New Torture Interpretation
26/July/2007 05:48 Filed in: Civil Rights
The
Washington Post today published an an article on the
Bush administration's new interpretation of Common
Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. You can read the
full article here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/25/AR2007072501881.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
The article expounds on the Bush administrations new interpretation on torture that:
"...as long as the intent of the abuse is to gather intelligence or to prevent future attacks, and the abuse is not 'done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual' -- even if that is an inevitable consequence -- the president has given the CIA carte blanche to engage in 'willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse.'"
Of course the principle purpose of the Geneva conventions was exactly the opposite--that "gathering intelligence" or "trying to get information out of someone" was not to be done through torture. Thus Bush takes another step, (one of many) that is leading us into totalitarianism and the ultimate destruction of any moral high ground we may have left.
We have already lost all credibility with the rest of the world regarding this issue when it was exposed that we were exporting torture to other countries. In other words, in order to save face and torture anyway, we would outsource our torture to other countries that didn't have any qualms about torturing prisoners.
Read the article "Outsourcing Torture" here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/25/opinion/main619513.shtml
Or read here:
http://hrw.org/campaigns/torture/renditions.htm
Or here:
http://www.president-bush.com/torture-outsource.html
It seems that for our administration, torture has lost its thrill in being outsourced and now wants to experience the excitement of torture for itself. What better way than to utterly corrupt the intentions of the Geneva Convention.
To read some more about the evolutions and convolutions of the President's policies in this Matter, read statements by President Bush and responses to those statements by Human Rights First:
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/media/etn/2006/statement/258/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/25/AR2007072501881.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
The article expounds on the Bush administrations new interpretation on torture that:
"...as long as the intent of the abuse is to gather intelligence or to prevent future attacks, and the abuse is not 'done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual' -- even if that is an inevitable consequence -- the president has given the CIA carte blanche to engage in 'willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse.'"
Of course the principle purpose of the Geneva conventions was exactly the opposite--that "gathering intelligence" or "trying to get information out of someone" was not to be done through torture. Thus Bush takes another step, (one of many) that is leading us into totalitarianism and the ultimate destruction of any moral high ground we may have left.
We have already lost all credibility with the rest of the world regarding this issue when it was exposed that we were exporting torture to other countries. In other words, in order to save face and torture anyway, we would outsource our torture to other countries that didn't have any qualms about torturing prisoners.
Read the article "Outsourcing Torture" here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/25/opinion/main619513.shtml
Or read here:
http://hrw.org/campaigns/torture/renditions.htm
Or here:
http://www.president-bush.com/torture-outsource.html
It seems that for our administration, torture has lost its thrill in being outsourced and now wants to experience the excitement of torture for itself. What better way than to utterly corrupt the intentions of the Geneva Convention.
To read some more about the evolutions and convolutions of the President's policies in this Matter, read statements by President Bush and responses to those statements by Human Rights First:
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/media/etn/2006/statement/258/