Standing up for what’s right.
April 22, 2009 at 10:35 am
I’ve always felt we should investigate and prosecute the people responsible for making the decisions to use torture on detaines at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. I’m angry with the Democratic leadership in Congress for not standing up for what’s right while they held control of the Congress during the Bush administration and with President Obama for not pushing to investigate how it came to be that the United States of America used torture to extract information from its prisoners.
I don’t care about any repurcussions such an investigation might have. I don’t care that it might cause a “tit for tat” response from the Republicans when next they hold the Whitehouse again. That doesn’t matter. Investigating and prosecuting the men and women who brought our country to this storry state is more important.
Malcolm Nance has a biting op-ed piece in Sunday’s New York Daily News that coldy and calmly lays out the reasons why the Bush torture architects need to be prosecuted. Everyone should read it.
Categories: Politics
Waterboarding seems to have helped keep us free from another terror attack… lets see what happens to that sorry state of things after Obama. Then watch Obama retaliate with some pretty extreme vengeance for having looked the appeaser.
A real sorry state on the horizon I fear.
“Waterboarding seems to have helped keep us free from another terror attack”. Really? I wouldn’t be so sure of that. c.f. http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/04/lies_about_torture.php
We need the administration to release the stuff that was redacted in the memos on the results of the interrogations.
The issue is given the capture of a combatant fighting outside the rules of war (the Geneva Conventions–in which case all that could be asked is name, rank, and serial number) than what are the rules for coercing information out of them. They’re not criminals. They’re combatants at war with the United States and fighting beyond the rules of warfare.
So were is the boundary between coercion and torture? The Administration attempted to define that witness the memos and opinions. Congress was briefed at the time and concurred with the methods.
I find waterboarding acceptable especially if it holds the promise of being effective on extracting intel on future assaults.
Obama needs to release the documents explaining the results which they continue to redact out. That’s wrong…
There’s the rub. I haven’t seen anything that indicates waterboading these people generated any useful intelligence. I _have_ seen strong evidence that waterboarding KSM generated false information that screwed up the prosecution of people in Pakistan who did do heinous things.
I don’t buy the argument that because they are fighting outside the rules of war, that we should. That’s equivalent to the old “Would you jump off a building just because Jimmy is doing it?” argument. Some things are wrong and shouldn’t be done. The U.S. prosecuted Japanese military for torturing U.S. prisoners of war and has even prosecuted a U.S. citizen for torture (a local-level law enforcement officer). For us to turn around and use the same techniques in heinous and should be prosecuted.
I do believe we are in violent agreemnt here.