Kruthammer On The Discussion of Torture

[Mr. Shaman]

Degrading? Did the US Senate vote that if a POW experiences conditions that he (the UN?) considers to be "degrading" it means the poor boy was tortured? Are we going crazy as a Nation?

Actually, the international community has established guidelines of what constitutes torture. The US actually used to abide by those guidelines

An "international community" aka the bar scene from Star Wars, some of which might be guilty of eating their POW's, has determined conditions equating "degrading" treatment of American POW's to torture and the left thinks that's just fine. Is it just me or has the American left gone crazy?

No....but, we DO recognize.....

.....White Is RIGHT Syndrome.....

....when we see it.​

 

[whitehall]

Actually, the international community has established guidelines of what constitutes torture. The US actually used to abide by those guidelines

An "international community" aka the bar scene from Star Wars, some of which might be guilty of eating their POW's, has determined conditions equating "degrading" treatment of American POW's to torture and the left thinks that's just fine. Is it just me or has the American left gone crazy?

If crazy means opposing the US engaging in torture, then yes, we have gone crazy

To some the definition of torture might be listening to Barney Fwank sound bites or watching the gay pride parade. When the bar scene from Star Wars aka the emerging UN nations get to define the standards at which the US is accused of torture we are in deep do-do. We need to consider that the emotional hate-filled left might think any definition of torture is is fine as long as Dick Chaney might face charges. Such a transparent argument.

 

[francoHFW]

Not so much...

PolitiFact | The Obameter: End the use of extreme rendition
Sep 15, 2010 ... Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, told us that it's "
unlikely that CIA renditions under Obama -– if they"re being ...

www.politifact.com/truth-o.../end-the-use-of-extreme-rendition/ - CachedObama and Rendition » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the ...
Jun 24, 2011 ... "I can't find any evidence of extraordinary renditions under Obama," Horton told
me, "but there's really no problem with normal extradition." ...

Obama and Rendition » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names - Cached

 

[rightwinger]

An "international community" aka the bar scene from Star Wars, some of which might be guilty of eating their POW's, has determined conditions equating "degrading" treatment of American POW's to torture and the left thinks that's just fine. Is it just me or has the American left gone crazy?

If crazy means opposing the US engaging in torture, then yes, we have gone crazy

To some the definition of torture might be listening to Barney Fwank sound bites or watching the gay pride parade. When the bar scene from Star Wars aka the emerging UN nations get to define the standards at which the US is accused of torture we are in deep do-do. We need to consider that the emotional hate-filled left might think any definition of torture is is fine as long as Dick Chaney might face charges. Such a transparent argument.

Since you are obfuscating ....let's cut to the chase

Water boarding is torture and it was embraced by our former administration. It was an embarassment to all Americans and destroyed our once proud reputation around the globe

 

[whitehall]

If crazy means opposing the US engaging in torture, then yes, we have gone crazy

To some the definition of torture might be listening to Barney Fwank sound bites or watching the gay pride parade. When the bar scene from Star Wars aka the emerging UN nations get to define the standards at which the US is accused of torture we are in deep do-do. We need to consider that the emotional hate-filled left might think any definition of torture is is fine as long as Dick Chaney might face charges. Such a transparent argument.

Since you are obfuscating ....let's cut to the chase

Water boarding is torture and it was embraced by our former administration. It was an embarassment to all Americans and destroyed our once proud reputation around the globe

The chase is that the American left wing thinks that emerging African nations and the Muslem brotherhood should be able to dictate standards that include "degradation" of POW's. The Senate voted for it and the American left seems to think it' fine. Waterboarding was in the Psych-ops manual for decades. Elite American Troops went through it and nobody on the left seemed concerned until they thought they could use it for their little game of treason.

 

[rightwinger]

I remember a time the US was the good guys. The ones on the moral high ground

That was before we started preemptive invasions and torture

 

[whitehall]

I remember a time the US was the good guys. The ones on the moral high ground

That was before we started preemptive invasions and torture

You can't be dumb enough to think Americans would view their Country as "the bad guys" on their own. It's the media stupid. Harry Truman is an icon to democrats and yet I could make a case that he was a timid fool who caused the deaths of about 35,000 Americans in Korea in three years because he didn't have the guts to tell an old WW1 veteran not to proceed beyond the mission. I could make a case that Truman acted illegally in the Korean conflict by not consulting with congress. It's all subjective depending on the media viewpoint and the ignorance of loyal democrats.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

An "international community" aka the bar scene from Star Wars, some of which might be guilty of eating their POW's, has determined conditions equating "degrading" treatment of American POW's to torture and the left thinks that's just fine. Is it just me or has the American left gone crazy?

Torture is illegal:

The United States has enacted statutes prohibiting torture and cruel or inhuman treatment. It is these statutes which make waterboarding illegal.[22] The four principal statutes which Congress has adopted to implement the provisions of the foregoing treaties are the Torture Act,[23] the War Crimes Act,[24],and the laws entitled “Prohibition on Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of Persons Under Custody or Control of the United States Government”[25] and “Additional Prohibition on Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.”[26] The first two statutes are criminal laws while the latter two statutes extend civil rights to any person in the custody of the United States anywhere in the world.

There is no doubt that waterboarding is illegal under the plain language of each of these four statutes. When it is practiced in other countries, the State Department characterizes waterboarding as “torture.”[46] Waterboarding inflicts “severe pain and suffering” on its victims, both physically and mentally, and therefore it is torture within the meaning of the Torture Act and the War Crimes Act.[47] It inflicts “serious pain and suffering” upon its victims, and it qualifies as “serious physical abuse,” therefore it is “cruel or inhuman treatment” within the meaning of the War Crimes Act.[48] Finally, American courts have ruled that when prisoners in the United States are subjected to waterboarding, it is a violation of the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments, and therefore it would be a violation of 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000dd and 2000dd-0 prohibiting cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.[49]

Waterboarding and the other forms of torture approved by the Bush administration for use in the War on Terror are inconsistent with our Nation’s deepest values and traditions.

Waterboarding is Illegal - Washington University Law Review

Torture is also un-Constitutional as it inflicts a de facto punishment absent due process or judicial review.

 

[whitehall]

An "international community" aka the bar scene from Star Wars, some of which might be guilty of eating their POW's, has determined conditions equating "degrading" treatment of American POW's to torture and the left thinks that's just fine. Is it just me or has the American left gone crazy?

Torture is illegal:

The United States has enacted statutes prohibiting torture and cruel or inhuman treatment. It is these statutes which make waterboarding illegal.[22] The four principal statutes which Congress has adopted to implement the provisions of the foregoing treaties are the Torture Act,[23] the War Crimes Act,[24],and the laws entitled “Prohibition on Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of Persons Under Custody or Control of the United States Government”[25] and “Additional Prohibition on Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.”[26] The first two statutes are criminal laws while the latter two statutes extend civil rights to any person in the custody of the United States anywhere in the world.

There is no doubt that waterboarding is illegal under the plain language of each of these four statutes. When it is practiced in other countries, the State Department characterizes waterboarding as “torture.”[46] Waterboarding inflicts “severe pain and suffering” on its victims, both physically and mentally, and therefore it is torture within the meaning of the Torture Act and the War Crimes Act.[47] It inflicts “serious pain and suffering” upon its victims, and it qualifies as “serious physical abuse,” therefore it is “cruel or inhuman treatment” within the meaning of the War Crimes Act.[48] Finally, American courts have ruled that when prisoners in the United States are subjected to waterboarding, it is a violation of the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments, and therefore it would be a violation of 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000dd and 2000dd-0 prohibiting cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.[49]

Waterboarding and the other forms of torture approved by the Bush administration for use in the War on Terror are inconsistent with our Nation’s deepest values and traditions.

Waterboarding is Illegal - Washington University Law Review

Torture is also un-Constitutional as it inflicts a de facto punishment absent due process or judicial review.

You can't keep quoting the bar scene from Star Wars jonsie. If we allow the emerging African nations and the muslem brotherhood to define "torture" as uncomfortable situations that POW's are forced to endure we are in deep stupid ignorant shit.

 

[francoHFW]

So we're the moral leader again- and not arrogant and incompetent anymore. What a shame for the RW.

 

[Annie]

Obama ended waterboarding, back to psychological interogation. If you can't tell the diff between the parties, you're deaf, dumb, and blind...

and you know this how?

Under Obama Administration, Renditions—and Secrecy Around Them—Continue - ProPublica

Under Obama Administration, Renditions—and Secrecy Around Them—Continue

by Marian Wang
ProPublica, Sept. 6, 2011

New documents in recent days have brought up several new details about the shadowy practice of snatching terrorism suspects from one country and rendering them into the custody of another. As we noted last week, several documents on rendition emerged as part of an obscure court case [1] in the state of New York. Others were discovered by Human Rights Watch in Libya [2].

Of course, it's been known for years that the Bush administration practiced (and on several occasions, botched [3]) rendition.

What's less appreciated: While the Obama administration has tried to distance itself [4] from the some of the harshest counterterrorism techniques, it has also said that at least some forms of renditions will continue [5].

In confirmation hearings in 2009, CIA director nominee Leon Panetta said that the Obama administration would not conduct what’s known as “extraordinary rendition,” which he defined as [6] “when we send someone for the purpose of torture or actions by another country that violate our human values.” Rendition that delivers suspects to another country to be prosecuted in that country’s judicial system is still an “appropriate use [7] of rendition,” he said.

Months later, the newly installed Panetta again tried to distance the administration from the Bush-era actions. “The worst part of rendition was rendition to a black site,” he told The New Yorker. “That will not be the case anymore. If we render someone, it will be to a country with jurisdiction over that individual.” The Obama administration had ordered the closure [8] of the CIA black sites.

It's hard to tell what such statements have meant in practice because the Obama administration has also followed another aspect of the Bush adminstration's rendition policy: utter secrecy. The Obama White House has invoked the states secrets privilege [9] to block evidence that could reveal details about past renditions under Bush and, more recently, has declined [10] to comment on the latest documents discovered in Libya and the details that emerged in the litigation in New York.

Though an Obama administration task force recommended [11] that greater accountability measures be imposed on countries that suspects are rendered to, the extent to which the recommendations have been implemented is unclear, and public statements by officials have been vague.

The administration has said it will continue seeking what are known as diplomatic assurances, or assurances from the receiving country promising that suspects won't be tortured in their custody.

“I will seek the same kind of assurances that they will not be treated inhumanely,” Panetta stated in his confirmation hearings. “I intend to use the State Department [12] to be sure those assurances are implemented and stood by.”

The Bush administration relied on such assurances for years, and human rights groups have long decried [13] the use of diplomatic assurances as unreliable, citing instances in which those assurances were violated.

In 2005, the Washington Post cited several current and former intelligence officers asserting that the diplomatic assurances relied on by the CIA were essentially highly questionable [14] verbal pledges. “They say they are not abusing them, and that satisfies the legal requirement, but we all know they do,” one anonymous official told the Post. Then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez also acknowledged that “we can’t fully control what a country might do.”

That semblance of an accountability system was in place even when the CIA rendered Abdul Hakim Belhaj, now the top rebel commander in Libya, back in 2005. Belhaj has said that after being rendered by the United States, he was tortured by CIA agents and then delivered by Qaddafi’s government in Libya, which also abused him. One CIA memo dated 2005, found by Human Rights Watch, corroborates the basic facts of his rendition and shows the U.S. spy agency requesting an assurance from Libya that he would be treated humanely. (See the memo, which we’ve posted [15].)

According to Joanne Mariner, director of the human rights program at Hunter College, the Libya case is "a really compelling example of how diplomatic assurances do not work." She says that while there aren't known cases of the Obama administration using rendition in a problematic way, it's not clear whether diplomatic assurances have been any more meaningful under this administraton than the last.

"What the Obama administration has said is not terribly reassuring," Mariner said, pointing to a general lack of transparency. "What we do know is that this administration has publicly stood behind the concept of diplomatic assurances and has expressed confidence in diplomatic assurances."

At least one Obama administration official has maintained that rendition is legal under U.S. law, even if the receiving country might torture the suspect. As the Washington Post's SpyTalk blog [16] noted, CIA assistant General Counsel Daniel Pines, writing for a law journal last year [17], asserted that while U.S. officials could not themselves torture suspects during rendition, “U.S. law does not even preclude the United States from rendering an individual to a foreign location where he or she could be abused or tortured.” Pines said he was expressing his own views, and not the official views of the CIA or U.S. government.

But on the international stage, the United States and its allies have been accused of breaching international law [18] in their practice of extraordinary rendition under the Bush administration. A 2009 report by the United Nations special rapporteur stated that the U.S. system of extraordinary renditions and secret detention "violate the prohibition against torture and other forms of ill-treatment."

 

[buckeye45_73]

I'm all for torture of enemies of the US that are not US citizens (membership has it's privleges). If you're at war and you want info, torture usually gives it up, but waterboarding isnt torture, we should go Henry VIII style on some of these enemy combatants.

 

[LoneLaugher]

Dumbass.