By Creature
For a great distillation of why these two torture enablers walked see JB at Balkinization. What's really sad is that all we were hoping for out of this DOJ review was disbarment, and we couldn't even get that. If embarrassment were justice (the report itself is not flattering) then maybe we'd have some accountability here, but since these guys are unembarrassed--and are heroes to some--we are left with nothing.
Showing posts with label Bush Torture Policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bush Torture Policy. Show all posts
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Dick the Impaler
By Capt. Fogg
We seem to have forgotten about torture. Comedians and far right shamans still make jokes about how those still left in the cages at Guantanamo are the "worst of the worst." People are heavily against giving them any amenities like flu shots and some have the audacity to say we treat them too well, even though so many of them have never had any case proved against them or have been cleared: so many are guilty of little more than being Muslim or accused of something by an enemy.
That Dick Cheney, the once and in his own mind future Führer pokes fun at the idea that we ever engaged in torturing prisoners and although he's not well liked by any but the most extreme subhumans, he has never suffered any consequences for having directed and promoted things we used to hang people for when I was a boy: kidnapping, torture and murder. Republicans prefer to believe him, many of the rest of us believe so much in our essential virtue that we just don't want to hear any more of it.
It's not that there is no evidence of the Bush Administration's capital crimes, not at all. We have imprisoned and tortured many people with essentially no evidence against them, but there has been a constant flow of increasingly horrible information about kidnapping and the kind of torture even Limbaugh or Dick the Impaler himself couldn't pass off as a frat-boy prank. Crain Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan now tells us, says Raw Story, that the people the CIA sent to secret dungeons there were raped with broken bottles and/or boiled alive until they "admitted" to being affiliated with Al Qaida. Some were forced to watch their children being tortured and all so that the Bush administration could justify destroying Iraq to the eager war lovers back home.
(Cross posted from Human Voices)
We seem to have forgotten about torture. Comedians and far right shamans still make jokes about how those still left in the cages at Guantanamo are the "worst of the worst." People are heavily against giving them any amenities like flu shots and some have the audacity to say we treat them too well, even though so many of them have never had any case proved against them or have been cleared: so many are guilty of little more than being Muslim or accused of something by an enemy.
That Dick Cheney, the once and in his own mind future Führer pokes fun at the idea that we ever engaged in torturing prisoners and although he's not well liked by any but the most extreme subhumans, he has never suffered any consequences for having directed and promoted things we used to hang people for when I was a boy: kidnapping, torture and murder. Republicans prefer to believe him, many of the rest of us believe so much in our essential virtue that we just don't want to hear any more of it.
It's not that there is no evidence of the Bush Administration's capital crimes, not at all. We have imprisoned and tortured many people with essentially no evidence against them, but there has been a constant flow of increasingly horrible information about kidnapping and the kind of torture even Limbaugh or Dick the Impaler himself couldn't pass off as a frat-boy prank. Crain Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan now tells us, says Raw Story, that the people the CIA sent to secret dungeons there were raped with broken bottles and/or boiled alive until they "admitted" to being affiliated with Al Qaida. Some were forced to watch their children being tortured and all so that the Bush administration could justify destroying Iraq to the eager war lovers back home.
"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles,"he said at a lecture in October that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network.
"I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."I'm not ashamed to say that I'm ashamed of my country. I'm ashamed not so much by the monsters and tyrants and murderers of children some of us still revere as heroes and patriots, but by the way we still support what they did, still can't accept the horror, don't want to be told about it, still want to continue crimes as hideous as any ever committed, because after all, these people are "suspects." These people are "the worst of the worst" whether guilty or not and most of all they aren't Christian, like us. It's not really important anyway, not like gay marriage or insurance company profits or ACORN or tax breaks for Cheney and Bush.
(Cross posted from Human Voices)
Friday, June 26, 2009
The Torturer of Tehran
By Capt. Fogg
Saaed Mortazavi is sometimes called the “Torturer of Tehran,” but probably not to his face. The man also known as “Butcher of the press” has been given authority by the Iranian government to "interrogate" people involved, or said to be involved, in the demonstrations in Tehran.
Mortazavi earned his nicknames for his role in the death of a Canadian-Iranian photographer who was tortured, beaten and raped during her detention in 2003, says the Times Online. The TOT was behind the detention of more than 20 bloggers and journalists in 2004, held for long periods of solitary confinement in secret prisons, where they were allegedly coerced into signing false confessions.
I expect to be hearing a great deal about how Iranian concern over the strange results of the recent election are the products of American propaganda and the protest sponsored, choreographed, and financed from Washington, DC.
Of course, such things are more effective in terrorizing the locals than in convincing them that these confessions don'e have more to do with cattle prods and genitals than with American interference, but isn't it too bad that the US has lost any ability to deplore enhanced interrogation? Isn't it too bad that the US must remain silent about starting wars and killing people based on information extracted by torture?
Thank you, George W. Bush and all the other cowards who dragged our proud country down to the level of these savages!
(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)
Saaed Mortazavi is sometimes called the “Torturer of Tehran,” but probably not to his face. The man also known as “Butcher of the press” has been given authority by the Iranian government to "interrogate" people involved, or said to be involved, in the demonstrations in Tehran.
Mortazavi earned his nicknames for his role in the death of a Canadian-Iranian photographer who was tortured, beaten and raped during her detention in 2003, says the Times Online. The TOT was behind the detention of more than 20 bloggers and journalists in 2004, held for long periods of solitary confinement in secret prisons, where they were allegedly coerced into signing false confessions.
I expect to be hearing a great deal about how Iranian concern over the strange results of the recent election are the products of American propaganda and the protest sponsored, choreographed, and financed from Washington, DC.
Of course, such things are more effective in terrorizing the locals than in convincing them that these confessions don'e have more to do with cattle prods and genitals than with American interference, but isn't it too bad that the US has lost any ability to deplore enhanced interrogation? Isn't it too bad that the US must remain silent about starting wars and killing people based on information extracted by torture?
Thank you, George W. Bush and all the other cowards who dragged our proud country down to the level of these savages!
(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)
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