Waterboarded 183 Times in One Month. Torture Issue Blows Up.

[finehoe]

The UN, human rights activists and legal experts have renewed calls for the Obama administration to prosecute US officials responsible for the CIA torture programme revealed in extensive detail following the release of a damning report by the Senate intelligence committee.

The report, released on Tuesday, found the CIA misled the White House, the Justice Department, Congress and the public over a torture programme that was both ineffective and more brutal than the agency disclosed.

"Today's release once again makes crystal clear that the US government used torture. Torture is a crime and those responsible for crimes must be brought to justice," Amnesty International USA's executive director, Steven W Hawkins, said in a statement.

"Under the UN convention against torture, no exceptional circumstances whatsoever can be invoked to justify torture, and all those responsible for authorising or carrying out torture or other ill-treatment must be fully investigated."

In Geneva, the United Nations's special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, Ben Emmerson, said CIA officers and other US government officials should be prosecuted.

"The fact that the policies revealed in this report were authorised at a high level within the US government provides no excuse whatsoever," Emmerson said in a statement.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/09/torture-cia-amnesty-international-human-rights-watch

[KamilahMerritt]

At some point human beings need to come to some universal standard from which we base our interactions with "other" human beings. This question of how to treat "others" has been a painful plague for too many for too long. In the U.S. there were and still are questions about how to treat the following "others" (in no particular order): nonpropertied others, female others, the "Negro Question" was raised in regards to African others, lgbt others, polish others, Irish others, Italian others, Jewish others, catholic others and I am sure I am missing some others but you get the picture.
Now the pertinent issues, in addition to the still simmering others is how to treat Muslim others, detainee others, and illegal immigrant others. Lgbt others are also at the forefront. Our country has not figured out to deal. Obama may still be "evolving" on the matter. Its hard to say what mayor Brown's progress or position is because he refused to take any position firmly or decisively either way when it came to the Human Rights Ordinance. I bet he breathed a sigh of relief at being able to evade voicing a public opinion because it did not get past the City Council. But I digress...
My point is that humans like to make up "others" who we can deny the rights and privileges we would desire in a similar circumstance.
We need to stop this. It paves the way to torture.

[ben says]

Prosecute those responsible.

[finehoe]

[Ajax]

Prosecute those responsible.

The only people who get prosecuted are the whistleblowers who expose the crimes. 

[finehoe]

Detainees can sue Bush-era officials over post-Sept. 11 treatment

Former detainees who say they faced harsh jail conditions due to their faith and ethnicity following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks can pursue a lawsuit against former top U.S. law enforcement officials, a sharply divided federal appeals court ruled on Friday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York voted 6-6 not to hear the case again before the entire court, leaving in place an earlier decision from a three-judge panel. A majority of the court's active judges must approve such a rehearing, known as an "en banc" review.

The plaintiffs were arrested on minor immigration violations and eventually cleared of any connection to terrorism, according to the lawsuit, which was first filed in 2002. Friday's decision clears the way for a possible trial in federal court.

The former detainees have sued officials from the administration of President George W. Bush, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller and former Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James Ziglar.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/arab-muslim-detainees-can-sue-bush-era-officials-over-post-sept-11-treatment