U.S. Exporting 'Tools of Torture,' Charges Amnesty

[Fozzledick]

Wed Dec 3, 7:44 AM ET
Jim Lobe, OneWorld US

WASHINGTON, D.C., Dec 3 (OneWorld) - The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush (news - web sites) is violating the spirit of its own export policy by approving the sale of tools to countries known to use them to torture detainees, according to new report released here Tuesday by Amnesty International.

In 2002, U.S. exports of electro-shock weapons and restraints that can be used for torture amounted to some US$14.7 dollars and $4.4 million, respectively, according to the report, titled "The Pain Merchants."

Along with the sales of such equipment, Washington is also reported to have handed over suspects in the ''war on terror'' to the same countries, the 85-page report said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=655&e=4&u=/oneworld/4536743141070455202

[kayell]

1. Is this helpless horror that I am spending more and more

of my days feeling, what the German public experienced in the 1930s?

Added: I was raised to believe that America always tried to be fair and equitable, that even when our country failed to live entirely up to it's ideals, that those ideals were always in sight, always the goal to strive for. Our country has fallen so far. Even though the reality of US foreign policy never lived up to the image we projected, at least there was a sense that that image was where we SHOULD be and what we were becoming. Now it is becoming clear that with every passing day we are in fact becoming everything we were taught to despise, yet no one seems to see the monster in the mirror.

[donsu]

2. yes and it will get worse

nt

[tom_paine]

5. Yes, and it will get worse

Luckily, for the moment anyway, our Totalitarians are certainly "kinder and gentler" than German Totalitarians of the 1930s.

For the moment.

But Totalitarianism is a funny thing that, no matter which political side, Left or Right, embraces it, it always seems to come to the same kind of Tyranny.

I'm not sure that, once the Ruling Class Opposition is eliminated for the Busheviks, that we won;t finally feel the "success" of trickle-down, which is trickle-down tyranny.

And to say again, yes, that peculiar sinking feeling in the guts, which I never experienced once before 12-12-2000, except as a pale shadow when reading "1984", "Animal Farm" or "Farenheit 451", is almost certainly what the Germans felt during their gathering Totalitarian Storm.

I have read several anecdotal accounts of people who say that they know Germans who lived during those times who are terrified now. And George Soros' statements cannot be dismissed as anecdotal.

[Ernesto]

3. bush creating US manufacturing jobs!

Well now I guess the economy is really turning around after all.

[AliceWonderland]

4. This report

made me ill. But it's not a new issue.

[tom_paine]

6. Where will Amnesty International move it's offices

after the transformation of Imperial Amerika from what it once was to what it is becoming?

They won't be able to stay in this tyrannical state, and within three decades their activities will likely generate considerable danger for themselves.