Re: OT: Physicians for a National Health Program

[Roger W <allucan8@xxxxxxx>]

On Dec 20, 5:05 pm, "Just Looking" <nos...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >Who the fuck is Andrew Sullivan and why should we care?
>
> According to Wiki he worked at The New Republic, Time and Atlantic Monthly=

> as a popular libertarian conservative blogger. Also not US citizen because=

> he is A HIV positive. He's is British. He is gay. I don't know why you
> should care about any of that.

No Shit? Is that so? I used to know a gay libertarian. He was opposed
to cocksucking government interferance.

>
> "Roger W" <alluc...@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
>
> news:af35260d-999f-4b81-b92d-0f2c5cae1762@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> On Dec 20, 4:25 am, "Robert L Bass" <RobertLB...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > > The only thing that bothers me about that sentence is the
> > > implication that you might be willing to give that power to some
> > > different president.
>
> > > Personally, I wouldn't trust any of 'em with it.
>
> > The following was actuually written by a *former* friend and
> > supporter of Bush:
>
> The opinions of a "former friend" would not mean shit to me.
>
>
>
> > "Bush's torturers follow where the Nazis led" -- Andrew Sullivan
>
> Who the fuck is Andrew Sullivan and why should we care?
>
>
>
>
>
> > "I remember that my first response to the reports of abuse and
> > torture at Guantanamo Bay was to accuse the accusers of exaggeration
> > or deliberate deception. I didn't believe America would ever do those
> > things. I'd also supported George W Bush in 2000, believed it
> > necessary to give the president the benefit of the doubt in wartime,
> > and knew Donald Rumsfeld as a friend."
>
> > "It struck me as a no-brainer that this stuff was being invented by
> > the far left or was part of Al-Qaeda propaganda. After all, they
> > train captives to lie about this stuff, don't they? Bottom line: I
> > trusted the president in a time of war to obey the rule of law that
> > we were and are defending. And then I was forced to confront the
> > evidence."
>
> > "From almost the beginning of the war, it is now indisputable, the
> > Bush administration made a strong and formative decision: in the
> > absence of good intelligence on the Islamist terror threat after
> > 9/11, it would do what no American administration had done before. It
> > would torture detainees to get information."
>
> > "This decision was and is illegal, and violates America's treaty
> > obligations, the military code of justice, the United Nations
> > convention against torture, and US law. Although America has allied
> > itself over the decades with some unsavoury regimes around the world
> > and has come close to acquiescing to torture, it has never itself
> > tortured. It has also, in liberating the world from the evils of
> > Nazism and communism, and in crafting the Geneva conventions, done
> > more than any other nation to banish torture from the world. George
> > Washington himself vowed that it would be a defining mark of the new
> > nation that such tactics, used by the British in his day, would be
> > anathema to Americans."
>
> > "But Bush decided that 9/11 changed all that. Islamists were
> > apparently more dangerous than the Nazis or the Soviets, whom
> > Americans fought and defeated without resorting to torture. The
> > decision to enter what Dick Cheney called "the dark side" was made,
> > moreover, in secret; interrogators who had no idea how to do these
> > things were asked to replicate some of the methods US soldiers had
> > been trained to resist if captured by the Soviets or Vietcong."
>
> > "Classic torture techniques, such as waterboarding, hypothermia,
> > beatings, excruciating stress positions, days and days of sleep
> > deprivation, and threats to family members (even the children of
> > terror suspects), were approved by Bush and inflicted on an unknown
> > number of terror suspects by American officials, CIA agents and, in
> > the chaos of Iraq, incompetents and sadists at Abu Ghraib. And when
> > the horror came to light, they denied all of it and prosecuted a few
> > grunts at the lowest level. The official reports were barred from
> > investigating fully up the chain of command."
>
> > "Legally, the White House knew from the start that it was on
> > extremely shaky ground. And so officials told pliant in-house lawyers
> > to concoct memos to make what was illegal legal. Their irritation
> > with the rule of law, and their belief that the president had the
> > constitutional authority to waive it, became a hallmark of their
> > work."
>
> > "They redefined torture solely as something that would be equivalent
> > to the loss of major organs or leading to imminent death. Everything
> > else was what was first called 'coercive interrogation', subsequently
> > amended to 'enhanced interrogation'. These terms were deployed in
> > order for the president to be able to say that he didn't support
> > 'torture'. We were through the looking glass."
>
> > "After Abu Ghraib, some progress was made in restraining these
> > torture policies. The memo defining torture out of existence was
> > rescinded. The Military Commissions Act was crafted to prevent the
> > military itself from being forced to violate its own code of justice.
> > But the administration clung to its torture policies, and tried every
> > legal manoeuvre to keep it going and keep it secret. Much of this
> > stemmed from the vice-president's office."
>
> > "Last week The New York Times revealed more. We now know that long
> > after Abu Ghraib was exposed, the administration issued internal
> > legal memos that asserted the legality of many of the techniques
> > exposed there. The memos not only gave legal cover to waterboarding,
> > hypothermia and beating but allowed them in combination to intensify
> > the effect."
>
> > "The argument was that stripping a chained detainee naked, pouring
> > water over him while keeping room temperatures cold enough to induce
> > repeated episodes of dangerous hypothermia, was not 'cruel, inhuman
> > or degrading'. We have a log of such a technique being used at
> > Guantanamo. The victim had to be rushed to hospital, brought back
> > from death, then submitted once again to 'enhanced interrogation'."
>
> > "George Orwell would have been impressed by the phrase 'enhanced
> > interrogation technique'. By relying on it, the White House spokesman
> > last week was able to say with a straight face that the
> > administration strongly opposed torture and that 'any procedures they
> > use are tough, safe, necessary and lawful'."
>
> > "So is 'enhanced interrogation' torture? One way to answer this
> > question is to examine history. The phrase has a lineage. Versch=E4rfte
> > Verneh-mung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact
> > term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the
> > 'third degree'. It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress
> > positions and long-time sleep deprivation."
>
> > "The United States prosecuted it as a war crime in Norway in 1948.
> > The victims were not in uniform - they were part of the Norwegian
> > insurgency against the German occupation - and the Nazis argued, just
> > as Cheney has done, that this put them outside base-line protections
> > (subsequently formalised by the Geneva conventions)."
>
> > "The Nazis even argued that 'the acts of torture in no case resulted
> > in death. Most of the injuries inflicted were slight and did not
> > result in permanent disablement'. This argument is almost verbatim
> > that made by John Yoo, the Bush administration's house lawyer, who
> > now sits comfortably at the Washington think tank, the American
> > Enterprise Institute."
>
> > "The US-run court at the time clearly rejected Cheney's arguments.
> > Base-line protections against torture applied, the court argued, to
> > all detainees, including those out of uniform. They didn't qualify
> > for full PoW status, but they couldn't be abused either. The court
> > also relied on the plain meaning of torture as defined under US and
> > international law: 'The court found it decisive that the defendants
> > had inflicted serious physical and mental suffering on their victims,
> > and did not find sufficient reason for a mitigation of the punishment
> > . . .'"
>
> > "The definition of torture remains the infliction of 'severe mental
> > or physical pain or suffering' with the intent of procuring
> > intelligence. In 1948, in other words, America rejected the semantics
> > of the current president and his aides. The penalty for those who
> > were found guilty was death. This is how far we've come. And this
> > fateful, profound decision to change what America stands for was made
> > in secret. The president kept it from Congress and from many parts of
> > his own administration."
>
> > "Ever since, the United States has been struggling to figure out what
> > to do about this, if anything. So far Congress has been extremely
> > passive, although last week's leaks about the secret pro-torture
> > memos after Abu Ghraib forced Arlen Specter, a Republican senator, to
> > proclaim that the memos 'are more than surprising. I think they are
> > shocking'. Yet the public, by and large, remains indifferent; and all
> > the Republican candidates, bar John McCain and Ron Paul, endorse
> > continuing the use of torture."
>
> > "One day America will come back- the America that defends human
> > rights, the America that would never torture detainees, the America
> > that leads the world in barring the inhuman and barbaric. But not
> > until this president leaves office. And maybe not even then."
>
> > --www.timesonline.co.uk
>
> > --
>
> > Regards,
> > Robert L Bass
>
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