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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
Glenn,
I'm so glad that you, Marcy, drational and others are working hard to bring attention to this matter. As I pointed out in my post for June 26 (linked at my name), the installation of Stanley McChrystal as head of US troops in Afghanistan guarantees that more innocent civilians will be imprisoned and tortured to death. McChrystal is a key player in many of the early torture incidents and has been known to be involved in hiding US detention facilities from the ICRC. If anyone thinks that Obama has truly stopped torture, all they have to do is look at the promotion of McChrystal to know that it will continue full speed ahead.
I look forward to the report finally being issued. Travel will keep me away from reading and commenting on it very quickly, but I do hope that we will at least have the report fully unredacted.
or even justifiable homicide (police killings). otherwise all the deaths of the innocent would be negligent homicide. The war itself was fraudulent, justified by trickery. Nevertheless once it started, it was war. The soldiers whose comrades were killed by roadside bombs can be forgiven not loving their enemies. Some were told to roughly interrogate prisoners and by chance or spite, killed a hundred. it's best to, as jesus said, let the dead bury the dead. Leave it be. Let it heal. We did worse in Vietnam - through torture deaths and plain old ordinary burning - over two million innocent deaths. They forgive us. why? We let them. Let's let the Iraqis forgive us. We didn't exterminate them or even try. Let it go.
I've tried this argument, and it's always countered with, "Who cares? They're terrorists!"
You cannot reason with the Right.
you knew this had to be the case. "Standard Operating Procedure" is all about Abu Ghraib. easily the creepiest part is when a young MP describes how unidentified americans routinely brought dead detainees to be held overnight without any documentation that they, or the deceased, had ever been there.
if it can happen just one time, it's easily happened many more. this is exactly why we need a torture commissions, trials, and punishments.
State-sponsored murder.
atmosphere that torture creates. It necessitates coverups and more coverups. And then it necessitates more torture to justify the torture we've already done.
death in war is not murder in peacetimeor even justifiable homicide (police killings). otherwise all the deaths of the innocent would be negligent homicide.
We're not talking about people accidentally killed by a bomb dropped from 35,000 feet or artillery shot from a mile away.
We're talking about people who are already safely in our custody, detained and helpless. We have responsibility for their well-being under every precept of international law and when they die in our custody because of things we do to them, those are war crimes and murders.
We've said that ourselves many times over the last number of decades.
You wouldn't know it, would you, from the AP reports we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Every wedding party that gets a hellfire missile thrown at them, every massacre of entire villages, families, etc, gets reported as "terrorists" or "Taleban" or "al qaeda" or "insurgents" (or sometimes "Taleban insurgents" or "al qaeda insurgents").
It is only afterwards that the facts begin to dribble out through the slower but generally more reliable means available: the people left alive on the ground.
Are "suspects" real people?
You wouldn't know that, either.
The awful truth is that people in the west have lost any sense of common cause we might once have had for the victims of our latest political idiocy du jour, and we no longer recognise that suffering an imperial power that treats people this way is as dangerous to our interests as it is to anyone elses.
And with each death of another innocent abroad it gets harder to escape the equally awful conclusion that when the day comes that this concentrated and lethally violent power is bought to bear against us, we will so thoroughly deserve it that there will be little room left for credible protest.
There you go again with your "accountability" schtick.
Didn't you hear Ahnold in "True Lies"? Asked whether he ever killed anybody, the answer: "Yeah, but they were alll baaaahd."
Somebody thought these dead guys must have been suspected having been, or having known, someone who was probably "baahd." Isn't that good enough for America?
Really. When we get to the end of this, is America really willing to go so far in ignoring what we all want to characterize as "mistakes" by the Bush Administration that we would rather normalize the conduct by changing our fundamental constitutional principles than redress it in order to enforce and respect those principles? And for no better reason than that we collectively accept the idea that those principles can be jettisoned by the unilateral and secret acts of the Executive Branch if there exists a perceived threat to America? Really?
Happy Fourth of July weekend, America. Anyone think timing this release for later this week has anything to do with news cycles, "taking out the trash", a congressional recess and a hope that the MSM won't want to interrupt the fireworks shows celebrating the birth of American Democracy over this particular weekend? How pathetic.
That's because bad guys were doing it silly.
In December, 2002, just six days after another detainee had been murdered, 22-year-old Dilawar the Afghani Cab Driver was going past Bagram at the wrong time. He was captured and ruthlessly beaten, despite interrogators believing he was innocent. He died of blunt force trauma to the lower extremities.
Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, Dilawar's coroner, said "I've seen similar injuries in an individual run over by a bus."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
I have the sad feeling that our policy of indefinite detention is simply an excuse to allow the worst abuses of foreigners for recreational purposes. This is more than at odds with our stated values and liberties. It is fundamentally undemocratic to hold someone indefinitely without their ability to challenge their status. I am appalled that Obama is signaling his intention to maintain this program at Bagram. Even the British have laws on the books that call for no more than a month's detention without review. We need to advocate for a similar US policy before the State starts turning this stuff on us next.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
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