We do
not torture
Posted by
Rachel
Neumann on November 8, 2005 at 10:55 AM.
 |
| This is just friendly interrogation |
Tell that to Muhammad al-Assad, Salah Nasser Salim 'Ali, and Muhammad Faraj Ahmed Bashmilah who were recently released, still hooded, after three years of beind "disappeared" and tortured by U.S. agents, according to an Amnesty International report.
Tell that to Hussain Youssouf Mustafa, who spent two years in American capitvity, and told this story to Mother Jones:
Mustafa estimated that he was interrogated about 25 times. Sometimes, he said, the soldiers forced him to kneel on a concrete floor with a bag over his head. Other times they woke him from sleep or interrupted him in prayer. He said he occasionally heard detainees screaming and concluded that they were being beaten. Then one day, he recalled, "an American soldier took me blindfolded. My hands were tightly cuffed, with my ears plugged so I could not hear properly, and my mouth covered so I could only make a muffled scream. Two soldiers, one on each side, forced me to bend down, and a third pressed my face down over a table. A fourth soldier then pulled down my trousers. They rammed a stick up my rectum."
Perhaps Bush should tell it to Mullah Habibullah, a 30-year-old man from the southern province of Oruzgan, Afghanistan and Dilawar, a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver with wife and chid. Oh, he can't. According to the same Mother Jones article, as well as the Baltimomre Sun, the two men were murdered. While being interrogated by U.S. agents in Bagram, they were hung by their arms from the ceiling and beaten so severely that, according to a report by Army investigators later leaked to the Baltimore Sun, had they lived, their legs would have needed to be amputated.
Perhaps Bush can look Dilawar's wife and 2-year-old daughter in the eyes
and tell them "We do not torture."
I know I couldn't.
2+2=Impeachment
It's all coming together now. The lies, the Iraq War, torture. Recent revelations expose the impotence and immorality of the Bush Administration's national security apparatus and a poll tells us exactly what to do about it.
First the administration violated the soul and conscience of America by torturing Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. Then they used the dubious information extracted to deceive the nation into war. Cheney even continued to use the information well after al-Libi recanted. Americans very clearly stated their desires should it be found that the president lied about the war...
(For information from the military and conservatives on why torture is ineffective, try this Anne Applebaum column or Sebastian Holsclaw's arguments...)
The New York Times recently got a hold of Defense Intelligence Agency documents stating that al-Libi's testimony was "probably misleading"; documents dating back to February 2002, a year before the Iraq War started and well before statements based on this confession were made.
As I write this, the
Center for American Progress released a thorough documentation of the
misleading "evidence" used by the Bush administration to take us to war.