Torture Whitewash

[MountainLaurel]

Wow, is the Washington Post growing a spine?

Twenty years from now, how will we remember this "global war on terrorism''? Assuming it's over by then -- assuming we haven't escalated a fight against al Qaeda into an all-out clash of civilizations -- will we look back on the GWOT, as Washington bureaucrats call it, and feel pride in the nation's resolve and sacrifice? Or will history's verdict be tempered by shame?

The answer will depend on how this Congress comes to terms with the documented mistreatment of prisoners in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Iraq and who knows where else in the secret archipelago of U.S. detention.

snip

The U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the United States has signed, bans the inflicting of severe "physical or mental" pain to obtain information or a confession. There's no way that the infliction of physical agony, prolonged sleep and sensory deprivation, confinement in painful positions for hours on end, sexual humiliation, threats with snarling dogs and other documented U.S. abuses fall short of the definition.

Some prisoners were "rendered" to cooperating countries where old-fashioned fingernail-pulling is a routine investigative technique. Others have simply "disappeared," as if the U.S. government were some Latin American junta whose generals wear gold-braided epaulets as big as vultures. Most prisoners have been given neither adequate military nor civilian rights. Many don't know why they were arrested or what charges they face.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/02/AR2005050201264.html

[mhr]

1. A Day Late And A Dollar Short

eom

[bemildred]

2. Tsk, are the Neocons making the imperialist project look bad?

Maybe bullying smaller nations is in itself an unseemly thing to do?
:puke:

[Double T]

3. The Issues The United States Previously Condemned, Now...

....Have Become Part Of Business As Usual Everyday With The Bush Administration