Monday, September 25, 2006

Torture Logic

Four years ago in Liberia, in an attempt to preserve his corrupt authority, President Charles Taylor adopted the Bush administration's phrase "unlawful combatants" to describe prisoners he wished to try outside of civilian courts. Today Mr. Taylor stands before The Hague accused of war crimes.
--Paul Rieckhoff, in an OpEd piece titled "Do Unto Your Enemy…"

It makes me crazy that Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or some other Democrat leader hasn't stood up and stated, in a loud, clear voice, "We, the Democratic Party, are completely against descending to the level of the thugs that we're combating, and we will do everything possible to defeat Bush's torture bill. We believe in a government of laws. We believing in adhering to treaties that we have signed. We believe in retaining the moral high ground. If the President and the majority party in Congress insist on attaching the destruction of the Geneva Conventions to the latest appropriations bill, then let them explain to the troops why there isn't any money."

Besides Reickoff's piece, I also recommend Andrew Sullivan's column in yesterday's (London) Times: "Torture by any other name is just as vile"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I completely agree. Where is the outrage in this country on this issue. That we as a country are even having a discussion that some level of torture is acceptable is offensive to my sensibilities. Making matters even more malodorous is the fact that those who are being tortured may not even be guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of the scariest stories I've heard in the past few weeks was that of the Canadien citizen who was arrested at the US border as a result of an information mix up. He was shipped to Syria, tortured and eventually released after the Canadien govt recognized what had happened. Who's to say that eventual paranoia in our country won't lead to people just being picked up off the streets by our govt (maybe by contracted security personnel)and tortured just for their veiws or their perceived "threat". Seems like this could never happen but if incendents such as this recent fuckup (one of how many?) make the realities of the Balkans in the 90s, Chile and Argentina in the 70s, seem that much more like harbringers of what could occur here if people don't wake up and start saying enough of this garbage.

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