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“It’s Just A Matter of Time Before [Torture] Spills Back Into Domestic Territory. Historically, It Always Has”
Military and constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley notes:
The cost of our torture program — and the failure to prosecute a single official for it (or the destruction of evidence and false statements revealed in its aftermath) will continue to cost this country dearly. Countries like Iran, North Korea, and China have already cited our use of water boarding to defend against their own abuses. When our soldiers or citizens are water boarded in the future, countries will play back Cheney’s words and others to say that such abuse is not torture. When we demand that officials in other countries be prosecuted for torture, they will mock our hypocrisy and own history.
Indeed, our enemies have already tortured Americans because we did it first.
Matthew Alexander – a former top Air Force interrogator who led the team that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – wrote in the Washington Post:
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.
And see this.
Torture isn’t just putting Americans in harm’s way abroad. It’s also going to come home to haunt us.
Retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce wrote last week:
To practice torture is to self-identify as a repressive police state, even if the practice is reserved only for conduct outside one’s own borders. But it’s just a matter of time before it spills back into domestic territory. Historically, it always has.
It always has … for thousands of years.
Indeed, all of the facets of militarization abroad are coming home.
Postscript: Torture is already arguably occurring occurring in U.S. prisons.
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It will all come to a sudden end when the state cannot finance and pay its SS military and police state anylonger. Then the hangmand will turn to whom ? EVERYBODY will see that serving someone who is broke is no good. Once the dollar falls, it all crumbles. ALL of it. The fate of the dollar is key to change. Until then, the shenanigans WILL GET WORSE.
It already has.
Just think of Kelly Thomas or this poor bastard:
http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/robert-leone/
The banksters need to repay us.
The pols and crats play at tyranny, the thugs implement it.
Like a boot stomping on your face- FOREVER!
Mark Levin, Conservative radio host, was going on about all the horrible things that happen in war as if to justify some torture. The is ironic as strict adherence to the Constitution is a hallmark of his program. He asserts we should stand by our agreements. The fact that we signed the Geneva Conventions is forgotten.
There was a reason we agreed not to use torture. It always comes back upon our own. We have violated that agreement and then tried to ignore that violation with the excuse that what we did was not torture.
i'm guessing that the ends justified the means...even more irony...for a conservative...cuz that's what liberals do.
In U.S. Prisons, Thousands Spend Years in Isolation
"Over the past two decades, solitary confinement has moved out of the prison basement and into whole facilities built just for isolation. These places have many names — Supermax, intensive-management units, secure housing — but the meaning is the same: years alone, out of the public view and away from public oversight.
"Isolation today means 23 hours a day in a concrete cell no bigger than a bathroom. One hour a day is spent alone in a concrete exercise pen, about the length and width of two cars.
"Most inmates held in solitary have no contact with the outside world other than the U.S. mail. Depending on the state, inmates have limited access to visitors. Most can't watch television, call anyone on the phone or even touch another person while in the units.
"Some inmates have been incarcerated in these conditions in U.S. prisons for more than 20 years. Most have been there for more than five years.
"Conservative estimates say that there are more than 25,000 inmates serving their sentences this way in 40 states. The inmates aren't in these facilities because of what they did on the outside. No one is sentenced by a court or a judge to serve their time in isolation, except in the rare occurrence of terrorists who could pose a threat to national security."
An interview by with Craig Heaney, a professor of psychlogy at UC Santa Cruz who has interviewed thousands of inmates who have spent time in long-term solitary "supermax" units, is worth listening to (starts at 25:19).
It's torture.
The fact that Torture perpetuates a response by foreign fighters who are indignant and enraged by this behaviour, is ideal for the Rockefeller/Rothschild perpetual 'war is peace' dynasty. Which is why it will continue and our media will focus on the foreign bombers and say how is peace possible with these savages and militant moooslims, we are forced to anhilate them all... like Bibi in Gaza... they are sub human unlike us elites... whilst in fact the Only difference between us and them is their faith rejected Ursury & the money lenders...
Domestic torture is listening to one of 0baMao's lying, Hitler-esc rants!
The fact that Torture perpetuates a response by foreign fighters who are indignant and enraged by this behaviour, is ideal for the Rockefeller/Rothschild perpetual 'war is peace' dynasty. Which is why it will continue and our media will focus on the foreign bombers and say how is peace possible with these savages and militant moooslims, we are forced to anhilate them all... like Bibi in Gaza... they are sub human unlike us elites... whilst in fact the Only difference between us and them is their faith rejected Ursury & the money lenders...
Saw Newsroom, series about msm defending the Constitution and civil rights by journalists/smart people answering questions before one could even ask the question. Great BS. MSM = government = military.
once war was declaced on terrorism, inevitably torture came with it.
war was declared on an inanament object.
terrorist, are not terrorist until they terrorize, they didn't wear uniforms, they looked no different than any other in the population, in fact they used them as shields, and hid amongst them.
the same person that was killing people in your squadron, was getting flagged through check points the next day.
the war on terrorism is open ended into eternity, it can be used as a political tool as a means to an end for ideolical purposes.
is what we're doing now toture, the use of drones, and the us, and opec hiring isis to be our proxies in a civil war in syria, to over throw assad, and weaken russia, and iran.
the tens of thousands of dead syrians, the abject TORTURE of the women, and children, not only in syria, but all across the me., and northern africa.
was it torture to drop 2 atom bombs on japan, and kill 100's of thousands to force them out the war, the generals decided they could win the war against japan, but would cost 300-500,000 dead americans, we bombed?
was it torture to bomd dresden killing 25,000 german civilians to pressure hitler to surrender in ww11, this was done in the last months of ww11 when it was known hitler was beat, but there was going to be many more allied, deaths, we bombed?
Hasn't this rediculous post been removed yet?
Not likely. 'George' is Tyler's gay partner.
Just come out and admit you are queer. people who have to find homosexuality in such situations clearly are gay or are experiencing repressed homosexual feelings.
In my experience people who use homosexuality to insult often have repressed feelings towards other men so why don't you just go ahead and come out of the closet
Would gut shooting bankers be torture or just considered inhumane because for some reason I just feel they should suffer and linger a while b4 they die ...kinda return the favor so to speak
Now see, you had to go and ruin the perfectly good righteous indignation and moral arguments of those who profess to abhor torture, by inserting those who any normal person would get great personal satisfaction out of torturing...to death, for the fun of it ;-)
I am hoping that serious torture is inflicted upon the America haters, islamic cult worshipers, and especially the socialist parasites.
I'm all for judicious use of torture where time and other measures are exahusted. But hating, worship, socialism or other 'ideas', isms, and other mental constructs is not grounds for any kind of pain or terror.
Back off or you look even more extreme than those you hate.
Islamic cult worship and socialism are diseases of the mind just as deadly as ebola, malaria, cancer, etc are to the body.
Policy should be to destroy them all.
irony much, bruh?
It's always been OK to toruture the Other. I was told they aren't even human. See the one over there with all the broken teeth and face so swollen you can't see it's eyes? It looks guilty and subhuman for sure, plus, they did it to us first.
As a Canadian with American children, all I can say my love for the USA has waxed cold in recent years, since the invasion of Afghanistan, a country where most civilians never heard of the twin towers, yet had to pay for whover dreamt up the plot and we do not know who is guilty, do we?
Bin Laden, would have gloated if he did it, but he denied it or so it is claimed. Not only that, Al Queda never lived up to the sophistication displayed in 9/11 afterwards.
Toture was something Evil countries stooped to, like the Nazis. That is what seperated the Allies from the Axis in the last World War, or we are led to believe that.
Now, there really is no difference is there?
There are two laws in life most of us fail at, love God and love thy neighbor.
God is the essence of life, without God, there is no universe. Without love, there is no motivation to live.
Not so. Your faith in a God, & by extension, no universe without one, is a badly flawed 'reason' to avoid torture and other evils.
Love exists independently of any phony deity. Motivation, ditto.
No doubt an unproven belief has made a great many billions of human beans feel better about their lives, organized religion a balm for them about the agonies, trials, and injustices in their lives.
All that proves is that human beans had to invent god, not the other way around, to make some sense of their lives. Not a bad or evil tactic for dealing with chaos, but a tactic nonetheless.
So is a belief in money, fame, or power equally flawed.
The essence of life is not god either. I don't even know that there is or should be an 'essence' to life. Life is life, an accident for all of us coming about as the random unification of 1 sperm out of 300,000,000 mating with one egg.
the human bean: can you think of any organism that can live life at such polar extremes as stalin and mother teressa?
and what drives these beans to such extremes? ha, i'll let you figure that out...
and that is what is wrong with humans...
humans=sad excuse for a living organism.
how could it have evolved to said such state as now?
have i misunderstood right and wrong?
i was thinking right was proper evo, ha, nothing of said such truth.
evolve to survive, evil or not, the polarity of turmoil called our existance.
which will win out?
ha, like inflation or deflation.
just my random thoughts about how fucked i, the human has the potential to be.
but toture is out of the question, golden rule...
"....how could it have evolved to said such state as now"?
What makes you think that human beans have 'evolved' when the case for hairy gorillas, and monkeys are THE advanced evolutionary species can be made so much more easily, considering what a great many human beans have done, do, and continue to do to one another?
It's likely that human beans are DEVOLVING, going backwards, and have been since our courts, our governments, and our so-called leaders play to the most lowest, depraved, unnatural, and violent of human instincts/
Our potential is locked up. Only the most stubborn among us will reach it, and those numbers appear to be dwindling the longer we continue to do the things that motivate the planet to kick us the hell off.
Right. Most of us are a sad commentary on what it means to be an advanced evolutionary, vanguard.
Don't know about that...
I'd rate good Whiskey, fast horses and loose women right up there.
That 700 Club business doesn't work for everyone.
BTW: Merry Christmas.
god is a concept reinforced by manipulation of mass stupids. love is bliss.
what did you say was worth living for!?
freedom and liberty to do the right things and the 11th(first and only) comandment, plus bonus thought- do not forgive, but get even with twice the fury>think bankers, printers, ploititcains, liars thieves. see you do gooders forgiving type don't get rid of the garbage-you just lock it up for a day for them to come back and rape your child AGAIN, fucking dumb...
oh, happy holiDAZE...
edit-opps, i tink i crossed the line-sorry
I found the Washington Post survey the most disturbing... when you look at the detail poll results to this question...
Q: Looking ahead, do you feel that torture of suspected terrorists can often be justified, sometimes justified, rarely justified or never justified?The detail break down of the 58% that feel torture is justified is an eye opener... it is MOL consistent across all segments of our society... Dem 45%, Liber 45%, Conservative 69%, Republican 72% the numbers are the same with age, race, income etc..... Christian (all flavors.......) mol 65%..
I wonder how Jesus would answer the questions in this poll?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/12/18/N...
Merry Christmas......
Unask that question about what Jesus, who permitted himself to be tortured and murdered, would answer, since he already has.
As a masochist, he has no cred.
As one who chalked up the treatment he received on his trip to Golgotha, as "know not what they do", when they damned well knew, his condoning it being done to him is tacit approval of torture.
Room 101 in the Ministry of Love.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
Lord Acton
Their power is derived from counterfeiting fiat.
End the FED.
Or, for another take on this:
"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."
- Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune
With everything you witness daily including the excessive use of force (which is a form of torture) and the "murder by choke hold" by our domestic law enforcement along with the extrajudicial killings of Americans abroad including an alleged American terrorist in Afghanistan and his 16 year old son who were never tried and convicted of ANY crimes before they were informally and unlawfully "sentenced" by the Executive -what makes you believe "that a matter of time" hasn't arrived a long time ago?...
SoCN, Agreed, but fwiw, I think it was Yemen.
GW you're overlooking the obvious:
Torture is done to dissuade potential dissenters. (By definition that does not include existing enemies.)
I'm surprised nobody has brought up any comparison yet to talk in the Third Reich, between non-Jewish people: "Shush, or they going to deport you to Auschwitz!"
"GW you're overlooking the obvious:
Torture is done to dissuade potential dissenters."
=======================
No, he addressed that directly:
=======================
Matthew Alexander – a former top Air Force interrogator who led the team that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – wrote in the Washington Post:
You have comprehension issues.
Are we all in a mindset of "nothing left to lose"?
Terrorism is theatre. It's meant more for those watching than the actual victims.
Bang on, George Washington.
Merry Christmas, bro.
Not even worth a comment.
Do Captain America or Superman use torture, yet? Torture is very effective when applied before trial, as proven by all those who confessed to witchcraft or to plotting against Stalin. Luckily, in the US, we would use torture only on the those who deserve it. We, as Americans, can be assured that our leaders use torture judiciously. Those naive Founding Fathers forbid cruel and unusual punishments in their Constitution, because of their ignorance.
What is truth? All the words we extract by torture. What is our proof? All those who confessed to witchcraft, heresy and enemies of the State after torture.
Alfreda Frances Bikowski, a high-ranking CIA officer, is the unnamed "Queen of Torture" who "gleefully participated in torture sessions".
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/19/senior-cia-officer-center-...
Apparently, the Obama Administration sponsored apology-for-torture puff piece "Zero Dark Thirty" based the lead character on her, reflecting support for strong female role models in positions of authority at the torture rack.
Apparently many North American Indian tribes would turn over their captured enemies to the womenfolks for torture. They found that they were much better at it than the men.
Brought to you by your comrades at Sony.
Domestic torture (as a common practice) is nothing more than the natural progression of a behaviour left unmodified. I find it difficult to believe that anyone could not reason this.
The BLS, "We tortured some numbers"
What's BLS??? Oh yes, I remember now: Bullshit, Lies and Snake-oil.
In other words, "The tip is in...."
EU In Total Horror As Russia Prepares New “Anti Nazi (torture) Law”...
A stunning report prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) circulating in the Kremlin today states that European Union (EU) foreign diplomats were left in “total horror” this past week after being alerted by their Russian counterparts to the catastrophic effects upon the NATO Alliance due to a proposed Federation Council (FC) law outlawing the sale of energy supplies to any nation that is now/or has been engaged in Nazi-like torture of prisoners of war or its own citizens.
According to this report, the Federation Council (the upper house of the parliament of the Russian Federation) began the adoption of this new “Nazi Law” under orders given by President Putin after the United States refused to heed Russia’s 14 December warning of retaliation against the imposition of additional sanctions by President Obama’s signing of a new Russian sanctions law on 18 December.
The proposed new “Nazi Law” being written by the FC, this report continues, would specifically forbid the sale of Russian natural gas, oil, oil by-products (and other such natural resources of the Federation) to any nation, or military alliance of nations, that: 1.) Has failed to support the United Nations resolution condemning attempts to glorify Nazism ideology and denial of German Nazi war crimes; 2.) Has used Nazi torture techniques against POW’s and/or civilians; and 3.) Has conducted mass executions of unarmed civilians.
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1827.htm
I'm an air force Brat of Cold Warrior parents (dad USAF SnrMSG, mom CSnrMsg).
I grew up with all the propaganda drilled into me about the Soviet Union and how Russians were the epitome of evil.
I'm now 55...and today, I think Russia may be the savior of the free world.
How can this be?