|
Edited on Sun Mar-18-07 03:23 PM by Peace Patriot
'keeping us safe'?" And if your answer is no--like mine (and my 'no' is unqualified--I think they have NO interest in our safety; to them, we are the marks to be looted, and the cannon fodder to be killed to make them rich)--then the next question is, "Why are they torturing these people?" If it is not to "keep us safe," if it is not to prevent attacks, what is the purpose? Perversion? Possibly. But when you consider the range of crime they may have committed--and are still committing--you have to wonder if they are not using this completely unlawful assertion of the right to torture, and other lawlessness such a indefinite detention and pervasive domestic spying--plus the huge spy/black ops apparatus of the "Patriot Act"/US military "security" establishment--to COVER UP their crimes.
Perhaps Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knew something about the Saudi/Bush 9/11 money trail, or Cheney arms dealings. How convenient to have him in custody at a secret location, and to have a lapdog Congress and Supreme Court providing no oversight--and, indeed, providing cover--and to be free to use unlawful powers to purge this information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's mind, and to be in absolute control of the contents of his "confession." You have complete control of a potential witness/whistleblower re your own crimes. You can prevent the public from ever finding out what he really knows. And you can, a) use his "confession" as needed, for timely headlines, and b) suicide him at any time, should anything start leaking out. If you were Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, would your traumatized brain forget its knowledge of Bush Junta crimes--bury it, perhaps irrecoverably-- if the CIA were holding your young sons in custody, and were waterboarding you, and doing god knows what else to you? It's very likely that you would. And I think this is a much more likely explanation for the use of torture, and the secrecy around torture, and the secret military tribunals, and all the rest, than that it has anything whatever to do with our national security.
They can also 'disappear' the interrogators. No one is safe. Valerie Plame's fate--and that of her entire WMD counterproliferation network--all put in jeopardy of their lives, taught us that. If you present any threat of exposure to these criminals, or even just know things, they can ruin you, create circumstances in which someone else kills you, or even just drop you out of an airplane over the ocean, as their thugs in Latin America did to leftists, peasants and union organizers.
I think that this confession is not just crap (completely untrustworthy), and not just a manipulation of the newsstream in a time of Bushite scandal (after scandal after scandal). It is possibly being used to cover up Bushite crime, perhaps the Bush Junta's complicity in 9/11, either by promulgating the official story (--that Islamic jihadists cooked up and implemented that attack all on their own), or by torture power over this prisoner, washing his brain of knowledge of their complicity. I think that they are probably using torture and detention in this way on many Bush Junta crimes, and also to further their greed--for instance, to eliminate Iraqis who are especially effective at opposing US global corporate predator oil contracts in Iraq, or anyone in the Islamic world who interferes with their war or business profiteering, or that of their pals. Say some Iraqi or Pakistani happens to witness, or be involved in, some dirty business with Halliburton, or Blackwater, or Exxon-Mobile, and, for some reason, comes to be viewed as a risk. Their house gets raided, and they are hauled off to some dungeon in Abu Ghraib or elsewhere. And they end up on the bottom of the pile of naked bodies. It's the ideal "Mafia" world, for the Bushite criminals, whom we know have nothing but contempt for the rule of law, for the Constitution, for the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter, and of course for common decency.
If they meant well by us, there would be no tax cuts for the rich in time of war. We all know this. There would be no $10 trillion deficit. If they meant well by us, there would be no oil price gouging, or Bankruptcy bill, or borrowing against Social Security and government pensions. If they meant well by us, there would be a lid on the outsourcing of jobs and of US manufacturing. If they meant well by us, they wouldn't have tried to sell US ports to sheiks of Araby. If they meant well by us, we wouldn't have seen the poor of New Orleans dying in their own shit after the Katrina disaster--with the first no-bid contract going to you know who, for more phantom you know what. We know that they do not mean us well--in ANY respect whatsoever. They mean us ill. They are looting us blind. Nor do they mean us well by torturing prisoners.
One plot concerning which I suspect that Iraqis may have been tortured and 'disappeared,' is a possible Rumsfeld scheme to plant nukes in Iraq, to be "found" by the US troops who were "hunting" for them--as a followup to the Niger/Iraq nuke forgeries. (Get this bogus allegation into Bush's SOTU speech, then make it come true, by planting the weapons.) Iraqi contacts of Brewster-Jennings, or of David Kelly (the top British WMD expert who was found dead, under highly suspicious circumstances, four days after Plame was outed), or Iraqi contacts of other UN weapons inspectors, would have been in the prime, on-the-ground position to notice illicit weapons movements in Iraq, as the invasion proceeded. And there were some intriguing reports in the Islamic press, at the time, of foiled US efforts to plant WMDs in Iraq--but no followup. What happened to these witnesses? (One of the reports concerned illicit WMDs in boxes with false Red Cross markings, at the Basra port.) Could this be why David Kelly turned whistleblower after the invasion (he had supported removing Saddam)--that he heard of this scheme, and perhaps heard of friends of his in Iraq (counterproliferation contacts) getting 'disappeared'? And is his knowledge of such a scheme why HE was killed? (And I think he WAS killed for what he knew--just not enough evidence to pin down why he posed such a threat to the Blairites.)
Anyway, we have to face the dismaying reality of all the collusion here at home--of some of our top Democratic leaders--in letting this situation go so out of control, without objection, just as they colluded with the Bushite corporate takeover of our election system. Out of malice. Out of cowardice. Out of greed. A mixed bag, the Democratic leadership. Some still sincere believers in democracy. Some not. And the collusion of all major "news" organizations, including our touted "newspaper of record," the NYT, those scumbags.
How do gangsters take over a neighborhood? By there being not enough community cohesion, and too much political corruption, to begin with. Every family or person for themselves, behind a locked gate. How do they take over a country? The same. A democracy in a state of erosion and decline for twenty years. And to undo this horror is going to take a long time--a long road back to democracy and our cohesion and common purpose as a nation.
It seems hopeless, but it is not. Ask Nelson Mandela about hopeless. Ask Rosa Parks about hopeless. Ask the poor of South America about hopeless--who are now engaged in a great democracy movement, which has seen the election of leftist (majorityist) governments in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, and powerful new leftist movements in Peru, Paraguay and Mexico. Such amazing developments, after decades and centuries of often US-backed brutal oppression. They have suffered horrors such as these--their rulers torturing and 'disappearing' people, and vast corruption. And the keys to their recovery and success are these, in my opinion...
1. Transparent elections.
2. Grass roots organization.
3. Think big.
And one more: Think long term. Our culture fosters impatience. And I see a lot of impatience here at DU--impatience that the Democrats in Congress have not yet stopped the war, etc. We must learn to think past the next election, and past the latest outrage. We must think about power and how people can re-acquire it, once it is lost. A lot of nitty-gritty work needs to be done--especially on transparent elections, but also on informing and organizing people. We need to understand WHY our elections are not transparent, who did it, who is protecting that non-transparency, and how, strategically, to get around them. We have to be wily and realistic. And we have to NOT be daunted by setbacks, and by continuing horrors. We CAN win back our democracy. But it's going to take time.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." We are having to learn this lesson all over again. To not become corrupt, power needs to be dispersed, and constantly curtailed by "checks and balances." We, the people, are the ultimate "check and balance." Our rightful power has been taken away--the power of our vote in openly counted elections. This was done for a REASON. 75% of the American people now oppose this war, and we CAN'T get it stopped--not just because of Bushite dinosaurs in the Senate (only 1/3 of which was up for reelection in '06), but also because of leaders in our own party who were not chosen in transparently counted primaries! Forty or fifty of them in the House--the disreputable "'Blue Dog" Democrats--who want to cut spending on everything but the war machine. Our will is being thwarted. And, until we restore transparent vote counting, it will continue to be thwarted. I think we showed in '06 that the people can out vote the machines. But, as long as rightwing Bushite corporations have this capability to place a 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" for Bushites, warmongers and corporatists, we can't outvote them enough. This must be Priority no. 1 in fighting this unjust, heinous war, and all of its associated horrors, including torture. 63% of the American people oppose torture "under any circumstances" (May '04). Why then is torture CONTINUING?
That is the question. How can this obscenity be continued--how can Bush still have this power--with the vast majority of Americans opposed to it? And how DID this criminal remain in office, after the Abu Ghraib revelations? How did he get a rubber-stamp Congress? And why, with 75% of the American people opposed to these polices, could we only achieve a 50/50 Congress?
The answer is staring us in the face. 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY vote counting, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations (a coup that took place very fast, between 2002 and 2004, with $3.9 billion in funding from the Anthrax Congress). And that must be our chief line of attack in recovering our democracy. Getting our ACTUAL power back--making them count every vote in a way that everyone can see and understand.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
