Does anyone really believe that Oswald acted alone?
Regards,
Shodan
There is plenty of physical evidence showing that Oswald indeed acted alone. That’s rather irrelevant to the matter at hand.
The point is that torture is indeed going on. If Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. did not authorize it, then they still bear responsibility for failing to prevent it. Whether they ordered war crimes to occur or are merely incompetent in managing their own military is academic.
I disagree; this strikes me as exactly the sort of plausible deniability folks are expecting. He says that ignoring the “six hours” guideline doesn’t strike him as a big deal, but he’s only ever implying a memorable shrug of approval. Multiply that by a hundred and you get a context. (And anyone who puts him on the spot gets passed over for promotion; that’s implied, too.)
Well, according to this review of Ron Suskind’s new book, Bush seems to have ordered or encouraged torture, specifically of an insane prisoner to get him to “admit” he was a terrorist big cheese. His motivation : to avoid losing face.
As far as what I personally believe, I expect they not only ordered it, but wouldn’t be surprise to learn that they watch videos of the torture to get off on it. I have no problem imagining Bush and Cheney masturbating while watching children being raped and people being torn up by dogs.
Would you define being tied upside down with a cloth over your face and then being partially suffocated to be “basically imprisonment”? How about being asphyxiated while being crushed in a sleeping bag? Or, for that matter, being left outside in 4 degree weather for three days while being occasionally doused with water? (see Apos’s excellent link).
If these aren’t torture methods, what are?
Yes, the vast majority. Does anyone believe that the Bush administration is authorising the torture which America is carrying out on captives in its custody? Yes, the…
Nice attempt at an ad hominem, by the way.
And I find the fact that they haven’t hastened to stop it to be particularly telling.
I do not believe that President Bush told anybody to torture anybody.
However, I believe that people who work for him, who he appointed to their positions and gave general instructions on what he wanted them to accomplish, did tell people to do that.
So, if Bush were to say, “Get me some answers out of those detainees,” somewhere down the line that could easily have turned into “beat people with a rubber hose until they tell us what we want to hear.”
Right. Take another look at Der Trihs’ quote: Bush makes it clear that he doesn’t want to lose face on his claims that the guy will say important things, and then asks whether the harsh methods really work. That’s probably the smokingest gun anyone can find, and it’s the type that doesn’t truly smoke.
Actually, that’s my point: it doesn’t quote Bush as ordering torture. It just quotes him asking if it gets results. And then somebody went and tortured the guy.
Yeah, I’m sure Bush would be shocked, shocked to find that he stated the importance of getting the information by any means necessary, asked whether these torture methods worked, and then, after he was told they did, they went and tortured the guy!
Man, I bet no-one could have predicted this outcome!
“Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
Since the days of Henry II, and even long before, those at the very pinnacle of power have been able, with a wink, a nod and a demand for results while not specifying methods, to let their subordinates know what is expected of them. Hitler didn’t have to sign a single paper explicitly saying “Kill all the Jews in areas under Nazi control.” His subordinates knew what was expected of them, and did their utmost to comply.
Bush is not Hitler; I’m not saying that. But it has become amply clear that, after 9-11, “the gloves came off” and the Bush Administration was and still is willing to do virtually anything (including subjecting those in U.S. custody to treatment that we would be outraged to hear our own captured servicemen and -women subjected to) in order to wage the War on Terror.
Under the Constitution, treaties which the U.S. has signed are the supreme law of the land. The U.S. is party to several treaties which prohibit exactly what we’re doing to our prisoners and detainees (call them what you will). Even with the passage of the McCain Bill, which explicitly prohibited U.S. personnel or those under their direction from engaging in torture or extreme treatment that might be construed as torture, the President was careful to issue a signing statement indicating, in essence, that he would ignore the law as he saw fit.
For shame.
It’s quite telling that when the pictures came out, Rumsfeld was more upset about their release than about what they showed.
The attitude of the Administration that the detainees did not fall into any protected class - either POWs or criminals - let the lower level types feel secure in using torture. Their lack of outrage when it came out, and the continued prosecution of only the little fish, shows their true attitude. So, I don’t think they explicitly authorized it, but they certainly showed that they didn’t mind if it happened.
An analogy - if a military commander’s troops are raping and pillaging, and he only punishes those who get caught, and makes no effort to prevent this, what do you call it? When a dictator orders the police to stand by while a mob riots against foreigners, what do you call it?
Most of what we are talking about here was clear before the 2004 election: the White House redefining “torture”, indefinite imprisonment at Gitmo, blaming Abu Ghraib just on a “few bad apples”. And the people really in charge – the voters – voted in favour of as continuation of the same thing (unless you believe that the election was rigged). So, yes, the people at “the top” – the very top, i.e., the American people – authorised the use of torture against people accused of terrorism or of insurgency in Iraq. George W. Bush is just following orders from his political masters.
Very good analogy, wish I’d thought of that one.
I think it was authorized from the top (president) on down (vice president, secy of defense, attorney general, commanding officers of GITMO and Abu). It couples with the “redefinition” of criminals, POWs and “terrorists”, the Gonzales memo, the choice of offshore locations to hide the activity, the European reports of secret airplane flights to “extreme rendition friendly” countries, etc. It was probably done verbally, and with a hinted “I/we will look the other way”. It happened, it’s still happening. Whether it is in writing or in any official directive is irrelevant. it has been too often and too widespread to be just a few lower enlisted “rotten apples”. There ware also the attempted denials and coverups, and the hissy fit that occurred when McCain put anti-torture verbage into that uhhh bill. If you aren’t torturing, then you wouldn’t care about that anti-torture verbage, would you???
The Gonzales memo called the Geneva Conventions being “quaint” and “obsolete”. This administration does not recognize those treaties as binding on it. But who’s going to enforce them?
One consequence is that our own people no longer can claim entitlement to the Conventions’ protections. He’s put our troops in added danger out os sheer yeehawism.
Damn straight. And Giles is right - Dubya had his “accountability moment”, and passed it. Even if you think he stole the election, the sheer numbers of us who undeniably voted for him anyway do indeed make me ashamed.
The OP question is if torture is “authorized” from the top, not “ordered”, for those of you who think there’s a difference. At the very minimum, certainly knowing about something going on in your chain of command and refusing to stop it constitutes “authorization”. But then the buck doesn’t stop anywhere with these people, does it?
Bullshit. Your citation in no fucking way supports your assertion.
Is this “hyperbole?” I wanna know before I call it just a stupid rant totally disassociated with reality. Either way, though, what legitimate place does an idiotic statement like that have in this thread?
Stop poisoning the well.
OK. We’re only on the first page of what I suspect will be a merry round of acrimonious exchanges. Let’s not get personal so soon.
[ /Moderating ]
Sorry, tom.
I don’t think anyone at the top of the administration explicitly authorized torture. But I firmly believe they encouraged and condoned it.