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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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BTW, Merry Christmas ZHers.
Without this small island of sanity, I would be confined to a small room somewhere, being tortured.
On this note...
Merry Christmas to my fellow Z-Hedgers.
I learn from your every comment.
Happy New Year and please continue to dissect every posting and comment with the same hard-assed reasoning. Thank you all for this year and the last four.
...bah...humbug.
Its p erfectly clear the state and all its institutions - the police, the tax, finance, military, intelligence, see us as an enemy to be exploited and repressed in evry way.
They will keep us at some minimal subsistence level as necessary consumers, laborers and when necessar to fighj to preserve the priveleges of the elite.
That shitty TV show, "24" prepared taxpayers to accept and pay for torture. Even their own.
Ironic that Americans are so upset about Eric Garner, when we have been choking the living shit out of small countries for the past 50-60 years.
And here I thought that all one had to do was self righteuosly point a .45 at a guy's head, slap him around a bit, and shout "Where's the bomb?" a few times, and terrorism would be defeated.
/s
People who are peadophiles, sychopaths and systemically evil when found in a postion of authority will always find justifiaction for murder and torture for the satisfaction of their own personal sickness.
In the Whitehouse, Pentagon, Defence forces, NSA, police, CIA, FBI etc .... it is the psychopaths, rapists and serial killers who use the cover of authority to develop programs of torture and murder ... to justify their existance to be normal, and satisfy their carnal pleasures. WONDER how many of these sick people in authority, and the perpetrators actually get secret videos of all this stuff to watch at the sick pleasure.
"There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men."
"How fast were yoi going, Mr Smith?"
"45."
"Liar!"
"Ulp, gurgle gurgle blub blub."
"How fast was that again, Mr SMith?
"60-65. You call it."
"Loud enough for the guys here in the barracks."
Anybody remembers the Audi TDI ad some superbowls ago, where they glorified some fascist police state?
That upset me enough to write an email to Audi, stating "I know TDIs from Germany and totally like those cars. But one more ad depicting some police fascist state as normal, and I will vow to not buy an Audi, new or used, for the next 10 years!" After some days they responded with the usual noncommittal 'We're sorry to hear..blablabla'
Quick googling shows it was in 2010, this link describes it best (although I'm not a Christian believer):
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2010/0209/Audi-s-Green...
I laughed at the commercial and I think it was meant to be a funny "poke" at eco-nazis.
Yep, we laughed at the eco-nazis...
Look where we are today.
I'm not laughing.
Germany and fascist police state. Now, where have I heard those two things mentioned in the same story before?
NY Times wrote an Op-Ed against torture. Finally.
Before that the NYT was for the GWOT, applauded Zero Dark Thirty, and probaby still thinks WTC7 fell out of sympathy for the Twin towers collapsing into their own footprint.
Torture: It's whats for Christmas.
I'm not even sure that is worth a honorable mention, so many years late.
Alan Dershowitz is all for torture. He even said as much.
Ironically, if they actually did some honest reporting on WTC 7, the justification for torture would be undermined. Therefore, I think the NYTs is just carving out some "humanitarian" space that they clearly don't deserve.
I love torture because my TV said if you don't support torture you hate America and are probably a gay.
Excessive taser use beyond what is necessary to subdue and arrest a subject is torture. Same with beating.
It's already here, we're just talking about the magnitude.
Tasing and beating are only the tip of the iceburg. Or didn't you hear about that Florida prisoner who was sprayed down with water so hot that it killed him?
Right = alsopepper spraying the eyes of submissive seated detainees.
Domestic torture is going on here everyday. What do you think ZIRP and manipulated markets are? Punishing people who work and save, is just another form of domestic torture. My parents worked and saved all their lives- for what? No return on their savings while crooked banksters get bailed out? The criminals are running the show.
Maybe countries will follow in our footsteps and turn to the light by just droning strike city blocks in our pursuit of individuals seen in the vicinity.
I took military history in high school over 40 years ago and my teacher told me that US troops used torture in the Philippines during the "Spanish"-American war. He said that when the troops came home, those troops that became police officiers continued the use of torture on American citizens.
It wasn't well known, because American blacks bore the brunt of it.
Look at militarized police in America today and ask yourself "how many fought in the wars of the last 20+ years?" and "What kind of training have they had? What kinds of action did they see?"
Has this kind of behavior become in some sense "normalized" and will we all have to bare the brunt of it one way or another?
After 1900 the U.S. establishes concentration camps in the Philippines.
Eventually, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos will be held captive in the camps and thousands will die in them. American troops commit countless war crimes and atrocities, systematically destroying everything outside the so-called “dead lines”, including crops, boats, animals, houses, farm buildings and human beings. Property belonging to the concentration camp inmates is stolen. U.S. troops enslave Filipinos, particularly those of Chinese descent, as forced labor.
Torture is standard American procedure.
The so-called water cure was very widely used by the U.S. in its war against the people of the Philippines.
Other beneficiaries of "benevolent assimilation" were hanged by the thumbs, dragged by horses or hung with fires then started beneath them. A favorite American torture was tying a victim to a tree and shooting him or her through the legs. The victim was shot again each day until either he "confessed" or died.
American troops routinely murdered wounded Filipinos and bragged of "taking no prisoners". Official reports claimed that fifteen Filipinos were killed by the U.S. for every one wounded, almost the inverse of the norm. General Arthur McArthur, never one to miss an opportunity for a racist comment, explained the unsual death/wounded ratio by saying that whites do not succumb to wounds as readily as people of "inferior races."
Root, highly paid shyster for some of the most ruthless Americans in history including William "Boss" Tweed and robber barons Jay Gould and E. H. Harriman was, not surprisingly, a little flexible when it came to matters of truth.
In 1902 Senator George Hoar demands an investigation as evidence mounts of U.S. war crimes in the Philippines. Theodore Roosevelt resists Hoar’s demands and growing public opposition to the racist, imperialist war against the people of the Philippines and persistent reports of war crimes, atrocities and torture by American troops.
A public statement by American Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith that he intended to set the entire Philippine island of Samar ablaze and would probably wipe out most of the population, finally forces Roosevelt to do a little PR work. He gives the job of whitewashing American war crimes to dyed–in-the-wool imperialist, Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge whose standing U.S. Senate Committee on the Philippines has been studiously avoiding the question of American war crimes for months.
But even Lodge can’t keep the lid on the cauldron of war crimes and torture being acted out by the United States of America. The first witness is the latest U.S.-installed dictator of the Philippines, William Howard Taft, who concedes under questioning that Filipinos are being tortured by the U.S. military. General Robert P. Hughes, chief of staff to genocide artist, General Elwell S. Otis, concedes that Filipino houses are burned indiscriminately. David P. Barrows, explains that the concentration camps established by the U.S. military and the tortures being conducted by the U.S. are not really as bad as people think and that the Filipinos are actually benefiting from it all.
The report of the U.S.-installed dictator of the province of Tayabas, Major Cornelius Gardener is presented to the Committee:
Attempts to have Major Gardener appear before the Committee are duly blocked.
Sergeant Charles S. Riley testifies about entire villages being burned by U.S. forces and described the "water cure" torture carried out by U.S. troops against Filipinos.
Private William L Smith corroborates Sergeant Riley's testimony and admits that he had assisted in the complete destruction by burning of the town of Igbaras, a town of ten thousand people. Sergeant Edward J. Davis related other incidents of torture by U.S. forces and the burning of another town of twelve thousand people. Other witnesses recounted similar incidents.
By a strict party vote, the Committee refuses to call other proposed witnesses, calling witnesses instead from a "safe" list created by the U.S. War Department. The attempt to hide the truth of what the U.S. is doing to the Filipino people backfires when the veterans on the safe list begin lecturing the anti-imperialist members of the Committee on the need to shoot and/or burn all Filipinos because of their "inability to appreciate human kindness."
Yes. The privitazation of our prisons has done nothing to help this problem either. Yes, there is torture going on everyday in USSA prisons; and we imprison more people per capita than any industrialized nation. We just won't imprison those who are most deserving of punishment; CONgress, Banksters, Lobbyists, Was Profiteers, etc. The list is just too long. Solitary confinement is a regular happening, even for non violent offenders. Yes, this is the best possible of all worlds!
The privitazation of our prisons has done nothing to help - but it has enriched crony businesses.
Private prisons benefit from having more prisoners.
this entire country has become a prison. your inmate number is your cellphone #. happy holidays. dont forget to buy buy buy shit you dont need for assholes that dont deserve it!