16-03-2009, 08:41 PM
The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report two years ago that the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners “constituted torture” in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The findings were based on interviews with prisoners once held in the CIA’s secret black sites. The Red Cross said the fourteen prisoners held in the CIA prisons gave remarkably uniform accounts of abuse that included beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and, in some cases, waterboarding. The author Mark Danner published parts of the secret Red Cross report in the New York Review of Books. Danner said the Red Cross’s use of the word "torture” has important legal implications. Danner said, “It could not be more important that the ICRC explicitly uses the words ‘torture’ and ‘cruel and degrading.’ The ICRC is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions, and when it uses those words, they have the force of law.”
Hours after excerpts of the Red Cross report were published, former Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on CNN. He was asked whether he believed President Obama was making Americans less safe by abandoning some of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism techniques.
Dick Cheney: “I do. I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence:rofl: that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11. I think that’s a great success story:rofl:. It was done legally:rofl:. It was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles:rofl:. President Obama campaigned against it all across the country. And now he’s making some choices that, in my mind, will in fact raise the risk to the American people of another attack.”
Dick Cheney’s comments came days after the Obama administration said it will no longer consider prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to be enemy combatants. Despite abandoning the label, the administration claims it still has the right to hold prisoners indefinitely without charge even if the individual is captured far from any battlefield and has not directly participated in hostilities.
(from http://www.democracynow.org for today)
What more can one say.....:help:.....all our leaders are madmen.....of one stripe or another...but Chaney takes 'the cake' in my 'book'! Where is the garlic and the large wooden stake - I thought that vampire was gone.
Hours after excerpts of the Red Cross report were published, former Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on CNN. He was asked whether he believed President Obama was making Americans less safe by abandoning some of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism techniques.
Dick Cheney: “I do. I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence:rofl: that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11. I think that’s a great success story:rofl:. It was done legally:rofl:. It was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles:rofl:. President Obama campaigned against it all across the country. And now he’s making some choices that, in my mind, will in fact raise the risk to the American people of another attack.”
Dick Cheney’s comments came days after the Obama administration said it will no longer consider prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to be enemy combatants. Despite abandoning the label, the administration claims it still has the right to hold prisoners indefinitely without charge even if the individual is captured far from any battlefield and has not directly participated in hostilities.
(from http://www.democracynow.org for today)
What more can one say.....:help:.....all our leaders are madmen.....of one stripe or another...but Chaney takes 'the cake' in my 'book'! Where is the garlic and the large wooden stake - I thought that vampire was gone.