With all the wrong that appears from the surface of the American criminal justice system, the stuff that can be seen, occasionally appears on videotape so that the deniers can’t deny, none of it compares to the allegations of Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK’s ambassador to Uzbekistan:
…the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.
“I’m talking of people being raped with broken bottles,” he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. “I’m talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I’m talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on.”
That this happens at all, anywhere, is beyond comprehension. That our government knows it, contributes to it, participates in it and seeks to benefit from it, undermines any moral value in our existence. This abhorrent conduct reflects an intersection between law and reality, where it’s “legal” to facilitate torture provided it doesn’t happen on our shores. That way, the CIA can enjoy the benefits of torture without having to go through all those nasty hearings or ask John Yoo for permission. Let the Uzkekis do it.
Suspects in Uzbekistan’s gulags “were being told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they’d been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes.”What’s particularly ironic, and disgusting, is that there is no information more unreliable than that obtained via torture. Great for obtaining confessions; horrible for gaining information. Who wouldn’t say anything the torturer wanted them to say in the face of this? But more to the point, what kind of mind would engage in behaviors like this? And what kind of nation would allow it?
“I was absolutely stunned — it changed my whole world view in an instant — to be told that London knew [the intelligence] coming from torture, that it was not illegal because our legal advisers had decided that under the United Nations convention against torture, it is not illegal to obtain or use intelligence gained from torture as long as we didn’t do the torture ourselves,” Murray said.
For anyone who believes that it’s acceptable to do whatever we need to do to “win the war on terrorism,” does this strike you as worth it? Does this make your chest swell with pride at being an American?
If this is only half true, that an arm of our government participated in any way in conduct of this stripe, whether by simply using the “information” gleaned or by actively using rendition to send people to the Uzbek’s for torture, it seems like a good time for a war crimes trial. This nation cannot tolerate, no less participate, in such conduct. There is no leeway here.
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I agree, a war crimes trial is absolutely necessary, and ASAP
Our erstwhile VP, Mr.Cheney, feels that not enough of this type of information gathering is being done. The people who condone this type of torture and then label any one who diagrees as unpatriotic or treasonus astounds me. We are a nation of law, at least until 9/11/2001, when the equation changed. Somehow the term ultimate hypocrite comes to mind when I think of Mr. Cheney. I aslo think of scoundrels and their last refuge. If you say you are ashamed of this then somehow you are less an American. Some one needs to answer for this. I realize it may not be popular but then doing the right, moral and ethical thing often isn’t.
Curiously, similar things were said about Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Insiders passed the CIA information that he was performing all kinds of torture. The CIA dutifully passed it on to high-level pols.
It’s unclear what the truth was. Perhaps it was half true?