[6]The Water Torture
Facsimile of a woodcut in J. Damhoudère’s
Praxis Rerum Criminalium,
Antwerp, 1556
It has now been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that specific [7] type [8] of torture which the U.S. used during the Bush years was a war crime [9].
Top terrorism and interrogation experts agree that torture creates more terrorists [10]. Indeed, the leaders of ISIS were motivated by U.S. torture [10]. And French terrorist Cherif Kouchi told [11] a court in 2005 that he wasn’t radical until he learned about U.S. torture [12] at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
[13]
But all Obama has done is to transition to drone assassinations which – beyond any shadow of a doubt – are a war crime [14] (more here [15] and here [16]), and create more terrorists than they stop [17].
As the eminent historian Alfred McCoy notes [18]:
Back in 2006 readers may well have dismissed that warning about “state-sponsored murder” as improbable, even irresponsible. But now this distinguished panel [which includes former FBI director William S. Sessions, former Army intelligence chief Claudia Kennedy, and former DEA director Asa Hutchinson] tells us that is exactly what has happened. Under President Obama, the torture issue has faded not from reform but because we are no longer taking prisoners since, as this report states, “the regime of capture and detention has been…supplanted in large measure by the use of drones.” By killing high value targets with drones, “the troublesome issues of how to conduct detention and interrogation operations are minimized.” In effect, we have slid down [19] the slippery slope of human rights abuse to find extra-judicial killings awaiting us like an unwelcome specter at the bottom.
Postscript: In reality, the Obama regime has simply replaced [20] Bush’s torture techniques with ones “that emphasize psychological torture,” and by outsourcing torture [21] to our “allies.”
And Obama is committing other war crimes which increase terrorism, like – according to a group of CIA officers [22] – arming Al Qaeda in Libya so they would overthrow Gaddaffi.