Yes but Obama is quickly changing that.
Good!
The US public realised the faults, and opted for a change. Why are we defending the clearly failed policies of previous administration?
10 'torture' techniques blessed by Bush
- Thread starter sammsky1
- Start date
Good!
The US public realised the faults, and opted for a change. Why are we defending the clearly failed policies of previous administration?
Its actually very little when contrasted to what it could be if we were flagrantly attacking civilians.
I'm not defending the Bush administration, just the value of obtaining information from terror suspects to prevent future attacks.
Yeah 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians without targetting them.
You really know your material don't you ?
Most deaths in Iraq are a result of Iraqi blowing themselves up.
Which happened all the time before the invasion of course.
Cleary not worked. Terrorists atrocities have increased many folds in the last eight years, not you may argue in US mainland, but certainly against US interests, it's allies, and has destabalised whole regions.
I've yet to see any compelling arguments in this thread. The main point of interrogation is to obtain information from to detainees in order to thwart future attacks. The Government's primary responsibility is to protect its citizens.
There is a difference between torture when there is a direct and imminent threat and you have an actual member of a cell, and what was done in AbuGhraib and Guantanamo, which has little to do with terrorism in US.
Please tell me, what information did the guy with the hood on his head with electrodes attached to him, provide that saved me from a terrorist attack?
Rumour has it he knew the Colonel's secret recipe.
I'm not directing my comments to anything having to do with Abu Ghraib.
I am opposed to torture like you, but not for this reason. Sometimes causing harm to innocents accidentally can be justified in the scheme of things. For example, I think there can be such a thing as a necessary or just war, and in such a war some innocents will unavoidable be harmed or killed, albeit regrettable.
I am mainly opposed to torture due to concerns over the reliability of the information gained and the fact it is so open to misuse for purposes other than gaining information. As well as the obvious natural recoil from inflicting such a thing on another person.
Supporters of the death penalty speak the same language.
I would hazard a guess some of them didnt do anything wrong.
Valid point. However, that means you place the US on an equal pedestal as those countries who facilitate torture. I, for one, always thought of the 'western nations' as an example of how things should be done. By engaging in such acts we are no better than what we fight. Especially considering that many detainees are being held without charges being laid.
Just because it is outside your definition of torture doesn't mean it isn't torture.
Given how you've decided the world should go by your definition of torture then this is case of the pot calling the kettle black.
selfish - You care only about the USA and not the human race as a whole. I bet if truth be told, you care mainly about yourself first and foremost because you ability to reason with others is zero. Even though you are really just a WUM, most WUM's I've seen crack at some point and show their humanity.
If you were such a champion of freedom and justice why aren't you trying to convince us to go into Darfur and other regions where atrocities take place?conniving - You support actions that violate the Geneva convention and you say only lefties are conniving.
vindictive - You support torture of individuals whose guilt has not been proven. Meaning that since a part of the culture has wronged you, you feel it just to wrong them back even if you attack the innocent parts of said culture. Also, you do have a vindictive hate of the political left. Which is kind of ironic, and hilarious all at the same time.
There was a story on this some time ago.
Not so strange that Raoul is ignoring this valid point. And he wonders why I've accused him of leaning towards Neo-Conservative tendencies.
Rob, i see you've spotted this thread. We're all doomed now.Quite right, really?
Last night there was a Constitution Law Professor from George Washington University explaining that the listed forms of torture are absolutely defined as War Crimes agreed to within 4 different treaties that the United States of America and other nations.
Furthermore, President Obama's attempt to sweep these crimes under the carpet can be seen as obstruction of justice. This story is going away quietly into the night.
The Professor explained, the law is the law. President Obama isn't going to do himself any favors by preventing the justice department from investigating and prosecuting laws that might have been broken. Quite rightly, President Obama has no business intervening in the course of any possible investigation, according to the law.
As for your very Neo-Conservative attempt to deflect the thread towards crimes committed by other countries;
So, you suggest that because other countries do nasty terrible and unthinkable things to humans, we shouldn't be so focused on the country the boasts the title of being the bastion of justice throughout the world?
I'll never forget the HBO documentary 'Ghosts of Abu Grahb', Gen. Lipinsky saying that 80% of the thousands of prisoners knew nothing, at all.
There also seems to be this myth that valuable information had been obtained, coming from the Neo-Cons. Yet, there is little evidence to justify such a claim. Time will tell the true story.
On the upside, because of the release of the memos, there is going to be a Special Investigation and special prosecutor assigned to the possibility of crimes committed. They will not be from the Dept. of Defense or out of the DOJ. Come to think of it, how sad is that... that the USA DOD and DOJ can not be trusted to properly prosecute such a case. Then again, the Blackwater boys walked free because of a botched investigation - Sen. Ted Stevens walks because of a botched prosecution - etc.
___________________
Added note: I heard or read somewhere that there is an International court in Spain, that is waiting to see if the USA handles this situation thoroughly. Rumors are that if the USA doesn't prosecute sufficiently, they will bring charges against the guilty parties.
*No worries Raoul, I don't expect you to reply to this post either. Keep safe.
I've been busy with work... too tired to really get to deep into it.
It's taking care of itself. I don't feel as if I'm shouting into a empty cave, anymore.
I hope that your thoughts here are intended as disingenuous.
If you care to read my opening post as author of this thread you will notice how I make the point that this is unacceptable behaviour given that it is in the name of 'freedom and democracy' from supposedly the worlds most advanced an civilised country.
Of course torture goes on in the countries you mention, and is accepting that these countries defy enlightened norms on basic human rights. But when a country like the USA can be so hypocritical in its words and its actions ... that is what I find so disturbing and unsettling.
Read the words again .... many many hours, dollars and human minds have been spent perfecting the techniques that have been documented. And those participating in this think it is perfectly valid. That same country is supposedly the worlds moral compass right now.
I find no amusement in that whatsoever.
Do to others what you expect them to do to you.
At best you are ignorant. At worst, you are stupid.
What your disturbing posts fail to acknowledge is that this world we now I've in, at least 2009 years after the birth of Christ and probably about 6000 years after man first arrived, we have accumulated much thought and wisdom on the rights and wrongs of humanity. Systems and processes have been thought of applied both in civil and military society. And in modern liberal thought, the detention and torture of untried detainees with no criminal evidence against them is morally and legally wrong. It just cannot be justified.
Perhaps you should be whisked off the street, without evidence or trail put into GitMo for 7 years, have the above techniques applied to you and then be released with no charge against you.
Im being serious. Think about it.
Surely everyone does? There is always a risk of mistaken identity in anything, but there are times when it is a risk worth taking.
Don't get me wrong, I'm as opposed to torture as anyone, just not for that reason.
extreme DICKHEAD statement
Have you ever left the USA? Do you own a passport? Id love it if YOU were captured outside your criminal country and exposed to some of this 'torture' that you seem to be such an expert of ... And you wonder why the world hates you?!
You really know your material don't you ?
Most deaths in Iraq are a result of Iraqi blowing themselves up.
unbelievable
I've been busy with work... too tired to really get to deep into it.
It's taking care of itself. I don't feel as if I'm shouting into a empty cave, anymore.
Have no fear buddy ... am here as your wingman ... lets play!
replace the word 'some' with 'most'.
I admit mistakes can be made.
In this instance the detainees were never given a chance. Prisoners were never tried, and the torture, detention was carried out with no criminal evidence.
Evidence of any previous?
Not surprised, if any of the prisoners released are being difficult.
If I was innocent and held without charge for seven years, I would look for ways of exacting revenge once released.
I would also have expected my family, friends, and countrymen to have been pretty angry whilst inside.
British intelligence shitting pants
British intelligence prosecution fear over US torture memos
Michael Evans, Defence Editor
From The Times
April 18, 2009
source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6115286.ece
Despite the memos' release, Barack Obama said there would be no prosecutions
Fresh revelations about the CIA’s torture techniques have thrown the spotlight on British Intelligence, which gained valuable insight into terror networks from confessions extracted by American officers. They have raised further fears that British agents could be prosecuted for their indirect role in the abuse of detainees.
Documents declassified this week by the Obama Administration – four US Justice Department memos authorising “harsh interrogation” – show that the CIA based more than 3,000 intelligence reports on the questioning of “high-value” terror suspects from September 11 2001 to April 2003.
They were sanctioned by US government lawyers during the Bush presidency, and MI5 and MI6 would have had access to huge amounts of such material.
The memos show that the majority of these reports – some of which would have been passed to the British as part of intelligence-sharing arrangements between the two countries – came “from detainees subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques”.
In the period between September 11 2001 and April 2003, there were a number of crucial intelligence tip-offs to the British authorities that may have come via US interrogation of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists.
They include the alert that led to the decision by Tony Blair in February 2003 to send 400 troops in light tanks to Heathrow after a warning of an imminent attack on airliners coming into the airport. Another led to the deployment of special forces to intercept a cargo vessel, the MV Nisha, off the Isle of Wight in December 2001 because of intelligence that a ship in the English Channel might be carrying biological weapon components.
US Justice Department lawyers justified the techniques, saying that they did not induce severe pain or long-term mental ill health. Opponents of the practice have described it as “torture lite”.
The CIA told the US Justice Department that the enhanced interrogation methods used – including waterboarding (simulating drowning), cramped confinement, wall-standing and sleep deprivation – had been “virtually indispensable” to obtaining “actionable intelligence”. Some Whitehall officials were hoping that the stark clarity of the legal arguments justifying harsh interrogation would keep the focus of attention on the Washington end of the story. But there remain concerns of possible legal implications for Britain, as America’s most intimate partner in the intelligence business. _Officials said the Government and the intelligence services had had no knowledge of the US Justice Department’s memos until they were published on Thursday night.
There are already fears in both MI5 and MI6 – arising from the case of Binyam Mohamed, who alleged that he was tortured by the CIA in a secret detention centre in Morocco – that their counter-terrorist intelligence work will be restricted in the future because of concern that individual officers might face prosecution if found to have been indirectly involved.
Mr Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British resident recently released from four years of detention in Guantánamo Bay, claimed that he was subjected to inhumane treatment during interrogation by the CIA and that some of the questions had been framed by MI5. His allegations are now the subject of a Scotland Yard investigation ordered by Baroness Scotland of Asthal, QC, the Attorney-General, to assess whether any British intelligence officer was criminally complicit in Mr Mohamed’s mistreatment.
Asked whether the Prime Minister intended to stop any possible prosecution of intelligence officers in the case of Binyam Mohamed, in the light of President Obama’s decision not to allow CIA officers to be prosecuted, No 10 referred the question to the Home Office. A spokesman there said: “This case has been handed to the Metropolitan Police and is a matter for them and for the Crown Prosecution Service.”
The details contained in the four US Justice Department memos may help Mr Mohamed to make his case against the British authorities. Their publication could also generate additional claims by other CIA-held detainees with links to Britain, attempting to show that Britain was complicit.
The response from Whitehall yesterday was that interrogation methods used by the intelligence services were carefully drawn up and constantly reviewed. MI5 and MI6 intelligence officers who are sent abroad to question detainees held by foreign agencies receive special training and are reminded that they must protect the human rights of arrested terror suspects.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials said that MI5 and MI6 were governed by guidelines drawn up by the Cabinet Office and approved by the Attorney-General, as the Government’s chief legal adviser. The lawyers for both MI5 and MI6 are then responsible for ensuring that the legal requirements are understood by individual officers.
The guidance is currently classified but on March 18, after the accusations by Mr Mohamed, Gordon Brown announced that the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee would review the wording of the guidelines and they would then be published.
There is evidence of highly questionable intelligence-gathering procedures by US servicemen and support for torture, murder and inhumane treatment
The guidelines, however, are based on the overriding principle that torture is never justified and that members of the security and intelligence services – and the Armed Forces – must observe the Geneva Conventions and the laws of armed conflict. Hooding, sleep deprivation, excessive noise, refusing food and water – all are banned.
Even if the British standards are proven to be above board and legal, it does not let the intelligence services off the hook if it can be shown that they suspected or knew of methods being used by the CIA – or other foreign agencies – that could be defined as torture. This is the dilemma at the heart of the Binyam Mohamed case, and both MI5 and MI6 are concerned that they might be deprived of potentially life-saving intelligence if they are barred from dealing with foreign agencies whose detainee-handling record is questionable.
In 2005 Jack Straw, when he was Foreign Secretary, gave evidence to the Intelligence and Security Committee on the handling of prisoners and referred to the “moral hazard” faced by the authorities when given a piece of credible intelligence that might have been extracted through unacceptable practices. “Do you ignore it?” he asked. “My answer to that is, the moment at which it is put before you, you have to make an assessment about its credibility.”
“What if we had been told through liaison partners [foreign intelligence agencies] that September 11 was going to happen, with all the details. Torture is completely unacceptable . . . but you cannot ignore it if the price of ignoring it is 3,000 people dead.”
The Committee’s report revealed that British intelligence officers conducted or witnessed more than 2,000 interviews in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay and Iraq, and that there were “fewer than 15 occasions when there were actual or potential breaches of either UK policy or the international conventions involving or reported by UK intelligence personnel”.
It also claimed that British intelligence officers had on several occasions complained about the rough treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, and that American officials promised to take their comments into account.
MI5, with the backing of MI6, told the Committee in evidence: “Clearly the US is holding al-Qaeda members in detention other than in Guantánamo, but we do not know the locations or terms of their detention and do not have access to them.”
The Security Service went on: “We have, however, received intelligence of the highest value from detainees to whom we have not had access and whose location is unknown to us, some of which has led to the frustration of terrorist attacks in the UK or against UK interests.”
In the case of Mr Mohamed, MI5 passed a series of questions to the CIA without knowing where he had been taken.
An MI5 officer had a face-to-face session with Mr Mohamed in a jail in Pakistan after he was arrested in 2002. But subsequent questions were posed on MI5’s behalf by CIA intelligence officers after he had been flown out of Pakistan on an “extraordinary rendition flight” to Morocco, and then on to Bagram in Afghanistan before he was incarcerated in Guantánamo Bay.
The British resident
1994 Binyam Mohamed, 30, born in Ethiopia, arrives in Britain, seeking asylum. His application is rejected, but he is given leave to stay for four years, and lives in North Kensington
2001 He converts to Islam and flies to Pakistan and then Afghanistan. He claims that the trip was to cure him of a drug habit and to observe an Islamic state in operation. The US claims that he was fighting with the Taleban and training in an al-Qaeda camp
2002 He is arrested at Karachi airport, Pakistan, and charged with conspiracy linked to a terrorist plot in the US. Five months after his arrest he is flown by the CIA to Morocco, where he alleges he was tortured for a period of 18 months
2004 He is transferred to Guantánamo Bay via a CIA prison at Bagram in Kabul
2005 Charges are dropped. He stays in the US camp in Cuba
2009 Released in February, he is flown to London, where he is granted residence for two years. His claim that he was tortured and that some of the questions during his interrogation were supplied by an MI5 officer is now the subject of a police inquiry
British intelligence prosecution fear over US torture memos
Michael Evans, Defence Editor
From The Times
April 18, 2009
source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6115286.ece
Despite the memos' release, Barack Obama said there would be no prosecutions
Fresh revelations about the CIA’s torture techniques have thrown the spotlight on British Intelligence, which gained valuable insight into terror networks from confessions extracted by American officers. They have raised further fears that British agents could be prosecuted for their indirect role in the abuse of detainees.
Documents declassified this week by the Obama Administration – four US Justice Department memos authorising “harsh interrogation” – show that the CIA based more than 3,000 intelligence reports on the questioning of “high-value” terror suspects from September 11 2001 to April 2003.
They were sanctioned by US government lawyers during the Bush presidency, and MI5 and MI6 would have had access to huge amounts of such material.
The memos show that the majority of these reports – some of which would have been passed to the British as part of intelligence-sharing arrangements between the two countries – came “from detainees subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques”.
In the period between September 11 2001 and April 2003, there were a number of crucial intelligence tip-offs to the British authorities that may have come via US interrogation of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists.
They include the alert that led to the decision by Tony Blair in February 2003 to send 400 troops in light tanks to Heathrow after a warning of an imminent attack on airliners coming into the airport. Another led to the deployment of special forces to intercept a cargo vessel, the MV Nisha, off the Isle of Wight in December 2001 because of intelligence that a ship in the English Channel might be carrying biological weapon components.
US Justice Department lawyers justified the techniques, saying that they did not induce severe pain or long-term mental ill health. Opponents of the practice have described it as “torture lite”.
The CIA told the US Justice Department that the enhanced interrogation methods used – including waterboarding (simulating drowning), cramped confinement, wall-standing and sleep deprivation – had been “virtually indispensable” to obtaining “actionable intelligence”. Some Whitehall officials were hoping that the stark clarity of the legal arguments justifying harsh interrogation would keep the focus of attention on the Washington end of the story. But there remain concerns of possible legal implications for Britain, as America’s most intimate partner in the intelligence business. _Officials said the Government and the intelligence services had had no knowledge of the US Justice Department’s memos until they were published on Thursday night.
There are already fears in both MI5 and MI6 – arising from the case of Binyam Mohamed, who alleged that he was tortured by the CIA in a secret detention centre in Morocco – that their counter-terrorist intelligence work will be restricted in the future because of concern that individual officers might face prosecution if found to have been indirectly involved.
Mr Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British resident recently released from four years of detention in Guantánamo Bay, claimed that he was subjected to inhumane treatment during interrogation by the CIA and that some of the questions had been framed by MI5. His allegations are now the subject of a Scotland Yard investigation ordered by Baroness Scotland of Asthal, QC, the Attorney-General, to assess whether any British intelligence officer was criminally complicit in Mr Mohamed’s mistreatment.
Asked whether the Prime Minister intended to stop any possible prosecution of intelligence officers in the case of Binyam Mohamed, in the light of President Obama’s decision not to allow CIA officers to be prosecuted, No 10 referred the question to the Home Office. A spokesman there said: “This case has been handed to the Metropolitan Police and is a matter for them and for the Crown Prosecution Service.”
The details contained in the four US Justice Department memos may help Mr Mohamed to make his case against the British authorities. Their publication could also generate additional claims by other CIA-held detainees with links to Britain, attempting to show that Britain was complicit.
The response from Whitehall yesterday was that interrogation methods used by the intelligence services were carefully drawn up and constantly reviewed. MI5 and MI6 intelligence officers who are sent abroad to question detainees held by foreign agencies receive special training and are reminded that they must protect the human rights of arrested terror suspects.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials said that MI5 and MI6 were governed by guidelines drawn up by the Cabinet Office and approved by the Attorney-General, as the Government’s chief legal adviser. The lawyers for both MI5 and MI6 are then responsible for ensuring that the legal requirements are understood by individual officers.
The guidance is currently classified but on March 18, after the accusations by Mr Mohamed, Gordon Brown announced that the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee would review the wording of the guidelines and they would then be published.
There is evidence of highly questionable intelligence-gathering procedures by US servicemen and support for torture, murder and inhumane treatment
The guidelines, however, are based on the overriding principle that torture is never justified and that members of the security and intelligence services – and the Armed Forces – must observe the Geneva Conventions and the laws of armed conflict. Hooding, sleep deprivation, excessive noise, refusing food and water – all are banned.
Even if the British standards are proven to be above board and legal, it does not let the intelligence services off the hook if it can be shown that they suspected or knew of methods being used by the CIA – or other foreign agencies – that could be defined as torture. This is the dilemma at the heart of the Binyam Mohamed case, and both MI5 and MI6 are concerned that they might be deprived of potentially life-saving intelligence if they are barred from dealing with foreign agencies whose detainee-handling record is questionable.
In 2005 Jack Straw, when he was Foreign Secretary, gave evidence to the Intelligence and Security Committee on the handling of prisoners and referred to the “moral hazard” faced by the authorities when given a piece of credible intelligence that might have been extracted through unacceptable practices. “Do you ignore it?” he asked. “My answer to that is, the moment at which it is put before you, you have to make an assessment about its credibility.”
“What if we had been told through liaison partners [foreign intelligence agencies] that September 11 was going to happen, with all the details. Torture is completely unacceptable . . . but you cannot ignore it if the price of ignoring it is 3,000 people dead.”
The Committee’s report revealed that British intelligence officers conducted or witnessed more than 2,000 interviews in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay and Iraq, and that there were “fewer than 15 occasions when there were actual or potential breaches of either UK policy or the international conventions involving or reported by UK intelligence personnel”.
It also claimed that British intelligence officers had on several occasions complained about the rough treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, and that American officials promised to take their comments into account.
MI5, with the backing of MI6, told the Committee in evidence: “Clearly the US is holding al-Qaeda members in detention other than in Guantánamo, but we do not know the locations or terms of their detention and do not have access to them.”
The Security Service went on: “We have, however, received intelligence of the highest value from detainees to whom we have not had access and whose location is unknown to us, some of which has led to the frustration of terrorist attacks in the UK or against UK interests.”
In the case of Mr Mohamed, MI5 passed a series of questions to the CIA without knowing where he had been taken.
An MI5 officer had a face-to-face session with Mr Mohamed in a jail in Pakistan after he was arrested in 2002. But subsequent questions were posed on MI5’s behalf by CIA intelligence officers after he had been flown out of Pakistan on an “extraordinary rendition flight” to Morocco, and then on to Bagram in Afghanistan before he was incarcerated in Guantánamo Bay.
The British resident
1994 Binyam Mohamed, 30, born in Ethiopia, arrives in Britain, seeking asylum. His application is rejected, but he is given leave to stay for four years, and lives in North Kensington
2001 He converts to Islam and flies to Pakistan and then Afghanistan. He claims that the trip was to cure him of a drug habit and to observe an Islamic state in operation. The US claims that he was fighting with the Taleban and training in an al-Qaeda camp
2002 He is arrested at Karachi airport, Pakistan, and charged with conspiracy linked to a terrorist plot in the US. Five months after his arrest he is flown by the CIA to Morocco, where he alleges he was tortured for a period of 18 months
2004 He is transferred to Guantánamo Bay via a CIA prison at Bagram in Kabul
2005 Charges are dropped. He stays in the US camp in Cuba
2009 Released in February, he is flown to London, where he is granted residence for two years. His claim that he was tortured and that some of the questions during his interrogation were supplied by an MI5 officer is now the subject of a police inquiry
No country is squeaky clean. Those posters from our shores slagging off the yanks should taKe a step back and consider what the British Government has done over the years; not least in NI; internment without trial, torture, collusion, jailing of innocent people.
Let he who hasn't sinned cast the first stone
Let he who hasn't sinned cast the first stone
Totally agree. For me, this thread is explicitly about Bush & Blair. Blair is just lucky is is now a nobody else his name would and should be firmly held next to these shocking truths that are now emerging.
Who knows how history will play out but I really think it possible he (Blair) will be tried for human rights crimes in the Hague at some point in the next 20 years.
Yes I agree, it is a disgrace and makes a mockery of any values of justice. And I totally agree torture is always unacceptable.
I was merely picking up a technical point that I don't think Nistelrooy10's point that "if even one innocent" is wronged, should be a consideration. If we applied that moral stance to everything then no judicial system could be backed.
I consider torture to be wrong, not because we might torture innocents by mistake, but because it is inherently wrong in and of itself.
for once, we agree.
What part of that didn't you understand ?
Its not in the name of Freedom and Democracy. It never was. Nor is it about being a moral compass.
Its about obtaining information from terror suspects to prevent future attacks. That is the primary reason people are interrogated.
Maybe you have forgotten that the founding of this country are based in Freedom and Democracy - it's origonal foundation is upon LAWS that guard against unfair treatment of people. Just because those tortured hadn't been Americans - it doesn't make it lawful.
The other reason I have an ax to grind against the Bush admin and the Neo-Connic following - They rammed conservative judges down the American throats and prosecuted millions of people throughout the past 28 years. The Bush years were amongst the worst. In addition, Bush's state of Texas executes more people at one prison than the rest of the country does throughout the entire country's system. I say live by the sword, die by the sword... If Bush had been such the staunch support of tough laws, let he and his supporters suffer the system they created.
If the 'information gathering techniques' had been done in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan only, your ploy that it was to save the world from a spreading evil might have be sellable.
But this was supposedly from Iraq:
I've always been curious about this photo - what's with the wires connected to the person's fingertips? Because it surely looks as if it's electrical sort of torture.
and this is from Iraq:
Thee above photo has been proof that the US military had been using some of world history's most brutal forms of torture. That being a Brazilian technique.
The US rush to intelligence gathering - or torture at the start of the Iraq war led to harsh and hasty choices in whom they would do this to.
Chances are none of the Abu Grahb prisoners ever had a word with an Al Queada operative. So to imply it was done in the spirit of the Twin Towers being taken down is not only misleading, it's tiresome.
One other point, there are 7 or 8 US soldiers that got caught up in the Abu Grahb torture scandal. At the very least, they should be sent to sit in front of an international court. Especially, if the officers and politicians in charge aren't going to step forward and take responsibility. As far as I remember, Cheney - Rummy - and the ever so smirky-smarmy Bushy said that they only endorsed the waterboarding of 3 or 4 people.
*Oh, and Raoul don't start bitching and moaning about people posting photographic PROOF of torture. If people like yourself are going to continue to defend it - then you should be able to stomach the results.
Besides I did relate to the photos in what I had to say, they aren't meant to simply provoke emotion.
*The photo in this link might be slightly too graphic for the kids, so I chose to use some discretion:
http://www.bloggerheads.com/abu_ghraib/iraq_torture_01.jpg
With 7 soldiers standing around 3 naked male bodies, somehow tied to each other... I seriously doubt that this isn't lasting psycologically damaging. As pointed out in the HBO documentary, these people may have had a very good standing in their communities, but after rumors of this humiliation they would be shunned, worse consequences, afterwards, for the women that had been tortured.
Yes but Obama is quickly changing that.
Although, President Obama is playing judge and jury on issues he has no business. When it comes to possible (or more than likely) war crimes that were committed under the Bush watch... Obama needs to take a step back because he is catching lots of heat for his forgive and forget statements.
ooeat0meoo beat me to it so please read his fantastic response immediately above this post.
but in summary, please tell me what/when IRAQI'S have threatened to attack the United States of America?
Your statements make we worry/pity the depths to which innocent Americans have been brainwashed and hoodwinked by the disgraced neocon Republicans whohave finally been thrown out of power. Like Germans post 1945 all Americans will soon realise the depth of the atrocities their army carried out under instructions from their Government. These finding are just the tip of the iceberg ... just imagine what we don't yet know.
Fantastic response ? Sounds like the start of a new friendship.As to the rest of it, you might be aware of the fact that there are upwards of 150,000 US troops in Iraq and plenty of anti Government Al-Qaeda types who want to kill them. Those who are captured need to be interrogated to get information about their comrades who are still running about plotting things.
And your statements underscore the rampant ignorance of point and click internet spastics who know nothing about what happens on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. You pontificate as if you're mildly educated about the subject matter you're trying discuss by throwing around unrelated historical references and inferring that there is more to this story that there really is. The fact that you tried to compare the US to a genocidal regime speaks volumes about the credibility of anything you have or will contribute to this thread. Good luck digging out of this one.