Tuesday, May 12, 2009

WPost Columnist Winks at Torture

By Robert Parry
May 12, 2009

These days, the Washington Post has the look of one of those Southern newspapers in the 1960s standing firm for segregation as the wave of civil rights swept across the region. Except for the Post, the blind commitment is to neoconservatism.

Read on.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Since the conservatives always hold out for torture in the extreme '24' event why don't they take it one step further and include the terrorists' family? If we had access to their family and we knew they had knowledge that would save millions would we kill one of their children to make them talk? Or maybe just maim the child? I am sure that would convince the most hardened terrorist to give up the information.

Tue May 12, 02:04:00 PM 2009
Florence Chan said...

I think what Cohen wanted to do was to lure people into a pseudo debate about whether we should adopt torture if it works.

My feelings toward the WP (and the San Francisco Chronicle, and all the other financially troubled mainstream newspapers) have been the same. I'd say, Let them die. We have nothing to lose.

Tue May 12, 04:09:00 PM 2009
ETSpoon said...

Robert,
Thanks for reading through Cohen's column.

I probably would have thrown up.

Wed May 13, 08:24:00 AM 2009
Anonymous said...

I have been so profoundly upset for the last few days that I can hardly express it. My son is ok physically, thank God, but what was done to him by his own leaders sickens me beyond belief.

My son is in the military, in a field that required that he attend SERE school.

I’m a veteran, I thought I had an idea of what was ahead for him, so I gave him a maternal pep talk and told him that it would be very hard but these people were on his side and were trying to prepare him for all possibilities and this would help make him prepared and tough.

I didn’t know how naïve my encouragement was. I thought they would teach him how to escape, and how to survive. I had no idea that it would be a sadistic exercise in dehumanizing and terrifying him. He was 19 at the time. I am sickened by this, and outraged.

My 19 year old son was water boarded, among other despicable things. They did more to him that he has yet to explain to me, one thing that went on long enough for him to start hallucinating and to think he was dying. He told me that by the time it was over he did not believe that he would survive, and he would have said anything to make them stop the things they were doing to him.

Now we all have found that the two men who came up with the SERE torture program were using my son and everyone else who went through SERE as guinea pigs for their sick, sadistic games.

Then they sold their torture program to the sadists in the Bush Administration and became overpaid military contractors who spread this poison throughout our military.

Yesterday on tv I saw some Cheney aide, who has never worn a uniform and has NO idea what the hell he is talking about, say that we never tortured anyone because we did it to our own troops and they volunteered to serve; therefore it isn’t torture.

And that bullshit statement was allowed to stand unchallenged.

My son did NOT volunteer to be tortured. He was NOT told what would be done to him at SERE. He was told he would be taught to survive. Instead he was tortured, humiliated, degraded, shamed, and told to keep quiet about it.

How in God’s name would that prepare any of our troops to survive capture? It won’t. It will only make them break quicker in the hopes of not having to go through more torture.

Who will speak up for my son and the others like him who joined the military to serve and who were subjected to sadistic torture, not by the enemy, but by the war criminals ostensibly on our side? These people, Cheney and his talking heads, everyone of them chicken hawks who avoided serving, should NOT be allowed to use torturing our troops as rationalization for their crimes.

There is NO excuse for this. People need to go to jail for this, and I don’t mean the Lyndie Englunds and other low-ranking troops who were led into this. I mean the people who ordered it at the top. The people who are still trying to justify their crimes and who are now having their mouthpieces use my son and others who were tortured as their cover. And for what? So the sadists who came up with this, and they are sadists, can keep themselves out of trouble? They all stood by silently, including Cheney, while lower-ranking troops went to prison for the evil they ordered done. Now they want to use my son’s torture as their rationalization? No!

This must NOT be allowed to stand unchallenged.

I can’t stand feeling so helpless. I WANT A VOICE. I want to confront those evil people who are still selling this torture as if it were our only defense against terrorists, and who now are attempting to use our troops to defend their indefensible, morally corrupt war crimes.

My son was not given a choice, he was not made aware of what would be done to him, he was ordered not to talk about it. He was tortured by sadists, at the behest of bigger sadists.

Who will stand up to those responsible for this? Who will stand up for my son and others like him?

Wed May 13, 02:08:00 PM 2009

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