Interrogation: Senate Report Reveals U.S. Military Split »
Posted By Spadecaller 6 months ago in NewsDisagreements continually arose among U.S. military personnel in 2002 and 2003 over which harsh interrogation techniques used on detainees at Guantanamo and in Afghanistan and Iraq were legally permissible, according to a report released last month by the Senate Armed Services Committee. The questionable interrogation methods employed were supplemented by Defense Secretary – Donald Rumsfeld’s guidance, according to the Senate report.
Read Full Story at washingtonpost.com »
451 Views Share Story 22 Comments Report
Submitted By:
Spadecaller
Welcome to my profile. About me: I'm an artist of several kinds; from bull to painting. I don't spare too many words. Most ...
RSS Join the Discussion
+ Add CommentComments So Far: 22 (view all)
-
100%
Spadecaller6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
FTA
Reply
"How differently individual Defense Department personnel viewed interrogations is vividly illustrated by the conflict in the fall of 2003 among three specialists sent by the Pentagon to Baghdad to assist a U.S. Special Forces group called the Special Mission Unit Task Force. That group was responsible for carrying out interrogations of highly valued detainees.
The three specialists were associated with the Pentagon's elite Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), which previously had trained U.S. military officers to resist harsh enemy interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. Beginning in 2002, some JPRA personnel had switched to training special American military and intelligence personnel in "offensive interrogation," using the enemy's techniques against detainees brought to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or held in Afghanistan and later Iraq."
Will we become the next nation that "saw nothing wrong" with crimes against humanity?-
Neutral
hyperbola6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Well Spade, we have "help" from a nation that "sees nothing wrong" with crimes against humanity working hard to ensure that. Indeed, the influence of "israel-firsters" in our universities, media (e.g. NY Times) and government (both parties) means we are well advanced along that path.
Reply
How Alan Dershowitz Misstates, Misrepresents and Misapplies the Law
As an ultra-Zionist, what he insists is akin to "the law is what I tell you it is! And why can't the World understand that!" While cherry picking, mischaracterizing and misapplying International Law, Professor Dershowitz ignores what every Law School and University teaches on the subject.
Should he spend more time in the Harvard Law School library, and less in TV studios, he would surely learn that an objective application of international legal norms to the conduct of Israel is Gaza would result its leaders being indicted and brought before the International Criminal Court in The Hague....
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/01/09/how-alan...
-
-
100%
not2needy6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
The issue of torture is so depressing. I hate to think that we have devolved into a new state of Barbarism (is that a word?)..
Reply
I realize that some of the people we're dealing with are of a Barbaric nature, but does that mean we have to lower our standards to theirs?? It appears that our last administration thought that taking us back into the middle ages was a good way to get and keep control over the masses. It's just sick and i believe they will answer for that things they have done..
Cheney's being vocal now, trying to exonerate himself from being brought up on war crimes, still trying to scare people into thinking they were right in what they did, and that Obama is going to get everyone killed.. He knows what they did, and he's scared.-
100%
Spadecaller6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
"I realize that some of the people we're dealing with are of a Barbaric nature, but does that mean we have to lower our standards to theirs?"
Reply
How true. And it is those that remain silent in the face of overwhelming undeniable evidence that the former administration had broken both constitutional and international laws and in so doing are responsible for heinous crimes against humanity. We must denounce that conduct to the world to elevate ourselves to the moral high ground.
What bothers me almost as much as those that have perpetrated these crimes, are those that know it was wrong and now choose to pretend that it doesn't matter. The hstory of pre-nazi Germany is about a nation of people most of whom claimed after the deaths of millions that "we knew nothing". Not only was that not true, it was a lie that too many people participated in. When our nation stood by and remained silent when we imprisoned Japanese Americans, there were also too many who claimed that they knew nothing.
The truth is that we did know and that we allowed it. Now we must help our nation stand up and face the truth and to clean up the wreckage that we have brought upon the world. Those guilty of war crimes must face a tribunal and those politicians on both sides of the aisle that were complicit or supportive of these atrocities must be held accountable. Most of us already know who were the key players. There time to face their crimes has arrived. The entire world is waiting for our nation to do the right thing. -
Neutral
Natureboy6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
"I realize that some of the people we're dealing with are of a Barbaric nature, but does that mean we have to lower our standards to theirs?"
Reply
That suggests that there was a previous time when our standards were higher.
Lets try pinning that down.
It wasn't when we were engaging in genocide against first nation peoples.
It wasn't when we were waterboarding and butchering Filipinos during the Spanish-American war.
It wasn't when we were subjecting suffragettes to torture while in confinement.
We can scratch the Korean and Vietnam conflicts - we sure weren't a shining beacon of human rights in those days.
So, unless we can find a little sliver of light in there somewhere, I have to say that we have not devolved into a new state of barbarism so much as we have simply carried on with the same old barbarism.
-
-
-
sonofreasonComment removed: Hard Banned3 Replies
-
50%
hyperbola6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Where were you when your "israel-first" buddies started this process in both the US and Israel?
Reply
Sderot - A town built on the ashes of an ethnically cleansed and defaced Palestinian village
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about Sderot, a town that has become the centrepiece of Israeli propaganda. Israeli spokesmen, and Israel’s stooges in the media and among politicians in Britain, the European Union and the United States, repeat ad nauseum the mantra about Palestinian home-made rockets "raining down" on Sderot, although only 1 in 500 causes a fatality. It is a mantra that has been used to justify the countless thousands of Israeli bombs, missiles, grenades and tank shells that are blasted into Gaza's tight-packed humanity. Bu what do we know about Sderot? Below is an insight into the town's history.
Israeli land thieves built Sderot on the ashes of an ethnically cleansed and defaced Palestinian village called Najd.
Sderot was settled by Jews in 1951. In All That Remains, Walid Khalidi says that Sderot, along with the settlement of Or ha-Ner, founded in 1957, were established on the village lands of Najd, which means "elevated plain" in Arabic.
According to Umkhalil, Najd's Palestinian villagers, approximately 620 in 1945, were expelled on 13 May 1948, before Israel was declared a state and before any Arab armies entered Palestine. UN Resolution 194 and also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13, Section 2, stipulate that the villagers of Najd have a right to return home to their personal property and to their native village.
Najd is 14 kilometres from Gaza. Palestinian Arabs own 12,669 dunums in Najd, although Israel refuses to honour their rights to their personal property, and refuses them their inalienable right to return home. In 1945 Jews owned 495 dunums of land in Najd and public lands consisted of 412 dunums.
In short, Sderot is an illegally occupied territory stolen from Palestinians.
Israeli Goebbels: Stop lying to the world about needing to defend what is not rightfully yours. You're worse than bank robbers saying they have a right to defend their loot!
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/01/29/sderot-a...
-
-
-
-
100%
Natureboy6 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Jung claimed that this phenomenon was group possession by the shadow self.
Reply
We all have a dark side. BUT when we deny our own darkness, and project it onto others, as the Germans did to Jews, Slavs, communists, gays, etc, and as many Americans do to Arabs and Muslims, then while we see ourselves as somehow being the good guys who are warring against the evildoers, the fact is that we have become possessed by our own evil impulses. While we think we are the shining beacon of light unto the world, we are in fact wholly given over to authoritarianism, violence, sadism. And when it is pointed out to us, we say "no, that's not us, we're GOOD, we just have to do these things because we are fighting the evil _________ . (insert "Jews," "Muslims", "commies," "Al-Qaeda," "Taliban" or other scapegoat du jour.) They're BAD, we're not bad."
-
-
Add a Comment
Sign In With Your Propeller Account
Please keep your comments relevant to this story.
To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.