Bush to veto

[ladyinred]

Bush Poised to Veto Waterboarding Ban
By Dan Eggen
The Washington Post

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030808Z.shtml

[Zerbie]

I can't seem to get the link working correctly. Sorry.

[Unmasked]

I feel rather ill. It is simply unacceptable that we continue to torture human beings. If I'm not mistaken some of Bush's crimes are punishable by death, but then again, he's absolved himself hasn't he? Little prick.

[ladyinred]

What is it really about:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWDUW9mtWqg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aepfsJfWxV0&feature=related

[marutidas]

People who accept tortue as a reliable sorce of infomation are very delusional. People who are subjected to painful and humilating torture will admit to anything to get it to stop. As well as the possiblity of innocent people being tortured for information and confessing to crimes to which they had no part of to begin with. Not to mention contamintaing those who are guilty with facts not related to their specific crime and possibly confuse them.

As a person who partakes of Bondage and Masocism, in a scene,( Which is something cosentual, and is neogosiate ,before not during, about activities to take place, by parties involved) you are not coherent enough to be asked questions about anything. your body and mind are all over the place not able to make sense of anything. You are so hyped up on endorphans and adrenoline, and you heart is racing, your senses are on overload

While Bondage and Masochism are ultimatly about pleasure,
I think I have at least a little bit of insight of what a torture victim may go through, and can tell you that it is all RUBISH when trying to get information out of anyone!!! I don't think I could ever know what pain and dred someone subjected to that dehumanizing behavior experiences. Nor would I ever want too.

This kind of method is ABUSE, no one, even if they are guilty should be subjected to, PERIOD!!!

[ladyinred]

http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/ArticleID/9589


March 14, 2008 - The House vote this week was 225 to 188 - not enough to override President Bush's veto of legislation requiring the CIA to abide by the same interrogation rules that bar torture by the military.

Congress should pass new legislation and insist on "no torture" as universal U.S. policy. This should be a central presidential campaign issue.

Since the revelations of Abu Ghraib, President Bush has said repeatedly that "We do not torture."
Yet Gen. Michael Hayden, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, admitted in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Feb. 5 that the CIA had used waterboarding on terror suspects three times in recent years.

Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said last year, "If we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy, that would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary."

Current law does not bind the CIA or other "national security" interrogators - the very ones who now have the exemption allowing "extreme methods." To bar it from those who don't do it, but allow it by those who do, is hypocritical at best. The use of electric shocks, sexual abuse and waterboarding are illegal under U.S. laws, but the president and even Sen. John McCain support the CIA's and their contractors' right to use them.

Last fall, McCain said that waterboarding "was used in the Spanish Inquisition, and there are reports it is being used against Buddhist monks today. It is torture."

However, on Feb. 13, McCain voted against the measure banning "harsh interrogation methods." (The measure passed in the Senate.) Claiming that the CIA should be differentiated from the Army Field Manual Guidelines, which McCain himself imposed, he said, "It is important to the war on terror that the CIA have the ability to detain and interrogate terrorists."

With deference to his POW and hero status, it must be stated that McCain has placed himself on the wrong side of this issue.

The government admits to three cases of waterboarding, but it's doubtful that is the limit. Former Vice President Al Gore has asked just how 100 young, vigorous soldiers died in our custody in prison in Abu Ghraib; no autopsies were conducted on these soldiers. The CIA's admission of waterboarding three people is a disingenuous way of ignoring what the CIA's contractors, as opposed to the CIA itself, have done. There is virtually no legal oversight abroad of CIA contractors. Amnesty International has provided evidence of the "use of torture and ill-treatment against prisoners" at Guantanamo, in Afghanistan and Iraq. It turns out that the torturing was likely done by purposely unmonitored contractors.

Just how do we think the families, friends and colleagues of those who are tortured react when their loved ones finally get to tell the story? Torture is motivating terrorists.

On the Senate floor, Edward Kennedy gave some precision to torture techniques: "What constitutes unlawful and inhumane treatment of detainees are a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure in elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment."

The United States legally banned these techniques in dealing with the Japanese, Germans and Vietnamese in past wars and prosecuted perpetrators of those nations who used them.

Now that Americans know that the CIA destroyed at least two videotapes documenting waterboarding despite specific congressional warnings not to delete such tapes, the battle over who-covered-up-what is on. Questions include not just whether agency officials withheld information from Congress, the courts and the 9/11 commission, but who authorized the illegal behavior, and precisely what was done.

So far, all that we have gotten from the administration on these questions is tortured logic. "We do not torture" should mean, "We do not torture."

Weiner, president of Robert Weiner Associates Public Affairs and Issues Strategies, was a public affairs director in the Clinton administration. Larmett is a senior policy analyst at Robert Weiner Associates.