bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
Wednesday September 27, 2006
Does America torture?
By BRIAN COONEY - Contributing Columnist
On Sept. 6, President Bush announced the transfer to Guantanamo of 14 detainees from secret CIA prisons in foreign countries. He acknowledged that the CIA used "an alternative set of procedures" to interrogate these prisoners. He refuses to deny widespread reports that these procedures included "waterboarding" or simulated drowning.
He went on to say that "The United States does not torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our values." He was lying. And he was playing games with words in a way that demonstrates his contempt for the intelligence of the American people.
Since 9/11, the United States has frequently outsourced torture to countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Syria, that are known to use brutal methods. This procedure is called "extraordinary rendition." It is expressly forbidden by the U.N. Convention against Torture (Part I, A. 3.1), which the U.S. has signed and ratified. It also violates section 2242 of the 1998 Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act.
When you outsource a task, you remain the primary agent. If I hire someone to murder another person, I am guilty of murder. George Bush is guilty of torture.
The U.N. Convention defines torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person." Waterboarding would certainly qualify, as would any technique that was really effective at getting information from a terrorist determined to remain silent.
The Supreme Court recently ruled that article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Convention applies to al Qaeda detainees. This article prohibits "cruel treatment and torture," and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment." In his Sept. 6 address, Bush announced that he wanted Congress to "clarify" article 3 by stipulating that it is consistent with his "alternative" interrogation techniques.
When Bush refuses to call his "alternative" methods torture, when he wants to clarify "cruel" and "degrading" as allowing waterboarding, he reminds me of what Humpty Dumpty told Alice in Wonderland: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
As I listened to this dishonest and belligerent man speak to the press, I was reminded of another bleak and oppressive period in recent American history - a time when, like today, basic American values were being trampled on by a ruthless politician.
On June 9, 1954, something momentous happened during a televised hearing of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
The American people finally recoiled in disgust at the way a powerful, fearmongering politician was abusing the power of government to undermine the rule of law.
For two years, Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) had used his subcommittee to bully and smear hundreds of people with unsubstantiated charges of being communist spies or sympathizers. He rode a wave of anxiety among Americans over the military threat, subversive activities and espionage of communist regimes in the Soviet Union and China. McCarthy manipulated these fears into a national paranoia. Politicians in both parties were afraid to stand up to him lest they, too, be accused of disloyalty.
On that June 9, McCarthy went too far. He was facing off with Joseph Welch, senior counsel for the Army. He insisted on entering into the record that a young lawyer working for Welch's firm was once a member of the National Lawyers' Guild, an organization that McCarthy had falsely accused of subversive activities. This entry could have meant an end to the young man's career.
Welch then asked a question that was the undoing of McCarthy: "Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" Soon after the hearing McCarthy was censured by the Senate, and lost popular support. I hope something like this will happen to George W. Bush as a result of the Sept. 6 press conference.
Bush is the desperate leader of a desperate Republican majority haunted by what could happen to them as a result of their incompetent and disastrous response to 9/11. The latest National Intelligence Estimate, reflecting the conclusions of all 16 intelligence agencies, states that the Iraq war has increased the number of terrorists and the danger we face from terrorism. A record 6,600 Iraqi civilians were killed in July and August. Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, reports that torture in Iraq "is totally out of hand. The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein."
Bush's response to all this is to ask the American people to let him do more torturing. If you won't, he threatens to label you as soft on terrorism, just as McCarthy threatened to call those who disagreed with him soft on communism. It's time to ask Bush: "Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last?"
Brian Cooney is the Stodghill Professor of Philosophy at Centre College.
source:
http://www.amnews.com/public_html/?module=displaystory&story_id=25330&format=html
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-muslim voice-
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