Torture is not a Gray Area
Excellent piece by Andrew Sullivan that successfully removes the artificial nuance that various players have tried to attach to Gitmo. Sullivan rightly points out that these waters are not muddy, that torture was conducted in your name. That is torture, and again torture and once more for good measure TORTURE!!! not enhanced interrogation or enthusiastic questioning or playful bullying but torture.
Categories: politics Tags: Andrew Sullivan, Enhanced Interrogation, Gitmo, Morality of torture, Torture
Sometimes there are no words……
Anyone involved in this needs to be sent to prison for life. Not releasing the images that support this (now confirmed) story is criminally negligent. It is providing Americans with protection that, in the long run, will only do harm. This needs to be confronted by the nation as a whole and the chips should be allowed to fall as they may.
what was really said to Obama about releasing these images that made him change his mind?
Clive Crooks says waterboarding may not be torture
A couple of thoughts about an article in The Atlantic by Clive Crook The Piece is entitled More on Torture prosecutions and is dated 29th April 2009.
The article is a follow up to a piece by the same author and he precis the original thus:
(a) Possibly, torture can succeed in extracting vital information.
(b) On balance, however, torture does not make the US safer.
(c) In any event, it is shameful and wrong.
(d) Waterboarding is torture in the ordinary meaning of the word.
(e) Notwithstanding (d), the law is not as clear as it should be on whether waterboarding as practised during the Bush administration is torture under the law.
(f) Congress could and should have outlawed waterboarding explicitly already. It should do so now.
(g) Because of (e), and because the issue is so acutely divisive in the US, prosecutions under the existing law may serve neither the cause of justice nor the public interest.
Categories: politics Tags: clive crooks, Torture, waterboarding
Ventura schools the View’s Hasselback
Not a high bar I k now but this was fun and a few of our own self important rear end covering congress critters need to sit up and take note.
Ventura isn’t my favorite politician or ex pol, far to Libertarian with Arnold and Bruce overtones for my taste but he absolutely spot on here. Elizabeth Hasselbach is throwing all the right wing talking points at him especially the Pelosi diversionary strategy and Ventura is having none of it. Torture is always wrong and everyone involved at any level needs to be in prison is his position – no context required.
Medical torture some distinctions and history
This post consists of two parts, the first provides an outline of relevant parts of the Hippocratic oath and the Declaration of Geneva and an important distinction. The second gives some historical perspective to the subject of medical torture.
Read more…
Categories: politics Tags: Gitmo, human rights, medical torture, Torture