US Weathers Calls for Torture Probes at UN Rights Meet ** CONTAINS GRAPHIC PHOTOS **

[unhappycamper]

US Weathers Calls for Torture Probes at UN Rights Meet
by Peter Capella
Published on Friday, November 5, 2010 by Agence France Presse

GENEVA - The United States faced a barrage of calls to investigate allegations of torture and shut down Guantanamo Bay detention centre on Friday in its first review by the UN's top human rights assembly.

European countries joined appeals for a halt to the death penalty, and there was trenchant criticism of Washington's recent human rights record during wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the detention and interrogation of terror suspects.

It prompted a robust defence from senior US officials at the 47-member Human Rights Council, although US Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner acknowledged that they "were not satisfied with the status quo."

"Let there be no doubt, the United States does not and will not torture," State Department legal adviser Harold Koh told the council.

"This administration began by turning the page and unequivocally ensuring the humane treatment of all individuals in US custody in armed conflict," he insisted.



unhappycamper comment: I'm sure glad "the United States does not and will not torture". Perhaps Harold could explain these pictures:


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/f/f2/20080408052912!Abu-ghraib-leash.jpg












You can google more pics: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&biw=1280&bih=559&q=abu+ghraib&gbv=2&aq=0s&aqi=g-s2g-sx7g-s1&aql=f&oq=abu+gharib&gs_rfai=

What does Michael Posner means when he says " (we) were not satisfied with the status quo"?

This camper has doubt. As should you.

[w8liftinglady]

1. I hope this is true...a strictly anecdotal statement from a friend,however...

who was an MP in vietnam and Gulf war 1...
"When you place National Guard/Reserves-with no experience in military law enforcement- consistently in positions like this,you will see continued...and worse...episodes such as these."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/paper/reports.html

of course,now that this,too has been outsourced to private contractors...we may never know.

[TheMadMonk]

4. Read up on the Stanford Prison Experiment.

The PTBs knew EXACTLY what they'd be getting when they made guards of Lindy England and others like her.

[Gravel Democrat]

2. Cultural etiquette is so very important

[ThomCat]

3. Yup, when the CIA is known to be running prisons,

and had to close one in Poland when it was discovered, there's definitely no torture going on there. Right?

When the entire world knows that Bagram is the place you now don't ever want to get shipped to, and it's a huge city of a base with a massive prison complex, there is definitely no torture going on there either. Right?

When we need to have military tribunals just so that information extracted from torture can be admitted can be allowed as "evidence" and we can cook the rules instead of using real rules of law, we can just assume that all that torture only happened years ago under Bush. Right? Even though not one single report indicates any changes in essential procedures, and in instead an actual escalation initially under Obama's authority. That can be dismissed somehow. Right?

When we have always been the place to go to learn how to torture, because we run the School of the Americas, is notorious for training more dictators than any other school in human history, we have no responsibility for that? And if that is where the CIA trains whichever dictators we currently support or prop-up in all the brutal methods they need to hold power. Including torture. It's totally inconceivable that we might be using torture in addition to teaching it. I mean, our teachers, they learning it out of books. They don't ever practice on anyone. They don't ever use those skills they teach. Right?

We have no reason at all to think that we torture anyone, or support torture. Obama has said so, and once the President says it, that means it's true! Right?