[Peace-discuss] Obama and torture

[Jenifer Cartwright]

Hey, thanks Stuart. Glenn is my favorite Greenwald these days!
 --Jenifer

--- On Mon, 12/1/08, Stuart Levy <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu> wrote:

From: Stuart Levy <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Obama and torture
To: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
Cc: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Date: Monday, December 1, 2008, 11:08 PM

On Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 10:35:49PM -0600, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> Obama's not really against torture either. Not like you and I are. No
one 
> will be punished for using or ordering torture. No one will be impeached 
> because of torture. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for 
> Constitutional Rights, says that prosecuting Bush officials is necessary
to 
> set future anti-torture policy. "The only way to prevent this from 
> happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the 
> torture program pay the price for it. I don't see how we regain our
moral 
> stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture 
> programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not 
> held accountable."

Yes, hear that.  

I would be happy to see a transparent official investigation
(as the Church Commission did for the CIA) and a formal
high-level apology as a nation for having violated international law.
That could be politically easier than prosecution, and would point out
torture as a systemic problem rather than one that'd be blamed on
some high level bad apples (so that once those Bad Guys were gone,
all would be well again).

Doing both would be even better.

> As president, Obama cannot remain silent and do nothing; otherwise he will

> inherit the war crimes of Bush and Cheney and become a war criminal 
> himself. Closing the Guantanamo hell-hole means nothing at all if the 
> prisoners are simply moved to other torture dungeons. If Obama is truly 
> against torture, why does he not declare that after closing Guantanamo the

> inmates will be tried in civilian courts in the US or resettled in 
> countries where they clearly face no risk of torture? And simply affirm 
> that his administration will faithfully abide by the 1984 Convention 
> Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, of which 
> the United States is a signatory, and which states: "The term
'torture' 
> means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or 
> mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as 
> obtaining information or a confession ... inflicted by or at the 
> instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or

> any other person acting in an official capacity."

That'd be a good test.


> The convention affirms that: "No exceptional circumstances
whatsoever, 
> whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political stability or

> any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of
torture."
>
> Instead, Obama has appointed former CIA official John O. Brennan as an 
> adviser on intelligence matters and co-leader of his intelligence 
> transition team. Brennan has called "rendition" – the
kidnap-and-torture 
> program carried out under the Clinton and Bush administrations – a
"vital 
> tool", and praised the CIA's interrogation techniques for
providing 
> "lifesaving" intelligence...

Is this still the case?   Glenn Greenwald's piece on Nov. 25th, last
Tuesday,
   http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/11/25/john_brennan/
   "Exceptional news: John Brennan won't be CIA Director or DNI"
notes with pleasure that Brennan has withdrawn his name from consideration
as director of national intelligence or as CIA director.
(Or is Blum suggesting an appointment to some other position instead?)
I'm not seeing anything recent in Google News about Brennan except
comments on his withdrawal.

> --William Blum, "The Anti-Empire Report," 1 December 2008 
> <www.killinghope.org>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
_______________________________________________
Peace-discuss mailing list
Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss



      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20081202/db376085/attachment.html