Scott Horton details the Italian court decision finding some of the CIA agents involved in kidnapping a suspected Arab terrorist from Italy.
I say Good for Italy. Kidnapping a guy who’s only “suspected” is bad enough, but sending him off for torture in Egypt? That’s a crime.
And let’s face it, if the UK had ever kidnapped American resident who supported the IRA back when it was a terrorist group, we’d have reacted with outrage (or any other American citizen accused of anything).
And it’s not as if the guy was going to walk away scott-free: Italian police were already on the case, but the CIA moved in before they could arrest him, as detailed in The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, over in Afghanistan, their police and officials are understandably upset about American plans to capture or kill suspected drug kingpins. Honestly, don’t these people realize their country belongs to us now?
The Destin Log is the twice-weekly newspaper devoted to covering the crown jewel of the Emerald Coast.
Archive for the 'Torture' Category
It’s that whole innocent-until-proven-guilty thing. And the torture-is-a-crime thing too
November 5th, 2009, 10:30 am by fshermanGreenwald again
September 21st, 2009, 10:06 am by fshermanHis post from this Saturday discusses how unsurprising it is that the CIA directors object to prosecutions for CIA employees who engaged in torture–and how noteworthy it is that they’re demanding the president pull the AG off the case, given that the AG decisions to prosecute are supposed to avoid politics.
And one from the Miami Herald
September 15th, 2009, 1:53 pm by fshermanThe column Fear Was No Excuse written by former Marine Corps Commandant
Charles C. Krulak and former Centcom Commander in Chief Joseph P. Hoar argues against torture as practically and morally a bad idea. But I’m sure they’re just two more filthy leftwingers who hate America.
Torture is just not acceptable
August 28th, 2009, 10:28 am by fshermanFrom the Daily News Spout Off this morning, on punishing CIA agents who torture: “Tell that liberal garbage to the families of 2,740 people who died on 9/11 and thank God that you weren’t one of them.”
In the first place, torture is still a crime, regardless of how p.o.’d the spouter feels. Revenge is not a justification for breaking the law.
In the second place, we’ve documented that our torture victims included people who had no more to do with 9/11 than Saddam did (which is to say nothing whatsoever). We’ve tortured people who were innocent of any crime at all.
And Dick Cheney’s claims to the contrary, there’s not the slightest evidence we’ve ever turned up evidence via torture that prevented another 9/11 or that we couldn’t have gotten the same information legally.
If they do it on TV, it must be moral, right?
August 26th, 2009, 1:40 pm by fshermanJonah Goldberg on the latest torture report: “In countless films and TV shows the good guys — not the bad guys — do things to get important information that makes all some [see update] of the harsh methods and allegedly criminal techniques in the IG report seem like an extra scoop of ice cream and a Swedish massage. In NYPD Blue, The Wire, The Unit, 24 and on and on, suspects are beaten, threatened, terrified. In some instances they are simply straight-up tortured.
…
Now, I know I will get a lot of “it’s just a movie” or “TV shows aren’t real” email from people. At least I have every other time I’ve made this point. So let me concede a point I’ve never disputed while making one these folks don’t seem to grasp. If such practices, in the contexts depicted, were as obviously and clearly evil as many on the left claim, Hollywood could never get away with having the good guys employ them.”
So by this logic—it can’t be that bad if heroes do it—
•Stealing is OK, because a lot of caper films take the crooks’ side.
•Adultery is OK, because that sure happens a lot.
•Rape is OK, because there are romance novels that show rape as sexy (a lot of people actually do buy this).
And, of course, some things that have been detailed about Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in the Bush gulag have been a lot worse than you’d see on TV (plus, of course, they happen to innocent people).
The wacky world of the Daily News letter column
August 10th, 2009, 12:08 pm by fshermanFrom Sunday, first we have Jim Blanchard of Crestview, who in one paragraph asserts that Obama is a Marxist creating a fascist state. Dude, fascism and Marxism are not the same thing–and Obama is neither.
I’m also amused by the outrage Blanchard and other Republicans are expressing lately over the idea Washington is run by “corrupt politicians, power brokers and financiers”—are they under the impression this is something new? (Ditto the complaints that bills are so long and complicated nobody reads them–that’s hardly novel, either).
Then we have John Leuenberger of Mary Esther explaining that he has no objection to Obama taking “prudent steps to protect the nation” (i.e., warrantless wiretapping) but is very upset that the president is “expanding the intrusion of government into our lives” in the form of cap and trade and health care bills (apparently eavesdropping on people’s calls isn’t intrusive).
I’d always figured Republicans would do a 180 on illegal detention, warrantless wiretapping, torture and other presidential powers claimed under Bush, but apparently I was wrong: For a lot of them, it wasn’t politics to defend Bush’s powers, it was principle: They like having a president who can do the kind of things we used to condemn the USSR for.
If they’re not hypocrites, that’s actually scarier.
Miscellanea
June 9th, 2009, 12:10 pm by fsherman•The Graham-Lieberman amendment to the supplemental war-spending bill didn’t make it into the final bill. The amendment would have given the president the power to cover up the torture photos that a court has demanded the government produce.
As Glenn Greenwald points out, the rationale for covering up the photos—they will inflame hostility against us—amounts to saying that the more horrible our actions, the more we’re entitled to keep them secret.
•The Supreme Court has decided not to tackle the military Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, but Congress is working on a bill to change the rules.
•The Supreme Court has ruled that a judge should have recused himself from a case in which the defendant had previously spent $3 million on a campaign against the incumbent whose seat the judge then took.
•A really terrific article in Christian Science Monitor about a female Pakistani playwright using theater to challenge the country’s religious right.
Wrong, wrong, wrong
June 8th, 2009, 10:13 am by fshermanSpeaking of torture, Sunday’s Daily News includes a letter from Crestview resident Joe Les Fishback on “this torture garbage” arguing that since terrorist kill their prisoners, it’s outrageous anyone criticizes America: “Murder is what happened Sept. 11, 2001 when innocent people were killed … Torture is what happened to the innocent people who were trapped under the rubble … These terrorists are not innocent people … Now whether one dies from a bullet or from a water hose, I personally don’t care.”
Which is our old friend, the Hey We’re Morally Superior To The Other Guys defense of what we do. As I’ve said many times, justifying our actions as being morally better than Saddam or bin Laden is setting the bar a bit low.
And then of course, as has been documented multiple times, we have tortured, imprisoned and brutalized innocent people. Just as innocent as anyone who died in 9/11.
And regardless of whether they’re innocent or not, torture is still illegal. Which means people who commit torture are well, criminals. Does this mean Mr. Fishback is one of those bleeding-heart liberals who doesn’t care about law and order?
And contrary to his statement that Bush has kept us safe since 9/11, we had five anthrax deaths since then. Let’s not forget, shall we?
Oh, no, a ticking bomb scenario
June 8th, 2009, 10:06 am by fshermanScott Roeder, the accused killer of George Tiller: “There are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal.”
By Republican pro-torture standards, doesn’t this justify subjecting Roeder to waterboarding or sleep deprivation so we can find out what he knows?
I personally wouldn’t support that: Torture’s wrong, regardless of whether the subject was a terrorist (and if Roeder’s guilty, a terrorist he certainly is) or not. But if Republicans aren’t demanding the government keep our country safe by torturing this alleged murderer … well, wouldn’t that be the teensiest bit hypocritical?
Eric Mancow on torture
June 2nd, 2009, 10:41 am by fshermanChicago radio host Eric Mancow underwent waterboarding in hopes of proving it wasn’t all that torturous.
His conclusion, as detailed here is that yep, it’s torture.
From the article:
“It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,”Mancow said, likening it to a time when he nearly drowned as a child. “It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back…It was instantaneous…and I don’t want to say this: absolutely torture.”
