Sat Mar 23, 2024 11:33 pm by globalturboA shame that will not be cleansed until the war criminals are arrested Posted By: Revel [Send E-Mail] Date: Wednesday, 11-Apr-2012 22:10:14 Poor Founding Fathers. They had such high hopes for America. Though personally flawed, as students of the Liberal Age of Enlightenment, they at least grasped for better angles and hoped future Americans would do the same. They entrusted to us a nation of laws carefully crafted to help us live up to their example. The American experiment sparked waves of democratic revolutions around the world. Over her first 230 plus years, the U.S. became the beacon other nations looked to for guidance and example… a reputation that only took 30 years of Republican governance to destroy by engaging in wars of aggression and torture. As Spencer Ackerman explains in Wired: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/04/secret-torture-memo/ ----- “A top adviser to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned the Bush administration that its use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading” interrogation techniques like waterboarding were ‘a felony war crime.’ What’s more, newly obtained documents reveal that State Department counselor Philip Zelikow told the Bush team in 2006 that using the controversial interrogation techniques were ‘prohibited’ under U.S. law — ‘even if there is a compelling state interest asserted to justify them.’ Zelikow argued that the Geneva conventions applied to al-Qaida — a position neither the Justice Department nor the White House shared at the time. That made waterboarding and the like a violation of the War Crimes statute and a ‘felony,’ Zelikow tells Danger Room. Asked explicitly if he believed the use of those interrogation techniques were a war crime, Zelikow replied, “Yes.” Zelikow first revealed the existence of his secret memo, dated Feb. 15, 2006, in an April 2009 blog post, shortly after the Obama administration disclosed many of its predecessor’s legal opinions blessing torture. He briefly described it http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2009_hr/051309zelikow.pdf (.pdf) in a contentious Senate hearing shortly thereafter, revealing then that ‘I later heard the memo was not considered appropriate for further discussion and that copies of my memo should be collected and destroyed.’ At least one copy survived in the files of the department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The State Department has now disclosed it to Danger Room, mostly without redactions — three years after this reporter filed an official request for it.” ----- So, though no elected “leader” is supposed to be above the law, rather than arresting the Bush Crime Family for unabashed war crimes, we allow them to appear on television and travel the nation on book tours. Despite his lies claiming he believed waterboarding was legal and even morally defensible, we now know from the memos they tried desperately to destroy, the Bush Crime Family were clearly briefed that America did not engage in torture – but they did it anyway. Hey? What’s more lies when there’s profit to be made… and nations to plunder? After all… since Ford pardoned Nixon for his crimes, no President has been held accountable for abuses of power - a trend that needs to stop if America is to ever claim once again the mantle of being “a nation of laws.” As in his revisionist history autobiography, “Decision Points,” the War Criminal in Chief, George W. Bush, likes to say that “history”will be his judge. As evidence mounts, (including the fact that the Bush Crime Family eagerly hung the justification of the invasion of Iraq – an invasion they began to concoct long before the September 11th terrorist attacks – on the lies of an informant known as “Curveball,”) it is getting clearer that history will indict him for his crimes – even if our current leadership chooses to “look forward, not behind.” Brutality is Weakness / Mercy is Strength
OUT OF MIND
