Hey, I really hate to spoil your day
The sky here is blue. It's mildly warm. The birds are chirping. The cat's asleep on her sunny perch. And we need to talk about torture.
Since this is the weekend after five years of being held hostage Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was released by the Taliban in exchange for five Taliban terrorists held at Guantanamo it may seem that keeping prisoners in indefinite detention may not have been such a bad idea after all. Despite the advantages of such amoral realpolitick for prisoner swaps, this particular swap might easily have been effected totally apart from the background of torture which is the question here.
Short of some graphic violence on 24 (which I have never seen) I question whether Americans have any real knowledge of US torture methods or history. Of course a person with internet could just Google "torture" as I did for the images I used here. But gagging (or fainting) over the variety presented--from medieval to modern--doesn't do justice to what we actually do.
Since we never were asked politically and foolishly trusted government officials to follow existing law, it may be long overdue to find out what Cheney meant by "the dark side." I list below two articles that show: 1. We're still doing it, and 2. Yep, it's torture.
All I'm asking is for you to become an informed citizen so you can develop a proper opinion, since except for certain especially clever folks you can't have an opinion "without you got no facs."
So I invite you, Dear Reader, to read (and hang onto your lunch, please):
1. Link was ineffective for an article in The Atlantic website, March 13, 2014, "A Technicality Won't Excuse the Obama Administration for Torture," author Conor Friedersdorf
Need An Example? Force Feeding
"In his May 23, 2013 speech to the National Defense University, President Obama addressed the then ongoing practice of force-feeding. Here is what he said:
'Is this who we are? Is that something our Founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave our children? Our sense of justice is stronger than that.'
One year later, the force-feeding continues and Mr. Obama is silent."
from Guantanamo Force- Feeding--The Resanctioning of Torture, L. Michael Hager, Truthout
from Guantanamo Force- Feeding--The Resanctioning of Torture, L. Michael Hager, Truthout
No comments:
Post a Comment