Those who committed torture brought ill repute upon us with their torture of both innocent and guilty people during the Bush II years, because it does not matter whether an innocent or a guilty person is tortured in the sense that torture is illegal either before or after guilt is established (The Penalty For Torture Can Be Death, President Reagan Puts Cheney In Jail).
Well, as you know there was no justice brought to those who tortured.
Until now, albeit from afar, and it was only justice against those states in Europe that collaborated with the CIA.
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that torture at secret U.S.eh? torture sites violated human rights:
The applicant complained that Poland, by enabling the CIA to transfer him from its territory, had exposed to him to a real and serious risk of being transferred to a jurisdiction where he would be subjected to a flagrantly unfair(ECHR, Al Nashiri v Poland). The decision is a couple of hundred pages, so you might want to read the synopsis in a news report instead (Raw Story).
trial, in breach of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention.
...
At the material time it had been known that the military commissions had allowed for indefinite detention without trial since there had been no time-limits on bringing the accused to trial. There had been no bar on admission of evidence obtained by torture ...
If one considers the U.S.E. (The United States of Europe, 2, 3, 4) along with this ECHR ruling, the U.S.A. is looking more like an old European authoritarian state, while the new Europe is looking more like the old United States of America when there was a real constitutional democracy.
The bottom line is that the U.S. is losing its good reputation in the world, and is even seen as the number one threat to peace in the world (Poll: United States Seen As Greatest Threat To World Peace In 2013) contrary to the wishes of the people (The Wars Are un-American Says Public - 2).
The previous post in this series is here.
My middle son and I were griping yesterday about how the gummint is so quick to steal our money in the form of taxes that go to pay to kill people we have no beef with and don't even know. There's no place on any tax form that one can check for his/her money to go to schools, the poor, infrastructure, and NOT bombs, expensive planes (that don't work), guns and ammunition. Great post - timely!
ReplyDeleteTom
"In the first trial of its kind ever, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, William Haynes, Jay Bybee, and John Yoo were convicted in Malaysia, for torture and inhumane degrading treatment of people." http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/2013/07/bush-administration-officially-found-guilty-of-war-crimes-lawyer-says-we-will-get-bush.html
ReplyDeleteThe story above is a couple years old but still a step in the right direction. More recently, Richard Clarke said he thought the ICC in The Hague would be a fitting place to start a war crimes trial since he felt some of the Bush administration's actions constituted torture.
"Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall." anon.
Paulette