John Ashcroft, former Attorney-General of these United States, seems to be using his recent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee as a testing ground for public gullibility. The torture methods used on al-Que-da prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other sites included water boarding or "simulated drowning". Apparently these methods didn't bother His Worthiness at the time, even though they trashed America's moral standing abroad and, along with sending suspects to torture-happy regimes like those in Egypt and Syria, have created more harm than any fanatic-Muslim propaganda ever could. He parked his conscience, apparently, at the door to his office.
From the Associated Press Story:
Both memos were written in part by former Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. John Yoo. Ashcroft agreed to withdraw both memos a few years later after his advisers said they were concerned that the legal reasoning behind them overstepped the limits of executive authority.
"My philosophy is that if we've done something that we can improve, why would we not want to improve it? Why would we not want to adjust it?" Ashcroft told the committee, noting that he had relied on Yoo and other Justice Department lawyers for advice when he first approved the opinions.
Said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose): "There seems to be the Constitution, and the Constitution as Mr. Yoo thinks it should be. And the two are remarkably different."
************
************
To say the least.
The logic of all the semantic escapades surrounding the issue have gone on too long. The United States, unlike what the President has said, did torture suspects in a systematic way that sickened even those older vets who interrogated Nazis in World War II and somehow did their jobs without using anything like water boarding.
One cannot pretend that horrible events don't occur in battlefields and in the midst of guerrilla ambushes where force has to be met with greater force. Or pretend there aren't brutal and viscous individuals who want to harm Americans. But the solution is not to copy our enemies but to abide by the international accords we signed and expect other enemies to abide when dealing with captured Americans. Anything less from a high official like Ashcroft should be a ticket to his own day in criminal court. I doubt such responsibility will be asked of the Attorney-General who can always rely on a public climate of fear as his best defense.
we still have to use comic books to train the army?
ReplyDeleteany significance in the "subject" being a brown-skin man?
note hoods of torturers, also from Catholic heresy trials
heaps of significance I should imagine Mary Evelyn. Isn't the enemy always brown?
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteCertainly have.
Water-boarding and other torture is nothing less than appalling violence to people who are completely in your power, one could also make analogies to domestic violence against women and children, or rape which is again is about power and control not sex anyhow.
Information obtained under such torture has to be questionable anyway. If someone was doing that to me or thee I suspect we would confess to anything and tell any tall tale just to make it stop, just like in the days of torture against women accused of being witches.
Very true, and one more reason to never go down that road. If someone tortured me I'd tell them I blew up that Greenpeace ship back in the 1980's you talked about before, or I kidnapped the Lindbergh baby or wrote "Valley of the Dolls", whatever they wanted to make it stop.
ReplyDeleteThe more things change, the more they stay the same. And with official sanctions.
ReplyDeleteI saw a video where an English journalist went through a controlled demonstration of water boarding I forget which site or I would add a tag. He did not last 15 seconds before he used the escape codes. It is a terrible terrible thing. I think Mr Ashcroft should spend some time on the table before he or anyone else signs off on anything like this. We are supposed to be better than then our enemies. I guess we have lost the moral high ground and we are fighting in the gutter with the rest of them.
ReplyDeleteWell said. And of course this loss of moral standing makes it easier for Osama binLaden-style leaders trying to recruit terrorists and harder for leaders in Europe and other democratic nations to galvanize support for foiling them.
ReplyDeletestill thinking about this--they wear hoods because they know they are committing crimes?
ReplyDeletethe consequences of this are going to be with a long, long time.
I thought Mr bin Laden was a recruit of the CIA anyway, so it is not so much a matter of the US adopting the methods of it's enemies, but more it's enemies adopting the methods of the CIA I think.
ReplyDeleteLest we forget Agent Orange! and the "Tiger Force" atrocities in Vietnam. http://hnn.us/articles/1802.html
Yes, that article is a sobering reminder of the whole mess of injustices unleashed once war commences. Thanks for the link, AA.
ReplyDeleteThat is certainly true Doug, still only another 100 years to go... if McCain is steered into the White House in his bath chair, Reasons to be cheerful I suppose :-)
ReplyDeleteLOL. He's not the most hale and hearty 72 year old I've ever seen. We'll have divisions in Baghdad until there's ice skating on the Tigris River if his group gets in.
ReplyDelete