Monday, June 29, 2009

Obama's Troubling Caution on Torture

By Diana Gibson and Ray McGovern
June 29, 2009

Anniversaries can be important. Last Friday marked the 22nd anniversary of the U.N. Convention against Torture, ratified and signed under President Reagan.

Read on.
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even some people against torture are willing to give Bush/Cheney the benefit of the doubt. "They overreacted after 9/11." Too bad this theory doesn't fit the facts.

1) FBI agent Soufan stated in his testimony that legal interrogation methods worked while CIA torture was ineffective and counterproductive.

2) Soufan was replace by an interrogator who didn't speak Arabic and had no counterterrorism experience or interrogation background. In a NYT article by Scott Shane we learned the brilliant Bush/Cheney/CIA program called for rounds of torture followed by "good cop" sessions with an unqualified CIA interrogator.

3) Nobody can point to actual reliable intelligence attained by the torture. Supposedly the CIA IG report shows that the torture did lead to some good intel. Maybe. Too bad the CIA won't release the report. Again, if they are so proud of the torture program, so sure it was absolutely required, so confident that all legal interrogation methods had been tried first, then why aren't they rushing to release the report? Won't it simply back up all of their claims?

Bush/Cheney love to brag about how they kept the country safe for seven years. Sadly, the MSM failed to ask the obvious follow up questions. At what cost? The price of their approach (not just in dollars) has been unbelievably high. Were their methods truly effective or are their other explanations for the lack of attacks on US soil? Just because they claim police state tactics worked doesn't mean it is so. For example, we still don't know the truth about 9/11. The secrecy gave Bush/Cheney free reign to suggest that 9/11 was attributable to overemphasis on Constitutional protections. The secrecy enabled the intelligence agencies to blame 9/11 on the lack of funding. Government officials could (and did) say basically whatever they wanted to because they knew the public would remain ignorant due to abuse of secrecy procedures and MSM propaganda.

Mon Jun 29, 11:33:00 PM 2009
Anonymous said...

Thank You for the honeords

Sat Jul 04, 09:52:00 PM 2009
Anonymous said...

Sorry, My computer is so screwed up it's hard to comment....Thank you for the honest words...!!! The good article...We should probably continue to support Obama and give him the benefit of out doubt.

Sat Jul 04, 09:55:00 PM 2009

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