'The extent to which USA acted & continues to act as a rogue nation - starkly revealed by the facts'

[kpete]

The extent to which the U.S. acted and continues to act as a rogue nation -- in every sense of that term -- is starkly revealed by the facts the High Court did disclose. British intelligence agents constantly complained internally about what they were witnessing when observing U.S. interrogations of detainees. Guidelines were promulgated specifically to direct British agents that they had the obligation to avoid any participation in acts of American torture. And this is what the British High Court said about demands from the U.S. that the British Court continue to conceal the evidence of America's torture of Mohamed (para. 67):

<>


So, to recap: first, the U.S. abducted Mohamed and refused to provide him with any access to lawyers or the outside world. Then -- with no due process afforded -- we shipped him around for the next couple of years to various countries that are the most notorious practitioners of torture, where agents of those countries and the CIA jointly conducted interrogations by brutally torturing him. Then, once he was broken beyond the point of return, we shipped him off to Guantanamo.

After six years in detention, we finally charged him with crimes in a Guantanamo military commission -- based on confessions we extracted from him -- but refused to provide him with the exculpatory evidence showing that those confessions were extracted by torture, even though, as the High Court noted:

We then threatened Britain that they had better keep the facts surrounding the torture concealed from the world or else we would no longer notify them of terrorist threats aimed at them. And finally, when Mohamed sued in American courts over the rendition and torture he suffered, the U.S. Government -- first the Bush administration and then the Obama administration -- insisted that courts must not allow him a day in court because any discussion of what was done to him was a "state secret" and any disclosure at all would harm national security.

more at:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/19/exceptionalism/index.html

[bdamomma]

1. this will bite us back hard.

[MsLeopard]

2. What is up with the Obama administration?

Why would they continue the path taken by their war criminal predecessors? I just don't understand it.....

K&R

edit for grammer

[L. Coyote]

3. Lawyers!!

[ThomWV]

4. I think - or at least I hope - I may see what is going on and why

Call me the optimist but I think their guarded response to the release of information and anything else that would, for the moment, change the status quo is just a holding maneuver. I am hoping that this is just the public face as they plan how to proceed with disclosure, investigation, and probably indictments. To simply turn the screw now, to release all or much information, to be over exuberant in releasing their prosecutarial intentions might harm cases they hope to bring.

Maybe its too much to ask or hope for, but I'm holding out hope for a little bit longer.

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R

[leftstreet]

6. K&R

[wroberts189]

7. Some famous historical figure once said....

If god is just I tremble for my country.


This is not over... it will be fought out in court for years. In the end he will be paid to keep quiet ..or perhaps something worse.

[chill_wind]

8. And his story is but just one of many. And we haven't begun to

talk about Bagram.

K & R.