More News

People have asked me how I can, in good conscience, say that I am not proud of my country. It’s reports like the ones I quoted a few days ago and the ones below that do it. I am extremely fortunate to live in this country. And I believe it can one day be great again. But this is a dark period in our history, and it is not a time to be proud of ourselves. It is a time to hang our heads in shame and vow to vote out of office most of the incumbents, Republican and Democrat alike, who have allowed us to come to this low point in our national history.

All the petty, partisan bickering aside, the whole lot of them have to go, from the President who believes he weilds ultimate power, including the power to dismiss the Constitution when it impinges on the things he wants to do to a Congress which happily bends over to lick his shoes clean, providing retroactive immunity to the telecom companies who may have broken the law. (And by the way, what the hell is the justification for that? If they didn't actually break the law, then they don't need protection, and if they did, there's no reason they SHOULD be protected).

If I had my way, the whole stinking lot of them, with relatively few exceptions, would be rounded up, tarred, feathered, put on a raft and shoved out into the gulf stream. I'd probably keep Chuck Hagel and Russ Feingold and maybe Dennis Kucinich. I'd toss Pelosi and Reid and Hoyer and Boehner through the same door through which Delay was unceremoniously dumped.

But anyway, on to the news items which have me feeling this way today, both from McClatchy news service again.

First, there’s this article, which reports that we (the United States) have hidden certain captives from the Red Cross. Recall that one of the purposes of the “International Committee of the Red Cross” is to evaluate the conditions of political and military prisoners around the world and report on whether they’re being treated according to the Geneva Convention. As a country, we have a long history of complaining when other people were not completely open with the ICRC, such as China and the old Soviet Union, or deceptively made things appear much better for the prisoners than they actually were during inspections. In much the same way, by the way, that the Bush administration faulted Saddam Hussein for not fully complying with the international nuclear inspectors and is now faulting Iran for the same behavior.

Apparently what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander. Quoting the article: "We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who's since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting that were made public Tuesday. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility — Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan — were using sleep deprivation to "break" detainees well before then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique. "True, but officially it is not happening," she is quoted as having said.

A third person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world.

"In the past when the ICRC has made a big deal about certain detainees, the DOD (Defense Department) has 'moved' them away from the attention of the ICRC," Fredman said, according to the minutes.

Read the rest of the article. These are not the actions of an innocent and above-board interrogation, and lead one towards the conclusion that perhaps our leaders are guilty of war crimes, which segues nicely into the second McClatchy article:

Retired Major General Antonio Taguba, who led the investigation into Abu Ghraib, says that the Bush administration is guilty of war crimes.

Quoting the article: U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Again, I urge you to read the entire article.

For those who read my blog who still don’t understand why I, and others, are so disgusted with this president, hopefully this sheds some light on it. If my understanding of the facts is correct, this man and his entire inner circle should be impeached and turned over to the Hague for war crimes trials. These are high crimes indeed.

Liam.