Sociology Talk

Gandalf Grey · Guest

Torture for the Torturers

By Dave Lindorff

Created Jul 16 2008 - 10:11am

I don't believe in torture, but right now, I'd like to see a few people
subjected to some of the torture techniques that they approved for use
against US captives in the so-called War on Terror.

I'd be satisfied if they just stuck to the ones used against 15-year-old
Omar Khadr--techniques that a US federal judge established constituted
torture under the Geneva Conventions.

I have a 15-year old son, so I'm particularly aware of what an atrocity it
has been the way the US has treated Khadr, and some 2500 other young boys
and teenagers that it admits to having captured and labeled as "enemy
combatants" in its so-called "war on terror."

Khadr, recall, was sent at the age of 14 to Pakistan by his allegedly
terrorist-linked Canadian father to attend a madrassa--one of those
fundamentalist Muslim schools. Like a number of students of those schools,
he was indoctrinated in jihad and ended up fighting with the Taliban in
Afghanistan against the warlords that opposed them. When the US attacked
Afghanistan, in 2001, Khadr got caught up in a war against America.
According to the charge against him, he was arrested in 2002 after US
Special Forces found him and some adult fighters hiding out in a remote
compound in the mountains. The Americans called in an air strike, and then
moved into the rubble to find out who was left--quite probably, according to
some testimony in the case--to finish them off. Someone, still alive after
the attack, tossed a grenade which killed one of the Americans and blinded
another. The others sprayed the wounded fighters, gravely injuring Khadr and
killing one of his older companions.

Khadr was accused of being the grenade tosser, and was reportedly tortured
in Afghanistan, before being shipped off to Guantanamo, where he remains six
years later, facing a military tribunal. He was interrogated there, not just
by Americans, but by Canadians too.

A citizen of Canada, and clearly someone who was captured and held in
violation of the Geneva Conventions, which hold that children are "protected
persons," not to be held as POWs if captured in wartime, but rather to be
treated as victims of war, Khadr has thus far been abandoned to his fate by
his own government. The Conservative prime minister of Canada, Stephen
Harper, anxious to have Canada serve as a willing servant of US military
power and foreign policy, has not lifted a finger to help him.

Now a court in Canada has ordered the Canadian government to release
videotapes it was keeping secret of Khadr's interrogations, and they make
for ugly viewing. Khadr is shown weeping, holding up his wounded arms,
pleading to be given treatment, pleading to be returned to Canada. It's a
disgusting scene, especially when we learn that he had already been
"softened up" for his Canadian interrogators by American torture specialists
at Guantanamo who subjected this boy to three weeks of sleep deprivation and
god knows what other creative techniques which we recently learned were
copied from the methods developed by the North Koreans and applied to
American captives in the Korean War.

It all makes you disgusted to be an American--especially with so many
Americans still justifying this kind of grotesque behavior.

But back to my desire to see some torture inflicted. My profound wish is
that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, former Department of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Canadian Prime
Minister Harper all be subjected to no less than a month of torture, to
include water boarding, at least 2-3 weeks of sleep deprivation, a variety
of 24-stints of being forced into stress positions (Rumsfeld's should be
standing), some violent slapping around, and a bit of creative sexual
humiliation. Since we don't know at this point that anal sodomizing was
officially sanctioned, or just was something that the torturers on the
ground came up with that was then ignored by superiors, I'm willing to let
that one be left up to those performing the torture, but I sure won't object
if it happens.

At this point, I can't think of anything less than such a punishment that
would be fitting for these monsters who are currently still running our, and
Canada's, governments.

When I think of what kind of twisted minds these people must have in order
to actually have met in the White House and approved such methods for use
against human beings--human beings who under our Constitution are to be
afforded the presumption of innocence, and who are promised to be protected
against "cruel and unusual" punishments (or in Harper's case to have known
about it and then not protested, even to protect a child born in his own
country)--it makes me sick to my stomach.

If there is a hell, I am sure there is in it some special circle reserved
for such monsters, but I think, having seen what was done at their direction
and with their approval to young Khadr (who after all, if he really ever did
toss that grenade, was only doing what any US soldier would hope to have the
courage to do in wartime if his unit were attacked), that hell is too good
for these leaders. They all need and deserve the special punishment of
having done to them what they ordered or allowed to be done to others.

Sadly, my wish to see them suffer such a fate is unlikely to be granted. One
can at least hope, though, that they will have their names etched somewhere
for posterity on some memorial to the victims of war crimes and to the
eternal condemnation of the perpetrators of such bestiality.

--
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Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107

"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson

znuybv · Guest

On Jul 17, 10:34 am, "Gandalf Grey" <valino...@gmail.com> wrote: