Letters to the Editor
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Rendition would be punishable under the ICC
Over one hundred countries including all NATO allies signed on to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. One of the Clinton's administration's last acts was to join as signatory, after much US-requested negotiating to safe-guard the US military against frivolous prosecutions.
The Bush administration however has refused to ratify its involvement with the ICC. If it had, the interrogation methods mentioned in this article would be deemed war crimes and subject to criminal prosecution. While admittedly the ICC is an institution in its early stages of development it does stand as a fundamental and necessary tool to protect human rights and hold countries up to a standard. The US, at one point, understood this. Now they like many torture states refuse to adhere to its principles. The US stands with China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Russia, Egypt, Iran, Israel and Turkey in this regard.
As a Canadian it's one thing to see torture blithely depicted in American popular culture à la Jack Bauer (embarrassingly, played by Canadian Keifer Sutherland) but quite another to know that a real life Canadian like Maher Arar can be submitted to torture by the country that once stood as your closest friend and ally, and was once but now is not an international leader on issues of justice and human rights.
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Million year picnic needs million years of therapy
Seriously, reading that post made me physically ill. I can't imagine a child with normal human feelings committing such a horrendous, depiscable act and arriving at adulthood with a normal brain. It appears this poster's main goal was to make readers sick. Mission accomplished.
I wonder how many other hideous acts this person has committed? Serial killers get their starts as children by torturing animals.
Maybe someday we will read about this poster in the news.
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Rendition, torture, and other high crimes and misdemeanors
Thanks to Salon for posting this piece by Stephen Grey.
Everyone who cares about what's being done in our name should read his book "Ghost Plane." An excellent companion is "Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights" by Trevor Paglen and A. C. Thompson, Melville House Publishing, Hoboken, NJ, 2006.
To all those are so fearful or so hostile and punitive that they either approve of torture or are willing to tolerate or excuse it in the name of "national security" I say shame on you. The "ticking time bomb" scenario has never been real, as far as I know. The belief in it is supported by paranoid fantasies and fantastical hopes that if we could just catch terrorists or criminals just in the nick of time we would always be safe and secure. Dream on!
The confession of his childhood kitten drowning by "Million-Year Picnic" reminds us that any of us could be tempted to commit vile crimes in certain circumstances. This is why we have laws and huge social pressure and life-long struggles with ourselves to behave ethically and morally. (And it's why minors should not be punished as adults because the development of the brain and maturity are essential to being able to take full responsibility for our behavior. That being said, torture of animals is not uncommon among children and if unchecked puts the young person at risk of growing up with an impaired conscience. There are unconfirmed reports (ie I don't have a reference) that George W. Bush was known to torture animals in his childhood.)
The Supreme Court's rejection of el-Masri's case against the CIA is appalling. The rationale of "protecting state secrets" sounds like a cover-up of responsibility. The "secret" is which heads should roll for this travesty. The case of Maher Arar, the Canadian of Syrian birth who was arrested while changing planes in NY on 9/26/01 and 'deported' to Syria on a CIA ghost flight (Grey, Chapter 3)is another one for which the U.S. will not accept responsibility.
And now it looks like Judge Mukasey, who declined to label waterboarding torture, although the U.S. prosecuted the technique as a war crime after WW II, is on the verge of being promoted to Attorney General by the US Senate. I hope concerned residents of NY and California are flooding the phone lines of Senators Schumer and Feinstein who have chosen to enable President Bush to do what he pleases.
Torture is never about information or intelligence. It's a license to abuse and punish anyone we have decided might be an "enemy."
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I Wish
I hadn't read that post from 'Million Year Picnic'
Sorry that kitten made so much noise starving...
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Million-Year Never Will Do It Again
People in the rural USA often kill kittens. Kids all over the USA hurt animals. Million-Year's story is awful, but it is well-told. It is a warning that we humans have this in us.
It shows that we need to grow out of it. Bush and Cheney and the Gestapo show us what happens when we never learn and never grow up.
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Good Point, Timbuktom
I myself have acted cruelly towards some innocent animals in my youth. I will answer for it when I die.
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Why do they torture?
Simply because they can.
And because they enjoy it.
Simone Weil covered this long ago in "The Use of Force." As did Orwell. As did Erich Fromm. As did so many others.
They do it because they enjoy the feeling of power & control -- and the greatest control over another human being is that of life & death.
They worship power, they worship destruction, they worship death.
Which is why Fromm called them "necrophiliacs."
Emotionally, psychologically, they are failed human beings. And anyone who isn't like them, terrifies & disgusts them, and must be crushed.
And more & more Americans find this to be "patriotic," admirable behavior ...
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@abba111
Sorry to be a pain in the ass, but your contention that simulated drowning is not drowning because "in drowning you die"is medically incorrect. One may or may not survive drowning. We tend to think of drowning victims as dead people because that is how they are treated in the media, but the fact is anyone who has gone under, filled up and stopped breathing, has drowned. If he is resuscitated he is the survivor of a drowning. Same as with cardiac arrest. It's not called something different if the patient survives the incident.
The point is not to talk over you but to explain -- as vividly as I can -- that drowning is torture whether you survive it or not, and waterboarding is drowning, whether the victim dies or not. "Simulation" is merely a way for the torture advocate to make this particularly onerous form of torture seem less horrible than it is.