Will Bush be prosecuted for Torture?

The Khmer Rouge, the communist ruling political party of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, is credited with killing an estimated 1.5 million of its own people or 1/5 of the country's total population. They used waterboarding.

A form of waterboarding was used in the Spanish Inquisition, in the name of Jesus Christ.

Waterboarding in the enlightened European Middle Ages.

USA soldiers were prosecuted for waterboarding Vietcong soldiers during the Vietnam War (known in Vietnam as the US War).

President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee to be attorney general, Eric Holder, has declared waterboarding to be a form of torture and has vowed to shut down Guantanamo Bay. At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Holder also pledged to restore credibility to the Justice Department and to serve as the people’s lawyer. If confirmed, Holder will become the nation’s first African American attorney general.

Here are excerpts of the hearing, including questions from Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy; Wisconsin’s two Democratic senators, Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold. This is Eric Holder.

ERIC HOLDER: Let me try to state this as simply as I can. It simply should not be the policy or the practice of the United States of America to turn over a prisoner, a captured person, to a nation where we suspect or have reason to believe that that person will be tortured.


SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Do you agree with me that waterboarding is torture and illegal?


ERIC HOLDER: If you look at the history of the use of that technique, used by the Khmer Rouge, used in the Inquisition, used by the Japanese and prosecuted by us as war crimes—we prosecuted our own soldiers for using it in Vietnam—I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, waterboarding is torture.


SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Do you believe that the President of the United States has authority to exercise a commander-in-chief override and immunize acts of torture?


ERIC HOLDER: Mr. Chairman, no one is above the law.


SEN. HERB KOHL: Mr. Holder, for decades, this country has been looked up to around the world for its unwavering commitment to human rights and the rule of law. There is a growing consensus that the detention center at Guantanamo Bay has tarnished that image. While the past two attorneys general, the current secretaries of Defense and State, and the President himself have publicly said that they would like to close Guantanamo, no steps, as yet, have been taken.


ERIC HOLDER: To responsibly close the facility, I think that we have to understand who these people are, make an independent judgment of who they are based on an examination of the records that exist down there, so that we can treat them in an inappropriate way. I think substantial numbers of those people can be sent to other countries safely. Other people can be tried in a jurisdiction and put in jail. And there are possibly going to be other people who we’re not going to be able to try for a variety of reasons, but who nevertheless are dangerous to this country, and we’re going to have to try to figure out what we do with them. But I think that review that we’ll have to go through to figure out who these people are and in what categories they fit will take an extended period of time, and I think that is the thing that will prevent us from closing Guantanamo as quickly as I think we would like, but I want to assure the American people that Guantanamo will be closed.


SEN. RUSS FEINGOLD: Is there anything in the FISA statute that makes you believe that the President has the ability under some other inherent power to disregard the FISA statute?


ERIC HOLDER: No, I do not see that in the FISA statute.


SEN. RUSS FEINGOLD: Well, thank you. I think that’s a very important break in favor of the rule of law that we’ve been waiting for in this country for many years, and I appreciate that answer.

from Democracy Now!

Simply Criminal

It troubles me greatly that our democratically elected government consciously decided to torture detainees and imprison Iraqis and others indefinitely (using my tax dollars). These are not American values. We are better than this. Many experts and soldiers in the field strongly believe that torture does not yield positive results. Even John McCain lied while being tortured.

Here is a link to an excellent opinion piece in the Washington Post from a US soldier who witnessed our soldiers torturing Iraqis. This soldier, who uses the fake name Matthew Alexander for protection (from our own soldiers?), conducted over 300 interrogations and oversaw over 1,000. His team found one of the most wanted men in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. And he didn't use torture.

This is a great article, and it is not too long. You should click on the link above, but if you don't have time, here are a few excerpts:

I'm not some ivory-tower type; I served for 14 years in the U.S. Air Force, began my career as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters, saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, then volunteered to go to Iraq to work as a senior interrogator. What I saw in Iraq still rattles me -- both because it betrays our traditions and because it just doesn't work.

The Army was still conducting interrogations according to the Guantanamo Bay model: Interrogators were nominally using the methods outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the interrogators' bible, but they were pushing in every way possible to bend the rules -- and often break them. I don't have to belabor the point; dozens of newspaper articles and books have been written about the misconduct that resulted. These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse.

I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology -- one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information.

Our new interrogation methods led to one of the war's biggest breakthroughs: We convinced one of Zarqawi's associates to give up the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader's location. On June 8, 2006, U.S. warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs on a house where Zarqawi was meeting with other insurgent leaders.

Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there's the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

Why does a Smart President Scare Conservatives?

I'm on a conservative email list and I received this image this morning with the text:

Are You Packed Yet?
Canada's readiness preparedness plan...November 2008

This cracked me up for so many reasons. First, I guess Republicans are accepting that Mc$ame/Palin are done.

Second, I was laughing out loud because Canada is so much more liberal than the USA (don't tell the conservatives, let them find out after they move).

Third, I imagined our country minus the people who are responsible for the nightmare of the last eight years:

Iraq
Abu Graib/torture
WMD
Katrina mess
warrentless wire tapping
Stock Market crash
Alberto Gonzolas
Florida elections
Dick Cheney
Karl Rove
Donald Rumsfeld
surplus to gigantic debt
4185 of our soldiers dead in Iraq
signing statements
our plummeting reputation around the world
health care crisis
end of the American dream (remember the American Dream? Summer home, boat, two cars, a JOB...)

But then I realized that some of my favorite cities such as Montreal and Vancouver would be full of Bush supporters and I stopped laughing.