2 Responses to Obama, American Ideals, and Torture as ‘a useful tool’

1. 

   Nikos Retsos

   April 21, 2009 at 6:52 pm

   The U.S. has tortured people under the Bush administration because it COULD DO it with impunity! The U.S. is the global elephant that can trample
   the rights of people of small countries with impunity. And at a time that Sudan’s president Omar Bashir has an arrest warrant issued by The International Criminal Court (ICC), and cannot travel outside of the Arab countries, George Bush was free to travel anywhere without any fear protected by thousands of secret service and the hosting police forces.

   Torture is nothing new in U.S. history. We did it in Korea, and Vietnam under war conditions; the CIA did it in Latin America with hordes of its death squads,
   and later it did it in Afghanistan where it packed Taliban suspects in giant metal containers left behind by the Soviets, and let them suffocate or die from dehydration. And to justify all that brutality, the U.S. has its own legal definitions: “Terrorist; terrorist suspect; Al Qaeda linked [ when there is no proof at all], jihadist, and the broader term “Taliban.” All those made
   the so called “enemy combatants” umbrella of guilt, even though some of them were 13-14 years old and have never been in combat, while others were too old to have been combatants. A report in the Chicago Tribune on October 17, 2006, described the release from Guantanamo of Nasrat Khan, a 78 years old, and of Khan Yakhdand, 105 years old – after 4 years of detention and “enhanced interrogations.” For Dick Cheney that was certainly a “no brainer,” but it was certanly “a brainer” for 68% of Americans with brains who told a CNN Poll on January 18, 2009 that the “Bush-Cheney duo was a “failure” and a “good riddance.” Now, the question for Obama is whether he will keep their torture legacy as a sordid souvenir, or wipe it clean with “a Truth Commission,” and punish those who have violated standing laws, and those who created customized legal opinions at the U.S. Justice Department that made torture legal under “euphemistic guidelines.”

   The United Nations rapporteur Manfred Nowak said on April 18, 2009 (Reuters) that “it will be illegal under Int’l Law to reprieve the CIA from torture practices, because all members of the Convention of Torture -which includes
   the U.S. – are obligated by its statutes to conduct an investigation and bring violators to court.” Surely, we can grant CIA a reprieve, but that will be the epitome of our hypocrisy when the State Department produces a Human Rights Report annually that blames our adversaries as blatant human rights violators – while we sweep under the rug our own violation of human rights of others. Nikos Retsos, retired professor
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