American-Bred Terrorists Causing Alarm For Law Enforcement

Everyone saw the headline, right?

American-Bred Terrorists Causing Alarm For Law Enforcement

What do they mean, "law enforcement"???? WTF is that???? I thought we were at war!?!??

WAR ON TERROR!!!!

War means the military, not law enforcement; otherwise, why would we have bothered sending hundreds of thousands of troops and spent hundreds of billions of dollars invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq? Think the FBI could do that? The CIA? Give me a break. If this was a matter of concern for law enforcement would we just stand idly by while thousands of American and Allied lives and countless millions of civilians are killed as part of our military exploits and excursions - I mean, protection of our liberties and freedoms!! - if that should have been something for law enforcement??

PLEEEEEEASE.

So when can we expect to see tanks rolling through Fairfax? How else can we "smoke 'em out of their caves, heh, heh?" I mean, seriously, unless I've missed something the last 9 years, WE ARE AT WAR!!! Terrorism isn't a crime, it's an act of war. Call in the friggin' Army, Marines, and Blackwater contractors - the real bad asses.......oops, that's the real rich bad asses!

This is what we've been told since Sept 12, 2001, isn't it? I mean, Duh-bya and Dicky and Rummy and all those good ol' boys wouldn't lie to us, right? We're at war, dammit. And besides, we all know that it's only the sniveling liberal, peace-niks, and spineless Dems who ever lie to us. Not the good patriotic, god-fearing, Ronny-worshipping (notice which gets capitalized - their real god) Ree-pub-lickins.

So, please. Please tell me that this means we'll be invading Virginia next. We needs to "fight over there so's we don't have to fight 'em over here"....in Pennsyltucky, that is!

That's enough.

It's about effing time we started talking about terrorism for what it is - a crime. How come we're not targeting Chesser and his fellow idiot citizens with tanks, drones, and laser-guided missiles like we do in Muslim countries?

How come we send law enforcement to arrest him, but we bomb Iraq back into the stone age?
Fact: seven years after our invasion, and the lights still aren't on and the water still doesn't run like it did before we arrived. (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0621/First-day-of-summer-in-Iraq-signals-hot-violent-months-ahead)

Could it be that it's because we're a bunch of friggin' xenophobic, hypocritical, frightened, punk-ass, racists who have no problem seeing our military flex its muscle when it's against non-Christian, non-whites in another country?

Here's a clue: all the military muscle in the world won't stop terrorists. It breeds them.

And so we get to witness the next stage in the evolution of the military industrial complex Ike warned us about during our life times. We get to watch what once was a dick-measuring contest against another form of government - communism - and a couple of erstwhile opponents, the USSR and China, now evolve (devolve, if you ask me) into a perpetual and exponentially bigger drag on our economy, the federal budget, and worst of all, the moral character of our society in the name of "Homeland Security" as if we can make our homes more secure by destroying someone else's.

Now on the count of 3, everyone take another big, long, chug of the Kool-Aid. 1.................2..................3.

Physicians group accuses CIA of testing torture techniques on detainees - latimes.com

Physicians group accuses CIA of testing torture techniques on detainees - latimes.com

I only wish I could be surprised by this..... There's only one way to determine the truth and that's to pursue these findings for what they are - evidence of the possibility of a crime. Only then will we know if there is, in fact, anything even remotely resembling real courage or justice left in our government, our country, and our society. Only a tyrant tortures, and only an amoral culture condones it no matter the supposed reasons or justification.

Commonwealth Club of California: Torture Touches Everybody#links

Commonwealth Club of California: Torture Touches Everybody#links

This erudite review of the "moral hazards" of the Bush administration, as well as what is now expected from President Obama - and how he's already failing to demonstrate his commitment to the rhetoric that helped to get him elected - was one of the best hours I spent in at least the last week.

Will illegal actions be tolerated at the highest levels of government?

Will this administration turn its head and simply "look forward"?

If waterboarding was considered a crime...
....worth court-marshaling U.S. soldiers who did it to Filipino guerrillas
....the U.S. could sentence a Japanese army officer in 1947 to 15 years of hard labor to for waterboarding a U.S. citizen, and
....the U.S. military could court-marshal 2 soldiers for in 1965 after pictures of them waterboarding Vietcong were published,
then how is that waterboarding can be defended today by Cheney and his supporters?

And why is there hesitation by Obama to call for a vigorous investigation to uncover those guilty of authoring, authorizing, *and* committing such atrocities has not already begun?

What does it mean if the U.S. government has over 2000 - yes, two thousand - photographs that possibly depict torture authorized by the Bush administration?

Will this president bring real change to the way in which our government functions and how the office of the president affects our values and ethics, and will it be enough to make a real difference?

Cheney on Torture

I suggest listening to this news program and the Cheney interview video at:



http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/05/cheney-v-obama




Here's what I did as a result of hearing this. You can decide for yourself what you do.



When I listened to this, I started (and am still) thinking about the implications all of this has on our country.



It raised questions for me like....

....What does this say about a populace who elects - and even more painfully, about those who continue to support - leaders like Cheney?

....What does it say about a political party and, with apologies, about those who support that party if he's considered one of its leaders?

....What does his position on torture say about him and those who agree with him as human beings?

....What does this do to the legitimacy and aspirations of his political party as the self-proclaimed standard bearer of such noble ideals as family values and big tent politics?

....What affects will we see happen to our collective morals and on our laws from even having a debate about the merits of torture?

....What is all of this politicization of torture having on our self-image as a society, as well as the view the rest of the world has about our legitimacy as a global economic, social, moral and political power?


Here's how what I see as Cheney's strategy for now being front-and-center.



He wants to.....

....try to rewrite history in order to protect his own legacy and the legacy of the last 8 years

(I believe it's way too late for that.)


He wants to.....

....try to frame the current discussion in terms of some perverse return on investment for torture

(As if America can do whatever it likes, including torture, if that's what it was and even though it's illegal, because of what we supposedly learned and can learn in the future about threats to America.)



He wants to.....

....do what he can to try and protect himself from prosecution

(I think and hope that his actions now will actually serve just the opposite purpose and help to secure a conviction for a crime which I personally believe he's guilty of committing.)



He wants to.....

....move the Republican party even further to the extreme right by saying things like Rush represents the Republican party more so than Collin Powell

(I think anyone who is a Republican should be very concerned politically about this one. If you're not careful, the party is going to be left with nothing but angry Bible thumpers and fliers of the Stars and Bars being led around by their collective noses by the wealthy oligarchy, present company excluded, of course.)



All of Cheney's words and deeds just reinforce my belief that he's completely out of touch with thoughtful, ordinary citizens. Frankly, I think he's one of the most reprehensible human beings ever to have walked the planet and unquestionably walking the planet today. He is, in my opinion, totally absent of the slightest shred of legitimacy as a leader and is the absolute epitome - along with people like Limbaugh, Rove, and yes, bin Laden - of an ugly political creature intent on self-preservation and power usurpation based solely on the fomentation of hatred and division.



He and his junior running mate, W, tricked this country twice. (Well, "stole" elections by some accounts.) We really shouldn't let him or them trick us again.



I think it's time for us as a democratic citizenry to rise up and to admit that we made a mistake electing him and W to 2 terms (if you can call them elections) and that those elected leaders, intentionally or unintentionally, may have violated laws. (It's ok to admit mistakes were made. I was once totally pro-business and leaned to the right on economic and fiscal policy issues. Life has changed my mind about a great many things, and I regret the mistakes I have made in the past like voting twice for Ross Perot.)



When it comes to the question of the legalities of policy and torture we need to let - hell, demand - that Congress and the courts investigate and decide the matter.



Cheney has publicly admitted to authorizing procedures which, by many definitions, are torture. It's time for a sincere and complete investigation into what he and others in the Bush administration did when it came to policy decisions about interrogation techniques and if any of them can be considered to be torture.



My own personal opinion about the "ROI" arguments Cheney or anyone else thinks can be made are absolutely without merit. They are a dodge; a red herring; an attempt to reframe the discussion in order to obfuscate us about the fact that torture is illegal no matter what the outcome.



Certainly I'm no legal expert, but it seems to me the way our society determines guilt or innocence is to first determine if suspicions and facts warrant investigations. I think they do in this case. If the investigation leads somewhere, courts have to be petitioned to issue subpoenas. People are questioned. Warrants for arrest are issued if it appears someone has committed a crime. We assume innocence first and give the accused their day in court - something we as Americans I think like to call habeas corpus but which the Bush administration denied to citizen and non-citizen alike whenever it suited them. If the prosecution convinces a judge and/or jury of the guilt of the accused - and in this case, regrettably, that is likely to include a re-examination of the definition of torture, but so be it - then those who authorized and committed the crime need to be punished.



So, if Cheney is so convinced that he and the administration are innocent of the crime of torture, then he should embrace - even demand - that an investigation begin to clear him and his compatriots of even the slightest hint of guilt. This notion of releasing memos about the value of torture is just another dodge. He's trying to make the "torture ROI" argument. Go ahead and release them, I say. I expect that rational people will look at them and conclude that we did, indeed, commit torture and that torture can never be justified by a peaceful and civil society regardless of the intelligence that is claimed to have been extracted.



What we as human beings - and especially as Americans - cannot and should not condone or tolerate is whether the "torture ROI" justified any decisions or actions if they are determined to be torture. That's like saying I'm innocent of the crime of bank robbery because I used the money to feed my kids. Bank robbery is still a crime no matter how supposedly noble the intent or desired outcomes.



Now Cheney and his supporters want to have a debate about the MERITS of torture?!?!?


Talk about relativism!!! Watch out you Republicans - it's starting to look like you're losing your moral compass and abandoning the black-and-white-right-and-wrong view of the world! ;-)




-----
"For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic."
John F. Kennedy, Yale Commencement address, 1962 (http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03Yale06111962.htm)

Blog: http://didyoucheckfirst.blogspot.com/

To torture or not to torture....there's no question and only one answer

So a friend asks me the big red herring "what if" question that presumably justifies torture:

"(I am) in charge of interrogation of this suspect named Osamabama Bin Laden. He has been captured and is boasting, backed by other evidence sources, that his group will detonate a nuclear device in a large American city in 24 hours. He absolutely knows the details. If you f*** this up, millions of Americans will die, not 3 thousand."


Here's my response......

First and foremost, I'm not an expert on interrogation tactics. I doubt that anyone reading this is, so none of us are qualified to make decisions about what to do in this situation.



What is absolutely certain is that torture is illegal, immoral, unethical, and according to experts, completely ineffective. I offer the following which do a far better job than I ever could in making the case against torture:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2302-2005Jan11.html

http://terrorism.about.com/od/issuestrends/a/TortureTerror2.htm



Now for my opinions.



Torture is barbaric and something that civilized people do not condone or engage in. As for the scenario you offer, not only is it totally debunked in the above, all I can really say is, "Oh brother." ;-)



You've presented classic fear-mongering and red herring material. I'm not trying to be insulting, but I see this kind of argument as pure drivel. It seems to me to be meant purely to sway the unsophisticated, uninformed, and uneducated. It's served up on daily basis by the likes of el Rushbo, Doyle, Hannity, Coulter, Robertson, and every other right-wing, war-mongering, xenophobic, neo-con, nut-job mouthpiece who either is already working at or auditioning for a spot on Fox, EIB, or CBN.



Ok, I admit that that's pretty harsh, but it sums it up for me.



The basic premise of your scenario is like most everything else that comes from the above sources; ridiculous in the extreme. Let me make sure I have this: So we capture a terrorist and they start playing "nanny-nanny-boo-boo" about a pending nuclear detonation? Come on.



Even if this were remotely plausible, do you really think that someone capable of being involved in such a despicable act is going to all of the sudden tearfully and truthfully confess because we waterboard them, connect a car battery to his scrotum, or whatever it is good Christian soldiers in the U.S. intelligence community were told was ok to do by the Bush administration and their appointed thugs?



Maybe you can answer this question for me. If torture is ok and so damned effective, how come the CIA voluntarily stop doing it in 2005?

(http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/22/timeline-released-senate-shows-condoleezza-rice-okd-waterboarding/)



(Note that this comes from Fox News, so I don't think you can accuse me of offering some biased liberal media source. If you want to accuse me of offering a biased news source, that would be correct, but it's just not a liberal bias in this case!)




The big mistake - the red herring - of your scenario and any other scenario like it that is used to try to justify torture is the belief that:

a) you can predict how people will respond to torture,

b) everyone responds the same and,

c) some degree of normal and rational thinking and behavior can be expected from someone who is clearly neither if they are a terrorist.



You can't expect, for instance, that a terrorist would respond to the possibility or reality of torture the same as, say, you or I would. Let's not forget, you're presumably referring to people famous for wanting to die for their cause so they can get to heaven and the 57 naked virgins or whatever the big reward is they expect to get in some after life. They aren't going to be scared or tortured into telling you anything of value. Hell, I'm betting they're sitting there thinking, "Bring on those jumper cables, you capitalist dogs! I'm going to spend eternity getting laid!"



No matter what you do to them, they aren't going to tell you where the bomb is planted. And please don't try to say that it's at least worth a try.



No matter what - and I mean, no matter what - the minute we stoop to torture we lose every shred of decency, integrity, legitimacy, and whatever moral high ground we think we can stake a claim to as a democracy and a nation of laws. When we torture - and it seems painfully obvious that we have - we have become a terrorist nation.



Let me say that again. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft, Gonzales, and the rest of that administration turned the United States into a terrorist nation. The only way to rectify that is to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute, try, and punish those responsible for the policy, authority, and commission of torture.



And don't give me that, "The security community is in shambles and looking over their shoulder now," bullshit, either. The men and women working in the intelligence community are not without morals, ethics, and decency, too. Yes, there will be some who will burn for this and they should. But I think the message that it sends will be embraced and well-received by the overwhelming majority of the military and intelligence communities as confirmation that we are a nation of principles and of laws. No Nuremberg defense should be allowed. Agents who were involved in "extraordinary interrogations" knew they were doing wrong. A memo from the boss doesn't make it right.



So let me ask....



Do you really think that there's a difference in the ethics, morality and legality of an act based upon who commits it? If it's wrong for our citizens to be tortured then isn't it wrong for us to torture?



Do you really believe in your heart of hearts that we have some sort of ......I hate to use this term, but I know it has meaning for some of you... God-given right to torture someone? Are we somehow above everyone else? Can we claim to hold some special status by which we're exempt from the same standards as everyone else? What would Jesus do? (Had to throw that one in.)



Where does it end? How do we look future generations in the eye and tell them that we were good people while we condoned torture? How does hatred, violence, and war ever have a chance of being swept from our lives if we as citizens of the United States of America condone torture?



Have we not evolved at least culturally to a point yet where such actions are universally condemned? Have we learned nothing from the Spanish Inquisition, Salem witch trials, the Armenian genocide, Nazi concentration camps, the Rwandan genocide, and the genocide that's going on in Sudan?



Doesn't look like it, does it? And our chances don't get any better if we as citizens of the U.S. give our government officials a pass on torture.



If we're going to continue to think and behave like barbarians, then we shouldn't act surprised or be repulsed the next time a hate group kills a gay man for being gay or drags a black man behind their pick up truck in Texas because he's black. Don't forget, the Klan used to hang Catholics, too.



If we don't demand the investigation and prosecution of government officials who approved torture, then we may as well embrace hate groups and bring back public hangings....maybe beheadings could be started, too. Hell, let's start torturing suspected terrorists in the town square - make sure to bring the kiddies and make a day of it!



In a democracy, it's up to us to decide what our society looks like. We elect our leaders. We need to hold them accountable. If we stay silent on this issue of torture, we send the message that we approve and support torture and that tells the nut-job fringe elements everywhere in the world that ours is a society that has truly declined to a state of barbarism.



I know some of you won't accept this perspective, either, but what if the shoe were on the other foot? Let's pretend that you're General Bruce in charge of the North Korean secret service. You've just captured an American intelligence officer. You're convinced he has knowledge of a pending air strike on a nuclear enrichment site. He's not talking and you know that that air strike is coming. Your wife and kids live close enough that they and lots of your family are sure to be killed along with lots (how do you define that?) of your fellow citizens.



Same basic scenario, just different uniforms.



I'm not willing to throw away one of the most basic principles of this nation - that we are a nation of laws that apply equally to everyone.



I'm not willing to surrender so much authority to elected officials and their appointees that they no longer feel accountable to me, my fellow citizens, and the citizens of the world. If laws were broken, then investigations are called for.



Hey, if it was so damned important to Republicans that the world know if Slick Willy lied about his affair with Monica, then I dare say that the question of torture is exponentially more important and worth investigating.



I'm not willing to allow the moral and ethical foundations of this great country, its history, and the heritage we leave to future generations to be weakened by saying, "It's ok to torture if we think it's necessary because, hell, we're Americans and we can do whatever we think is best and the rest of the world can go f*** itself."



So, no, I don't torture even if the guy sitting in the chair is thumbing his nose about a nuclear device. Torturing him won't get the information needed AND IT'S AGAINST THE LAW!!!!!!



Anyone wishing to add their voice to the cause should consider visiting www.IndictBushNow.org