TORTURING DEMOCRACY
http://torturingdemocracy.org/
Here is a post from Gene Burns, a libertarian talk show host from KGO (who use to mock the idea that the US engaged in torture)
Andrew Sullivan, The AtlanticI now believe that some international human rights organization ought to open an investigation of the Bush administration, I think focused on Vice President Dick Cheney, and attempt to bring charges against Cheney in the international court of justice at The Hague, for war crimes. Based on the manner in which we have treated prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and the manner in which we have engaged in illegal rendition, that is, surreptitiously kidnapping prisoners and flying them to foreign countries where they could be tortured by foreign agents who do not follow the same civilized standards to which we subscribe.
I've always said that I've thought that even at Guantanamo Bay the United States was careful to stay on this side of torture. In fact, you may recall that on a couple of occasions we got into a spirited debate on this program about waterboarding, and whether waterboarding was torture. And I took the position that it was not torture, that it was simulated drowning, and that if that produced information which preserved our national security, I thought it was permissible.
And then I saw Torturing Democracy.
And I'm afraid, now that I have seen what I have seen, that I was wrong about that. It looks to me, based on this documentary, as if in fact we have engaged in behavior and practices at Guantanamo Bay, and in these illegal renditions, that are violations of the international human rights code.
And I believe that Dick Cheney is responsible. I believe that he was the agent of the United States government charged with developing the methodology used at Guantanamo Bay, supervising it for the administration, and indulging in practices which are in fact violations of human rights.
Why not George Bush? I think that it would be easier to nail Cheney. And there's a certain method to this madness: that if you go after Cheney--seriously, I'm talking now about a serious investigation by an international tribunal, and charges brought against him in the international court, so that he would be subject to arrest, and trial, just as Milosevic and some of the people involved in these behaviors in the Balkans were--that that would force Cheney, in his defense, to disclose the degree to which the president, George W. Bush, was culpable in any of this, if culpable at all.
I really found this documentary, Torturing Democracy, very, very disturbing. And I guess the reason that heretofore I have not been such an easy mark on the matter of this kind of charge is that I don't think I ever saw an organized, systematized review of what we did, and how we did it, as well presented as it was in this documentary.
And it grieves me to say, as an American citizen, that I believe the leadership of our country is responsible for crimes against humanity. But, you know, we can't be trumpeting about the behavior of others, like Milosevic, and others, if we do not expect ourselves to be held to a similar high standard.
And no matter our desire to preserve and protect our national security, which is uppermost in the minds of all of us, and something which our leaders are sworn to do by oath, if to do that we have to engage in torture, we should not do it.
And as this documentary points out, there is no indication that any significant, credible evidence that made us safer was ever developed or deduced or adduced during these sessions. And in my view, some of these sessions went over the line.
And I'd like to see a panel of international court judges review the evidence. They might not agree. They might find Vice President Cheney not guilty--who knows? But I'd certainly like to see a trial of Dick Cheney as the responsible party in the United States government for developing tortures that were violations of our obligations under international concordants and treaties involving human rights violations.
It grieves me too. Please watch "Torturing Democracy." It isn't easy to watch; but what so many innocent (and guilty) individuals were subjected to in your name was unimaginably harder. As readers know, I've been fixated on this since Abu Ghraib. But that documentary made me ill by forcing me again to absorb the enormity of what Bush and Cheney have done - and the urgent, urgent task of repairing the damage.