These soldiers are acting in good faith, O.K.?
Friends, Obama the Charmer has decided that CIA interrogators can’t be charged for torturing prisoners because they were ‘acting in good faith’! The reason?
They had legal guidance issued in memos by the Bush Administration to the effect that what they did to prisoners in order to extract confessions or information was not torture. Several memos suggested that approved interrogation techniques including placing an insect (a spider perhaps) into a suspect’s “confinement box,” slapping, sleep deprivation, water-boarding, and shoving a suspect into a wall.
Additionally, I seem to remember pictures from Abu Graib that showed piles of humiliated naked men and the use of dogs. I seem to remember also that rendition was used so that even harsher treatment was able to be applied to people of interest in shadowy foreign countries.
According to Reuters, Obama said that: “The men and women of our intelligence community serve courageously on the front lines of a dangerous world. … We must protect their identities as vigilantly as they protect our security, and we must provide them with the confidence that they can do their jobs.” God bless him! No World Court for him!
So there you have it, folks. If you have a memo, you are safe. You can carry out acts of unbelievable cruelty with a clear conscience.
I suppose those who were involved in the Holocaust probably had memos too! And those who dropped napalm on Vietnam! And those who carried out Shock and Awe on Bagdad! And those who attacked Gaza recently with phosphorous munitions!
It seems the world is full of legally-based memos which justify man’s continuing inhumanity to man and protect the torturers and killers from judicial trial and punishment. Even Obama, who is a lawyer, plays this despicable game.
The law is an ass! Most humans are crass!
Geez, Obama can say no wrong. Is it me or is his rhetoric condescending to the very people he is claiming to protect? In this case the CIA. What about the unheard of outing – by the Bush Whithouse – of Valerie Plame. Talk about endangering people on the front lines of danger! Oh but of course it was Plame’s husband that knew there was no Iraqi danger! The very Nigerian yellowcake, “mushroom cloud,” that led us to kill over one million Iraqis.
There is no good faith going on in the picture above. Unless the employee following orders is a sadist by nature – Sadists do unfortunately exist and they need jobs too.
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David G Reply:
April 17th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Grace,psychological experiments have shown that most humans are capable of engaging in torture if they feel they are following orders. Many will do it even if the authority is absent!
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GWB believed he got his orders from god. Ph@#k you Father! This authority is more than absent. It doesn’t exist. I’m still here! Bad things happen to good people because far too many good people are bad. I had to figure that one out for myself. Go figure!
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He’s gotta plan for me, I beg to disagree. He’s gotta plan for me, I beg to disagree. He’s gotta plan for me, I beg to disagree. I’ve gotta plan, I’ve gotta plan, I’ve gotta plan. Sorry y’all. I felt like singing. Love, Chucky Moreland.
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David G Reply:
April 17th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Whatever you’re having, Chucky, I’ll have the same!
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Never understood what they were supposed to confess.
Some punks settled in an abandoned factory (Germany), one incidentally, which had made ovens for the WWII exterminations.
The “police” (massive helmets, full uniform) removed them. Scary, folks.
German source (Das Bild) pictures (#4, ugh!) (Das Bild is MSM, sides with the police.)
http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/200…-osten- auf.html
The world that Obama is promoting.
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Link don’t work.
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and now spain have rejected the proposal to investigate the other lot (the six senior bush officials) on their crimes against humanity…………
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Obama said he would not prosecute because they where “just following orders”, but that is what the Nazis used as their excuse for horrible crimes. It did not work for them so why should it work for us. Plus we should have some degree of wisdom about such behavior after what happened in WWII.
Worse yet Obama will not go after the leaders who wrote the torture memos, the men who order the torture in the first place, surely they where not following orders.
Unless Bush was hearing voices such as god told him to do it which would make him insane and they would have been following a madman.
Or is Obama setting things up so he can do the same?
This is scary stuff!
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Grace Reply:
April 19th, 2009 at 3:26 am
“Or is Obama setting things up so he can do the same?”
This is the most disturbing thought of all and I have shared this same thought.
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Jeannie, Coco and Ken, what Obama is doing is following his script and protecting his own backside!
America seems incapable of changing its spots and I feel that we who live elsewhere in the world are going to get more of the same in the coming years. Scary thought!
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I have debated this issue with countless people, they always got me with ‘what if torture would save your children, would you still be against it?’
I honestly can’t say in that situation but that circumstance would be about as remote as me vactioning on Venus.
I want to declare I’m against torture 100% and under any conditions. My real reason isn’t so much altruistic but selfish, there is a greater chance of me & mine being tortured if torture is ok.
I completely blame Israel for legalising torture, it certainly seems like the USA is in a monkey see, monkey do competition in/re Israel. Just look at the crimes committed in Iraq, in fact the whole preemptive argument is one that Israel is fond of using.
So no torture for anyone, not even George Bush, but definately incarcerate him & the other war profiteers, for life.
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David G Reply:
April 18th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Kate, torture gives us yet another window into the depths that the human soul can reach. There are not many windows that reveal the heights!
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‘There are not many windows that reveal the heights!” That is becasue the windows and doors to our very souls are contained within each one of us. However, we are not allowed much access to our dreams and meditation because the paradigm we exist in keeps us stressed, overworked , strained and burnt out and any free time occupied by t.v. This is the crime against our very humanity.
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David G Reply:
April 19th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Grace, your observations concerning the current human condition is very perceptive. Whatever potential we have as humans has been cut off at the pass by our many exploiters!
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