspaper, a top editor may remark casually, “Let’s give the new mayor a chance to see what he can do before we start attacking him.”
This gets passed on as “Don’t touch the mayor unless he really screws up.”
And it ultimately arrives at the reporter level as “We can’t say anything negative about the mayor.”
The version of the detainee bill now in the Senate not only undoes much of the McCain-Warner-Graham work, but it is actually much worse than the administration’s first proposal. In one change, the original compromise language said a suspect had the right to “examine and respond to” all evidence used against him. The three senators said the clause was necessary to avoid secret trials. The bill has now dropped the word “examine” and left only “respond to.”
In another change, a clause said that evidence obtained outside the United States could be admitted in court even if it had been gathered without a search warrant. But the bill now drops the words “outside the United States,” which means prosecutors can ignore American legal standards on warrants.
The bill also expands the definition of an unlawful enemy combatant to cover anyone who has “has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” Quick, define “purposefully and materially.” One person has already been charged with aiding terrorists because he sold a satellite TV package that includes the Hezbollah network.
The bill simply removes a suspect’s right to challenge his detention in court. This is a rule of law that goes back to the Magna Carta in 1215. That pretty much leaves the barn door open.
As Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet dissident, wrote, an intelligence service free to torture soon “degenerates into a playground for sadists.” But not unbridled sadism—you will be relieved that the compromise took out the words permitting interrogation involving “severe pain” and substituted “serious pain,” which is defined as “bodily injury that involves extreme physical pain.”
In July 2003, George Bush said in a speech: “The United States is committed to worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes, whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit.”
Fellow citizens, this bill throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems it necessary—these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law.
I’d like those supporting this evil bill to spare me one affliction: Do not, please, pretend to be shocked by the consequences of this legislation. And do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200609..._habeas_corpus/
QUOTE(beasty @ Sep 27 2006, 12:40 PM) [snapback]244378[/snapback]
If we got a decent definitionn which included means that stop well short of permanent damage I'd answer sometimes, but rarely. I don't trust polls that are so general. Maybe if they asked specific acts and durations.
Good luck on that. Be more careful with your typing fingers.
I see. So your definition is "doesn't leave permanent agony", but screaming and weeping and pleading and making up lies to get you to stop is OK?
So much for the moral high ground.
Senate Kills Habeas Amendment on Torture Bill
By Justin Rood - September 28, 2006, 12:21 PM
The Senate just killed an amendment to ensure federal courts could review the legitimacy of individual' imprisonment on suspicion of involvement in terrorism. The amendment had been proposed by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It is a fundamental protection woven into the fabric of our Nation," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who supported the measure. It was defeated 48-51, largely along party lines.
Former torture victim Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), portrayed as a "maverick" by earlier bucking the White House on the issue of detainee treatment, voted against the amendment. The White House also opposes the changes the amendment would make to the bill. Sens. John Warner (R-VA) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who had also challenged the White House over the bill, joined McCain in voting against the amendment.
The Senate is expected to vote on -- and pass -- the entire bill later today.
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/
Maybe a future congress with some dignity and honor will right this wrong. We have taken a major step backwards in this country. This bill alone shows Republicans are not fit to run anything.
Senate Kills Habeas Amendment on Torture Bill
By Justin Rood - September 28, 2006, 12:21 PM
The Senate just killed an amendment to ensure federal courts could review the legitimacy of individual' imprisonment on suspicion of involvement in terrorism. The amendment had been proposed by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It is a fundamental protection woven into the fabric of our Nation," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who supported the measure. It was defeated 48-51, largely along party lines.
Former torture victim Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), portrayed as a "maverick" by earlier bucking the White House on the issue of detainee treatment, voted against the amendment. The White House also opposes the changes the amendment would make to the bill. Sens. John Warner (R-VA) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who had also challenged the White House over the bill, joined McCain in voting against the amendment.
The Senate is expected to vote on -- and pass -- the entire bill later today.
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/
Maybe a future congress with some dignity and honor will right this wrong. We have taken a major step backwards in this country. This bill alone shows Republicans are not fit to run anything.
Uncomfortably Numb to Torture
As America's politicians, media and citizens get used to wartime abuses, Bush's horrific policies get a pass.
By JoAnn Wypijewski, JOANN WYPIJEWSKI covered the Abu Ghraib trials at Ft. Hood, Texas, for Harper's magazine.
September 30, 2006
A YEAR AGO this week, a military jury convicted Army Reserve Pfc. Lynndie R. England of maltreating detainees. The face of the Abu Ghraib scandal, England is forever fixed in photographs as the girl with the bowl cut and the pixie smile who pointed at Iraqi prisoners while they were forced to masturbate and who held a writhing, naked man by a leash. Before sentencing, the Army prosecutor thundered: "Who can think of a person who has disgraced this uniform more? Who has held the U.S. military up for more dishonor?"
Indeed, it was that uniform — not the breach of immutable standards of decency held by this nation — that put England in the dock and eventually in prison. It was that uniform and nothing else, because if England and the others charged in the scandal had been civilian interrogators instead of military police, they would be among the privileged torturers whom President Bush and members of both parties in Congress are determined to keep on the job and to shield from future prosecution.
Abu Ghraib has become shorthand for the kind of abhorrent behavior that, in the latest discussion about interrogation techniques, nobody ventures to allow. In that sense, Abu Ghraib is the new American standard, a negative one, marking the line that must not be crossed. A positive standard — that is, humane treatment of unarmed prisoners — being inconceivable, debate turns on permissible degrees of inhumanity; "rough stuff," as New York Times columnist David Brooks and others justifying pain say lightly.
So here is the bitter joke: England, the public emblem of torture, was convicted for nothing so awful as what the president and his flank have chosen to protect. Her crime was to smile, to pose, to jeer at naked, powerless men, and to fail to stop their humiliations or to report them afterward. She did not shackle men in stress positions, strip them of their clothes, deny them sleep, force them to stand for hours or days, douse them with icy water, deprive them of heat or food or subject them to incessant noise or screaming.
Despite Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain's compromise, none of those brutalities is expressly outlawed in the legislation that Congress just passed and the president is about to sign.
Such brutalities were regular fare at Abu Ghraib because interrogation, by civilian and military personnel, was regular fare. But interrogation was largely sidestepped in the Abu Ghraib trials, in which prosecutors focused on what soldiers did for "fun," for "laughs," with common criminals "of no value" to U.S. intelligence. The infamous pyramid and sexual mortifications were not part of interrogations, so these formed the centerpiece of criminal charges. The daily application of fear and cold and want and pain — what Spc. Charles A. Graner Jr., the putative ringleader of the scandal at Abu Ghraib, called his job of "terrorizing prisoners" — was an accompaniment to questioning, so it went unpunished.
"We just humiliated them," England said; it could have been worse. For many detainees, it was. Two days before England was photographed laughing at prisoners, Manadel Jamadi died in a shower stall at Abu Ghraib. Army investigators found that he entered the stall under his own power with civilian interrogators said to be from the CIA. Later, soldiers smiled in pictures with his corpse. The interrogators had vanished, and no one was charged.
Congress would never justify murder by interrogators, but it hasn't insisted that anyone be held accountable for Jamadi's death either. There's a similar indifference to accountability in the one case in the Abu Ghraib scandal unavoidably linked to interrogation.
The Army never took a sworn statement from the prisoner who was forced to stand atop a box, draped in a hood and cape and told he would get a shock if he moved. Then the Army conveniently lost him, and though the MPs who improvised his ghoulish torment went to prison, the civilian interrogator who the MPs said instructed them to keep the prisoner awake was never charged. Take away the bogus wires and the iconic costume and this is the kind of treatment the president says is absolutely necessary for our safety.
The bold opposition wags a finger but leaves it to the president to set the rules. Where is the outrage? Like England and the others who went from good to bad, or bad to worse, through acquaintance with cruelty, finally accommodating themselves to it or even administering it, the citizenry, the media and the politicians have become insensible to horror.
Years of conditioning to abuse and war have had a numbing effect. So the president's advocacy of an "alternate set of procedures" for detainees gets a pass. The Democrats' official response, a pass. The McCain compromise, a pass masquerading as courageous dissent. Public reaction to legislating indefinite detention, the admissibility of hearsay, prosecutions based on torture, a pass.
As at Abu Ghraib, up is down, day is night.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-...-opinion-center
As America's politicians, media and citizens get used to wartime abuses, Bush's horrific policies get a pass.
By JoAnn Wypijewski, JOANN WYPIJEWSKI covered the Abu Ghraib trials at Ft. Hood, Texas, for Harper's magazine.
September 30, 2006
A YEAR AGO this week, a military jury convicted Army Reserve Pfc. Lynndie R. England of maltreating detainees. The face of the Abu Ghraib scandal, England is forever fixed in photographs as the girl with the bowl cut and the pixie smile who pointed at Iraqi prisoners while they were forced to masturbate and who held a writhing, naked man by a leash. Before sentencing, the Army prosecutor thundered: "Who can think of a person who has disgraced this uniform more? Who has held the U.S. military up for more dishonor?"
Indeed, it was that uniform — not the breach of immutable standards of decency held by this nation — that put England in the dock and eventually in prison. It was that uniform and nothing else, because if England and the others charged in the scandal had been civilian interrogators instead of military police, they would be among the privileged torturers whom President Bush and members of both parties in Congress are determined to keep on the job and to shield from future prosecution.
Abu Ghraib has become shorthand for the kind of abhorrent behavior that, in the latest discussion about interrogation techniques, nobody ventures to allow. In that sense, Abu Ghraib is the new American standard, a negative one, marking the line that must not be crossed. A positive standard — that is, humane treatment of unarmed prisoners — being inconceivable, debate turns on permissible degrees of inhumanity; "rough stuff," as New York Times columnist David Brooks and others justifying pain say lightly.
So here is the bitter joke: England, the public emblem of torture, was convicted for nothing so awful as what the president and his flank have chosen to protect. Her crime was to smile, to pose, to jeer at naked, powerless men, and to fail to stop their humiliations or to report them afterward. She did not shackle men in stress positions, strip them of their clothes, deny them sleep, force them to stand for hours or days, douse them with icy water, deprive them of heat or food or subject them to incessant noise or screaming.
Despite Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain's compromise, none of those brutalities is expressly outlawed in the legislation that Congress just passed and the president is about to sign.
Such brutalities were regular fare at Abu Ghraib because interrogation, by civilian and military personnel, was regular fare. But interrogation was largely sidestepped in the Abu Ghraib trials, in which prosecutors focused on what soldiers did for "fun," for "laughs," with common criminals "of no value" to U.S. intelligence. The infamous pyramid and sexual mortifications were not part of interrogations, so these formed the centerpiece of criminal charges. The daily application of fear and cold and want and pain — what Spc. Charles A. Graner Jr., the putative ringleader of the scandal at Abu Ghraib, called his job of "terrorizing prisoners" — was an accompaniment to questioning, so it went unpunished.
"We just humiliated them," England said; it could have been worse. For many detainees, it was. Two days before England was photographed laughing at prisoners, Manadel Jamadi died in a shower stall at Abu Ghraib. Army investigators found that he entered the stall under his own power with civilian interrogators said to be from the CIA. Later, soldiers smiled in pictures with his corpse. The interrogators had vanished, and no one was charged.
Congress would never justify murder by interrogators, but it hasn't insisted that anyone be held accountable for Jamadi's death either. There's a similar indifference to accountability in the one case in the Abu Ghraib scandal unavoidably linked to interrogation.
The Army never took a sworn statement from the prisoner who was forced to stand atop a box, draped in a hood and cape and told he would get a shock if he moved. Then the Army conveniently lost him, and though the MPs who improvised his ghoulish torment went to prison, the civilian interrogator who the MPs said instructed them to keep the prisoner awake was never charged. Take away the bogus wires and the iconic costume and this is the kind of treatment the president says is absolutely necessary for our safety.
The bold opposition wags a finger but leaves it to the president to set the rules. Where is the outrage? Like England and the others who went from good to bad, or bad to worse, through acquaintance with cruelty, finally accommodating themselves to it or even administering it, the citizenry, the media and the politicians have become insensible to horror.
Years of conditioning to abuse and war have had a numbing effect. So the president's advocacy of an "alternate set of procedures" for detainees gets a pass. The Democrats' official response, a pass. The McCain compromise, a pass masquerading as courageous dissent. Public reaction to legislating indefinite detention, the admissibility of hearsay, prosecutions based on torture, a pass.
As at Abu Ghraib, up is down, day is night.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-...-opinion-center
What Waterboarding Looks like.
Photos here: (scroll down)
http://www.davidcorn.com/
In an email to me, Blank explained the significance of the photos. He wrote:
The crux of the issue before Congress can be boiled down to a simple question: Is waterboarding torture? Anybody who considers this practice to be "torture lite" or merely a "tough technique" might want to take a trip to Phnom Penh. The Khymer Rouge were adept at torture, and there was nothing "lite" about their methods. Incidentally, the waterboard in these photo wasn't merely one among many torture devices highlighted at the prison museum. It was one of only two devices singled out for highlighting (the other was another form of water-torture--a tank that could be filled with water or other liquids; I have photos of that too.) There was an outdoor device as well, one the Khymer Rouge didn't have to construct: chin-up bars. (The prison where the museum is located had been a school before the Khymer Rouge took over). These bars were used for "stress positions"-- another practice employed under current US guidelines. At the Khymer Rouge prison, there is a tank of water next to the bars. It was used to revive prisoners for more torture when they passed out after being placed in stress positions.
The similarity between practices used by the Khymer Rouge and those currently being debated by Congress isn't a coincidence. As has been amply documented ("The New Yorker" had an excellent piece, and there have been others), many of the "enhanced techniques" came to the CIA and military interrogators via the SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape] schools, where US military personnel are trained to resist torture if they are captured by the enemy. The specific types of abuse they're taught to withstand are those that were used by our Cold War adversaries. Why is this relevant to the current debate? Because the torture techniques of North Korea, North Vietnam, the Soviet Union and its proxies--the states where US military personnel might have faced torture--were NOT designed to elicit truthful information. These techniques were designed to elicit CONFESSIONS. That's what the Khymer Rouge et al were after with their waterboarding, not truthful information.
Bottom line: Not only do waterboarding and the other types of torture currently being debated put us in company with the most vile regimes of the past half-century; they're also designed specifically to generate a (usually false) confession, not to obtain genuinely actionable intel. This isn't a matter of sacrificing moral values to keep us safe; it's sacrificing moral values for no purpose whatsoever.
These photos are important because most of us have never seen an actual, real-life waterboard. The press typically describes it in the most anodyne ways: a device meant to "simulate drowning" or to "make the prisoner believe he might drown." But the Khymer Rouge were no jokesters, and they didn't tailor their abuse to the dictates of the Geneva Convention. They-- like so many brutal regimes--made waterboarding one of their primary tools for a simple reason: it is one of the most viciously effective forms of torture ever devised.
The legislation backed by Bush and congressional Republicans would explicitly permit the use of evidence obtained through waterboarding and other forms of torture. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and other top al Qaeda leaders have reportedly been subjected to this technique. They would certainly note--or try to note--that at any trial. But with this legislation, the White House is seeking to declare the use of waterboarding (at least in the past) as a legitimate practice of the US government.
The House of Representatives voted for Bush's bill on Thursday, 253 to 168 (with 34 Democrats siding with the president and only seven Republicans breaking with their party's leader). The Senate is expected to vote on the bill today. Its members should consider Blank's photos and arguments before they, too, go off the deep end.
******
Too late. They did.
Photos here: (scroll down)
http://www.davidcorn.com/
In an email to me, Blank explained the significance of the photos. He wrote:
The crux of the issue before Congress can be boiled down to a simple question: Is waterboarding torture? Anybody who considers this practice to be "torture lite" or merely a "tough technique" might want to take a trip to Phnom Penh. The Khymer Rouge were adept at torture, and there was nothing "lite" about their methods. Incidentally, the waterboard in these photo wasn't merely one among many torture devices highlighted at the prison museum. It was one of only two devices singled out for highlighting (the other was another form of water-torture--a tank that could be filled with water or other liquids; I have photos of that too.) There was an outdoor device as well, one the Khymer Rouge didn't have to construct: chin-up bars. (The prison where the museum is located had been a school before the Khymer Rouge took over). These bars were used for "stress positions"-- another practice employed under current US guidelines. At the Khymer Rouge prison, there is a tank of water next to the bars. It was used to revive prisoners for more torture when they passed out after being placed in stress positions.
The similarity between practices used by the Khymer Rouge and those currently being debated by Congress isn't a coincidence. As has been amply documented ("The New Yorker" had an excellent piece, and there have been others), many of the "enhanced techniques" came to the CIA and military interrogators via the SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape] schools, where US military personnel are trained to resist torture if they are captured by the enemy. The specific types of abuse they're taught to withstand are those that were used by our Cold War adversaries. Why is this relevant to the current debate? Because the torture techniques of North Korea, North Vietnam, the Soviet Union and its proxies--the states where US military personnel might have faced torture--were NOT designed to elicit truthful information. These techniques were designed to elicit CONFESSIONS. That's what the Khymer Rouge et al were after with their waterboarding, not truthful information.
Bottom line: Not only do waterboarding and the other types of torture currently being debated put us in company with the most vile regimes of the past half-century; they're also designed specifically to generate a (usually false) confession, not to obtain genuinely actionable intel. This isn't a matter of sacrificing moral values to keep us safe; it's sacrificing moral values for no purpose whatsoever.
These photos are important because most of us have never seen an actual, real-life waterboard. The press typically describes it in the most anodyne ways: a device meant to "simulate drowning" or to "make the prisoner believe he might drown." But the Khymer Rouge were no jokesters, and they didn't tailor their abuse to the dictates of the Geneva Convention. They-- like so many brutal regimes--made waterboarding one of their primary tools for a simple reason: it is one of the most viciously effective forms of torture ever devised.
The legislation backed by Bush and congressional Republicans would explicitly permit the use of evidence obtained through waterboarding and other forms of torture. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and other top al Qaeda leaders have reportedly been subjected to this technique. They would certainly note--or try to note--that at any trial. But with this legislation, the White House is seeking to declare the use of waterboarding (at least in the past) as a legitimate practice of the US government.
The House of Representatives voted for Bush's bill on Thursday, 253 to 168 (with 34 Democrats siding with the president and only seven Republicans breaking with their party's leader). The Senate is expected to vote on the bill today. Its members should consider Blank's photos and arguments before they, too, go off the deep end.
******
Too late. They did.
no doubt
The Right and Deliberation
30 Sep 2006 09:59 am
A reader says it better than I could:
On issues as grave as habeas corpus and torture, these people couldn't even call for a delay to make sure we knew what we were doing. That's how deferent they are to politics before principle.
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/
Yep. Loyalty to the party trumps everything. EVERYTHING. Even the country. They didn't even have time to see what it said.
McCain, Graham and Specter rolled over and betrayed the oaths they took to defend the Constitution.
This shows me moderate Republicans cannot be trusted either.
30 Sep 2006 09:59 am
A reader says it better than I could:
You mention Glenn Reynolds' concern about applying the new torture law to citizens, but there's a bigger point to be made here. One of the many problems with this law is the way it was forced through Congress. Until Thursday, nobody even knew what the language said. They held no committee hearings. They just wrote it up, forced it through, and passed it before the Congressional session ended, because Bush wanted to ensure he could muck up the definition of a war crime before the Democrats took over Congress and made it difficult to pass a bill, and because Karl Rove thought this would be a great issue to run on in the 2006 elections.
The point is, conservatives and right-leaning libertarians like Reynolds who express concern over this or that provision in the bill (even if they are much more amenable to the major goals of the legislation) really have no standing to say a thing about it, because I saw no protests from any of those websites regarding the process by which this bill was being shepherded through the Congress, which anyone with any intelligence should have realized was going to result in a bill with a bunch of bad provisions in it.
All they would have had to say is "let's think about this a bit, hold some hearings, write a good bill". But the problem is, doing that would have kicked it past the election. Ergo, no issue for the Republicans to run on, and possibly no Republican Congress after the election to attempt to immunize Bush and his subordinates from war crimes liability.
These folks, by their silence, cared more about the political aspects of this than they did about the legislative process. And then they have the gall to say that they think that some of the provisions of the bill went too far.
On issues as grave as habeas corpus and torture, these people couldn't even call for a delay to make sure we knew what we were doing. That's how deferent they are to politics before principle.
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/
Yep. Loyalty to the party trumps everything. EVERYTHING. Even the country. They didn't even have time to see what it said.
McCain, Graham and Specter rolled over and betrayed the oaths they took to defend the Constitution.
This shows me moderate Republicans cannot be trusted either.
What My Father Saw at Nuremberg
Sixty years ago today, my father watched the U.S. win the battle of ideas. Have we lost our way?
By Christopher Dodd, SEN. CHRISTOPHER DODD (D-CONN.) is a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
October 1, 2006
SIXTY YEARS AGO today, at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany, the verdicts were read in a trial that will forever define the punishment of war criminals. One by one, the 22 top surviving Nazi officers of Adolf Hitler were sentenced. By the time the gavel sounded, three had been acquitted, seven sent to prison and 12 condemned to death.
One of the people in court that day was my father, 38-year-old attorney Thomas Dodd, who was the No. 2 prosecutor for the United States behind Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. My father always considered Nuremberg to be the most meaningful experience of his life.
My father wrote more than 400 letters to my mother from Nuremberg. Many are devoted to how much he missed his wife and children; others to the Nazis he had met.
But some of his harshest words were reserved for the Russians, who had little interest in a fair trial. In one letter, he tells the story of a toast offered by a visiting Soviet dignitary, who raised a glass and said: "May the road for these war criminals from the courthouse to the grave be a very short one."
"I winced," my father wrote, "and I could see that Judge [John J.] Parker, the American alternative, was certainly embarrassed."
But of course, a quick trial that led to quick executions was the temptation. The world had seen a monstrous regime try to conquer the world. It had seen them take the lives of more than tens of millions of men, women and children.
Why not just give in to vengeance? Why not just shoot them, as Winston Churchill wanted to do? Why not just succumb to the law of power politics and impose our will without any regard to principle? Why not just give in to violence, which was certainly within our ability and, many argued, within our right?
Why not? Because the United States has always stood for something more.
When we entered World War II, we did not fight for land or for treasure — we fought for an idea. The idea that laws should rule the land, not men; that the principles of justice embodied in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution — of due process, of innocence until proven guilty, of the right to a fair trial — do not get suspended for vengeance.
At Nuremberg, we rejected the certainty of execution for the uncertainty of a trial. The test was one of principle over power, and the United States passed.
President Harry Truman understood that our nation's ability to bring about a world of peace and justice was rooted not in our military might but in our moral authority; not on the ability to compel people with our tanks and planes but to convince them that our values and our ideals were right. He understood that our ability to succeed in spreading American values of freedom and human rights are only as effective as our willingness to uphold them.
Over the last six decades, that moral authority helped persuade more than half the nations of the world to embrace freedom and free markets. But now that they are walking with us, why are we walking away from them?
Today, we debate secret prisons, suspension of habeas corpus, warrant-less searches and wiretaps. The president even asks us to reinterpret the Geneva accords to sanction the torture of enemy prisoners.
Just as the word "Nuremberg" once defined the United States' moral authority and commitment to justice, what we risk today is that, one day, the loss of that moral authority and a commitment to injustice may also be defined by a single word: "Guantanamo."
Once again, the question is being asked: Why not just give in to vengeance and show our enemies less mercy than they showed their victims? Why not just abandon due process and the rule of law and the right to a fair trial?
Because the United States stands for something more.
Now, as then, this nation should never tailor its eternal principles to the conflict of the moment, because if we do, we will be walking in the footsteps of the enemies we despise. By abandoning the rule of law, as Congress did last week, we will lose much more than what we gain.
In the end, it's not about them — it's about us. It's about staying true to the values and principles that have always made our nation unique.
We would do well to remember the words of Justice Jackson: "We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-...inion-rightrail
Sixty years ago today, my father watched the U.S. win the battle of ideas. Have we lost our way?
By Christopher Dodd, SEN. CHRISTOPHER DODD (D-CONN.) is a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
October 1, 2006
SIXTY YEARS AGO today, at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany, the verdicts were read in a trial that will forever define the punishment of war criminals. One by one, the 22 top surviving Nazi officers of Adolf Hitler were sentenced. By the time the gavel sounded, three had been acquitted, seven sent to prison and 12 condemned to death.
One of the people in court that day was my father, 38-year-old attorney Thomas Dodd, who was the No. 2 prosecutor for the United States behind Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. My father always considered Nuremberg to be the most meaningful experience of his life.
My father wrote more than 400 letters to my mother from Nuremberg. Many are devoted to how much he missed his wife and children; others to the Nazis he had met.
But some of his harshest words were reserved for the Russians, who had little interest in a fair trial. In one letter, he tells the story of a toast offered by a visiting Soviet dignitary, who raised a glass and said: "May the road for these war criminals from the courthouse to the grave be a very short one."
"I winced," my father wrote, "and I could see that Judge [John J.] Parker, the American alternative, was certainly embarrassed."
But of course, a quick trial that led to quick executions was the temptation. The world had seen a monstrous regime try to conquer the world. It had seen them take the lives of more than tens of millions of men, women and children.
Why not just give in to vengeance? Why not just shoot them, as Winston Churchill wanted to do? Why not just succumb to the law of power politics and impose our will without any regard to principle? Why not just give in to violence, which was certainly within our ability and, many argued, within our right?
Why not? Because the United States has always stood for something more.
When we entered World War II, we did not fight for land or for treasure — we fought for an idea. The idea that laws should rule the land, not men; that the principles of justice embodied in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution — of due process, of innocence until proven guilty, of the right to a fair trial — do not get suspended for vengeance.
At Nuremberg, we rejected the certainty of execution for the uncertainty of a trial. The test was one of principle over power, and the United States passed.
President Harry Truman understood that our nation's ability to bring about a world of peace and justice was rooted not in our military might but in our moral authority; not on the ability to compel people with our tanks and planes but to convince them that our values and our ideals were right. He understood that our ability to succeed in spreading American values of freedom and human rights are only as effective as our willingness to uphold them.
Over the last six decades, that moral authority helped persuade more than half the nations of the world to embrace freedom and free markets. But now that they are walking with us, why are we walking away from them?
Today, we debate secret prisons, suspension of habeas corpus, warrant-less searches and wiretaps. The president even asks us to reinterpret the Geneva accords to sanction the torture of enemy prisoners.
Just as the word "Nuremberg" once defined the United States' moral authority and commitment to justice, what we risk today is that, one day, the loss of that moral authority and a commitment to injustice may also be defined by a single word: "Guantanamo."
Once again, the question is being asked: Why not just give in to vengeance and show our enemies less mercy than they showed their victims? Why not just abandon due process and the rule of law and the right to a fair trial?
Because the United States stands for something more.
Now, as then, this nation should never tailor its eternal principles to the conflict of the moment, because if we do, we will be walking in the footsteps of the enemies we despise. By abandoning the rule of law, as Congress did last week, we will lose much more than what we gain.
In the end, it's not about them — it's about us. It's about staying true to the values and principles that have always made our nation unique.
We would do well to remember the words of Justice Jackson: "We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-...inion-rightrail
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.