Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (19559)	12/19/2007 4:55:57 PM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224759

Romney is full of it. He doesn't really believe anything he says except when he's talking about more tax breaks for the rich. Chris Matthews made a remark which is true, that he doesn't know a single person for Romney who isn't rich. If you're very rich and want more tax breaks, Romney is your man. Otherwise he really doesn't stand for anything. Time Magazine's man of the year is given not to the best person but the most influential. #2 was Al Gore who certainly has done more good for the world than anyone else lately, but the most influential can often be a notorious character. Even Hitler won it once I think, and he definitely deserved it at the time. As for Petreaus, he is a fine general, but the rightwing has pumped him up into some kind of overly hyped symbol to replace Bush-Cheney as their military idol. Bush has been lying since day one that he listens to the generals on the ground. In fact 90% of generals are against Bush now, but he finally found one he could work with and quickly spun him into a savior. In fact, we are no closer to "victory" in Iraq than we have ever been. The problems are not military and cannot be solved that way.

To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (19559)	12/19/2007 4:57:22 PM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 224759

Abu Graib Victims Sue US Defence Contractor for Torture * Yet another corrupt Bushie war profiteer gone crooked and amok Jason Rhyne Published: Tuesday December 18, 2007 del.icio.us del.icio.us \| StumbleUpon Print This Email This Alleged torture victims faced no charges; were later released More than 250 former detainees from Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison have filed an amended lawsuit against a private US military contractor they say participated in a conspiracy to commit torture. The head of a human rights group involved in bringing the case told RAW STORY that unchecked abuses of contractors in Iraq are tantamount to a "license to kill." The class action lawsuit, submitted Monday to a Washington, DC, federal court, asserts that employees from contractor CACI International Inc. routinely tortured, threatened and humiliated prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other US-run facilities. The complaint is an revised version of a suit first brought against CACI and another contractor, the Titan Corporation, in 2004. A US district judge in November dismissed the plaintiffs' case against Titan in a summary judgment. "Plaintiffs are 256 persons among the tens of thousands of persons swept up in the military raids for no reason other than shortage of military interpreters and interrogators," the official complaint states. "They were all eventually released without any charges being brought against them." According to a press release from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a group involved in bringing the complaint, the plaintiffs allege that they were "repeatedly sodomized, threatened with rape and harm to their family members," by CACI personnel, and were "kept naked in their cells, chained and handcuffed to the bars of their cells, forced to wear women's panties on their heads and bodies, subjected to electric shock, subjected to extreme heat and cold, attacked by unmuzzled dogs, subjected to serious pain inflicted on sensitive body parts, and kicked, beaten and struck." For its part, CACI on Wednesday dismissed the new suit as unfounded. "CACI totally rejects and denies all of the plaintiffs' allegations and claims in their amended legal filing of Dec. 17, 2007," reads a statement from the contractor. "These accusations and allegations in their latest and ever-changing lawsuit are a rehash of their original baseless submissions...The plaintiffs are attempting to prosecute the same restated, reformulated, and related claims that were frivolous when first filed and which remain to this day frivolous and maliciously false." CCR president Michael Ratner, however, told RAW STORY by email that the complaint was part of an attempt to hold contractors accountable for their actions. "This suit against CACI, a private contractor, may be one of the few ways we in the US can get legal accountability for the horrendous torture that was carried on in Iraq," he said. "A situation where private contractors are unaccountable is like giving a license to torture." The former prisoners allege that two specific CACI interrogators directed the use of torture techniques so severe that Cpl. Charles Graner and Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick -- both of whom were subsequently convicted for abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib -- refused to carry them out. The suit purports that the employees also told US soldiers to dole out "special treatment" for some prisoners, a code for making them crawl naked over concrete until bloody and incapacitated. In addition to the Center for Constitutional Rights, plaintiffs in the case are represented by the law firms of Burke O'Neil LLC and Akeel & Valentine, PLC. The same legal team brought suit against private security firm Blackwater USA for firing on Iraqi civilians in a September incident. "Hopefully, this suit -- and the precedent it will set -- will send a strong message to those who would violate fundamental rights," Ratner told RAW STORY. "The time is long past when we need to get off the page of torture and on to the page of rights. We cannot do so until and unless we investigate and bring to justice the torturers." More information about the suit is available at CCR's website here.