Support BuzzFlash Get a copy of click image BuzzFlash Content Interviews P.M. Carpenter Maureen Farrell World Media Watch Barbara's Daily Buzz Eric Harrison Thomas Burns Steven C. Day The Angry Liberal Editorials Contributors Mailbag Perspectives Analysis News Alerts Link Archives Search About FAQ Buy a Book and Support BuzzFlash

Time to TOSS the WHOLE ROTTEN BUNCH!

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by One Citizen

No one seriously expects President Bush to actually go so far as to fire Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld, even though it has now been reported that he had authorized a secret program that encouraged the torture of Iraqi detainees allegedly to obtain intelligence about Iraqi insurgents. [New Yorker]

After all, it's also been revealed that Bush knew about Rummy's policy all along, and it was actually approved by his National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice -- who, by the way, is in charge of his recently formed Iraq Stabilization Group.

Many were wondering why Bush had very publicly praised Rumsfeld for a "job well done" immediately after a private viewing of the torture photos. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]
This wasn't just a tacit show of support for in general, it was a blatant show of support for an administration policy which those photos had just shown him were being carried out!

By all means don't let that stop us from properly demanding that Rummy and his staff be fired. It is important that the Bush administration doesn't simply ask Rumsfeld to resign, because now that the facts are in, they should all be properly fired as soon as possible, and immediately escorted from their government offices, and taken directly before a U.N. war crimes tribunal.

No matter how Bush supporters attempt to spin it, the public's demand to fire Rumsfeld can not be relegated to merely "liberals playing politics." If Mr. Hersh's report bears out as truthful, any public outcry for tossing the whole bunch out can only be interpreted as a sane and informed U.S. citizenry's attempt to regain a modicum of safety for our troops who remain in harm's way.

Why? Partially because now, in retrospect, virtually all of the media reports thus far have held that the Iraqi insurgents had been treating American troops they'd taken captive far better than we have the Iraqi detainees! That is, up until the graphic and controversial videotape of Nicholas Berg's execution appeared -- AFTER the torture photos became public. Before that time nary a single photo of Pfc. Jessica Lynch on a dog leash nor any videotape of Army Spec. Shoshanna Johnson being stacked naked in a pile with other prisoners had surfaced.

Not because they WEREN'T videotaping them, but because they weren't abusing our troops.

And the U.S. public has rightfully expected that nothing like that would ever come up because we (the US) signed the UN Convention Against Torture in 1994. In Article One from that convention, the US declared that:

" ...torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity." [St. Louis Tribune]

Although this is a basic definition of torture as ratified by our U.S. Congress, it appears that this is yet ANOTHER briefing that the Bush Administration hasn't read all the way through.

Is that really an acceptable excuse for authorizing a policy of torturing POW's?

Any war veteran worth his pension should remember that it's long been a source of honor among our troops that "we" treated our prisoners differently from the way "they" treated theirs. In fact that's one reason why so many of our young men have felt that it's honorable to volunteer to serve during wartime. It used to be noble to support and defend the cause of liberty and justice for all oppressed people.

It now appears as if our leaders have been sanctioning policies designed to terrorize the oppressed people of Iraq!

The mere suggestion that our American forces have been torturing detainees just seems (to me, anyway) like a basic violation of every decent American's core principles.

Yet this vile policy of the Bush Administration, if true, will have turned out to be perhaps the most reckless -- and unnecessary -- escalation of the war on terror to date. Reckless because it obviously lowers the standard for the treatment of our troops who are now, or may soon be, war prisoners. And unnecessary because experts testify time and again that studies in human nature show that torture for the purpose of gleaning information from the victim seldom, if ever, produces the desired result. This happens because victims most often are coerced into telling the torturer what he thinks the torturer wants to hear whether or not he (or she) even knows any of the facts sought by the torturer!

If you believe that the evil activities at Abu Ghraib prison were merely the result of a limited aberration, or feel compelled to buy into the right wing media's propaganda downplaying the Bush policy of abuse as mere fraternity-style hazing, then you probably aren't aware that in the mid-90s the Baltimore Sun ran an award-winning series of stories by staff writers Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson documenting our U.S. Ambassador to the Honduras Negroponte's apparent collusion with death squads and his cover-up of rampant human rights abuses.

For example:

For 78 days in 1983, Ines Consuelo Murillo was tortured by a secret Honduran military intelligence unit called Battalion 316.

Her captors tied the 24-year-old woman's hands and feet, hung her naked from the ceiling and beat her...fondled her. They nearly drowned her. They clipped wires to her breasts and sent electricity surging through her body.

"It was so frightening...my body would shake when they shocked me. They put rags in my throat... But I screamed so loud, sometimes it sounded like an animal. I would even scare myself."

Murillo is one of hundreds abducted and tortured during the 1980s by Battalion 316, a unit trained and equipped by the CIA to gather intelligence about subversives, at a time when Honduras was crucial to the Reagan administration's war against communism in Central America.

International Law specialist Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch: "When John Negroponte was ambassador [to Honduras] he looked the other way when serious atrocities were committed. One would have to wonder what kind of message the Bush administration is sending about human rights by this appointment."

The Bush administration knew full well that Americans would be repulsed by the thought of torturing our detainees. Why else would the Defense Department have denied the charges so strongly?

Let's not forget the shocking fact that 70-90 percent of those "detainees" in Abu Ghraib prison are no more than innocent bystanders waiting to be "interrogated"! [Washington Post]

This week we will see yet another a battle between New Yorker magazine journalist Seymour Hersh and the NeoCons. My money's on Mr. Hersh. He's weathered their attacks before and has been fully vindicated every single time.

So it appears nigh time that citizens call, fax, or write their local CongressPerson with a demand to fire Rumsfeld from his post as Secretary of Defense and block Bush's appointment of John Negroponte to the post of U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. [Baltimore Sun]

Support the troops in the old fashioned way: Demand proper leadership for them!

To let your Congressperson know what you expect of them, the following link lists ways to contact each. http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

And don't forget to let your Representatives know that you're sending a copy of your demand to "toss the whole rotten bunch out" to your favorite local newspaper.

-One Citizen
Charleston, WV

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION