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THE Torture Thread (merged)

What's on your mind?
General interest discussions, not necessarily related to depletion.

Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby Sixstrings » Thu 14 May 2009, 13:51:01

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'C')IA says Nancy Pelosi is lying when she claims the CIA didn't report to her about their torturing people

CIA says Pelosi is lying about her knowledge of torture

Sheesh! What a mess. I'm sure Obama never imagined that his release of four cherry-picked memos on torture would entangle Pelosi in the torture fiasco. :roll:


Oh isn't that cute, how the Republicans are *attempting* to drag Congress down with them.

The fact is, the only real check Congress has over the Executive branch in matters of national security is the ultimate authority of impeachment. And that's a very high bar to meet, and it's no quick process. There's not a darn thing Congress could have done to stop the Executive from acting as commander in chief.

The President is given great leeway in his role as Command in Chief, precisely because you cannot defend a nation by committee. When the dust has settled though, and the threat has abated, it's perfectly fair that the executive branch be held to account as to whether they acted within the law.
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby dinopello » Thu 14 May 2009, 14:00:25

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'C')IA says Nancy Pelosi is lying when she claims the CIA didn't report to her about their torturing people

CIA says Pelosi is lying about her knowledge of torture

Sheesh! What a mess.:


Not a mess, a good thing. Once Pelosi is taken care of there will be less impediment to getting to the bottom of things. Likely is, though she didn't break laws (lying is not a crime). But hopefully, if she did know, her consituents will throw her out on her fanny.
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby Jotapay » Thu 14 May 2009, 14:07:16

Just to throw more fuel on the fire, I had been hearing about children being sodomized in Abu Ghraib in front of their mothers and of systemic raping of boys. I couldn't believe it, but after some searching for a few days, I finally found the article. It's a little old, but here it is. Just sick. What have we become?

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/ ... /15/hersh/

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Hersh: Children sodomized at Abu Ghraib, on tape

After Donald Rumsfeld testified on the Hill about Abu Ghraib in May, there was talk of more photos and video in the Pentagon's custody more horrific than anything made public so far. "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse," Rumsfeld said. Since then, the Washington Post has disclosed some new details and images of abuse at the prison. But if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse.

Hersh gave a speech last week to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it. The speech was first reported in a New York Sun story last week, which was in turn posted on Jim Romenesko's media blog, and now EdCone.com and other blogs are linking to the video. We transcribed the critical section here (it starts at about 1:31:00 into the ACLU video.) At the start of the transcript here, you can see how Hersh was struggling over what he should say:

"Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

Notes from a similar speech Hersh gave in Chicago in June were posted on Brad DeLong's blog. Rick Pearlstein, who watched the speech, wrote: "[Hersh] said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, 'You haven't begun to see evil...' then trailed off. He said, 'horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.' He looked frightened."
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby rangerone314 » Thu 14 May 2009, 14:30:36

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jotapay', 'J')ust to throw more fuel on the fire, I had been hearing about children being sodomized in Abu Ghraib in front of their mothers and of systemic raping of boys. I couldn't believe it, but after some searching for a few days, I finally found the article. It's a little old, but here it is. Just sick. What have we become?

About as bad as they are, I would guess. Didn't pederasty used to be fairly common in the Middle East, at least among the upper classes?
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby jasonraymondson » Thu 14 May 2009, 14:43:02

I find it hard to believe that soldiers would stand around while other soldiers sodomized children. This shit is most likely made of bullshit. I am not saying their aren't some sick fucks in the military, but the non sick fucks never would have allowed this shit to fly.

Anyone caught molesting or hurting a child in my company would have been raped by a 40mm incendiary round.
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby dinopello » Thu 14 May 2009, 15:01:17

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jasonraymondson', 'I') find it hard to believe that soldiers would stand around while other soldiers sodomized children. This shit is most likely made of bullshit. I am not saying their aren't some sick fucks in the military, but the non sick fucks never would have allowed this shit to fly.

Anyone caught molesting or hurting a child in my company would have been raped by a 40mm incendiary round.


If it happened, and that's a big IF, I would not believe it would be soldiers or agents of the gov't. It would be private 'contractors' (can you imagine the RFP?) or even foreign contractors. The things that make it believable is that it would likely be effective, particularly with people who might not be fully part of al queda or insurgency, but people with "information" (as Plantagenet says). Also, the bizarre antics of the soldiers that have been released (naked stacking, etc) makes it seem as though that there may have been some "hardcore" going on and what leaked out was the "softcore" spillover.
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Re: US warns Britain not to reveal torture evidence

Unread postby Voice_du_More » Thu 14 May 2009, 15:03:23

I intend to become alot more vocal on this issue. I was talking to my wife about it and at first it was so hard for her to admit that she flatly denied that it mattered. Later it became clear that for her to admit that we might be taking innocent fathers away from their families and murdering them after weeks or months of severe torture was just too hard to reconcile with a day at the mall and a new haircut. She was going to have to feel bad about simply being an American because she knew that our lifestyle is at least partly to blame for the license these criminals take with our tax dollars and our trust. She is always that way about hard issues at first. But talking to her I realized that just like the German's during WWII simply would not or could not admit that they were a party to what was going on with the Jews, Americans are similarly choosing denial and ignorance.

It would only take one more significant terrorist attack in the US, a mall bombing, anything really, and dissent would begin to be met with extreme threats and force. The level of psychological pressure in the country is building with every new tragedy and diving deeper into denial will not forever keep the cost of it all at arms length. As the pressure builds America will most likely become a consumer fascist state with all that that entails. I think we are fairly close right now and the plutocracy does not help because the average person feels like the only thing they can do to help is work and spend. I consider the United States in the next two decades to be potentially the most dangerous nation on the face of the earth. We have more power than any nation in history and we have an addiction to the luxury cheap oil provides that we simply will not reconsider. Those two factors are an easy mix leading to abuses of all kinds.

My sense of it is that the nation is almost at a breaking point right now. It won't take too much more bad news or too many more sudden shocks for the stitches to pull loose and the bllod to start flowing. We are now moving into a realm where the media is starting to rebel against their handlers in little ways here and there, once the Fourth Estate finds it's freedom again things will quickly evolve into a 60's style revival of civil disobedience only this time it will be out of work autoworkers hurling stones at police and sabotaging public infrastructure instead of hippies having sex on the lawn.

I pray for my country, but I do not have much hope for it since our moral center is completely eroded, the values that once pulled us back from the brink are less and less common even among those who would consider themselves good Americans.

The Germans by BTW to this day many cannot face the Holocaust. The Hitler Youth Corp of the 30's became the Blitzkrieg of the 40's, we ought to consider that before we train to many more Boy Scouts in paramilitary tactics, but I doubt we will.
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby Jotapay » Thu 14 May 2009, 15:10:12

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jasonraymondson', 'I') find it hard to believe that soldiers would stand around while other soldiers sodomized children. This shit is most likely made of bullshit. I am not saying their aren't some sick fucks in the military, but the non sick fucks never would have allowed this shit to fly.


Rumsfeld admitted the pics existed several years ago. He said it would be very unsettling to the public if they were released. He didn't say what was in them, however.
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby Plantagenet » Thu 14 May 2009, 15:32:29

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dinopello', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'C')IA says Nancy Pelosi is lying when she claims the CIA didn't report to her about their torturing people

CIA says Pelosi is lying about her knowledge of torture

Sheesh! What a mess.:


Not a mess, a good thing. Once Pelosi is taken care of there will be less impediment to getting to the bottom of things. Likely is, though she didn't break laws (lying is not a crime). But hopefully, if she did know, her consituents will throw her out on her fanny.


Not very likely in a one-party town like SF. Pelosi lied about cutting off funding to end the Iraq war if the dems got the majority in 2006, and her constituents didn't throw her out.

Nope...the gerrymandering prevalent now pretty much guarantees people like Pelosi their Congressional seats for life, no matter how much they lie or what crazy things they say or how much money they scam. Look at Rep. Jefferson literally caught with payoff money in his freezer, or John Murtha with his airport to nowhere...both still safe in Congress.
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby Sixstrings » Thu 14 May 2009, 16:47:06

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dinopello', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jasonraymondson', 'I') find it hard to believe that soldiers would stand around while other soldiers sodomized children. This shit is most likely made of bullshit. I am not saying their aren't some sick fucks in the military, but the non sick fucks never would have allowed this shit to fly.

Anyone caught molesting or hurting a child in my company would have been raped by a 40mm incendiary round.


If it happened, and that's a big IF, I would not believe it would be soldiers or agents of the gov't. It would be private 'contractors' (can you imagine the RFP?) or even foreign contractors. The things that make it believable is that it would likely be effective, particularly with people who might not be fully part of al queda or insurgency, but people with "information" (as Plantagenet says). Also, the bizarre antics of the soldiers that have been released (naked stacking, etc) makes it seem as though that there may have been some "hardcore" going on and what leaked out was the "softcore" spillover.


This is my guess too.. I can't believe US soldiers would do this, it would have to be our hired goons.

And this is PRECISELY why this information needs to be made public. The American people need to know what horrors our paid mercenaries are committing.
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby Jotapay » Thu 14 May 2009, 17:25:14

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'T')his is my guess too.. I can't believe US soldiers would do this, it would have to be our hired goons.

And this is PRECISELY why this information needs to be made public. The American people need to know what horrors our paid mercenaries are committing.


The few soldiers who were convicted for the Abu Ghraib photos said at trial the CIA was running the prison and telling everyone what to do.
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby rangerone314 » Thu 14 May 2009, 19:42:48

War brings out the ugly side of people and having domination over imprisoned people brings out even more ugly.

People would LIKE to think the Germans in WWII were vastly different from us but they were not. It is not a cultural problem; it is a species problem. Any group of people is capable of great evil, professional soldiers or not.

Japanese soldiers in WWII ATE natives, Russians and to lesser extent Americans went on a raping spree against German women.

And what about Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia? How many examples of human evil are needed?
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Re: US warns Britain not to reveal torture evidence

Unread postby Sixstrings » Thu 14 May 2009, 19:46:00

The truth is starting to leak out. It appears the torture going on in Gitmo is more horrific than we'd thought..

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Gitmo Detainee’s ‘Genitals Were Sliced With A Scalpel,’ Waterboarding ‘Far Down The List Of Things They Did’

Last week, two British High Court judges ruled against releasing documents describing the treatment of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who is currently being held at Guantanamo Bay. The judges said the Bush administration “had threatened to withhold intelligence cooperation with Britain if the information were made public.”

But The Daily Telegraph reported over the weekend that the documents actually “contained details of how British intelligence officers supplied information to [Mohamed's] captors and contributed questions while he was brutally tortured.” In fact, it was British officials, not the Americans, who pressured Foreign Secretary David Miliband “to do nothing that would leave serving MI6 officers open to prosecution.” According to the Telegraph’s sources, the documents describe particularly gruesome interrogation tactics:

The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, “is very far down the list of things they did,” the official said.

Another source familiar with the case said: “British intelligence officers knew about the torture and didn’t do anything about it.”

“It is very clear who stands to be embarrassed by this and who is being protected by this secrecy. It is not the Americans, it is Labour ministers,” former shadow home secretary David Davis said. But one unnamed U.S. House Judiciary Committee member told the Telegraph that if President Obama “doesn’t act we could hold a hearing or write to subpoena the documents. We need to know what’s in those documents.”

http://digg.com/d1r8J5
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Re: US warns Britain not to reveal torture evidence

Unread postby rangerone314 » Thu 14 May 2009, 19:58:26

More people die from the actions of corporations in the US than die from terrorists. (i.e. 195,000 die each year in US from hospital mistakes, about what died in atomic bombing of Hiroshima) So unless AQ is able to buy several lbs of plutonium at the local Walmart, I have a hard time envisioning something that will kill more than 195,000 Americans.

People like Cheney would own stock in terrorist groups if al-qaida sold stock on the NYSE if he thought he could make a buck - people like him don't give a c**p about human life, American or otherwise.

I bet that bald b@$t@rd was probably licking his chops at the swine flu in Mexico, assuming he still owns a good portion of the tamiflu makers.
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby ForlornHope » Fri 15 May 2009, 13:48:02

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rangerone314', 'W')ar brings out the ugly side of people and having domination over imprisoned people brings out even more ugly.

People would LIKE to think the Germans in WWII were vastly different from us but they were not. It is not a cultural problem; it is a species problem. Any group of people is capable of great evil, professional soldiers or not.

Japanese soldiers in WWII ATE natives, Russians and to lesser extent Americans went on a raping spree against German women.

And what about Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia? How many examples of human evil are needed?

rangerone314, well put! This I think has more to do with human ethics and morals as a species than It does with being perpetrated by Americans/Nazis/fill in the blank. One cannot reason with evil.
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby Plantagenet » Fri 15 May 2009, 15:28:29

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ForlornHope', '
')
People would LIKE to think the Germans in WWII were vastly different from us but they were not. It is not a cultural problem; it is a species problem. Any group of people is capable of great evil, professional soldiers or not.


It was the policy of the national socialist government in Germany to commit genocide against millions of Jews and Gypsys and enslave the slavic peoples of eastern Europe.

I agree in the abstract that other groups of people are capable of similar crimes, but in the real world the vast majority of state sponsored murder is done by totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Communist China, Communist Cambodia (Khmer Rouge), etc.
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby Caffeine » Fri 15 May 2009, 15:33:40

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'I') agree in the abstract that other groups of people are capable of similar crimes, but in the real world the vast majority of state sponsored murder is done by totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Communist China, Communist Cambodia (Khmer Rouge), etc.


Armenian genocide, early 20th century.
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby Jotapay » Thu 28 May 2009, 10:44:12

Here is the Telegraph confirming unreleased photos show men, women and children were raped by servicemembers and translators in Abu Ghraib.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -rape.html

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')t least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby Plantagenet » Thu 28 May 2009, 14:21:04

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jotapay', 'H')ere is the Telegraph confirming unreleased photos show men, women and children were raped by servicemembers and translators in Abu Ghraib.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -rape.html

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')t least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.


Rape is a crime and the people who commit such crimes should be tried and punished. If these photos exist, then the photos should be made public as part of the evidence at the trials of the people shown in the photos.

Instead, it appears that Obama is hiding evidence of rape, covering up the crime, and protecting the rapists from prosecution.
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Re: US interrogators may have killed dozens, tortured to death

Unread postby Jotapay » Thu 28 May 2009, 14:42:32

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'R')ape is a crime and the people who commit such crimes should be tried and punished. If these photos exist, then the photos should be made public as part of the evidence at the trials of the people shown in the photos.

Instead, it appears that Obama is hiding evidence of rape, covering up the crime, and protecting the rapists from prosecution.


I agree. To be fair, Bush covered it up too. Rumsfeld is on tape talking about these unreleased photos, saying they would cause a strong public reaction.

By the way, this news brought to your attention by Alex Jones (I learned of it on Infowars.com).
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