Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Challenging Americans on Torture

By Ray McGovern
September 15, 2009

On April 16, President Barack Obama released official memoranda demonstrating serious crimes by the previous administration.

Read on.
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bravo.... would be nice if at least C-Span were covering this event.

George Collins

Tue Sep 15, 09:43:00 PM 2009
Bob Locke said...

Go McGovern!

I have not been able to understand Americans' complacency about torture. I think it must be a lack of imagination.

Which circle of Hell is relegated to these torturers when they escape justice right here on Earth?

GWB was just plain stupid, but Dick Cheney was just plain evil, a word I have never used previous to discovering that monster's actions, along with all his minions, Libby, Yoo, et alii too many to name.

How has it happened in America after all that we learned from the Nazis?

Wed Sep 16, 10:06:00 AM 2009
Dean Taylor said...

Question--HORRIFIC question for some, as it turns out:

When was it determined that Americans are utterly and absolutely precluded from "Good German" status," either "then" or "now"?

When--I ask again--WHEN were we that "nice"?

Newsflash: WE are not "virgins." Said another way: we have other people's blood on our hands, going way back to the Continental Congress days, i.e., it is NOT A recent phenomena.

Put indelicately: we "stink" just like every other Power on the planet. And the corrupting effect of Power has often found its way into the rank and file. And how could it possibly be otherwise?

When did this occur? How about: the Trail of Tears? How about the crucifixion of Blacks throughout the Southland for several hundred (that's several HUNDRED) years. The rape of American labor by, e.g., corporate-hired Pinkertons busting striking worker skulls--with the connivance of the State? All three scenarios of disenfranchisement abide, in various degrees, within the current corporate-run polity.

The EFCA bill is dead--via K Street largesse. Leonard Peltier remains in Lewisburg--via, what has been argued, judicial malfeasance. Blacks are still bound and shot--in the back--on train platforms in Oakland.

To attempt to refute this is to cultivate--and partake of--the exceptionalism myth in America.

Americans, per se, are no different than anyone else on the planet, except that, as Empire, we have a corporate agenda which we are able to back up with our prodigious military presence, worldwide. Might makes right-- right?

Do we, nevertheless, have heroes? Yes, we do. And they have names like John Brown, Thoreau, Eugene Debs, Mother Mary Jones, Joe Hill, Dr. King and the Freedom Riders, the students at Cal-Berkeley in the sixties, Dave Dellinger, the Berrigan brothers, Daniel Ellsburg. And, EVERY one was an outlaw--quote-unquote. Every one!

Draw your own conclusions.

Thu Sep 17, 03:09:00 PM 2009
Dean Taylor said...

erratum...
That's "Ellsberg."

Thu Sep 17, 03:13:00 PM 2009
Dean Taylor said...

“Redeem the times! The times are inexpressibly evil. Christians pay conscious, indeed religious tribute, to Caesar and Mars; by the approval of overkill tactics, by brinkmanship, by nuclear liturgies, by racism, by support of genocide. They embrace their society with all their heart, and abandon the cross. They pay lip service to Christ and military service to the powers of death. And yet, and yet, the times are inexhaustibly good, solaced by the courage and hope of many. The truth rules, Christ is not forsaken."
Dan Berrigan, S.J.,


from the Catonsville Nine statement, 17 May 1968

Thu Sep 17, 10:49:00 PM 2009

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