Beyond Anger
Torture was sold to the American people based on the “ticking bomb” scenario: “Wouldn’t you go all Jack Bauer on a guy if he knew where the bomb was?”
Based on this New York Times article, Waterboarding used 266 times on 2 suspects, we now know that everyone died when the bomb blew up, because as every real professional interrogator who was ever asked about torture has said: IT DOES NOT WORK!
In the time the sadistic bastards working for the US government took to destroy the psyches of these two individuals, a competent professional interrogator would have gotten the truth from them.
The only two groups who really think torture works, are people who enjoy it, and people so frightened that they would spill their guts on the threat of torture, i.e. the same people who fall for the “good cop/bad cop” routine.
CNN is reporting that former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden is saying that the current administration “compromised national security” by releasing these memos. Michael Hayden should find a hole, like Saddam, and stay there. He has disgraced his uniform and violated his oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States”. National security is seriously compromised when “political officers” ignore the laws and rules, to produce “boutique intelligence”. That is analysis that says what the consumer wants to hear, rather than the truth.
The current administration doesn’t want to pursue the people who created this immoral mess. My question would be: what about the enlisted personnel of the Army Reserve unit that have already been tried and convicted? Are they going to be the only people held responsible? How do you justify that? Are you going to wipe their slates clean and reinstate them?
People died under tortured approved by the government of the United States. Where is the justice for them? Where is the closure for their families? When do we become a nation of laws again?
9 comments
“When do we become a nation of laws again?”
I ask myself that question morning and night. So far, I have no answer.
Hayden is a scary guy. No one with his mindset should be in charge of that organization… no matter who is President. Jane Hamsher believes latest evidence shows Hayden would defy Obama and use now-forbidden torture techniques anyway. Who am I to say she is wrong.
Steve Bates´s last blog post..Bureaucratic Encounters Of The Absurd Kind
Hayden sucked up to the people in power, and they are gone. They will probably just allow him to retire, but he definitely should not be allowed to keep the fourth star.
He would have been better keeping a very low profile, because shooting his mouth off is bringing him to the attention of the Spanish judiciary, so he can forget world travel in retirement.
I want to see entitlements slashed by throwing some of these people in prison, and stripping their pensions. If you are going to imprison privates in the Reserves, generals in the Regular military should joint them.
You prosecute people to ensure it doesn’t happen again – that’s what war crime trials are all about. That’s how you reinforce the concept of the rule of law.
I’m pretty angry about all this also. I saw a LOT of tortured people in Cambodia, and not all by the Khmer Rouge warlords. The Khmer did it to terrorize the villages, they didn’t care if anyone knew anything or not.
I read the the UN security council, under pressure from most of the members, has backed Spain’s decision to prosecute. Obama has said he will use the US’s veto power if necessary.
Yes. Very angry.
You do realize that if Obama continues with this, the USA and US interests everywhere will become a serious target on every nutjob in the Worlds hit list, right? This will be all the excuse they need. In a strange way, they essentially decided that the USA deserved Bush and that they couldn’t do anything worse to the USA. With Obama and the hope of Americans soaring… that’s a very different thing.
Not to mention that whatever trust anyone out here has for the USA will plummet lower than when Bush was prez.
The people in charge just don’t get it. If the people tortured had been US citizens you might get away with “truth and reconciliation”, but no one is going to be satisfied with doing nothing when in happens in other countries to other peoples.
Innocent locals were tortured and died. That can’t be reconciled or ignored. When you cross borders, you invoke international rules. If European powers can’t even hold people who were observed engaged in acts of piracy on the high seas, why would any think you can ignore the detention and torture of people who committed no known crime?
The world is not going to trust the US until the US shows, clearly and openly, that it wants to rejoin the community of nations. If we veto a Security Council resolution, we demonstrate that we can’t be trusted.
Aside: Marcy Wheeler (“emptywheel” of Firedoglake) broke this story, as even the NYT admits… well below the fold. Bloggers are the Rodney Dangerfield of the news world.
Steve Bates´s last blog post..The Effectiveness Of Tor… (Redacted)
Sadly, Obama is just another ‘local yokel’ who really doesn’t understand, and maybe doesn’t care to understand , despite his rhetoric to the contrary, the World. He only understands Chicago Politics, machine politics. Most of his advisers are narrow-minded fools who only care about vested interests.
He doesn’t seem to understand that the World as a whole doesn’t forgive or forget, unless they have a reason to. And talk is worthless. Half the World still despises Germany and that won’t change for at least another generation. That was the whole point of the Nuremberg trials. Finding the guilty was just a side issue, it was to lower the levels of anger and hatred the World felt to stem what was wisely seen as decades of violence that would follow if the *guilty* were not prosecuted. The World felt cheated when Hitler committed suicide. Sadly, in this World, people want and need retribution, and they will get it one way or another.
We understand, even if it seems most Americans don’t, that torture is simply a weapon of despots and terrorists. It’s used to terrorize. Even if the guilty are prosecuted, it will be a long time before any forgiveness will follow. Fighting fire with fire is a nice slogan, and is great for minimize the damage caused by bushfires, but in any other sense is shear stupidity and just makes you another arsonist.
Steve, unlike Villagers, bloggers actually read information after it has been released, instead of relying on “sources” to give them the Cliff Notes versions. Marcy is an attorney and can scan legal documents, i.e. she knows the boiler-plate that can be skipped over to find the important parts.
Apparently “journalists” don’t know that food recalls and dead banks will be reported Friday after 5pm Eastern. Anything longer than a “tweet” is too boring to be read, so they rely on “sources”. It makes you wonder how any of them managed to get through college, because even my BS in Computer and Information Technology required a lot of library time in addition to computer time. I would think that a BA in Journalism would involve a lot more research.
Republicans keep looking for shortcuts. They don’t want to do the work. More and more journalists have exactly the same problem – they don’t want to do the research, they want it to magically appear on their Blackberry.
Americans are still, to a remarkable degree, isolationists. The number of people who have never been out of a single county their entire lives is scary. The number of people who have never been out of their state is even larger.
Most “ethnic” food in the US is a pale shadow of its original glory to avoid offending the American taste buds, which are assumed to have never developed beyond baby porridge.
Even Americans who have traveled abroad just don’t get it. When my Dad was stationed in Germany, we lived in Germany – the only Americans in a small German village. Most of the other US civilians lived and worked in the Disney version of the US known as the Air Base. It was pathetic. I hated hanging out with American kids from class, because they panicked whenever they were off Base, and didn’t have a clue about public transportation.
Most Americans don’t understand how the rest of the world affects them, and too many are actively xenophobic. It is absurd that the “world leader” doesn’t actually know or care about the world.
You and I understand, but there are entirely too many around who just don’t get it. We have been forcibly interconnected by multinational corporations and things that happen in small places matter to everyone.
[…] not only the tortured but the torturers and anyone associated with them. And it does. not. work. Bryan at Why Now: The only two groups who really think torture works, are people who enjoy it, and people so […]