Speaking Truth to Torturers == Poll: Americans Agree, Bush is Lying

[L. Coyote]

Speaking Truth to Torturers
BY Scott Horton - Oct12, 2007
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/10/hbc-90001399

”I don’t think it, I know it”

Each time he is confronted with evidence of his own policies condoning torture, President Bush responds with the same phrase: “We do not torture.” It is a lie. A brazen lie. The American public now recognizes this (see next item). But in the etiquette of American politics, no one is prepared to say that the Emperor is wearing no clothes.

But now President Jimmy Carter speaks Truth to Power. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml;jsessionid=BME4HS1ETENA1QFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/10/12/wcarter112.xml&site=5&page=0

Asked by the CNN news channel whether he thought the Bush Administration had tortured suspects, Mr Carter said: “I don’t think it, I know it, certainly.” Confronted with Mr Bush’s public denial last week that the US had ever tortured detainees, Mr Carter replied: “That’s not an accurate statement if you use the international norms of torture as has always been honoured, certainly in the last 60 years, since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated.”

Last week, the New York Times obtained memos written by the US justice department in 2005. These argued that techniques such as simulated drowning, head-slapping and keeping detainees in freezing temperatures did not constitute torture and could therefore be used. But Mr Carter, 84, said: “You can make your own definition of human rights and say, ‘we don’t violate them’. And you can make your own definition of torture and say ‘we don’t violate it’.

“The president is self-defining what we have done and authorised in the torture of prisoners.”

Poll: Americans Agree, Bush is Lying About Torture
A Rasmussen poll shows ..... http://news.yahoo.com/s/rasmussen/20071010/pl_rasmussen/torturepoll20071010

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[Duer 157099]

1. Just remind people about bamboo under the fingernails

and see if they think that is torture, because that's the classic definition.

Let them think about how far away that is from either organ failure or death.

And yet, is considered by all as torture.

I think people just need to be reminded of what the word means, in terms they understand.

[L. Coyote]

2. Torture, according to international law, is "any act .....

Torture, according to international law, is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."

^ Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, United Nations, 10 December 1984.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture

[L. Coyote]

3. Speaking Truth to Torturers, Cont’d = BY Scott Horton

October 15, 2007
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/10/hbc-90001428

Last night I listened to a group of retired generals and admirals speak very movingly of their commitment to oppose the Bush Administration’s torture policies. One of them, General Fred Haynes, is a genuine American hero, who fought in three wars, starting with the beaches of Iwo Jima. “It undermines our most fundamental values,” he said, “it makes us less safe, not safer.” Hopefully we’ll have some reporting on their remarks in the press shortly. In the meantime, here are three more voices raised against torture.

Frank Rich, ‘The Good Germans’
Frank Rich reminds us (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/opinion/14rich2.html?ei=5087&em=&en=4bccaa3c0251c781&ex=1192680000&pagewanted=print) that the debate about torture is not “just politics,” as most of the mainstream media would have it. More properly viewed, it raises a simple question: does our nation have any fundamental shared values any more?

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Simon Jenkins, The Threat Lies Within
Simon Jenkins is one of my favorite Tories. I’ve read him faithfully for years and just ten days ago—at a publication party in London for Robert Harris, marking the issuance of The Ghost–finally got to meet him. He mentioned that he was at work on a piece talking about the core values test of the war on terror, and on Sunday it appeared (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/simon_jenkins/article2652762.ece). It’s a must-read piece, which exposes an essential fact. The Bush Administration has waged the war on terror as a war on our own values. And that constitutes a potentially far graver threat to our society that the Islamic terrorists themselves.

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Francis X. Stone, Unsophisticated Methods
Lt. Col. Francis X. Stone, a retired Air Force officer, writes to the Boston Globe (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2007/10/12/bushs_unsophisticated_methods/): .....