Thank you, McCain et al, for fighting Bush's detainee bill
POW John McCain, courtesy of VietnamWar.com
"Though having committed untold crimes on our people, the American pilots suffered no revenge once they were captured and detained. Instead, they were treated with adequate food, clothing and shelter."
- Sign at the "Hanoi Hilton," the Vietnamese POW jail where John McCain was held for over five years, during which his friends were killed, he was tortured and twice tried to commit suicide.
George Bush made a jackass out of himself at a press conference in the White House Rose Garden on Friday, which you can see here in an MSNBC clip from "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," which also provides interesting and very insightful commentary about why our President is acting like such a nutjob lately. And btw, kudos to Olbermann for taking a stand and not being afraid to speak out against Bush and this sick policy. That certainly was a breath of fresh air, given how most of the media kowtows to the wannabe emperor.
Dubya really lost his composure when he snapped at and tried to belittle NBC journalist David Gregory. The reason? Because Gregory had the sac to ask Dubya, Hey how would you feel if Iran or North Korea adopt your standards for torture and go at it on some poor American POW?
Someone buy that journalist a well-deserved drink! Of course, Bush avoided answering the question in his typical doublespeak fashion. If you don't watch the video, this photo shows how pissed he was. One of his best lines was, "It is unacceptable to think, . . ." Oh, rillllllllly?
"I wanna torture somebody, damnit!"
For the past fifty six years, 192 countries have followed the policy on not torturing prisoners as set by Geneva Convention General Article 3 in 1950. Now Bush wants to change the law and allow the CIA to breach the conventions by employing the use of "cruel treatment." It's been widely reported that CIA techniques include:
-
"Cold Cell" in which a prisoner made to stand naked in a fifty degree cell as he's doused with cold water -
"Long Time Standing," in which a prisoner is forced to stand, handcuffed and with his feet shackled to a bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. -
Stress positions and long time standing -
Threats of violence and death of a detainee and/or his family -
"Waterboarding" in which they practically drown the prisoner
Thankfully, Bush has not gotten his way in passing the bill allowing medieval "tactics" thus far. On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee said no way to Bush and instead voted 15 to 9 in favor of John McCain's radically alternate version.
A Bush memo from 2002 started this whole thing. Written by Alberto Gonzales (shudder) along with Dick Cheney's counsel, David Addington and Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, it claims that Article 3 does not apply to al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees, but that the U.S. would "continue to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva." Talk about vague wording. The Bush administration says the United States complies with the Geneva conventions as long as interrogators abide by the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act barring cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of captives. This memo, endorsed by Bush, would prove to be the very dog that has now returned to bite him in the ass.
Dubya's current proposal seeks to establish military tribunals at Guantánamo that would deny prisoners legal protections required by the Geneva Conventions and prevent U.S. courts from being involved in the cases. It would also allow hearsay evidence and evidence obtained by coercion, and convict prisoners to death without letting them see the evidence. Why doesn't it allow stretching them on the rack? Hey, let's do it up while we're at it. I'm sure those medieval fairs wouldn't mind lending Bush their iron maidens when they're not displaying them in Ye Olde Dungeon Replica during the summer tour circuit.
I found this info on the Networking Human Rights Defenders website:
The United States government, under the leadership of President George W. Bush, has made perfectly clear its intention to create a gulag at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba - a lawless zone, to which the American administration will be able to send any person it chooses, to disappear, without trial, and without remedy. If the government’s position is not rejected by the American courts, victims of torture will no longer be able to seek justice and have their claims heard in court. All hope of justice will be denied. This is in flagrant violation of the Constitution of the United States and international human rights conventions.
Amnesty International's U.S. Executive Director asks, "After continuing to insist that no laws were broken in detainee treatment, why does the President now feel the need to narrow the scope of international treaties that have withstood the test of time? Amnesty International believes that any attempt to undercut the Conventions will set a worrying precedent that will invite countries all over the world to follow suit. A global redefinition of the Geneva Conventions will undermine fundamental protections that have served soldiers and civilians in armed conflict for over 50 years."
McCain said CIA director Michael Hayden wants Congress to give the CIA carte blanche to treat detainees as it wishes so he and his agents would be immunized against accusations of unlawful conduct. "He's trying to protect his reputation at the risk of America's reputation," McCain said.
The real reason Bush is in such a mad rush to get his torture bill passed has nothing to do with extracting information during future bouts with terrorists. What's got him on pins and needles is the fact that once the Red Cross interviews the fourteen tortured detainees who just arrived in Cuba from the secret CIA torture prisons, Dubya himself might be fingered as a war criminal. In other words, he is trying to retroactively cover his ass.