Below is the web address for Glenn Greenwald’s commentary on the CIA torture report:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/09/live-coverage-release-senate-torture-report/
It seems that the leaders of the free world handed moslem captives over to sadists, who did disgusting things to them. A century of moralizing by nationalistic Americans now has the rest of the world laughing at, and now ignoring, American lectures on human rights. It is not just the out-control CIA that is complcit in the (apparently rather ineffective) torture program; it is the leaders of both parties, the media and the psychiatric profession, which took large sums of money to advise on how to torture most effectively.
I cannot go through all the grisly details; Greenwald does a very thorough job. But some of the cruel and unusual punishment inflicted included “Rectal rehydration,” threats to rape and kill detainees’ mothers, and water-boarding, of course (clearly many more instances than the three previously reported).
I deliberately used the expression “cruel and unusual punishment” because it is outlawed by the very Constitution the macho bullies effect to admire and support. There is only a small distance between arresting, imprisoning and torturing foreigners (what they call “towel- heads) and starting on the American population itself. There are enough American dissidents (what the thugs call traitors) to keep them busy for years!
Gen. Barry McCaffrey said of the period after 9/11: “We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the CIA.” At least one person, then, has demonstrated his sense of decency and morality.
Republicans overwhelmingly believe the use of harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects was justified, and a majority of independents agree. Democrats are more likely to say these actions were not justified than to say they were. (Gallup)
Am I right in saying that these are the self- same Republicans and indepents who self-identify as practising christians?
Robert P. Imbelli CONTRIBUTOR December 9, 2014 – 5:13pm
from Rod Dreher’s blog:
“This is a matter of deep conscience. What kind of country are we? Is this what America is? Is this what we defend? The worst kind of barbarism? In particular I want to say to my fellow Christian conservatives: think hard about this report, and the idolatrous attitude that so many of us have toward America. We are America’s good servants, but God’s first. When our country has done evil, we must not hesitate to condemn it, and work to reform it. What we must not do is fall victim to an instrumentalist mentality that calls evil acts good because they achieved, or are believed to have achieved, desired results.”. ( from Commonweal, a Catholic newsletter)
Torture and the wars that drove this heinous policy should have been loudly, screamingly, ceaselessly condemned in every Christian church every Sunday for the last dozen years.
Every Sunday, every Catholic priest from the parish to the Vatican, should have put aside all the pelvic subjects which so engrossed the U.S. hierarchy and delivered homilies on the incompatibility of Jesus’ message with torturing human beings. Period!