war crimes

America’s long night into torture

by

UnknownTorture is universally condemned, and whatever its actual practice, no country openly advocates  for the use of torture.

Torture is illegal under both U.S. statutory criminal law, and several international treaties and conventions of war to which the U.S. is not only a signatory to the agreement, but was the principle author and proponent of the agreement.

Torture is illegal. Period. Stop.

Despite this, the Bush-Cheney regime not only concocted convoluted legal theories to justify illegal torture, i.e., the Torture Memos, but engaged in illegal torture in violation of U.S. and international law.

The nonpartisan Constitution Project, a legal research and advocacy group, conducted an independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it. U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes.

A 6,700 page report by the bipartisan United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)’s Detention and Interrogation Program, and its use of various forms of torture on detainees also “concludes that CIA abuses were far more brutal, systematic, and widespread than previously reported; that many of the CIA’s interrogation techniques went beyond even those authorized by the Justice Department; and that the CIA began using the techniques long before they had obtained authorization for them.” US: Senate Report Slams CIA Torture, Lies.

Read more

Krugman: The Iraq war was worse than a mistake, it was a crime

by

The Beltway media villagers have all decided that the framing of the question — in order to extricate themselves from their own complicity — should be “would you have invaded Iraq, knowing what we know now?” The premise of the question presupposes that decisions were made in good faith based upon “faulty” intelligence. In other words, Iraq was a “mistake.”

That is complete bullshit. There was solid reporting at the time questioning and undermining the Bush administration’s case for war from McClatchy News and Scripps Howard, and numerous international news sources. There was solid evidence that the case for war was based upon fabricated “cooked” intelligence. The American people were being lied to, and it was reported at the time.

krugman.pngBut the so-called “gatekeepers” of the mainstream corporate news media all chose to ignore this countervailing reporting for the Bush administration’s narrative (see the New York Times’ Judith Miller, for example) because they made an editorial decision to cheer lead for a Neocon war of adventure in Iraq, the consequences of which we are still living with today.

Paul Krugman today in a must-read column destroys the media’s framing of the question. Errors and Lies:

Thanks to Jeb Bush, we may finally have the frank discussion of the Iraq invasion we should have had a decade ago.

But many influential people — not just Mr. Bush — would prefer that we not have that discussion. There’s a palpable sense right now of the political and media elite trying to draw a line under the subject. Yes, the narrative goes, we now know that invading Iraq was a terrible mistake, and it’s about time that everyone admits it. Now let’s move on.

Read more

New York Times calls for the prosecution of Bush-Cheney regime torturers

by

I believe that the New York Times is the first major U.S. publication to call for the prosecution of the Bush-Cheney regime torturers. Of course, the Times is also guilty of propaganda by Judith Miller and others at the Times in support of the unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq — also a war crime under the Nuremberg Principles — but this is at least a good start. Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses:

Since the day President Obama took office, he has failed to bring to justice anyone responsible for the torture of terrorism suspects — an official government program conceived and carried out in the years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

rice.cheney.bush.rumsfeld

He did allow his Justice Department to investigate the C.I.A.’s destruction of videotapes of torture sessions and those who may have gone beyond the torture techniques authorized by President George W. Bush. But the investigation did not lead to any charges being filed, or even any accounting of why they were not filed.

Mr. Obama has said multiple times that “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” as though the two were incompatible. They are not. The nation cannot move forward in any meaningful way without coming to terms, legally and morally, with the abhorrent acts that were authorized, given a false patina of legality, and committed by American men and women from the highest levels of government on down.

Read more

WWRRD? Prosecute the individuals who authorized or engaged in illegal torture

by

Screenshot from 2014-12-12 10:23:50Republicans have made Ronald Reagan into a false idol whom they worship — the mythologized version of Ronaldus Magnus in the conservative media entertainment complex mind you, not the actual man or the reality of what he actually stood for.

In the “debate” over the use of illegal torture by the CIA as authorized and approved by members of the Bush-Cheney regime, I find it curious that no Republican is asking “What would Ronald Reagan do?” (WWRRD).

The reason they do not ask is because the modern-day Republican Party is not your father’s GOP. They do not like the answer that their sainted Ronnie Reagan actually provided them.

Read more

Sen. Mark Udall resists call to read the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture into the Congressional Record

by

udallportrait2Senator Mark Udall (D-CO) was petitioned by more than  200,000 petition signatures  from Americans to read the 6,300 page classified version of the Senate Intelligence Report on CIA torture into the Congressional record, similar to what Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK) did, reading the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record in 1971 (with no one present to object to unanimous consent in the early morning hours, Sen. Gravel moved to insert the 4,100 pages of the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee).

The following day, the Supreme Court’s New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the New York Times and Washington Post, which resumed publication of the Pentagon Papers.

So far, Sen. Udall has resisted reading the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on CIA torture into the Congressional Record, preferring to work through “regular order” for now, but keeping his options open. Charles Pierce at Esquire reports, Mark Udall Had Something To Get Off His Chest:

Outgoing Senator Mark Udall got up in the Senate yesterday, and while he didn’t enter the entire 6000 pages of the Senate’s torture report into the record, the way I think he should have, he unlimbered himself sufficiently — It’s being called a “career-defining” speech, albeit one delivered to a largely empty chamber — that I suspect the mandarins of the security state, and their acolytes in the legislature and in my business, will shortly be rending their garments. In fact, that already may have started.

Read more