Tell Congress Torture is Un-American!

[globalvillage]

From Jeeni Criscenzo, CA-49 Congressional candidate:

Last month I joined a group of leading peace activists in meetings with Iraqi leaders in Amman, Jordan. One of the most disturbing things I learned about was how Iraqi detainees are being routinely tortured.

Victims of Abu Ghraib told us about the unspeakable things that were being done in our name, as Americans, to our fellow human beings. In every case these victims had not been charged with a crime and were eventually released because they were innocent!

Americans were so upset that Saddam Hussein had tortured his own people that many of them thought that invading Iraq was actually a mission of mercy! Now we find out that it is America that is torturing innocent Iraqi people and our President wants permission to continue doing it!

George Bush is bullying Congress to RETROACTIVELY remove references from the Geneva Convention to “outrages upon personal dignity…” These are exactly the kind of barbaric abuses I learned about while I was in Jordan! Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3eLEYSnaq4 to see my video about this meeting.

Watch the video and send a letter to Congress at:

http://www.usalone.com/criscenzo/pnum507.php

[razors edge]

1. If they don't know that already

then perhaps they are not american.

[globalvillage]

4. OK.

"Send a letter to Congress via this e-form telling your Congressional representatives you want them to oppose the torture bill" wouldn't fit in the subject line.

I thought the intent was pretty clear.

[razors edge]

5. my rep is marcy kaptur

my girlfriend is her niece, so I could deliver it in person if i thought for a second she would support torture or the reinterpretation of the gen. conv.

I didn't mean to be short but I for one can't see how this ever got to this level, sure the neocons are predatory nazis, but I heard few Democratic leader's voices while this was being hashed out.

Granted the MSM has waltzed over this as if it were nothing, but where was the loud opposition?

I don't understand their strategy here, if there is one. And if not, why not?

[globalvillage]

7. Thanks.

I think it's traditional, when you want your views heard, to write to your elected representatives. That's the reason for my post.
The form is very simple to use. You just fill in your particulars, then write a short comment that indicates how you feel. It's nice that you can drop yours off personally. Many of us can not.
Really, no one here has to do this, but I'm thinking some here might.

Also, the video is interesting.

I'm not sure of the strategy either, but I'm hoping we'll hear from Dems on this over the next few days. I think they're expecting to hear from us as well.

:hi:

[razors edge]

8. Hoping to hear from them as well.

The powder is going to go from dry to petrified pretty soon I fear.

[bullimiami]

2. not just unamerican, uncivilized and immoral.

anyone who doesnt know that already will never get my vote. NEVER. ANYONE.

[pat_k]

3. If they support the War Criminals Protection Act of 2006,

. . .they become accessories after the fact. Do they really want to become War Criminals themselves?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2844073&mesg_id=2844273

[and-justice-for-all]

6. Everything Congress has approved for ShrubCo...

..is unAmerikan

[Jcrowley]

9. The ultimate depravity

Torture is torture no matter who does it, no matter what you call it, and no matter the circumstances. There is no such things as ‘limited torture,’ as its current advocates claim.  History shows almost without exception that once torture is allowed, its use spreads rapidly and becomes a routine practice of security forces.

Remember Dan Mitrione, kidnapped and killed by Uruguay's Tupamaros and portrayed by Yves Montand in Costa-Gavras's film State of Siege? In the late 1960s Mitrione worked for the US Office of Public Safety, part of the Agency for International Development. In Brazil, so A.J. Langguth (a former New York Times bureau chief in Saigon) related in his book Hidden Terrors, Mitrione was among the US advisers teaching Brazilian police how much electric shock to apply to prisoners without killing them. In Uruguay, according to the former chief of police intelligence, Mitrione helped "professionalize" torture as a routine measure and advised on psychological techniques such as playing tapes of women and children screaming that the prisoner's family was being tortured.

In recent years the United States has been charged by the UN and also by human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International with tolerating torture in US prisons, by methods ranging from solitary, twenty-three-hour-a-day confinement in concrete boxes for years on end, to activating 50,000-volt shocks through a mandatory belt worn by prisoners? Many of the Military Police guards now under investigation for abuse of Iraqis earned their stripes working as guards in federal and state prisons, where official abuse is a daily occurence. Indeed, Charles Granier, one of the abusers at Abu Ghraib and the lover of Linndie England the Trailer Park Torturer, worked as a guard at South Carolina's notorious Greene Correctional Unit and has since gone back to work there.

[BuyingThyme]

10. kcik

[Taxloss]

11. What are you talking about? It's as American as apple pie!

What do you think the CIA spent 30 years training folks to do around the world? Hint: not basket-weaving! They even called it the "School of the Americas".

http://mediafilter.org/guest/Pages/September.21.1996.23.26.32

On edit: A bit harsh of me. Of course it's unAmerican in the sense of contrary to American ideals. But that has not stopped Americans from doing it, mainly in the CIA.

[petgoat]

12. October 5th Torture Protest

Nationwide.

Get an ebay jumpsuit and spray paint it orange. Get a pillow case
for your head. Kneel down in front of a church when the 10:00 service
is letting out and the 11:00 is coming in. In half an hour you'll
give maybe hundreds of people something to think about as they ponder
"loving your enemy" and "turning the other cheek" and US policies.

The purpose of torture is not the extraction of information, since all
you get is whatever you want to hear.

The purpose of torture is intimidation. Torture is terrorism.

http://www.worldcantwait.net/

[GeorgeGist]

13. You'll lose with that approach..

torture is inhuman but it is not yet un-American.