Trying hard not to make comparisons to certain countries who are synonymous with terrorism

Excerpts from a sad story and an equally sad comment.

Raw Story (via a Tiny Revolution):

According to human rights lawyer John Sifton, the CIA tortured some of its detainees in the War on Terror so severely that it had to take measures to keep them alive so they could continue being tortured.

Sifton, who the executive director of One World Research, told an interviewer for Russia Today that there was both a CIA detention program and a military detention program and that "The CIA program was by far the most secretive. ... That's the one that only had a few dozen detainees at any given time -- but it's the one that saw the biggest abuses, the most serious forms of torture."

[. . .]

Last year, when Scott Horton interviewed Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side, about the CIA program, he asked, "One of the lingering mysteries in Washington has been what happened to the CIA internal probe into homicides involving the program. You note that CIA Inspector General (IG) John Helgerson undertook a study and initially concluded, just as the Red Cross and most legal authorities in the United States and around the world, that the program was illegal and raised serious war crimes issues. Helgerson was summoned repeatedly to meet privately with Vice President Cheney, the man who provided the impetus for the program, and it appears as a result of these meetings the IG’s report was simply shut down."

"Helgerson’s 2004 report had been described to me as very disturbing," Mayer replied, "the size of two Manhattan phone books, and full of terrible descriptions of mistreatment. ... We know that in addition, the IG investigated several alleged homicides involving CIA detainees, and that Helgerson’s office forwarded several to the Justice Department for further consideration and potential prosecution. ... Why have there been no charges filed? It’s a question to which one would expect that Congress and the public would like some answers."

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comment #8:

miggy

I believe that the USA stands at the edge of rare moment of ‘decision liability’.
If they make the wrong decisions they will be responsible for their own destruction and most likely at their own hands.

That the USA has engaged in the very same war crimes that they held others responsible for just 60 years ago, and now avoids responsibility for the same is not lost on the world.

The USA is not in any position to dictate to the world any longer. They have become weak and ineffective in all of their foreign policy, cannot win the wars that they start, cannot pay their debts for those wars, deliver death and destruction to the innocent where ever they go, and live the lies and deception that they themselves call others to responsibility for. They refuse to keep their treaties while holding others to theirs. They lie, cheat and steal with little or no remorse.

Their political system is controlled and owned by the Plutocratic Oligarchy with huge payments being made this very moment to the very people who created the problems in the first place; while thousands are loosing their homes after loosing their jobs, after loosing their liberties at the hands of the previous administrations criminals.

How much longer the world is willing to tolerate the USA is only a matter of time.

The USA could become a world leader overnight with the changes needed to become a leader by example. Whether they have the will, or the strength or the integrity; may remain an unanswered question without action–immediately.

“If the USA were another nation the USA would invade the USA to keep the world safe; and they would be justified.”

Rogue Nation Slaughters Innocents at Funeral

Imagine if the nation was North Korea. What would be the US reaction?

Or if Iran were doing it? Neocons and liberals alike would call for an invasion.

After all, collective punishment is a war crime.

But alas. It's only us. So, not a peep out of our representatives.

I'm still waiting for that change you can believe in.


via Truthout:

"Dozens Dead" in US Drone Strike

Tuesday 23 June 2009

by: | Visit article original @ BBC News

Qari Zainuddin, shown here with his bodyguards, was assassinated on Tuesday.
(Photo: Ishtiaq Mahsud / AP)

At least 45 people have died in a missile strike by a US drone aircraft in Pakistan, officials there have said.

The people killed in South Waziristan region had been attending a funeral for others killed in a US drone strike earlier on Tuesday.

Intelligence officials said at least 45 people had been killed and dozens more injured in the later strike, when two missiles were fired.

But a local official told BBC News the death toll was more than 50.

The region is a stronghold of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

Bringing it home

from a Cindy Sheehan email of November 15, 2007:

"Our national identity rests on and has been formed by violence and greed. Congress has a chance to slow down, if not reverse, that cycle but will give George Bush billions more to wage their (the mess belongs to all the branches co-equally) illegal occupation because, instead of protecting life and liberty for all, they viciously protect the life and liberty of their elitist club only."

My email reply:

Cindy-

I just had a thought that seemed so clear - probably like some you've had many times.

Imagine if, instead of a bill to provide more money to continue killing nameless and faceless Iraqis, Congress was pondering a bill to permit US forces to capture, torture, and possibly kill Nancy Pelosi's children (doubtless for some imaginary national security reason.) Or substitute the children of any lawmaker you choose.

Imagine the somewhat different tactics that would be "on the table" to kill that bill.

I'd think there would be a total shutdown of the government before such a bill was allowed to go into effect. Lawmakers would be calling press conferences every hour to denounce this travesty. They'd call on all their resources, call in all their favors from powerful business and government leaders, blanket the media with outrage and demands for a return to rational, civil behavior.

In short, they'd stop "business as usual" and shift into drastic crisis mode, and not stop until the inhuman threat was gone.

And yet, how is this materially different from the situation they face now?

Kinda makes ya think.

-steve