Torture? Again?

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**Easy E**

Interesting article about everyone's favorite topic....

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/04/21/new_amnesty_report_criticizes_obama_handling_of_torture_evidence_could_america.html

Rather than another reason to refight old arguments, I hope that today’s report can help us leave these techniques where they belong—in the past.” That was President Obama, last December, after the release of a Senate panel report on the CIA’s use of torture against terrorism detainees. Obama’s statement encapsulated both his confidence that the brutal interrogation techniques of the Bush era had been brought to an end by the executive order he issued banning them upon taking office, and his reluctance to probe more deeply into abuses that occurred or prosecute any of the offenders.

But a new report issued this morning by Amnesty International charges that the Obama administration has effectively granted impunity to the practitioners of torture, and that its reluctance to address the issue “not only leaves the USA in serious violation of its international legal obligations, it increases the risk that history will repeat itself when a different president again deems the circumstances warrant resort to torture, enforced disappearance, abductions or other human rights violations.”

Amnesty’s report examines what the senate document actually added to the public record, considers the potential involvement of senior executive branch officials (including President George W. Bush) in rendition and torture, and finally argues that the senate report falls short of providing accountability for the acts that took place.

“What we’ve consistently heard is this theme of looking forward, not backward,” Naureen Shah, director of Amnesty USA’s Security and Human Rights Program, told me of signals and statements from the Obama administration. “They wanted to prohibit torture and then move on.” Shah says Amnesty’s report is aimed primarily at the Justice Department, and in particular outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, in the admittedly long-shot hope that he might spend his remaining time in office (a very short amount of time now that the senate reached a deal on Tuesday paving the way for the confirmation of Holder’s successor, Loretta Lynch) reopening an investigation into abuses. Holder had earlier ruled out charges against CIA interrogators in 2012 after a controversial three-year investigation, and the department declined to reopen the case after the Senate report. As for Lynch, she has said that she considers waterboarding to be torture, but Shah notes that she hasn’t been specifically asked about whether she would reopen the investigation.

Amnesty’s report calls for the Department of Justice to reopen and expand its investigation and “bring to justice in fair trials all the persons, regardless of their level of office or former level of office, suspected of being involved in the commission of crimes under international law, such as torture and enforced disappearance,” though Shah notes that there are possible ways of ensuring accountability without criminal prosecution, such as the truth and reconciliation commissions used by several Latin American countries to address crimes, including torture, committed under authoritarian governments.

“Our experience shows that any time people get away with torture, you’re sending the message that it can happen again,” Shah says, arguing that “this administration keeps getting confronted with opportunities to take seriously the possibility that this could happen again and it is failing.”

The Obama administration has not only failed to look into the sins of the Bush administration. Obama may not be OK with “enhanced interrogation,” but he has approved the secret detention and interrogation of suspects before they are turned over to the civilian justice system. His administration has also allowed for the transfer of suspects to facilities with dire conditions in places like Afghanistan and Somalia. “There are places throughout the world where CIA has worked with other intelligence services and has been able to bring people into custody and engage in the debriefings of these individuals … through our liaison partners, and sometimes there are joint debriefings that take place as well,” CIA Director John Brennan said recently, raising the disturbing possibility that the administration hasn’t so much banned harsh interrogation practices as outsourced them.

As for what happens in U.S. custody, Obama’s most concrete step to prohibit torture was an executive order that could be rescinded by the next administration. This hasn’t come up much yet on the campaign trail, but there’s already reason for concern.

Jeb Bush has said little about the interrogation practices that took place under his brother’s administration, though several of W’s senior national security officials, including two former CIA directors, are advising him. Marco Rubio has strongly criticized the release of the Senate report and declined to criticize any of the actions detailed in it. He has suggested that he believes waterboarding may have played a role in tracking down Osama Bin Laden, something the Senate report disputed.

At this point, it certainly doesn’t seem inconceivable that in response to a major national security threat, the U.S. could once again decide it needs to “torture some folks.”

There you go. Is Torture truly behind us as the President says, or is it only behind us for now?

Will this issue be America's "Armenian Genocide"?

**Frazzled**

Pfft thats not America's Armenian Genocide. The Trail of Tears is America's Armenian Genocide. This isn't even a blip.

Besides torturing terrorists is not going to garner much sympathy in any population.

**AlmightyWalrus**

Frazzled wrote:
Pfft thats not America's Armenian Genocide. The Trail of Tears is America's Armenian Genocide. This isn't even a blip.

Besides torturing terrorists is not going to garner much sympathy in any population.

No, but torturing people without due process is. Especially when said people are foreign nationals that have been "obtained" outside of the US's jurisdiction.

**Jihadin**

Will this issue be America's "Armenian Genocide"?

Forgot about the Native Americans?

**Ahtman**

Easy E wrote:
Interesting article about everyone's favorite topic....

This isn't about Taco Bell.

**Easy E**

No. I did not. However, we are actually taught about the Trail of Tears, smallpox blankets, and Native America genocide now days.

Will future generations be taught about our Torture programs?

**Frazzled**

AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
Pfft thats not America's Armenian Genocide. The Trail of Tears is America's Armenian Genocide. This isn't even a blip.

Besides torturing terrorists is not going to garner much sympathy in any population.

No, but torturing people without due process is. Especially when said people are foreign nationals that have been "obtained" outside of the US's jurisdiction.

Again thats nothing for the US. You clearly have not researched what a bunch of

s we've been in the past.

As Veep said when the husband of Denmark's Prime Minister gropes the VP "I am going to

you over so hard. Don't you get it? Where I come from we shoot people in the face just because we don't like their hair."

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ahtman wrote:
Easy E wrote:
Interesting article about everyone's favorite topic....

This isn't about Taco Bell.

Taco Bell. Now there's a crime against humanity, except of course they serve genuine cat in their tacos so thats a plus.

You should try Torchies Tacos. They're awesome.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Easy E wrote:
No. I did not. However, we are actually taught about the Trail of Tears, smallpox blankets, and Native America genocide now days.

Will future generations be taught about our Torture programs?

Bunch of lazy losers. They should learn how to do it properly themselves. Pick yourselves up by your own bootstraps I say!

**AlmightyWalrus**

Frazzled wrote:
AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
Pfft thats not America's Armenian Genocide. The Trail of Tears is America's Armenian Genocide. This isn't even a blip.

Besides torturing terrorists is not going to garner much sympathy in any population.

No, but torturing people without due process is. Especially when said people are foreign nationals that have been "obtained" outside of the US's jurisdiction.

Again thats nothing for the US. You clearly have not researched what a bunch of s we've been in the past.

The people responsible for the Trail of Tears are dead. So are the people behind the internment camps for Japanese-Americans during WWII, the Smallpox-blanket-gifters, and the founders of the Ku Klux Klan. The people responsible for what is effectively the kidnapping and torture of foreign citizens outside US jurisdiction are getting to walk away from this scott-free as we speak.

The fact that someone's stabbed someone in the past doesn't mean that said person isn't a douche for stealing candy from a baby today.

**Haight**

AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
Pfft thats not America's Armenian Genocide. The Trail of Tears is America's Armenian Genocide. This isn't even a blip.

Besides torturing terrorists is not going to garner much sympathy in any population.

No, but torturing people without due process is. Especially when said people are foreign nationals that have been "obtained" outside of the US's jurisdiction.

Again thats nothing for the US. You clearly have not researched what a bunch of s we've been in the past.

The people responsible for the Trail of Tears are dead. So are the people behind the internment camps for Japanese-Americans during WWII, the Smallpox-blanket-gifters, and the founders of the Ku Klux Klan. The people responsible for what is effectively the kidnapping and torture of foreign citizens outside US jurisdiction are getting to walk away from this scott-free as we speak.

The fact that someone's stabbed someone in the past doesn't mean that said person isn't a douche for stealing candy from a baby today.

While i get what you're saying, time doesn't diminish the scope of atrocity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Wars

While i don't condone black site operations whatsoever (and mostly because i'm an ex legal professional, and I believe very heavily in the rule of law as one of the things that sets us apart from barbarism, and black site extradition violates all habeus corpus for Citizens, and for foreign nationals it violates international treaty, which is to say, International Law), to claim that it's in any way even remotely close in scope or awfulness to what took place during the American Indian Wars just isn't credible.

As a point of reference, remember that the British in the Boer Wars modeled their work and starvation camps after our Relocation and Reservation system. And the Boer camps were the basis of model for the Concentration camps in the 30's and 40's. Manifest Destiny is nearly as ugly an horrible a time in American History as you can shine a spotlight on, you'd be hard pressed to find a worse one past the obvious exception of the Slavery Era and its practices.

**LordofHats**

We at least (mostly) acknowledge the mess of Slavery and that it was wrong. The dark sides of manifest destiny just gets watered down left and right.

**Dreadclaw69**

Easy E wrote:
There you go. Is Torture truly behind us as the President says, or is it only behind us for now?

It's behind us as long as it stays out of the news

Easy E wrote:
Will this issue be America's "Armenian Genocide"?

Not even clsoe

**Ouze**

Frazzled wrote:
Besides torturing terrorists is not going to garner much sympathy in any population.

I think you forgot the word "alleged" in there somewhere. For a guy who points out the government can't even run a DMV or start a website for healthcare competently, you have a lot of trust that we scooped up the right guys we tortured, especially in the face of a few of them turning out to not be the right guys (oops).

I think it was wrong to dismiss investigating what happened in the previous administration even as I understand the motivation behind it, but when you have (for example) the CIA ordered to produce videotapes by a court, and they burn them instead... that's a level of contempt that warrants investigation regardless of political exigency.

**Dreadclaw69**

Ouze wrote:
I think it was wrong to dismiss investigating what happened in the previous administration even as I understand the motivation behind it, but when you have (for example) the CIA ordered to produce videotapes by a court, and they burn them instead... that's a level of contempt that warrants investigation regardless of political exigency.

Just like servers and hard drives.

**Ouze**

Yes, as I've said in that thread many times, that needs to be thoroughly investigated as well.

By my count, in fact I said I thought the IRS issue needed to be investigated thoroughly in one form or another no less than 9 times. If you're implying that I only think we should investigate malfeasance when it's politically handy by my reckoning, I don't think my post history bears that out.

Furthermore, not investigating the excesses of the Bush administration actually was the politically handy thing to do for President Obama since looking into it would have allowed for accusations of a witch-hunt to distract from the economic problems of the time.

**sebster**

I'm honestly not that concerned that with another administration the torture program could start up again. Post 9/11 was a really weird time when people were really struggling to to figure out what life was like with this new heightened awareness of terrorism, and for the most part I think we've come out the other side of that, realising that while terrorism is a horrible thing done by horrible people that need to be fought, but it isn't an existential threat.

The part that actually concerns me is that Obama avoided the issue largely because he was concerned about the political costs of fighting large parts of his own government. Fearing political response from the CIA and the military, Obama instead chose to just move on from the issue. Taking one government institutions, breaking bad culture and taking the head of bad and incompetent actors is pretty much what politicians are supposed to do. Obama is far from the only politician to fail to demand accountability from the government he leads, but his decision is probably a low point in how bad behaviour can be without punishment.

That I can see continuing, no matter which side is in power they're likely to be politically weak and far more committed to using their power to score points against the other political team. This means government departments will be largely free to act without serious penalty from their political masters.

**Dreadclaw69**

Ouze wrote:
Yes, as I've said in that thread many times, that needs to be thoroughly investigated as well.

By my count, in fact I said I thought the IRS issue needed to be investigated thoroughly in one form or another no less than 9 times. If you're implying that I only think we should investigate malfeasance when it's politically handy by my reckoning, I don't think my post history bears that out.

Furthermore, not investigating the excesses of the Bush administration actually was the politically handy thing to do for President Obama since looking into it would have allowed for accusations of a witch-hunt to distract from the economic problems of the time.

I was not trying to single you out. Apologies if I was unclear

**Frazzled**

AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
Pfft thats not America's Armenian Genocide. The Trail of Tears is America's Armenian Genocide. This isn't even a blip.

Besides torturing terrorists is not going to garner much sympathy in any population.

No, but torturing people without due process is. Especially when said people are foreign nationals that have been "obtained" outside of the US's jurisdiction.

Again thats nothing for the US. You clearly have not researched what a bunch of s we've been in the past.

The people responsible for the Trail of Tears are dead. So are the people behind the internment camps for Japanese-Americans during WWII, the Smallpox-blanket-gifters, and the founders of the Ku Klux Klan. The people responsible for what is effectively the kidnapping and torture of foreign citizens outside US jurisdiction are getting to walk away from this scott-free as we speak.

The fact that someone's stabbed someone in the past doesn't mean that said person isn't a douche for stealing candy from a baby today.

You evilz feren devilz don't get it do -don't make us "Gitmo' you!

1. More people have been "creatively questioned" in Chicago jails than whatever you're babbling about.
2. These were terrorists. Other than hothouse lefties who never had a hard day in their lives no one really gives a

.
3. Your blah blah nonsense is getting in the way of my Kardashian tweets.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ouze wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
Besides torturing terrorists is not going to garner much sympathy in any population.

I think you forgot the word "alleged" in there somewhere. For a guy who points out the government can't even run a DMV or start a website for healthcare competently, you have a lot of trust that we scooped up the right guys we tortured, especially in the face of a few of them turning out to not be the right guys (oops).

I think it was wrong to dismiss investigating what happened in the previous administration even as I understand the motivation behind it, but when you have (for example) the CIA ordered to produce videotapes by a court, and they burn them instead... that's a level of contempt that warrants investigation regardless of political exigency.

Many of those 'alleged" have gone back to killing people for fun and profit so no not alleged.
Again, this is #1,256,7857,555 in the list of things to worry about. You want to know something the US should really apologize for? 80s hair bands.

**AlmightyWalrus**

Torturing your own citizens is bad. Seizing and torturing foreign nationals without trial is comic book villain bad.

**Frazzled**

AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Torturing your own citizens is bad. Seizing and torturing foreign nationals without trial is comic book villain bad.

unless they're bad foreign nationals then its good and the subject of cool movies with Tom Cruise.

**Easy E**

sebster wrote:
I'm honestly not that concerned that with another administration the torture program could start up again.

I agree that the next Administration (or any really) will just bring it back for the giggles.

I could see another attack or similar National Security Crisis bringing it all back in spades, and it starting up with surprising speed and ease.

**Talizvar**

Is it strange to assume people will do nasty things outside of any law in the name of country or at least "ends justifying the means"?

Funny how all this may appear at first glance perfectly fine: torture of terrorists, enemy soldiers, criminals... your citizens...

I guess forcing it to remain illegal, unacknowledged allows it to be a weapon of last resort rather than a condoned method that then has the slippery slope of where to draw the line.

The only problem is, with it being an unofficial action, it is assumed the president is not involved, so who decides who gets tortured?
That is the scary question.

**Easy E**

Fraz does.

**LordofHats**

Easy E wrote:
Fraz does.

He makes the decision by throwing some Jerky to his weiner dogs and based on how they tear it apart, he can divine who needs to be tortured and why

**Frazzled**

LordofHats wrote:
Easy E wrote:
Fraz does.

He makes the decision by throwing some Jerky to his weiner dogs and based on how they tear it apart, he can divine who needs to be tortured and why

Indeed. Don't tick me off, or you'll get the Jerkey!