Letters to the Editor
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She said what?
From yesterday's British Observer newspaper:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1657289,00.html
"Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern said Rice told him in Washington she expected allies to trust that America does not allow rights abuses."
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American torture procedures...
I agree with everyone who has responded so far. Our administration's approach to the crisis sucks. I will leave it there.
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I agree with Linda Kreusel, if only I could leave the US until this regime is unseated
This current regime is perpetrating torture on the American people. Physical toture, economic torture, educational torture, social torture each in many varieties every minute that it remains in power.
It is clear that they support torture, they perform torture on the citizens of the country, daily.
How could we expect them to do better elsewhere?
The concept of forced democracy is an oxymoron.
Democracy must come from within, it cannot be forced from without.
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What can people or our allies do?
As long as the US military keeps following these illegal orders, Bush and co. are untouchable. Our allies will do their best to ignore this for three years until the US gets a new president and we stop torturing people.
I am very dissapointed in the US military power structure and the CIA leadership for not telling Bush and Cheney to go fly a kite when they were ordered to abduct and torture people. If the military and CIA are this quick to secretly torture and kill suspects, then the US is much closer to falling into facism than we would like to think.
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Thank you, Salon, for putting this on the record
In which religion did George W. Bush claim he was born again? I heard Condi Rice on the radio this morning, denying all charges of torture by the U.S. In the face of this kind of evidence, how can this administration keep speaking out of both sides of its mouth? It's beginning to look like the rest of the world will have to rise up against us to make their point. I'm afraid for all of us. The world may not want to wait another three years. Thanks, George, Dick, Condi, and all you good guys who are looking after our best interests. What will you say or do when the backlash reaches our shores? You can't even clean up after a couple of hurricanes. I am sick to my stomach.
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Sick report, excellent reporting...
It is this kind of unpleasant, but necessary reporting that makes Salon.com such a valuable voice online. Anyone who thinks that the United States doesn't engage in torture is deceiving themselves.
I congratulate the military brass and soldiers on the ground who have the guts to come forward and tell the truth about what's really happening in this so-called "War on Terror." What we need is a "War on Torture."
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America can't take it anymore?
Americans don't have a clue what's going on in their own town let alone their own government and the worst part is they couldn't care less. YOU might be to the point where YOU can't take it anymore but Americans can't even tell you what E85 is and why it's a good thing. Americans just can't be bothered by the outside world or by the struggles of their own neighbors 2 blocks down. They vote every 4 years based on talking points and they go into hibernation until the media asks them to listen to their next round of shit. You might care but America doesn't. Sad but true.
Don't worry, our crushing National Debt will end most of our problems. Ask the average American what the National Debt is and the amount if you want another laugh. America's asleep.
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Couldn't take it 4 years ago
What bugs me the most about this current upwelling of indignation is how late it is in coming. I've been writing angry emails and passionate letters to my senators (Boxer and Feinstein) and representatives (Dreir, then Schiff) for four years now. With the exception of Senator Boxer, who at least expressed a slight degree of misgiving, not one of them has expressed any serious remorse about their role in giving the Bush administration carte blanche to pursue what to me, and a lot of my fellow Californians who are supposed to be represented by these people, looked right from the start like a load of crap.
In addition to pressure on the Bush junta, I want an apology from these people. They let their constituents down and contributed, indirectly perhaps, to the injustices that Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, et al, have perpetrated.
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Let's all take some responsibility
People might wonder -- how did America come to this place? The obvious answer that we read in Salon is -- Bush got elected. That's what caused it all. Get rid of Bush and it will all stop.
I have a different point of view. Let me tell you about a panel discussion on torture held by the National Academy of Sciences in Washington that I had the honor to attend roughly ten years ago, when my husband was inducted into that stellar organization.
There was one expert who worked with Tibetan refugees who talked about the lasting effects of torture on the individual. There was another expert who worked with survivors of Serbian rape camps who told us that torture survivors don't need medication or therapy so much as they need their lives to be given back to them through social and political change.
The last expert shocked me. He was an American doctor who used to work in our American prison system. He talked about how drug addicts get tortured by guards in prison through the denial of health care. He named the War on Drugs as the breeding ground for torture in America. Throwing huge numbers of sick, weak, nonviolent people into the prison system has created conditions tantamount to torture.
I was much more impressed by the Tibetan and Bosnian stories so I kinda blocked the American guy out of my mind. I didn't really take him seriously.
But then a friend of mine was convicted for running a medical marijuana cub in Orange County. Despite the fact that he gave the pot away free and only charged people a nominal $20 membership fee, he was considered by the jury to be a drug dealer rather than someone fulfilling the mandate of California's medical marijuana law, and he was sent to prison for six years.
He suffers from spinal arthritis and has to wear a brace. On a good day, pot is enough to relieve his pain. On a bad day it takes a little more. Without pot, he needs bottles and bottles of opiates, because his spine is collapsing on itself, and that tends to hurt a lot.
When he went to prison to serve his time, they took away his back brace as a security threat. The only pain relief they offered was a few Tylenol every week. Not even every day. That's what constitutes pain relief in our prison system.
His treatment constituted torture. He lived in horrific pain every single day. Finallly his medical problems became so severe, he was confined to the prison hospital.
Luckily, Gray "Property of the Prison Guard Union" Davis, a pro-torture Democrat, was overthrown. A few months after Arnold announced his controversial plans to reform the California prison system, my friend was granted an early parole.
I hope some people out there can see from my anecdotes that we're not going to get rid of torture just by getting rid of Bush.
What the torture experts at the NAS panel agreed on is people who commit torture are able to do so by a process of desensitization. I think the War on Drugs has desensitized the American public to torture. In my personal opinion, the War on Drugs has given us a thirty year dress rehearsal for the Bush administration's abuses overseas.
We could have opted out at any time, but we didn't. This is who we are. If we want to stop being these people, we have to start working on ourselves and -- as tempting as it may be given the shocking excesses of the current administration -- not just blame it all on our leaders.