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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (9491)	12/15/2005 1:24:23 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22250

Len > Our government does not condone or commit torture In that case we'll call it "rendition". counterpunch.org >>Condi Rice's declaration that the Bush administration is too morally pure to engage in torture was just another transparent Bush administration deception. What is the point of Bush's rendition policy that Rice was sent to Europe to defend if the purpose is not torture? Why else do CIA agents kidnap foreign nationals in foreign countries and fly them to secret prisons in other foreign countries? The Bush administration defends its policy of "extraordinary rendition." Everyone who has survived the policy has testified to experiencing brutal torture. Just read the account in the December 11 Sunday Observer (UK) of the Ethiopian student that the CIA kidnapped and tortured in Morocco. Everyone knows that confessions obtained under torture are worthless. By having them tortured, Stalin was able to get the heros of the Bolshevik Revolution to declare that they were guilty of striving to overthrow the communist revolution! Why then do we have the disgusting spectacle of the president and vice president of the US and their neoconservative apologists, such as Charles Krauthammer, defending torture? In his defense of torture as a "moral duty," Krauthammer assumes that the person being tortured is guilty and will reveal the truth under torture. There is no basis whatsoever for Krauthammer's assumptions. The reason that the Bush administration and the neocons defend torture is that, having launched an illegal invasion and created an American police state, they are desperate for "evidence" of the terrorist threat in order to justify their illegal and unconstitutional policies. The only way to obtain this "evidence" is to torture people until they confess to the plots that are invented for them. A steady stream of confessed "terrorists" serves to justify the police state that has been created. Bush revealed the ploy when he asserted on December 10 that terrorist violence will be the result if Congress does not renew the Orwellian-named "Patriot Act" by December 31: "In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without that vital law for a single moment." What Bush declares to be a "vital law" is, in fact, the greatest assault on civil liberties in the history of our country. Do Americans really want to give up the civil liberties granted to them by the US Constitution merely in order that the Bush administration can lord it over the Middle East, establish puppet governments over Muslim peoples, protect Israel from retribution for its crimes against Palestinians, and steal oil from Arabs and Persians?<< news.bbc.co.uk >>New 'torture jail' found in Iraq These are not the first claims that Iraqi prisoners have been abused. Iraqi and US officials have found a packed interior ministry prison in Baghdad, where 625 inmates were being held in "very overcrowded" conditions. Thirteen of the prisoners needed hospital treatment amid torture claims. An Iraqi official speaking anonymously said 12 of the 13 men in hospital had suffered torture, including electric shocks and the loss of finger nails. <<