Hope your dad lives somewhere safe from our nation's freedom producing bombs and liberty promoting prisons! And if you're a dad, hope your kids aren't locked up or six feet under.
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Yay for dads, they're awesome, and we as a society are totally supportive of healthy families! We believe in promoting our values all over the world, from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli...in the air, on land, and sea.
Showing posts with label torture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label torture. Show all posts
6/19/2011
8/28/2009
the disgustingness continues
(P) This week, the ACLU put up another document that the government has belatedly released regarding the criminal (er, heroic, terrorist-stopping, manly, beer-drinking) acts of the senior officials of the Bush Administration.
As the document bureaucratically explains:
What I think is going to surprise a lot of people as more and more of the details trickle out is how cold and calculated everything is. One of the features of a large organization is that bureaucracy involves lots of decision-makers, and in order to disseminate information among the various groups, there is lots of information sent back and forth. The nature of this process thus can almost hilariously contrast with the particular subject matter at hand. Our nation's leaders discussed war crimes, treaty violations, and felonies as if they were discussing where to build a new highway interchange or quarterly projections for GDP growth.
This process is precisely why transparency, openness, 'sunshine', is a core element of good governance. Decision-makers have to know at the time of their decisions that their deliberations will become public, that there will be social and legal consequences for blatantly improper courses of action.
The PDF for this document from 2004 sent to the Office of Legal Counsel from the Central Intelligence Agency can be downloaded here. It's been clear for awhile that this is no group of 'bad apples' or 'rogue agents' or other nonsense. The dedicated staff at the CIA, NSA, DIA, INR, etc, etc, who are monitoring my blog, your email, your mom's phone conversations, your dad's credit history, your neighbor's political contributions, your kid's internet postings, your grandma's participation in peace groups, etc, etc, are not the people who designed these policies. And to a great extent, it's the bureaucracy itself, the countless professional civil servants, who are able to apply the brakes internally, to slow down inappropriate, counterproductive, illegal programs.
But that only stops so much. When a group of our leaders is committed to ignoring the law, there is only one group of people that can stand up to them, and that is us, We the People. Seven years after we first started this particular bit of horrific, counterproductive, illicit behavior, we have yet to stop it completely, let alone hold the architects accountable for their creation.
But hey, at least we've been able to arrest millions of other Americans over the past seven years for grave allegations like shoplifting, prostitution, and marijuana possession. It's good we've got our 'tough on crime' priorities in order.
As the document bureaucratically explains:
Note: This paper provides further background information and details on High Value Detainee (HVD) interrogation techniques to support documents CIA has previously provided the Department of Justice.
This paper focuses strictly on the topic of combined uses of interrogation techniques.
What I think is going to surprise a lot of people as more and more of the details trickle out is how cold and calculated everything is. One of the features of a large organization is that bureaucracy involves lots of decision-makers, and in order to disseminate information among the various groups, there is lots of information sent back and forth. The nature of this process thus can almost hilariously contrast with the particular subject matter at hand. Our nation's leaders discussed war crimes, treaty violations, and felonies as if they were discussing where to build a new highway interchange or quarterly projections for GDP growth.
This process is precisely why transparency, openness, 'sunshine', is a core element of good governance. Decision-makers have to know at the time of their decisions that their deliberations will become public, that there will be social and legal consequences for blatantly improper courses of action.
The PDF for this document from 2004 sent to the Office of Legal Counsel from the Central Intelligence Agency can be downloaded here. It's been clear for awhile that this is no group of 'bad apples' or 'rogue agents' or other nonsense. The dedicated staff at the CIA, NSA, DIA, INR, etc, etc, who are monitoring my blog, your email, your mom's phone conversations, your dad's credit history, your neighbor's political contributions, your kid's internet postings, your grandma's participation in peace groups, etc, etc, are not the people who designed these policies. And to a great extent, it's the bureaucracy itself, the countless professional civil servants, who are able to apply the brakes internally, to slow down inappropriate, counterproductive, illegal programs.
But that only stops so much. When a group of our leaders is committed to ignoring the law, there is only one group of people that can stand up to them, and that is us, We the People. Seven years after we first started this particular bit of horrific, counterproductive, illicit behavior, we have yet to stop it completely, let alone hold the architects accountable for their creation.
But hey, at least we've been able to arrest millions of other Americans over the past seven years for grave allegations like shoplifting, prostitution, and marijuana possession. It's good we've got our 'tough on crime' priorities in order.
8/04/2009
unsanitizing torture
(P) I personally tend to be more discrete and diplomatic in my communication, but I wanted to highlight somebody being a little more direct in telling it like it is. The notion that our prison policies have been anything but immoral, illegal, and counterproductive is pretty funny.
Some articles have a way of just lettin' it all hang out, leaving little to the imagination. The graphic alone makes reading this story worth it.
I would normally give a warning that this is mature content, but this is what our government is doing in our name to real human beings. How can conduct be so horrific we should shelter our kids from it, but at the same time, not be worth investigating and prosecuting? That's a rhetorical question, of course. Of the millions of Americans who have been arrested in the last few years, few have committed crimes even remotely as disgusting or an as large a scale as the senior officials of the Bush Administration.
For your reading pleasure, Whores on Terror by Allan Uthman.
A snippet:
Some articles have a way of just lettin' it all hang out, leaving little to the imagination. The graphic alone makes reading this story worth it.
I would normally give a warning that this is mature content, but this is what our government is doing in our name to real human beings. How can conduct be so horrific we should shelter our kids from it, but at the same time, not be worth investigating and prosecuting? That's a rhetorical question, of course. Of the millions of Americans who have been arrested in the last few years, few have committed crimes even remotely as disgusting or an as large a scale as the senior officials of the Bush Administration.
For your reading pleasure, Whores on Terror by Allan Uthman.
A snippet:
I don’t want to come off as minimizing the horror of controlled drowning. It’s just that there’s something about forcible anal rape that brings the torture issue into sharp focus. Just once, I’d like to hear one of these American Enterprise Institute psychos, the ones that always trot out to defend the Neocons’ freakish obsessions, have to defend shoving a flashlight up a guy’s ass. I want to hear Frank Gaffney or Jonah Goldberg tell me why I shouldn’t be fucking mortified that raping prisoners was considered within tolerable interrogation practices by my country. I want Glenn Beck to justify butt-raping a suspect.
5/20/2007
happy valentine's day
This is really cool.
Apparently a Navy officer sent a list of Guantanamo detainees' names in a Valentine's Day card. As he told a reporter, "My oath as a commissioned officer is to the Constitution of the United States". He was sentenced to six months in jail, but it could have been a lot worse.
AP story
Dallas Morning News
Apparently a Navy officer sent a list of Guantanamo detainees' names in a Valentine's Day card. As he told a reporter, "My oath as a commissioned officer is to the Constitution of the United States". He was sentenced to six months in jail, but it could have been a lot worse.
AP story
Dallas Morning News
4/08/2007
how about giving up torture for lent
I had a good trip home to Liberty, and maybe I'll get around to writing about it. Or maybe those thoughts will sink down into that morass of vague feelings too distant to put into precise language.
But I did have one Easter thought I wanted to share. If you can talk about the suffering of Jesus and not be outraged to the point of insanity with our prison system, from "correctional" institutions stateside to military prisons to CIA black sites to partnerships with autocratic foreign governments, you need to read your Bible again.
Torture is one of those lines in the sand. You cannot be a Christian and not be adamently, vehemently, passionately, vocally, obnoxiously, ceaselessly against our government torturing people. It seems like every day we learn more details about how expansive have been the variety of injustices conducted in our name. It is disgusting.
It must stop.
Update: Apparently, I'm a little restless tonight. A long weekend must have done me good.
It occured to me that the passion narrative is a remarkably detailed description of the situation we face today. The authors make a point to tell us that Jesus was subjected to various forms of accusations, degrading and humiliating treatment, physical discomfort, and extended stress positions. Was this exceptional treatment for a high value target? Nope. Two common criminals are in similar stress positions next to him. Are the writers sympathetic to the needs for such tactics? Nope. In fact, the perpetrators, from jailors to priests to the masses, are made to look most misguided and despicable. While vile, is the response at least justified, given the threat of the day? Nope. Again, the authors are quite clear. What is done to Jesus is both wrong and counterproductive.
Interestingly, the Romans seem not to have needed to render the prisoners blind and deaf, and they left them so close to each other that they could actually interact--and even have visitors, of a sort, in this public place where all could see.
But I did have one Easter thought I wanted to share. If you can talk about the suffering of Jesus and not be outraged to the point of insanity with our prison system, from "correctional" institutions stateside to military prisons to CIA black sites to partnerships with autocratic foreign governments, you need to read your Bible again.
Torture is one of those lines in the sand. You cannot be a Christian and not be adamently, vehemently, passionately, vocally, obnoxiously, ceaselessly against our government torturing people. It seems like every day we learn more details about how expansive have been the variety of injustices conducted in our name. It is disgusting.
It must stop.
Update: Apparently, I'm a little restless tonight. A long weekend must have done me good.
It occured to me that the passion narrative is a remarkably detailed description of the situation we face today. The authors make a point to tell us that Jesus was subjected to various forms of accusations, degrading and humiliating treatment, physical discomfort, and extended stress positions. Was this exceptional treatment for a high value target? Nope. Two common criminals are in similar stress positions next to him. Are the writers sympathetic to the needs for such tactics? Nope. In fact, the perpetrators, from jailors to priests to the masses, are made to look most misguided and despicable. While vile, is the response at least justified, given the threat of the day? Nope. Again, the authors are quite clear. What is done to Jesus is both wrong and counterproductive.
Interestingly, the Romans seem not to have needed to render the prisoners blind and deaf, and they left them so close to each other that they could actually interact--and even have visitors, of a sort, in this public place where all could see.
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