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Forget The Trial Get The Rope: Bush Approved The Torture!!! |
Current rating: 0 |
by gdy
(No verified email address) |
09 May 2004
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While the shutter captured the gruesome horror in graphic detail, it missed capturing the full scope of the incident, as did CBS. This was not an isolated incident. It was not the result of a few rogues. Rather this incident was the result of careful long-term planning. In fact Bush and every other high official of this administration approved of the torture and we have their own words on that |
May 9, 2004
From the Streets of Little Beirut
Glen Yeadon
Appalling, shocking, repulsive are some of the words used to describe the pictures taken by U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqis. With a flick of a camera's shutter CBS's Sixty Minutes II had captured the essence of one of this war's dirty little secrets. The report jerked the world's collective conscience to attention and focused on the appalling behavior of U.S. troops in Iraq as the photos of the torture taking place at Abu Ghraib prison aired freely around the globe, except in two countries. In Iraq the U.S. controlled media banned the airing of the photos and in the U.S. the distribution was severely limited.
Repercussions followed immediately as the Bush administration desperately tried to contain the damage. On the first day after the airing of the photos Bush feigned a personal disgust of the torture during a White House press briefing. A general, a sergeant and some privates were dismissed and face possible charges. The administration blamed the incident on a few rogues who lacked proper training and claimed it was an isolated incident. The Pentagon appointed the general who was in charge of Camp X-ray to take over managing of the prison in Iraq. Later in the week Bush was forced to apologize. Everyday brought new revelations. By the end of the week the dust still had not settled as Seymour Hersh revealed the existence of a hitherto secret army report by Army Major General Antonio Taguba. The report is criminally damaging to this administration. Bush claims he has not seen the report and blamed Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld for failing to show him the report.
While the shutter captured the gruesome horror in graphic detail, it missed capturing the full scope of the incident, as did CBS. This was not an isolated incident. It was not the result of a few rogues. Rather this incident was the result of careful long-term planning. In fact Bush and every other high official of this administration approved of the torture and we have their own words on that. The full scope leads down a dark trail, involving CIA mind control programs, child abuse/pedophile control rings, Nazi scientists and the vital recognition of the Bush family's willfuland voluntary association for more than 80 years with Nazi elements.
Within days of 9/11 members of the Bush administration including Bush proposed the use of torture. They claimed because 9/11 was an act of terrorism the Geneva Convention did not apply because terrorist suspects were not prisoners of war instead in an unprecedented form of Texas style verbal gerrymandering suspects were to be classified as enemy combatants. Even in the shocked post 9/11 environment this raised a few eyebrows among the liberals and those that value our constitutional rights. In fact they even went further in supporting the assassinations of suspects that could not be captured
This is the real story behind the torture reports the media has left out. For those that still fail to remember how this administration approved torture I suggest a trip to the local library and reading the immediate post 9/11newspapers. You will find that all the top officials Bush, Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Powell and others approved the use of torture on terrorist suspects.
This incident was by no means an isolated. A quick Google search of the web will reveal reports of torture and mistreatment of prisoners as early as January 2002. In a February 2002 article appearing in the Guardian, Wayne Madsen a former U.S. navy intelligence officer told the Guardian the US was using two methods of torture. The first he referred to as "lite" torture or psychological torture. (Note this is the torture method linked to mind control and child abuse and will appear in an article of a later date.) The second method is "full-blown" torture.
In this second method the turns the prisoners over to a third country that has no limits on torture for interrogation. The interrogation proceeds oftentimes with an American overseeing the torture. Some prisoners have been summarily executed after the interrogation. The procedure of turning the prisoner over to a third country for interrogation is known as 'rendition.'
On March 11, 2002 the Washington Post published an article entitled "US Behind Secret Transfer of Terror Suspects." The article quoted an U.S. diplomat saying, "After September 11, these sorts of movements have been occurring all the time. It allows us to get information from terrorists in a way we can’t do on US soil." The article reports that "Since Sept. 11, the US government has secretly transported dozens of people suspected of links to terrorists to countries other than the United States, bypassing extradition procedures and legal formalities, according to Western diplomats and intelligence sources." The article continues "The suspects have been taken to countries, including Egypt and Jordan, whose intelligence services have close ties to the CIA and where they can be subjected to interrogation tactics—including torture and threats to families—that are illegal in the United States, the sources said. In some cases, US intelligence agents remain closely involved in the interrogation, the sources said."
Moreover, this is exactly the procedure US Immigration officials used in deporting Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen to Jordan and then on to Syria. The hapless Canadian was waiting for a connecting flight to Canada after returning from Switzerland when immigration officials seized him. He reported being beaten in Jordan and then taken to Syria where he endured ten months of torture.
The unconstitutional Patriotic Act made it possible for immigration authorities to deport Mr Arar. Furthermore, the act makes it possible for the US to take similar actions against US citizens. In fact, the act forfeits many of our freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. If authorities claim that a citizen is a terrorist or engaged in terrorist actions then the person has no right to a lawyer, no right to bail, no protection against unreasonable searches and can be held indefinitely without charges being filed.
Bush has followed the same path Hitler took. The Nazis first passed euthanasia laws before murdering the feebleminded. The passed the Nuremberg laws before persecuting the Jews. The Patriotic Act is America's Nuremberg law. It is only one example of many of steps the Bush administration has taken to avoid criminal charges. Another example is the Bush administration insistence that those held in Camp X-ray and Abu Ghraib prison are enemy combatant and not prisoners of war. The stark reality of such labeling is nothing more than a mere play on words. US law has already established that these captives are prisoners of war by case law.
The case establishing the status of "civilian combatants,"" terrorists" or whatever euphemism one wishes to use as prisoners of war comes from a case during the Civil War when a Confederate ship was seized. The sailors captured were taken to New York and were regarded, as the today's equivalent of terrorists since the US did not recognize the Confederate States as a country. The founder of Sullivan and Cromwell successfully defended the prisoners fixing their status as prisoners of war and saved them from hanging.
There are many examples of the Bush administration's collusion to avoid war criminal charges. Perhaps, the best example comes the Congress's passage of the Serviceman Protection Act introduced in congress by their cronies Tom Delay and Jesse Helms. The bill calls for an automatic invasion of the idyllic land of windmills and tulips. What raised the ire of the Bush administration against the stoic Dutch was simply Holland is home of The Hague and the World Court. While the bill pretends to protect US servicemen such as the privates charged with torture from a trial before the World Court, the bill is merely protection for administration officials. The World Court does not prosecute cases against military personnel when their country does. Thus those reservists charged with torture have nothing to fear from the World Court as long as the US brings them to trial which seems assured. The real protection from the bill extends to protecting cabinet level officials and the president and vice president.
Furthermore, the Bush administration has bullied other countries into withdrawing their support for the World Court by using foreign aid as a club.
This leaves us with what the proper course of action should be. The low ranking escape goats have already said the CIA and even a civilian contractor ordered them to soften up the prisoners. In fact, Taguba's report named the civilian contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI International. The report recommended the army fire and reprimand him. While the Nuremberg trials clearly established following orders is no defense for committing war crimes there is some validity to the claim at the lowest level of the command chain. Certainly they should be held accountable and sentenced accordingly.
However, the real war criminals lie at the top of command chain at the cabinet level and above. When the President, the Vice President and cabinet secretaries recommend committing war crimes it is an impeachable offense. Congress should be working posthaste in preparing the articles of impeachment against all of those involved including Bush and Cheney. Moreover, impeachment is not sufficient alone. They need to face serious charges of war crimes. The Allies made a serious mistake in Nuremberg in not hanging enough high-ranking Nazis. Let's not repeat the mistake.
For more on the Bush Nazi Connection go to
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/noon.html
Please check my site on a regular basis for the followup article on the links between the Bush family, their network of loyalist criminals, the intrigue of the Nazi war criminals imported after WW2 to staff the psychological warfare operations of the intelligence agencies and the common racist eugenics theology that was funded by the Bush/Harrimanenterprise. It is not without coincidence that this White House and its heavily influenced PNAC agenda are linked. This link is the genome specific bioweapons called for in policy papers published by the PNAC members. That is racial warfare and we all need to be well educated to the dark path these men have chosen. |
See also:
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/torture.htm
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This work is in the public domain |
Comments
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Re: Forget The Trial Get The Rope: Bush Approved The Torture!!! |
by NRA4Freedom
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 May 2004
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LOL! |
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From Texas to Abu Ghraib: The Bush Legacy of Prisoner Abuse |
by Heather Wokusch
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 May 2004
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While administration officials express shock and outrage over allegations of the torture and murder of Iraqi prisoners by US forces, a deeper look into Bush's stateside prison-system record shows disturbing similarities.
Despite Taguba's report detailing US "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" of Iraqi detainees, the President declared, "We acted, and there are no longer mass graves and torture rooms and rape rooms in Iraq."
In George Bush's America, denial about inmate mistreatment runs similarly rampant. As Texas governor, Bush oversaw the executions of 152 prisoners and thus became the most-killing governor in the history of the United States. Ethnic minorities, many of whom did not have access to proper legal representation, comprised a large percentage of those Bush put to death, and in one particularly egregious example, Bush executed an immigrant who hadn't even seen a consular official from his own country (as is required by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the US was a signatory). Bush's explanation: "Texas did not sign the Vienna Convention, so why should we be subject to it?"
Governor Bush also flouted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by choosing to execute juvenile offenders, a practice shared by only Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Significantly, in 1998 a full 92% of the juvenile offenders on Bush's death row were ethnic minorities.
Conditions inside Texan prisons during Bush's reign were so notorious (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=5064485) that federal Judge William Wayne Justice wrote, "Many inmates credibly testified to the existence of violence, rape and extortion in the prison system and about their own suffering from such abysmal conditions."
In September 1996, for example, a videotaped raid on inmates at a county jail in Texas showed guards using stun guns and an attack dog on prisoners, who were later dragged face-down back to their cells. Funding of mental health programs during Bush's reign was so poor that Texan prisons had a sizeable number of mentally-impaired inmates; defying international human rights standards, these inmates ended up on death row. A prisoner named Emile Duhamel, for example, with severe psychological disabilities (http://www.amnestyusa.org/education/lessonplans/dp8_torture.html) and an IQ of 56, died in his Texan death-row jail cell in July 1998. Authorities blamed "natural causes" but a lack of air conditioning in cells that topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit in a summer heat wave may have killed Duhamel instead. How many other Texan prisoners died of such neglect during Bush's governorship is unclear.
As president, Bush presides over a prison population topping 2 million people, giving America the dubious distinction of having a higher percentage of its citizens behind bars than any other country. When considering that the US has three times more prisoners per capita than Iran and seven times more than Germany, the nation looks more like a Gulag than the Land of the Free.
Abu Ghraib has left administration officials falling over themselves with protestations of compassion, but it's worth remembering that the Bush White House has fought hard against the International Convention Against Torture (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/aug2002/tort-a05.shtml).
It's not difficult to see why: if even a fraction of Bush's devastating legacy with Texan prisoners has been transferred to the US prison system as a whole, then the scandal over Abu Ghraib will seem like child's play.
The White House also wants to stifle investigation into the roughly 760 aliens (mainly Muslim men) the US government rounded up post-911, ostensibly for immigration violations. Amnesty International reports 911 detainees have suffered "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse by some corrections officers" and a denial of "basic human rights." (http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510792003?open&of=ENG-USA)
Then of course, there's Guantanamo, where the US is holding hundreds of detainees in top secrecy and without access to courts, legal counsel or family visits. Add to that the roughly 1000 civilians the US imprisons in Afghanistan, the 10,000 civilians thought to be detained in Iraq and who knows how many others across the globe, and it looks as if incarceration is the nation's best export.
But blame can't stop with Bush. A recent CNN poll asking "Is torture ever justified during interrogation?" yielded 47% of respondents answering in the affirmative, which explains why there hasn't been much stateside outrage over prisoner neglect in the past. It's that Faustian with-us-or-against-us mentality rearing its ugly head once again, promising safety but tempting us to dehumanize others and lose our souls in the process.
Heather Wokusch is a free-lance writer, and can be reached via her web site: www.heatherwokusch.com . Heather's latest project is "A Woman's Political Primer: 100 Easy Steps to Owning Your Power and Making a Difference" to be released in the fall. |
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