Propelling Prisoners' Heads into Concrete Walls

[davidswanson]

SUMMARY OF PRELIMINARY MEMORANDUM OF THE JUSTICE ROBERT H. JACKSON CONFERENCE ON FEDERAL PROSECUTION OF WAR CRIMINALS

Propelling prisoners' heads into concrete walls by means of towels wrapped around their necks, savage beatings with fists and rifles that left prisoners crippled, hanging prisoners by the arms with their arms strung up behind them, depriving prisoners of sleep for weeks on end, which has been thought the worst torture possible for 500 years, causing prisoners to freeze -- sometimes to death, and waterboarding are but a partial list of the torture methods ordered by America's highest officials. In the "Preliminary Memorandum of the Justice Robert H. Jackson Conference on Federal Prosecutions of War Criminals," law school Dean Lawrence Velvel, the founder of the Jackson Conference, details the full spectrum of tortures performed in wholesale combinations -- not one torture by itself -- on detainees around the world. His Preliminary Memorandum is a precursor to a formal legal complaint to be filed with the Justice Department this spring.

The Preliminary Memorandum identifies 31 culprits and details the war crimes they committed, the laws they broke, and the many fulsome warnings they received regarding their actions from numerous governmental lawyers and officials high and low, including the Judge Advocate Generals of all the armed services. The culprits who should be prosecuted include Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Addington, Tenet, Bybee, Yoo, Haynes, Chertoff and others.

The Preliminary Memorandum calls the Bush administration's illegal acts "an attempted constitutional revolution that succeeded for years." It began six days after 9/11, when Bush secretly gave the CIA permission to "murder . . . people all over the world." It continued in a series of secret, wholly specious legal memos authorizing torture, electronic eavesdropping, wholesale violations of law, and Presidential usurpation of the role of Congress.

Public pressure eventually forced the administration to declassify a few of the memos. These purported to authorize war crimes outlawed by the Geneva Conventions and U.S. anti-torture laws. Among them was John Yoo's infamous "torture memo" defining torture as "requiring the pain associated with organ failure or death," saying torture supposedly couldn't exist if the torturer wanted information, and urging that the President could do anything he wanted, including paying no attention whatever to Congressional laws. Meanwhile, Bush administration officials and lawyers ignored extensive warnings given them by government officials that they were engaging in criminal acts; the warnings were given both orally and in extensive memos.

[RC]

1. The war criminals need to be brought to justice.

There is nothing political about it.

[Bunkie0913]

2. Sometimes I feel

like the avaerage citizen of the U.S. is just a large part of a George Carlin routine"Nobody knows and nobody cares". If the mass populous ever woke up to realize what had been done "in our name" maybe they'd stop watching ignorant television and take to the streets.

[rfranklin]

4. A lot of our citizens feel more secure when torture is used...

Of course, they have no firsthand exprience of torture (except for the S & M branch of the Republican party). They think somehow they are safe from the "terrists" because these methods are used. It speaks to their most primal fears.

[pmorlan1]

3. Excellent Summary of the Crimes

I don't know how anyone could read all the documentation currently available (government documents, testimony, etc.) that this memorandum so ably pulls together and come to the conclusion that these people shouldn't be prosecuted. What kind of person could possibly make such an argument?

[Dollface]

5. These criminals would have made Stalin proud. This is horrifying and I am going to ruin some

people's day by forwarding it. They can compare it to this.

From Solzhenitsyn's Gulag: The Simplest Methods which Break the Will

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9236.htm

[Career Prole]

6. K & R for the afternoon crowd.

:kick:

[EFerrari]

7. Kick

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. kick

[Warren DeMontague]

9. Ah, more fraternity hijinks.

[Ichingcarpenter]

10. It is a travesty if there is no accountability - and no justice

thanks david.

[bluesmail]

11. Maybe it's just my towel wrapped head that's being thrown into a concrete wall

that has me thinking MK Ultra or a myriad of other nefarious scenarios. It is torture and there's no debating it.

[defendandprotect]

12. Anyone who thinks about this understands they could be us at any time ...

in the future.

It's not like we're asking that Bush/Cheney be sent to Iraq to stand trial ---

just bring them to justice here or in any international court--!!!

[NutmegYankee]

13. Your title sounds like a George Carlin show.

He was only joking, but the Bush regime wasn't. Sick fuckers.

[Solly Mack]

14. K&R

[bobthedrummer]

15. K&R&Prosecute...

[byrok]

16. Not one of these people named will be jailed.

Thats right, I said it. I wish to god that they would be paraded throughout the world and jailed for life. I wish the world could see that we don't support this crap. But alas, it shall not be. There may be hearings. There may be investigations. There may be talk of... That is all.

Any other country but the US. It will not happen here. If I am wrong about any of those mentioned above, I will have to seriously start playing the lottery, or praying, or something else extremely crazy in my opinion. Cuz I may just be delusional after all.

[Offred]

17. Guantanamo

The United Nations should send in a forensics investigation team into Guantanamo NOW, to keep an eye on what could reasonably be considered an active crime scene. After Guantanamo is closed and the U.S. forces leave could be too late. By then, the crime scene could no doubt have been be sanitized. Is it so unlikely to think that prisoners may have died as a result of torture and then were buried on the premises? Can we be really secure in thinking that the Army won't bulldoze the whole camp before it leaves, or dump incriminating evidence in the ocean?

[Piewhacket]

18. Excellent. Belated rec.

[Octafish]

19. NAZIs did that stuff.

Must be where they learned it.

CIA Started by NAZI Sympathizers and Staffed by NAZIs...

[lunatica]

20. Kicked and recommended