You are hereBlogs / dlindorff's blog / The US Must Prosecute Torturers and their Enablers, or Forever Be a Labeled a Rogue Nation

The US Must Prosecute Torturers and their Enablers, or Forever Be a Labeled a Rogue Nation


By dlindorff - Posted on 11 December 2014

By Dave Lindorff

            In all the media debate about the Senate Intelligence Committee’s release, finally, of a heavily redacted report on officially sanctioned torture by the CIA and the US military during the Bush/Cheney administration and the so-called War on Terror, there has been little said about the reality that torture, as clearly defined in the Geneva Convention against Torture which went into effect in 1987, is flat-out illegal in the US as a signatory of that Convention.

 

            During the Bush/Cheney years, administration lawyers like the reprehensible John Yoo (now a law professor at UC Berkeley), tried through shameless legal acrobatics, to provide legal cover for, and to legally authorize “enhanced interrogation” techniques. But the Geneva Convention is clear on this point: Torture means:

 

 

...”any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”

 

      All of the tortures cited in the Senate report, from rectal “rehydrating” to telling a captive he would later be killed if he didn’t talk, are unarguably torture under this broad definition, and call for severe punishment, not only of the perpetrators, but also of those who authorized their actions, or those who covered them up or failed to bring them to justice.

 

            True, in approving the Geneva Convention, the US added a caveat, defining torture as being what meets the standard of  “cruel and unusual punishment” as prohibited in the US Constitution. But again, the actions that have been exposed as having been employed against captives by the CIA and the US military in that Senate report also clearly are “cruel and unusual” punishments by any definition.

 

            And what about Vice President Dick Cheney? The perpetually scowling man who famously said that the US needed to turn to the “dark side” to combat terror after 9-11, is even now, in the face of the outrages cited in the just-released Senate report, claiming that the years of kidnapping, renditioning and torture he and President Bush oversaw during their eight years of power in Washington were justified because of the terrorist threat facing the US...

 

For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, uncompromised, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/2586

 

 

 

Speaking Events

2017

 

August 2-6: Peace and Democracy Conference at Democracy Convention in Minneapolis, Minn.

 

September 22-24: No War 2017 at American University in Washington, D.C.

 

October 28: Peace and Justice Studies Association Conference



Find more events here.

CHOOSE LANGUAGE

Support This Site

Donate.

Get free books and gear when you become a supporter.

 

Sponsors:

Speaking Truth to Empire

***

Families United

***

Ray McGovern

***

Julie Varughese

***

Financial supporters of this site can choose to be listed here.

 

Ads:

Ca-Dress Long Prom Dresses Canada
Ca Dress Long Prom Dresses on Ca-Dress.com

Buy Books

Get Gear

The log-in box below is only for bloggers. Nobody else will be able to log in because we have not figured out how to stop voluminous spam ruining the site. If you would like us to have the resources to figure that out please donate. If you would like to receive occasional emails please sign up. If you would like to be a blogger here please send your resume.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.