Mr Blair takes me to the second theme of the day and that is rendition.
He is always very dismissive of this subject so we tried to press him
on the moral issues of rendition and Guantanamo as well. He did for the
first time formally call for the end of Guantanamo but on rendition he
remains evasive and very unwilling to criticise America.
snowmails
The autopsy photos of Mowhoush make the now-infamous images from Abu Ghraib prison look like a costume party. Bruises and welts cover Mowhoush's dead body. Doctors ruled that Mowhoush was smothered. Officials charge that Welshofer stuffed him inside a sleeping bag, bound him with an electric cord, sat on his chest and covered his mouth. Still, there is no question that Mowhoush also was savagely beaten.
The United States, which sanctimoniously lectures the rest of the world about human rights, did this. America's political and military hierarchy approved harsher handling of military detainees after the 9/11 attacks. This is what we got.
A Citizen of Mosul
11 comments:
Mowhoush probably was a "high-value facilitator of the insurgency in Western Iraq
Tells me all I need to know. Good riddance to a mass murderer
and you'd like American troops treated like that in captivity?
How do you think Al Qaeda treats its prisoners? It's a fucking war, & you're dealing with scum whose stated method is slaughtering civilians. They don't get lawyers
so you think american soldiers should be treated like that because its war?
There's always a good reason for inhumanity.
War is wrong. When resources for it it are spent on peacemaking, even unilaterally, it will be abolished. Otherwise, everyone dies. This isn't the Middle Ages, it is a new dark age..with utterly cataclysmic weaponry.
This war is fueled by greed, and won't be won via bloodshed.
This war is fueled by greed, and won't be won via bloodshed
It wasn't diplomacy that shut down the furnaces at Auschwitz, nor the mass graves in Iraq. You can't be against war in principle, because wars don't exist in principle. From A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin:
"If you claim to know war in principle you're only pretending, & if you can only pretend to know it you can only pretend to be against it. Many people just like to show they're thinking the right thoughts."
As for American soldiers, the point of the Geneva Conventions isn't moral preening, but quid pro quo. Al Qaeda - which beheads friends (like Margaret Hassan) & enemies alike - isn't signatory to it, & treating them like legitimate soldiers doesn't change their behaviour at all.
Sorry I've been learning from Mr. Perry "If I don't get an answer I'm going to keep repeating the question until I do..."
Would you like American soldiers to be treated like that?
History is written by the victors, it is rarely an accurate accounting. The persistence of war in the modern world is largely the result of the dominion of the profiteers. You forget our close affiliation with Nazi Germany, then and now. W's grandfather was sanctioned for it.
The resources wasted on the war machine , if spent wisely, would end war as we know it. Eisenhower was right about our destiny on this path, and he knew more about war than all pretentious war supporters put together.
Throwing gasoline on a world on fire
is the predominant wisdom of those intoxicated by war. Going forward by looking backward will lead us into the abyss. We are nearly there. If you want to quote someone at this point, quote Gandhi.
Bones- I'll answer your question...Yes, what goes around comes around. There is no shortage of hypocrisy or lack of vision in all this. Short-sighted men of narrow vision will never find the way to peace.
While we're quoting:
"It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms."
John Stockwell, former CIA official and author
John Stockwell is a 13-year veteran of the CIA and a former U.S. Marine Corps major. He was hired by the CIA in 1964, spent six years working for the CIA in Africa, and was later transferred to Vietnam. In 1973 he received the CIA's Medal of Merit, the Agency's second-highest award. In 1975, Stockwell was promoted to the CIA's Chief of Station and National Security Council coordinator, managing covert activities during the first years of Angola's bloody civil war. After two years he resigned, determined to reveal the truth about the agency's role in the Third World. Since that time, he has worked tirelessly to expose the criminal activities of the CIA. He is the author of In Search of Enemies, an exposé of the CIA's covert action in Angola.
Stockwell is a founding member of Peaceways and ARDIS (the Association for Responsible Dissent), an organization of former CIA and Government officials who are openly critical of the CIA's activities. His latest book is entitled The Praetorian Guard: The U.S. Role in the New World Order.
THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA
(For those interested in the truth.)
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