donderdag 23 april 2009

Martelen 100


 Rice, een vrouw, zwart, behorend tot wat Henk Hofland noemt 'de politiek literaire elite.' What is in a name? Indeed.

Rice Gave Early "Waterboarding Green Light"

Thursday 23 April 2009

  Visit article original @ Agence France-Presse 

Washington - The CIA first sought in May 2002 to use harsh interrogation techniques including waterboarding on terror suspects, and was given key early approval by then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, a US Senate intelligence document said.

    The agency got the green light to use the near-drowning technique on July 26, 2002, when attorney general John Ashcroft concluded "that the use of waterboarding was lawful," the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a detailed timeline of the "war on terrorism" interrogations released Wednesday.

    Nine days earlier, the panel said, citing Central Intelligence Agency records, Rice had met with then-director George Tenet and "advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation of Abu Zubaydah," the agency's first high-value Al-Qaeda detainee, pending Justice Department approval.

    Rice's nod is believed to be the earliest known approval by a senior official in the administration of George W. Bush of the intelligence technique which current Attorney General Eric Holder has decried as "torture."

2 opmerkingen:

Sonja zei

Belangrijk is ook om te weten dat de CIA kort nadat het met martelen begon in 2002, heeft gezocht naar juridische bescherming. Dat wil dus zeggen dat ze het idee moeten hebben gehad dat ze iets illegaals aan het doen waren.

Sonja zei

Cover van Life Magazine 1902
The May 22, 1902 issue of Life magazine used this editorial to denounce the torture method now called "waterboarding," which was used extensively in counter-insurgency warfare in the Philippines. In the background can be found representatives, in caricature, of European colonial powers, one of whom says, with some self-satisfaction: "Those pious Yankees can't throw stones at us anymore."

2007: What torture is
You've heard all the euphemisms by now: "enhanced interrogation"; "coercive interrogation"; "aggressive questioning"; "harsh interrogation." Not only have leading politicians and torture apologists used these terms but the mainstream media have adopted them as well, as if writing news stories in which the United States is described as practicing torture is so unimaginable a concept that it requires obfuscating.

In 1948 werden nazi's door een oorlogstribunaal van de VN veroordeeld voor "enhanced interrogation techniques" (verschärfte Vernehmung).

Freezing prisoners to near-death, repeated beatings, long forced-standing, waterboarding, cold showers in air-conditioned rooms, stress positions [Arrest mit Verschaerfung], withholding of medicine and leaving wounded or sick prisoners alone in cells for days on end - all these have occurred at US detention camps under the command of president George W. Bush. Over a hundred documented deaths have occurred in these interrogation sessions. The Pentagon itself has conceded homocide by torture in multiple cases.

De verdediging van de nazi's in het tribunaal was dezelfde als die van personen als Cheney en Rumsfeld.

The Court did not regard any of the above-mentioned circumstances as a sufficient reason for mitigating the punishment and found it necessary to act with the utmost severity. Each of the defendants was responsible for a series of incidents of torture, every one of which could, according to Art. 3 (a), (c) and (d) of the Provisional Decree of 4th May, 1945, be punished by the death sentence.
...
The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

Peter Flik en Chuck Berry-Promised Land

mijn unieke collega Peter Flik, die de vrijzinnig protestantse radio omroep de VPRO maakte is niet meer. ik koester duizenden herinneringen ...