Well this certainly doesn’t come as a big surprise. They flipped on the bank bail out why not flip on torture. Only their position on torture hasn’t been reversed, they’ve just been caught with guile. Torture is illegal in Canada. Obviously they’re not going to come right out and say they support torture. That’s the purpose of off shore prison camps like Guantanamo Bay, to get around the legality of torture.
Now CSIS claims that they are opposed to torture but they will not destroy evidence they have received from torture. What a crock of shit that is. To make matters worse, Harper’s government sent out a bullshit warm and fuzzy press release claiming they opposed the torture that went on in Libya under their command. Yeah right. They banned the activist who complained about the torture in Libya under their command from entering Canada.
Harper and McKay LIED when they said they did not know the Canadian military were handing over prisoners in Afghanistan to be tortured. We’re not talking about water boarding. We’re talking about hood over the head electric shock treatment. Harper denied knowing anything about it in one breath, then fired and slandered the whistleblower in the next breath. He is a liar.
Some people will argue that in cases of terrorism where innocent lives are at stake torture is acceptable. Iggy even wrote a book supporting that premise. I disagree for two reasons. I do not believe torture is acceptable at any time and I certainly don’t trust them to determine when torture is a matter of national security.
Obviously Hitler would have argued that torturing anyone who opposed the third Reich was a matter of National security. No doubt he would torture someone falsely accused of terrorism after he burned down the German Parliament and blamed it on terrorists.
Likewise Stalin would no doubt argue that dissidents were a threat to National Security and should be tortured. We know that as the US passed a treasonous bill that threw out the bill of rights giving the military power to arrest domestic terrorists without a charge or due process, England published a list of domestic terrorists that include everyone protesting in support of the occupy movement.
Now all of a sudden we have people supporting the constitutional right to lawful assembly labeled as a domestic terrorist. That means they have no rights and can be tortured. That is so wrong it is absolutely insane debating the matter. This editorial in today's Vancouver Province entitled Canada should not use info from torture is right. This other article from today's Vancouver Province stating why Tories defend torture stand is so very wrong.
Re: Torture
ReplyDeleteWhat people who really know nothing about the subject of enhanced interrogation think of when they use the T word bears very little resemblance to the process as it is used these day. While I can't speak for the Israeli's, the American version is pretty much psychological, topped off by water-boarding. While that process is extremely unpleasant, it generates results that are far above beating the absolute crap out of someone, without beating the absolute crap out of someone.
It's easy for people with no connection to the world of people who have sworn to keep them safe to beak off about what they want or do not want done in their name, but remember also that they are people who really know nothing about which they are talking. I'm aware of the slippery slope there, but that changes nothing really. Do you offer your surgeon advice on how to perform an operation? You do not, because you don't know WTF you're talking about. Yes, it's your body, but you have no background, training, or ability in that field. Imagine how foolish you'd sound telling someone who does what you need done exactly how you want it to be accomplished from a point of virtual ignorance.
Do all those guys sitting around at Gitmo and showing up back in their home countries after a few years with all their fingers and toes look like anyone got medieval on their asses? Nope. Contrast that with how the opposition does business.
Sorry, you're not going to sell me on that one. Guantanamo Bay is wrong. Cuba of all places. In Afghanistan it was hoods and electric shocks. Throwing away the bill of rights is wrong, period. That is what the president and the military is sworn to uphold. Failing to do that makes us no better than the bad guys. Especially when we are dealing drugs and committing investment fraud as a form of fund raising.
ReplyDeleteOh I knew we'd be on opposite sides of the coin again, LOL. No worries.
ReplyDeleteThe Bill of Rights, huh. U.S. service members swear to "uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic". Not to grant the rights of a US citizen to a sworn enemy who is not a declared combatant that violates the Laws of Land Warfare and engages in deliberate terrorist acts which target civilians. As a matter of law, the Rill of Rights does not apply outside the 50 states, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Maybe American Samoa. Saying that it does is as naive as saying it applies in Russia, or China. Obviously it does not. Maybe it should, but it doesn't.
You cannot fight a war, whether it is a righteous one or not, with both hands tied behind your back. We already do it with one hand tied, in that when we go to war we in large part maintain a focus on not killing everyone we run across. There are a lot of folks who have the requisite experience to comment that believe this was one of our mistakes in Iraq in that it left a large body of ex-Iraqi military available to join the insurgency in return for our generosity.
Personally I think we should quit all this nonsense with exporting democracy and making the world safe for multi-national corporation to do business. This does not necessarily mean that we would never go to war again, but when we do we should solve the problem permanently. Something along the lines of taking as captives the hot looking women (such as there may be) as captives and putting the rest of the population to the sword. It worked out pretty well for the Romans....
Yeah that issue was raised by a "pinko liberal" critiquing Sara Air Head Palin's distorted view of the constitution on Youtube. The Bill of rights say all people not all US Citizens. The new bill that gives the military the rights to arrest any domestic terrorist on US soil without a charge or due process is more what I'm referring to. They are talking about arresting Americans on American soil without a charge or trial because they classified them as a domestic terrorist just like England classified their entire occupy movement.
ReplyDeleteUnderstood, and on this we agree.
ReplyDeleteWasn't the full moon last week : )
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