Naomi Klein: The US has used torture for decades. All that's new is the openness about it |
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Posted By dissent
6 months, 3 weeks ago
in News
Saturday 10 December 2005
It was the "Mission Accomplished" of George Bush's second term, and an announcement of that magnitude called for a suitably dramatic location. But what was the right backdrop for the infamous "We do not torture" declaration? With characteristic audacity, the Bush team settled on downtown Panama City.
It was certainly bold. An hour and a half's drive from where Bush stood, the US military ran the notorious School of the Americas from 1946 to 1984, a sinister educational institution that, if it had a motto, might have been "We do torture". It is here in Panama, and later at the school's new location in Fort Benning, Georgia, where the roots of the current torture scandals can be found.
According to declassified training manuals, SOA students - military and police officers from across the hemisphere - were instructed in many of the same "coercive interrogation" techniques that have since gone to Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib: early morning capture to maximise shock, immediate hooding and blindfolding, forced nudity, sensory deprivation, sensory overload, sleep and food "manipulation", humiliation, extreme temperatures, isolation, stress positions - and worse. In 1996 President Clinton's Intelligence Oversight Board admitted that US-produced training materials condoned "execution of guerrillas, extortion, physical abuse, coercion and false imprisonment".
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Submitted By:
dissent
we live in a culture of war.
let's make it a culture of peace.
"my country is the world. and my religion is to ...
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gamahuche6 months, 3 weeks ago
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Your message with the heads-up recommended checking the date of this story.
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EVERYONE should!
I can't unfortunately give it the attention that it deserves but I will mention that Naomi Klein has a long track-record at the Guardian - formerly a Liberal paper [as in supporting the British Liberal Party]. Of course translating into US standards that would put them on the left politically, but in relation to the former impeccable integrity of the quality British Press, now, alas, diminished by the Bliar years quality information, the Guardian still sustains a high standard.
In other words - well worth listening to! -
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hyperbola6 months, 3 weeks ago
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We shouldn't forget that these crimes by our government have also spawned similar crimes by a whole series of corrupt corporations, including some of the corrupt financial companies (Goldman Sachs) that have just bilked US taxpayers out of trillions of dollars. At the forefront of this development was none other than the war criminal Henry Kissinger. We should turn him over to Interpol (he is wanted for questioning is several countries).
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Wanted for War Crimes: Henry Kissinger
....He serves his consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, serves as a sort of private National Security Adviser and Secretary of State to about 30 major corporations around the world, such as American Express, Freeport-McMoRan Minerals, Chase Manhattan Bank, Volvo ... Walter Isaacson on Booknotes
According to the new book Kissinger, by Walter Isaacson, published in 1992 by Simon & Schuster, ASEA Brown Boveri (page 733) had a contract or project arrangement with Henry Kissinger’s money-making consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, in 1990. According to this fascinating book, Kissinger started his consultancy in July 1982 with “$350,000 lent to him by Goldman Sachs and a consortium of three other banks.” Some of the people Kissinger hired to work for him were Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser, and Lawrence Eagleburger “who was lured aboard as president in June 1984 after serving as undersecretary of state”. Both Snowcroft and Eagleburger left Kissinger Associates in 1989 to join President Bush’s administration. Kent Associates is a subsidiary of Kissinger Associates. On pages 733-734 a list of some of Kissinger’s corporate clients include, aside from ABB: Shearson Lehman Hutton, Atlantic Richfield, Banca Nazionale del Lavora (BNL) “a Rome bank that made illegal loans to Iraq”; Fluor; Hunt Oil; Merck & Co.; Union Carbide. http://www.workonwaste.org/wastenots/wn218.htm
http://www.zpub.com/un/wanted-hkiss.html -
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slate6 months, 3 weeks ago
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Will13136 months, 3 weeks ago
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no problem from me..
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the current problem was caused by revealing it was being done... and trying to set policy statements on it.. setting up a paper trail..
while i certainly don't condone it...
some things belong in the back room so to speak.. .. to think we haven't from time to time.. would be naive... -
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lfergie8126 months, 3 weeks ago
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Nice try slate but the laws on torture applies to captives of war. Clinton was not officially a president during time of war so unless you have proof that those captured in Bosnia were tortured under his orders, there's no basis for your statement.
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One has to wonder just who was running the country the last eight years. Bush or Cheney. Never in the history of our country has a vice president taken as much power as Cheney did.
"Early in the Bush administration, Cheney placed a group of allies throughout the government who advocated a robust and pre-emptive foreign policy, especially regarding Iraq. But a potential obstacle was Tenet, a holdover from the Clinton administration who had survived the transition by bypassing Cheney and creating a personal bond with the president."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/v... -
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Endoscopy6 months, 3 weeks ago
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This story is an absolute lie. The poster also tells this lie as well.
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1. Torture has a very specific definition in the federal law and what was done does not violate that law.
2. In 2002 all congressmen were invited to the room to hear what the methods of interrogation were going to be used. All but one that went agreed with what was presented. Many asked if harsher methods should be used.
3. The Senate in ratifying treaties always makes sure that it does not disagree with our laws. If it does an exception is placed in the conditions of signing. Thereby preserving our laws.
This is just a Bush bashing method.-
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dissent6 months, 3 weeks ago
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"Torture was taught by CIA; Declassified manual details the methods used in Honduras; Agency denials refuted
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By Gary Cohn, Ginger Thompson, and Mark Matthews.
The Baltimore Sun
Monday 27 January 1997, Final Edition
WASHINGTON -- A newly declassified CIA training manual details torture methods used against suspected subversives in Central America during the 1980s, refuting claims by the agency that no such methods were taught there.
"Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual -- 1983" was released Friday in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by The Sun on May 26, 1994.
The CIA also declassified a Vietnam-era training manual called "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation -- July 1963," which also taught torture and is believed by intelligence sources to have been a basis for the 1983 manual.
The 1983 manual was altered between 1984 and early 1985 to discourage torture after a furor was raised in Congress and the press about CIA training techniques being used in Central America. Those alterations and new instructions appear in the documents obtained by The Sun, support the conclusion that methods taught in the earlier version were illegal."
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/40/055.html -
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lfergie8126 months, 3 weeks ago
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Endo
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I see that you're still talking off the top of your head. Torture is defined in article 3 section (c) of the Geneva Convention which was signed by the USA and "entry into force 21 October 1950", not by the Republican congress of 2006 but by the congress which approve the agreement in 1949.
"(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;"
The rest of the article goes on to describe how prisoners must be treated when captured.
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm -
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sinophil496 months, 3 weeks ago
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endo - Calm down. This is not a Bush bashing article. This is a revelation of the depth and duration of the use of torture by the US government. The only difference with Bush is that he tried to legitimize it by decaring that what he ordered was NOT torture, even though it clearly was.
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It seems that all presidents since the Vietnam War have used torture to varying degrees. Whether any should be prosecuted or not is a different legal debate that I will not initiate.
What is important is what we can learn from the revelation and what we can do to improve the behavior of our elected officials in the future. You simply denying that what was done by Bush was torture will actually make it easier for future presidents to commit the same international crimes.
You want to bash some Democrats. OK, go ahead. JFK and Clinton were serial adulterers. Carter was a wimpy president. Ted Kennedy committed manslaughter.
Please do not close your eyes to the wrongs of our own government. We are all humans and make errors in judgment. Our government is composed of humans and they also make mistakes. Nothing surprising in that. What must distinguish our form of government is thay we must try to continually improve our government. We cannot do that unless we are able to honestly admit and evaluate past mistakes and even crimes.
Germany has done an admirable job of owning up to the Nazi atrocities and the Holocaust. They have rebuilt their nation and their prestige ever since the end of WWII.
We must do no less.
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Will13136 months, 3 weeks ago
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2. In 2002 all congressmen were invited to the room to hear what the methods of interrogation were going to be used. All but one that went agreed with what was presented. Many asked if harsher methods should be used.
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you know that's not true.. everyone here knows that's simply not true... yet you keep spouting it over and over...
LINK OR LIE..-
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GLee6 months, 3 weeks ago
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LINK!!
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http://townhall.com/Columnists/JohnHawkins/2008/06...
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Poulenc6 months, 3 weeks ago
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So torture--the meaning, the act--is a matter of consensus?
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Brings to mind Justice Potter Stewart's famous "I know it when I see it" definition of obscenity.
One can parse the definition of torture ad infinitum (to, usually, justify it's use), but each of us knows what constitutes torture.
The acid test: Would I want it done to me? -
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lloydm656 months, 3 weeks ago
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You are absolutely right,I wouldn't want it done to me.I would however expected it,if I had been one of the scum bags who help bring about the incineration of three thousand innocent civilians,including the babies,and small children in the nursery.In fact I could not consider myself a man if I didn't accept the death penalty with out trying to evade it.Walk to gallows,refuse the hood accept my fate.I don't expect sorrow,or repentance.It would be unnatural.Now all you sniveling slob who don't even aspire to be men,shut the hell up.
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honeydove646 months, 3 weeks ago
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Is is not "torture" when we catch the victims killed by Camera?? what we have is sick people who do not understand this logic of Rights. The USA believes in Freedom and Basic "human" rights. Some groups would not open their mouth about this when we talk about our American soldiers! They are fighting for our lives and their Families as I write this...
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FrankHummel6 months, 3 weeks ago
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Maybe it is actually beginning to penetrate through the thick skulls of a great many foolish folk that the whole REACTION, long "pent up" but now finally actually "breaking loose", against the OBSCENITIES that have LONG been being committed in "our" name and which have been foisted off on us all by "our" marvelous MISguided (or maybe more like MISBEGOTTEN!) MIS"leadership" is NOT just some mere "harmless" exercise in "Republican vs. Democrat political posturing". Clearly, there IS guilt enough to go around --- on BOTH "sides of the aisle"!
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What I, for one, find nearly as disgusting as the atrocities perpetrated "in our name" themselves is THE APPARENT INCLINATION OF LARGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE TO NOW GO ALONG WITH "SWEEPING IT ALL UNDER THE RUG" ---
ostensibly on the grounds that there would be no "party advantage" to be had once it actually begins to come home to people that many of "our" marvelous MISmanagers, of BOTH political "stripes", have a share in the guilt.
Clearly, this is something in "our" national makeup with which this society is going to have to come to grips --- kind of like say, for example, SLAVERY, or the "ethnic cleansing" of the Native Americans and the Nisei. It CAN'T merely be "deferred in perpetuity", as "we" seem to so often be inclined to try to get away with in (not) dealing with many OTHER things as well.
I, for one, would like to express my ADMIRATION AND THANKS to Obama and company for the shrewd manner in which they are evidently trying, at least, to FORCE people to face up to the LARGER realities of the whole subject! This ISN'T just a "Republican" sin --- and there really SHOULD be a much BROADER exposure, together with FULL discreditations, and maybe indeed PROSECUTIONS, where they are deserved, of ALL "architects" of such policies. What is needed is a good cathartic CLEANSING of a great deal of "dead wood". Whatever their INTENTIONS may or may not have been, these birds did NOT "protect" "us" --- indeed, the net effective result of their whole obscenity has worked out to be QUITE THE OPPOSITE of that!
I submit that the fact that so many people have for so long been unwilling to THINK FOR THEMSELVES, but evidently prefer instead to follow off after any ideological idiot who picks up a mere FLAG and waves it IS PRECISELY WHAT HAS GOTTEN THIS COUNTRY INTO THE PICKLE IN WHICH IT NOW FINDS ITSELF!
I just wonder to what extent it may have been the case that some of the more egregious outrages by fighters on the "other side" may have actually been ENGENDERED by the kinds of treatment being meted out to THEM in cases when THEY were held as "our" prisoners!-
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FrankHummel6 months, 3 weeks ago
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By the time they (for example) beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, "al-Qaeda" MUST SURELY HAVE BEEN WELL AWARE (given escapes, exonerations and releases, and some forcible "extractions" of prisoners that had occurred long before then) of much of what was being done to THEIR OWN brethren in captivity. (Only "We the People" over here, after all, were "kept in the dark" in THAT regard!)
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So then THAT, of course, raises the question of to what extent it has to be considered, as a matter of logic, that a factor MOTIVATING such atrocities as the Pearl murder may well have been what had been and was being done by "our OWN" people!
That is, maybe at least a part of the more-or-less universal outrage at THAT horror really should be directed at "our OWN" murderers and torturers --- who now come along and muster the sheer chutzpah to argue that "we" have got some kind of bounden obligation to "support" them on the things they have done because THEY were supposedly "protecting" "us"! But did not what they did ACTUALLY ADD to "our" risk?? TALK ABOUT CIRCULAR REASONING!!
Anyway, HERE is the only “circular” reasoning that is actually valid:
What GOES ‘round --- COMES ‘round.
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bluevalla6 months, 3 weeks ago
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The names have been changed to to protect the inocent WHO are we all kidding it has Cane killed Able for an iaed? so it' has been going on for over 5ooo years So why change now? Answers to wanted and needed questions so one army can kill more have been gotten buy whateven means the human mind can invent. We call some serial killers others intergatior others heros It's ALL the same and will NEVER change. If we belive in a devine being even He or She demanded a death before providing us a great service. The human race has alwasys wallowed in eachothers blood for our oun importance. Koran Tora Bible doctrin of Ball Musaka ect norhing will ever change as long as one wants what the orher has. What ever happened to to JUST STOP !!!!!!!What are we always so afraide of being pray or not being able to stop being the hunter?
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