Posted on 07/29/2014 4:57:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
Remember back in April, 2007, when then-CIA director George Tenet appeared on 60 Minutes, angrily telling the program host, "we don't torture people"? Remember a few months later, in October, President George W. Bush saying, "this government does not torture people"? We knew then it was not true because we had already seen the photos of Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib prison four years earlier.
Still the US administration denied that torture was torture, preferring to call it "enhanced interrogation" and claiming that it had disrupted so many terrorist plots. Of course, we later found out that the CIA had not only lied about the torture of large numbers of people after 9/11, but it had vastly exaggerated any valuable information that came from such practices.
However secret rendition of prisoners to other places was ongoing
The US not only tortured people in its own custody, however. Last week the European Court of Human Rights found that the US government transferred individuals to secret detention centers in Poland (and likely elsewhere) where they were tortured away from public scrutiny. The government of Poland was ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to two victims for doing nothing to stop their torture on Polish soil.
How tragic that Poland, where the Nazis constructed the Auschwitz concentration camp in which so many innocents were tortured and murdered, would acquiesce to hosting secret torture facilities. The idea that such brutality would be permitted on Polish soil just 70 years after the Nazi occupation should remind us of how dangerous and disingenuous governments continue to be.
This is the first time the European court has connected any EU country to US torture practices. The Obama administration refuses to admit that such facilities existed and instead claims that any such "enhanced interrogation" programs were shut down by 2009. We can only hope this is true, but we should be wary of government promises. After all, they promised us all along that they were not using torture, and we might have never known had photographs and other information not been leaked to the press.
There are more reasons to be wary of this administration's claims about rejecting torture and upholding human rights. The president has openly justified killing American citizens without charge or trial and he has done so on at least three occasions. There is not much of a gap between torture and extrajudicial murder when it comes to human rights abuses.
Meanwhile, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior current and former CIA officials are said to be frantically attempting to prepare a response to a planned release of an unclassified version of a 6,500 page Senate Intelligence Committee study on the torture practices of that agency. The CIA was already caught tapping into the computers of Senate investigators last year, looking to see what information might be contained in the report. Those who have seen the report have commented that it details far more brutal CIA practices that have been revealed to this point.
Revelations of US secret torture sites overseas and a new Senate investigation revealing widespread horrific CIA torture practices should finally lead to the abolishment of this agency. Far from keeping us safer, CIA covert actions across the globe have led to destruction of countries and societies and unprecedented resentment toward the United States. For our own safety, end the CIA!
The Abu Ghraib persons were NOT following protocol, at least one of them was a member of lavender mafia (like Chelsea Morning Manning), AND they were LONG under criminal prosecution before the photos were leaked to the partisan press by an irate uncle of one of the perps who tried to blackmail the administration if his relative didn't get a lighter sentence.
Will it have anymore teeth than the Senate investigation into the Obama administration and Injustice Department running guns to narcoterrorists in Mexico to stir up a media frenzy about gun rampage?
“We knew then it was not true because we had already seen the photos of Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib prison four years earlier.”
The “ring leader,” whose name escapes me, was a National Guardsman. His “regular job” was a guard at a state prison. Even though he had worked there for several years he was categorized as “probationary status.” Although the facility could not disclose his employment record it’s likely he was caught up in some kind of misconduct involving prisoners. Usually when organizations “settle” they include nondisclosure agreements.
The National Guard members claimed they were tasked by higher ups to make “training aids.” The young private in the center of the scandal, Lindy England, was Admin. She had no clearance or authorization to be in that part of the complex. Along with the “torture” photos were a lot of graphic pictures of the married prison guard and little miss paper pusher engaged in various sexual acts.
The General in charge of the complex did not have an appropriate clearance to enter the facility. Unlike England, she never toured the prison. She didn’t have a clearance due to a shoplifting incident at a BX/PX facility.
The whole issue wasn’t so much “torture” as “gross incompetence and criminal misconduct.”
End torture - disband the IRS.
Like yesterday
What the hell is that second picture?
If we do it to our own guys as training then it is not the sort of torture I would get my panties in a bunch over.
And yeah, we waterboard our own agents so they know what it is like.
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