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Local News & Opinion
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Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
03.05 Open Letter to Congressman Bart Stupak Health & Environment
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries 03.18 Pressure Drop: Brave Sir Dennis Ran Away 03.12 Slick Barry and the $100-Billion Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Claim 03.09 Kill Bill: Death to Obamacare! 03.09 Obama’s Rhetoric May Be “Fiery,” But His Health Care Reform Is Still Lukewarm Media Watching
03.17 CNN Scrapes Bottom of Right-Wing Barrel With Erickson Hire 03.16 WPost Blames Obama First, on Israel 03.16 Letter to the New York Times' Editor: Stovepiping To Persia 03.12 Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion 03.11 NYT and the ACORN Hoax 03.05 Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq 03.03 It's Snow News 03.03 The Woeful Washington Post Ref. : The Daily Howler Legal Matters
02.26 America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution US Politics, Policy & Culture
03.11 Power Rangers: Policing the System With the "Fightin' Progressives" 03.09 Thinking About Countings 03.07 Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism 02.25 Future Shock: A Better World Beyond the Imperium High Crimes?
03.19 Israel's Troubling Tilt Toward Apartheid 03.18 The Lawfare Project's Anti-Democratic Agenda 03.16 America's Secret Prisons 03.13 Palestinian Dispossession in East Jerusalem 03.12 Israeli Settlement Expansions Continue 03.11 Brutalizing Palestinian Children 03.08 The Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Barcelona Session 03.05 Targeting Israeli Apartheid 03.01 America's Permanent War Agenda 02.25 Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
03.19 The Growing Movement For Publicly-Owned Banks 03.19 America's "Houdini Recovery" under IMF-Type Austerity 03.14 The Crisis in America's Telecommunications Network 03.09 The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource 03.05 Is the Recovery Real? 03.04 IMF-Style Austerity Measures come to America: What “Fiscal Responsibility” Means To You 03.04 Barry C. Lynn's "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and Economics of Destruction" 03.01 Thinking About Fees International
03.15 Peace Process Hypocrisy: Stillborn from Inception 03.03 Muslim Disunity 03.02 Funding Israeli Militarism, Belligerence and Occupation 02.26 Iran Captures a 'Good' Terrorist We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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VIEWPOINT:Complicity in the Use of Torture
Article One of the Convention's definition of torture includes not only acts committed by public officials, but also the acts to which they acquiesced.
The recent disclosure of the fact that the CIA briefed a bi-partisan group of Senators and Representatives on the Congressional Intelligence Committees about methods of torture used by the CIA, including "waterboarding," is evidence that there is complicity in these crimes by members of Congress.During the Committee's proceedings Mukasey refused under questioning to declare that waterboarding is illegal under the United States Law that includes the Convention Against Torture ratified by the United States Senate.
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Importantly, Article One of the Convention's definition of torture includes not only acts committed by public officials, but also the acts to which they acquiesced. The convention states, "For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental is intentionally inflicted by...or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official." As expressed in a United States Senate's understanding of this point in the Convention the Senate Resolution To Advice and Consent To Ratification (1990) states that in order for an official to acquiesce to an act of torture an official must, "....prior to the activity constituting torture, have awareness of such activity and thereafter breach his or her legal responsibility to intervene to prevent such activity"(CRS-6, Page 9) It is the responsibility of Senators who oversee CIA activities "to intervene to prevent such activity"—to put an end to the CIA's violations of the laws against the use of torture. Instead, these Senators approved and encouraged CIA torture by not acting to intervene. Mukasey's refusal to declare that waterboarding is illegal must be seen against the backdrop of this Senatorial silence and complicity. Senator Lindsay Graham made this point: "If he does not believe that waterboarding is illegal, then that would really put doubts in my own mind [about his appointment], because I don't think you have to have a lot of knowledge about the law to understand this technique violates the Geneva Convention and other statutes." In the light of these revelations, it is now understandable why Democratic Senators Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein voted in the Senate's Judiciary Committee to support the appointment of Michael Mukasey for United States Attorney General. Mukasey, by his refusal to admit the illegality and criminality of the waterboarding method of torture, was assuring the Senators that had been briefed on the use of torture by the CIA that in his tenure as United States Attorney General he would not focus on their failure to intervene, since as far as he was concerned Congress had passed no law designating waterboarding as torture. An exception was Committee Chair Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy. He voted against the appointment of Mukasey in part because of Mukasey's refusal to recognize waterboarding torture as illegal and criminal. The members of Congress who were advised by the CIA that torturing prisoners, including waterboarding, was being used included Rockefeller, from the family that is reaping an added fortune in billions of dollars from their oil, gas, and finance international conglomerates during the invasion and occupation of Iraq; Pelosi, who voted for and continues to vote to fund the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Palestine beyond the internationally recognized 1948 and 1967 border between Palestine and Israel; and Jane Harman, who wrote HR 1955 (now S1959), the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" to put a cap on, and to label as criminal, criticism of the policies she has also supported—policies that are resulting in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents. The Senators who were advised of the CIA's use of torture became complicit in the act of torture upon their failure to intervene in the continuing practice and, even worse, in their encouragement of the CIA's use of torture. That, however, is not the whole of it. We find out now that the CIA has destroyed the tapes of its torture sessions—the torture methods that the Senators were briefed about and where they failed to intervene—the visual and sound version recordings of torture, possibly including waterboarding, that would make Mukasey's inability to classify waterboarding as illegal, criminal torture the mockery that it really is.
The CIA destroyed the tapes—the best evidence of the illegal use of torture—in defiance of an order of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
In short, the CIA destroyed the tapes—the best evidence of the illegal use of torture—in defiance of an order of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in October of 2003 and May of 2004, requiring the CIA to preserve "all records pertaining to the treatment of detainees in its custody."Obviously, the secret affairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee's illegal, criminal acquiescence to and failure to intervene in the use of torture was about to see the light of day, so the CIA destroyed the best evidence of the Senators' and the Representatives' complicity. William C. Carlotti writes from Vermont. Visit his blog.
Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on December 20, 2007. |
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