In looking at the wiki of the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse convictions it doesn’t appear that they really reached very high up. Was justice fully served in those convictions, or did some higher ups escape justice that should have been held responsible?
No, justice was not served.
Yes, many escaped justice; including, at least, the vice-president.
Will justice ever be served? I doubt it.
If you get a chance check out the documentary “Standard Operating Procedure”
These pictures of a pyramid of naked men, exposing their rear ends (hence the photographers even respecting their anonymity!), were published half a dozen times (with increasing intervals, according to an algorithm used in mnemotechnics) over a period of several weeks in the daily press.
In order to make believe that this was torture, heavy prison sentences were dealt to England and Garner.
The scandal is that the press contributed to spread this inflationary definition of the notion of torture, and that public opinion swallowed the whole in a sort of hysterically silent consensus…
Do you believe that England and Garner are still in jail, or even ever got jailed?
And yet if this were the case, it could only stand for covered-up charges of real torture.
When those who authorized or ordered it, are brought to trial, the answer can become Yes.
People that have done the documentary linked to and quoted from above have done quite a bit of investigation on this and have come to the conclusion that what you saw was just the tip of the iceberg.
What are you basing your statements on? Do you have some facts, investigative reports that you would like to share? My request is not restricted to the web.
Perhaps I misread, EasyPhil, but it read to me that the implication that that was torture was just the tip of the iceburg. You bolded that particular sentence, but not the last one.
At the very least, Maj Gen Geoffrey D. Millershould have been tried, but since that would probably bring us way too close to Rumsfeld and Cheney, it never happened.
I seem to remember that there was some extra evidence in form of photos and maybe videos that wasn’t released to the media. These photos were said to be even worse than those showed by media. What happened to all these? Did they ever come out?
It’s not EasyPhil who bolded the sentence, it is bolded in my original text – and I should indeed have bolded the last sentence too, besides correcting it and making it more explicit, i.e.:
**And yet if England and Garner got jailed and still were in jail, the sentences could only stand for covered-up charges of real torture.
**
This should answer EasyPhil’s questions, yet he might not even have asked them if I had done my last sentence right on first hit.
As to the evidence he claims from me, this claim becomes void too as it misses the point.
I saw online the other week an engraving of a man hung by his wrists behind his back. It dated to something like the middle ages. It disturbed me pretty bad, and now I learn that this is being done by Americans now…
I do hate it how in the news everyone runs around screaming “torture” “torture” and then references things like pretend drowning and loud music. It makes a lot of people go “wtf, those liberals must be some pussies.” But in fact real torture went on. In guantanamo and abu ghraib, but especially at secret cia prisons. The news doesn’t talk about it, because there isn’t so much “objective” evidence for it. But it keeps talking about the well-documented torture-lite as a placeholder. And I can’t figure out if it’s better than not putting emphasis on torture at all, or if it’s hurting things that they keep claiming that torture-lite is abhorrant, or if the should fucking grow some balls and talk about the real things that went on.
Taxi to the Dark Side is much, much better: more comprehensive and deeper dug.
That’s the kind of “torture-lite” that was used by the pussies of (respectively) the Gestapo and the KGB.
Well of course by the law of the bell curve they used torture-lite more than real torture. You know, the most frequent thing that the Gestapo and KGB did to the detained is yell really loud. So mall cops are like the Gestapo.
Huh. I had no idea that the entire civilized world prior to the Bush administration, the majority of Republican 2008 presidential candidates, and pretty much everyone who’s actually experienced waterboarding were liberals. I guess life is a learning experience.
Obama’s been appointing quite a few vocal anti-Bush-torture folks, so I’m hopeful that something will come of it all - but I doubt that Obama would be remotely interested in prosecuting the major players, which is both a shame and a bow to political reality.
Look, I know waterboarding is bad, but you can’t go around losing perspective. How about I give you the choice of waterboarding and pulling out your fingernail?
Don’t get me wrong, I am NOT a Bush apologist. As a matter of principel, I get pissed when people go around calling everything “rape” or “assault” or etc. When people lose persepctive, when they distort the language to enforce their point, it distorts their argument. Equating waterboarding with other forms of torture gets some of your audience to question what you are saying. (As much as bringing up enthusiasm in the rest.) This has happened. A good chunk of the nation is fed up with all arguments regarding “torture” for this very reason, and now is disinclined to listen to allegations of the real thing.
Waterboarding became a big deal because it was something the Bush administration owned. They were putting out contortionate legal opinions and extolling its effectiveness, and Bush and Cheney promoted it in the media. They haven’t done that with anything more severe (in public); like you said, the evidence for worse offenses is lacking.
Obviously there’re worse forms of torture than waterboarding, but it’s still bad enough that it used to be invariably roundly condemned and severely punished, with only the worst of regimes engaging in its practice. The almost universal judgment of non-administration lawyers is that it is illegal by American law, it certainly was prosecuted as such before Bush, and it definitely violates international law to which we are signatories. Doesn’t that suffice?
The fact is that there was no language distortion on this topic until Bush supporters initiated it.
Re waterboarding being “torture” or not this thread linked below has an interesting perspective and very detailed description of the process and physical reactions to it. FWIW almost every person (journalists etc) who has been curious enough to undergo this has agreed it’s 110% torture, no ifs ands, or buts.