"Obscene — Almost Pornographic"-Anatomy of Bush's Torture 'Paradigm' By Ray McGovern

Anatomy of Bush's Torture 'Paradigm'

By Ray McGovern
April 14, 2009

The prose of the recently leaked report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on torture seems colorless. It is at the same time obscene — almost pornographic.

The 41-page ICRC report depicts scenes of prisoners forced to remain naked for long periods, sometimes in the presence of women, often with their hands shackled over their heads in "stress positions" as they are left to soil themselves.

The report's images of sadism also include prisoners slammed against walls, locked in tiny boxes, and strapped to a bench and subjected to the drowning sensation of waterboarding.

How could it be that we Americans tolerate the kind of leaders who would subject others to systematic torture — yes, that’s what the official report of the international body charged with monitoring the Geneva agreements on the treatment of prisoners concludes — torture.

Over the past week I have been asked to explain how this could have happened; who authorized the torture in our name? The Red Cross report lacks the earmarks of rogues or “rotten apples” at the bottom of some barrel.

This is what I have been telling those who ask:

6 more pages tons of evidence:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/041409a.html



http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/041409a.html

"Five-Deferment Dickie & his Republicon Homelander 'Family Values' cabal made me do it. It's all their fault. They were the, um, Real Deciders. Smirk."

- xCommander AWOL (R)

- Yours truly, with towering umbrage & boundless arrogance,
xVP Dickie 'Five Military Deferments' Cheney (R)

can be offered for this in its entirety? :P

war - it is known that if you torture, the one being tortured will say whatever you want them to say to make the torture/abuse stop.

They know that, the physicians observing knew that, the sadists torturing knew that.

And that is what makes the crime even more perverse, if that is at all possible - they knew that the torture did not provide any reliable evidence.

....that there aren't even any real 'plots' to unearth since their phony "war on terror" is in fact a very real war OF terror.

last paragraph...

What do you suppose is holding Attorney General Eric Holder back from appointing an independent prosecutor to investigate, with a view toward rubbing out, once and for all, this shameful stain on our collective conscience?

We need to let the DOJ be fully approved, then go for the prosecutor.

-Hoot

For sure.

You'd have thunk the guardian press first amendment troopers would be able to weed out dangerous sadosexual perverts from obtaining the highest office in the land before he gets a chance to abuse the power of office and silence his critics.

Apparently, nope. The inquiring press was bullied and stonewalled in 2000 and his unauthorized biographer was obliged to kill himself (Hatfield's Fortunate Son). And the election was stolen, after all.

Just who wanted such a character in office to outrage his victims? Create enemies and war? A sputtering empire degenerate?

... but only a few "bad apples" from the bottom of the barrel were held accountable.

Indeed, what is holding Holder back?

Failure to prosecute serious crimes for which there are mountains of evidence puts the Justice Department stamp of approval on those crimes and reinforces the precedent that the president is above the law.

If the Bush cabal is not prosecuted we can expect more of the same, and worse.


K&R

He would have to take out half the Democratic leadership too.

They knew and did NOTHING.

... but are they criminally indictable for issuing the directives that resulted in torture?

That's what is happening here IMHO.

No other explanation makes sense.

The policy was enacted with the complicity of the opposition party and implemented (often with enthusiasm) in the military & intelligence communities down through the chain of command all the way to the lowest enlisted personell.

Bush never hooked electrodes to anyone's scrotum. That honor was left to others.

The number of whistle blowers at all level can be counted on one or two hands.

The torture policy was one that fit well with the American zeitgeist and was embraced with zeal.

and people will finally start to listen.

Pornography is defended by much of the Left through arcane, tortuous logic worthy of Pat Robertson explaining how Jesus was a free-market capitalist, but then it's held up as the ultimate evil when men are treated the same way trafficked women and children are in the pornography spread around the internet to which millions of males masturbate.

Were I not to throw up or get arrested, it'd probably take me 10 links from my google home page to find photos of middle eastern women being tortured in scenes set up to look like Abu Ghraib, with those photos being peddled as someone else's sexual freedom.

By all means, I wish Holder would go after these bastards.

And maybe it'll sensitize Americans to what trafficked, drug-addicted, impoverished and battered women and children have to go through every day, so that we will then only use erotica in which the participants are CLEARLY ADULT AND CONSENTING.

Imagine...in the United States of America...we`re not doing a single thing to right this wrong. It`s truly inexcusable.

What was it that Rall said? - "America is a nation of laws--laws enforced by Spain."

Because (and this is me) the rule of law in America is: Certain people are above the law.

As always, my government is welcome to prove me wrong.

Seems some things never change..too bad we need Spain or other countries to lead the way in obeying laws and treaties!!!!!!

Our constitution was predicated on the Magna Carta which encompassess Habeas Corpus..it is the very foundation of Democracy.

Obama the candidate:

September 2008


Obama on the need for habeas corpus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl3RPSw_450&eurl=http%3A ...

Barack Obama - the Habeas Debate Sept 27 2006

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BIylNUkmvo&eurl=http%3A ...

Obama on torture, detainees and enemy rights
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjDaeyUdpJY

NOW TODAY?????????????

Obama to Appeal Detainee Ruling

By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: April 10, 2009
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Friday that it would appeal a district court ruling that granted some military prisoners in Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits seeking their release. The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight.

In a court filing, the Justice Department also asked District Judge John D. Bates not to proceed with the habeas-corpus cases of three detainees at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, Afghanistan. Judge Bates ruled last week that the three — each of whom says he was seized outside of Afghanistan — could challenge their detention in court.

Tina Foster, the executive director of the International Justice Network, which is representing the detainees, condemned the decision in a statement.

“Though he has made many promises regarding the need for our country to rejoin the world community of nations, by filing this appeal, President Obama has taken on the defense of one of the Bush administration’s unlawful policies founded on nothing more than the idea that might makes right,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/world/asia/11bagram.h ...

or
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/world/asia/11bagram.h...

A version of this article appeared in print on April 11, 2009, on page A6 of the New York edition.

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/04/14/its-not-the-water-boarding-its-the-blows-to-the-head/

It’s Not the Water-Boarding, It’s the Blows to the Head
By: emptywheel Tuesday April 14, 2009 8:06 pm

Just to lay out a few details based on this article explaining that Obama continues to waver on what parts of the 2005 Bradbury torture memos to reveal. (h/t Steve)

1. According to the WSJ, it's not the description of water-boarding that the CIA wants to hide. It's the description of how the CIA threw people against the wall.

Among the details in the still-classified memos is approval for a technique in which a prisoner's head could be struck against a wall as long as the head was being held and the force of the blow was controlled by the interrogator, according to people familiar with the memos.

2. We know from the ICRC report this technique had been used, three years before Bradbury wrote his OLC memos, with Abu Zubaydah.

do read the rest at the link.........

Who do you think he is: Clinton?

downloadable from the orginal site as well...

are sexual perverts. It was sadism. In the clinical sense.

Someday we'll know all about it.