Excellent piece in the NY Times by Morris Davis back on February 17th. Definitely worth a look:
Twenty-seven years ago, in the final days of the Iran hostage crisis, the C.I.A.’s Tehran station chief, Tom Ahern, faced his principal interrogator for the last time. The interrogator said the abuse Mr. Ahern had suffered was inconsistent with his own personal values and with the values of Islam and, as if to wipe the slate clean, he offered Mr. Ahern a chance to abuse him just as he had abused the hostages. Mr. Ahern looked the interrogator in the eyes and said, “We don’t do stuff like that.”
Those were the days.
He continues:
After humiliating prisoners at Abu Ghraib by forcing them to strip naked and lie in a pile like a stack of firewood or simulating the drowning of detainees to persuade them to talk, we can no longer say we “don’t do stuff like that” — and we do not have to look far to see the damage. The disclosure last month of a manual for Canadian diplomats listing the United States as a country where prisoners might face torture, referring specifically to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was an embarrassment on both sides of the border.
…we need to come to grips with the practice known as waterboarding, the simulated drowning of a person to persuade him to talk.
It has done enormous damage to our national image, eroded our standing in the world and provided motivation and justification for those who would do us harm. In short, it was a very bad idea.
…Why a few others in positions of power still find it so difficult to admit the obvious about waterboarding is astounding. We can never retake the moral high ground when we claim the right to do unto others that which we would vehemently condemn if done to us.
Read it here: www.nytimes.com
Fucking Bush, Fucking Cheney, Fucking Rumsfeld, Fucking Ashcroft, Fucking Gonzales, Fucking Rice, and yes Fucking Powell…. you bastards stole my country. If there was justice the lot of you would be presented to The Hague.
Those troops are bastards aren’t they?
This is Ouuurrrrr Country!
I wish they wouldn’t refer to waterboarding as “simulated” drowning. It is actual drowning, it is just controlled to prevent actual death. (usually)
The terrorist won on 911. Our way of life that Bush said they hated so badly has gone. Our constitution lies in shreds. Our moral highground is a toxic swamp. We have gladly iven up freedom in the name of security. Next time they attack we’ll probably do it again.
Bush, Cheney, Feith, Libby, Rumsfeld, Rice, Tenet & more all need to be tried for war crimes.
Waging a war of aggression, which is exactly what they did, Iraq was no threat in any conceivable way, is a war crime.
Don’t you like how former-torturee John McCain conspiculously failed to vote on this controversial subject last week in the Senate, even though he was present for the vote. Despite years of preaching against torture, McCain failed to vote on a bill near and dear to his heart, which would have required the CIA to adhere to the Army Field Manual guidelines for acceptable intelligence gathering practices…in effect banning the CIA from waterboarding.
The only thing more ironic to me is that the reason for his abstaining from voting. You see, the conservatives in the country are actually PRO-torture. That’s right! They are pro-life, when it comes to your teen-aged daughter and her right to correct a mistake, but they are PRO-death when it comes to killing little brown people on the other side of the world. They are also PRO-death when it comes to capital punishment in our own country. They are PRO-torture when it may (or may not!) “save the lives of Americans”. Jesus loves the little children, as long as they’re not murderers or terrorists…then it’s okay to blow the little fuckers to hell.
In what is likely not the final act of selling his soul to the devil (which I don’t believe exists!) in order to get elected, John McCain “The Pander Bear” is courting the right-wing nutjobs that have ruled this country for the past 8 years. In order to win their favor, he’s willing to forget how many years (??) of having bamboo shoved under his finger nails in that pit of hell in Hanoi. “To hell with principle…I wanna be president!”
Makes me so proud that he’s from Arizona…
Dont forget PRO death when it comes to stem cell research. Fucking hypocrits!!