Torture - others have said it better, others abandoned their own words

[mtnester]

We don't torture people in America and people who say we do simply know nothing about our country.
- George W. Bush

Shamefully we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management, U.S. management.
- Edward Kennedy

Our enemies didn't adhere to the Geneva Convention. Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them even unto death. But every one of us -- every single one of us -- knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or countenancing such mistreatment of them.
- John McCain, Republican US Senator

If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America -- even those designated as 'unlawful enemy combatants.' If you make this exception the whole Constitution crumbles.
- Alberto J. Mora, former Navy General Counsel

I fear you speak upon the rack,
Where men enforced do speak anything.
- William Shakespeare

The healthy man does not torture others—generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.
- Carl Jung

And more than you ever wanted to know on Torture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture

My country...OUR country..will officially become a toilet when Republican Senators vote to become an uncivilized nation, and relegate the Constitution and Bill Of Rights to the role of toilet paper for above mentioned turd receptacle. Just when I thought my heart could not grow heavier, it did, and I cannot even begin to think of the horrors this country will become if we do not get checks and balances in November. If this is the new model of democracy, I want no part of it, and will continue to work my ass off to stop it.

So I close with:

All cruelty springs from weakness.
- Seneca

[C_U_L8R]

1. Is that the one Shakespeare

that Bush didn't read???

(as if he reads at all)

[mtnester]

3. Unless Merchant of Venice was on his reading list

another thing (his reading list) I belive is pure, utter bullshit

[liberal N proud]

2. McCain can rot in HELL!

The one person who could have stood up and said, I know what torture is and America does not sink to those levels, did not.

FUCK HIM!

[pberq]

4. Alberto J. Mora - tried to stop the torture

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?060227fa_fact

. . .One document, which is marked “secret” but is not classified, is a twenty-two-page memo written by Mora. It shows that three years ago Mora tried to halt what he saw as a disastrous and unlawful policy of authorizing cruelty toward terror suspects.

The memo is a chronological account, submitted on July 7, 2004, to Vice Admiral Albert Church, who led a Pentagon investigation into abuses at the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It reveals that Mora’s criticisms of Administration policy were unequivocal, wide-ranging, and persistent. Well before the exposure of prisoner abuse in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, in April, 2004, Mora warned his superiors at the Pentagon about the consequences of President Bush’s decision, in February, 2002, to circumvent the Geneva conventions, which prohibit both torture and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” He argued that a refusal to outlaw cruelty toward U.S.-held terrorist suspects was an implicit invitation to abuse. Mora also challenged the legal framework that the Bush Administration has constructed to justify an expansion of executive power, in matters ranging from interrogations to wiretapping. He described as “unlawful,” “dangerous,” and “erroneous” novel legal theories granting the President the right to authorize abuse. Mora warned that these precepts could leave U.S. personnel open to criminal prosecution.

. . . Mora had some victories. “America has a lot to thank him for,” Brant, the former head of the N.C.I.S., told me. But those achievements were largely undermined by a small group of lawyers closely aligned with Vice-President Cheney. In the end, Mora was unable to overcome formidable resistance from several of the most powerful figures in the government.

. . .Mora first learned about the problem of detainee abuse on December 17, 2002, when David Brant approached him with accusations of wrongdoing at Guantánamo. As head of the Naval Criminal Service, Brant often reported to Mora but hadn’t dealt with him on anything so sensitive. “I wasn’t sure how he would react,” Brant, a tall, thin man with a mustache, told me. Brant had already conveyed the allegations to Army leaders, since they had command authority over the military interrogators, and to the Air Force, but he said that nobody seemed to care. He therefore wasn’t hopeful when he went to Mora’s office that afternoon . . .

(much more at link)