From Britain’s The Independent, 27 April 2011, “US doctors ‘hid signs of torture’ at Guantanamo“:
US government doctors who cared for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay deliberately concealed or ignored evidence that their patients were being tortured, the first official study of its kind has found.
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A detailed review of the medical records and case files of nine Guantanamo inmates has concluded that medical personnel at the US detention centre were complicit in suppressing evidence that would demonstrate systematic torture of the inmates.
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The review is published in an online scientific journal, PLoS Medicine, and is the first peer-reviewed study analysing the behaviour of the doctors in charge of Guantanamo inmates who were subjected to “enhanced interrogation” techniques that a decade ago had been classed by the US government as torture.
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Vincent Iacopino, senior medical adviser for Physicians for Human Rights, and Brigadier General Stephen Xenakis, a retired US Army medical officer, had access to the medical records and case files while acting on behalf of defence lawyers.
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They concluded that no doctor could have failed to notice the medical signs and symptoms of the extreme interrogation techniques and unauthorised assaults that other physicians would recognise as torture, such as severe beatings resulting in bone fractures, sexual assaults, mock executions, and simulated drowning by “waterboarding”.
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“The findings in these nine cases indicate that medical doctors and mental health personnel assigned to the US Department of Defence neglected and/or concealed medical evidence of intentional harm,” the authors of the study concluded. “The full extent of medical complicity in US torture practices will not be known until there is a thorough, impartial investigation including relevant classified information. We believe that, until such time as such an investigation is undertaken, and those responsible for torture are held accountable, the ethical integrity of medical and other healing professions remains compromised.”
Nancy Pelosi, (then) House Speaker, Tim Dickinson interview published in the 5 March 2009 issue of Rolling Stone:
The last administration didn’t place much of an emphasis on accountability. Sen. Patrick Leahy called yesterday for a “truth commission” to investigate abuses of power under Bush, and Rep. John Conyers has sponsored a similar bill. Do you support such a process?
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I support what Mr. Conyers is doing. I look at it from the standpoint of a separation of powers. We believe there was a politicizing of the Justice Department under President Bush, that conversations took place at the White House that supported that activity. We asked for those documents, but we did not receive them. We asked for those people to testify, but they did not come. That, for us, is a violation of the Constitution. So what we’re talking about is bigger than any specific activity. We’re talking about contempt of Congress — Article One, the legislative branch.
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I also support what President Obama has said: “My approach is to look forward, recognizing that no one is above the law.” Both of those approaches are correct. It is also correct for us, as the first branch of government, to say, “The White House, no matter who is in it, cannot violate the Constitution by not being accountable to the Congress.” […] __
But Conyers is asking for more than that. He wants subpoena power to investigate potential abuses of war powers, to force people to testify about torture and find out what was done at Guantánamo and the CIA’s black sites. Do you foresee a scenario in which senior members of the Bush administration are actually prosecuted?
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I think so. The American people deserve answers… Under Bush, the Justice Department told the U.S. attorney not to prosecute the case. So the beat goes on — it just gets worse. We don’t know what will happen, because they’ve delayed it a long time.
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I’m talking more about the level of a Donald Rumsfeld — people who authorized torture and greenlighted the kidnapping and rendition of innocent people.
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I didn’t like their policies, which is why we needed to win the election — to get them out of power. But I don’t know what the evidence is against them on any specific charge. When you have a truth-and-reconciliation commission . . . look, I’m still fighting the bombing of Cambodia. I still have my gripes with the administration that bombed Cambodia before you were born, so I think it’s important to bring these things out. If you have a case against someone, you bring a case.
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With all due respect, we’ve had elections before that tossed people out, but then the same people returned to power later just as Dick Cheney did after leaving the Nixon administration. If we turn the page without full examination and prosecution, aren’t we in danger of seeing this again?
__
We should have full examination, I’m not denying that. You asked me a specific question: “Should they be charged?” I think that further information might take us to that place, but what we want to do is unify the American people. The American people do not want wrongdoing to go unaddressed. We don’t want any Democratic or Republican administration to abuse power, and that’s what they tried to do with wiretapping, that’s what they did with politicizing the Justice Department, that’s what they did in many more ways that we could see almost on a daily basis. And yes, that should be stopped.
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What Mr. Leahy is putting forward, in terms of a truth-and-reconciliation committee, has always been helpful. It was helpful in South Africa, it was helpful in Rwanda, and they were talking about doing it in places like Lebanon…
Hendrick Hertzberg, in the 18 April 2011 New Yorker:
The collapse of Obama’s effort to close Guantánamo is the kind of failure that, in our atomized, increasingly dysfunctional political system, has a thousand deadbeat dads. But it has always been within the President’s power to remedy one aspect of the moral morass that Guantánamo symbolizes: the lack of any official accountability for the abuses of the past, especially the embrace of torture. There is no dispute that there was torture, that it was systematic, and that it was encouraged at the highest levels—George W. Bush, in his memoir, currently adorning the best-seller lists, practically boasts of approving it. Perhaps there are good, prudential reasons for stopping short of prosecuting those who authorized this vile offense to elementary morality for the crimes against American and international law that it entailed. No such reasons forbid the appointment of a truth commission. The work of such a commission, charged with compiling the record, affixing responsibility, and formally acknowledging what was done, would be a healthy act of atonement.
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Obama has said more than once that he prefers to look forward, not backward. Not everyone feels that way. As soon as the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reversal was announced, Peter King, the New York Republican who heads the House Committee on Homeland Security, called it “yet another vindication of President Bush’s detention policies.” It is no such thing. Even with all the failings of the current Administration, the difference between its approach and its predecessor’s is the difference between night and day, albeit a rainy, miserable day, overcast with dark clouds. But, by elevating amnesia to official policy, the President has put himself in a poor position to make even that argument.
“Look forward, not back” may be an excellent mantra for an individual abuse survivor. For a great and powerful nation, not so much.
Bulworth
Obviously a terra-rist luving publication.
The Tim Channel
And yet, somehow, our society found fifty cops to raid Charlie Sheen’s home a couple weeks before the start of his Torpedo of Crazy tour. Priorities.
Enjoy.
BGinCHI
Something tells me that ignoring history dooms you to repeat it.
Add this torture evidence to Trump’s “let’s just take their oil…let’s be tough” rhetoric, and you see how impossible it is in this country right now to call out bullies and fools.
This must be what a slippery slope feels like when you’re actually on it.
Hypnos
So, can we drop the pretense that the US is, was, or has ever been, any different from any other imperial power ever to impose its light presence on this Earth?
There is no shining city on a hill. There is no force for good, let alone human rights of democracy – towards the establishment of which the US has probably been more of a hindrance than a help.
Really, we all know what this is about, ever since the days of Sargon III: making a desert, and calling it peace.
Violet
Just keep walking. Right?
cathyx
Hippocratic oath? Not too much.
Elia Isquire
Remains the clear blotch on Obama’s record thus far.
Zifnab
It’s a great way to walk yourself into the next abusive relationship.
Antonius
“For a great and powerful nation, not so much.”
Or powerful, anyway.
Linda Featheringill
Damn.
I earned an MA in History concentrating on Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Medical doctors were complicit in a lot of the stuff that went down. Mengele didn’t act within a vacuum.
I really, really hate to hear this about the US doctors. Whether you believe in the soul or not, and whether you believe in sin or not, this behavior definitely is a terrible stain on the individuals involved.
May they remember what they have done every day of their lives.
Again I say, damn.
sb
I don’t recognize the country I grew up in.
jl
PLoS Medicine is a relatively new internet based free access medical journal. It is influential, highly cited, and I have heard that its peer review process is quite rigorous.
Some of their articles have gotten big media attention. I wonder if this story will.
Chris
@Hypnos:
This Frenchman (dual citizen) still appreciates the U.S’s work in post-World War Two France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland and West Germany. I’m under no illusions that it was a happy kumbaya event, and I know some ugly shit went down behind the scenes (or rather, out in the open before being buried by the history books). Still, the end result was a healthy, working, democratic Western Europe.
The U.S. could’ve done it differently. The difference between De Gaulle’s France being allowed to leave NATO and pursue an independent policy without punishment, and the way the Soviets reacted to the Prague Spring with tanks and martial law, is a pretty striking one. A pity the U.S. didn’t treat its other allies, especially those in the third world, the same way.
General Stuck
The American people by about 3 to 1 agree to look forward not back, concerning the possible prosecution of the Bushies. They know he tortured folks, but most believe terrorists, alleged or otherwise, deserved it. There has been enough media highlighting what waterboarding is, to where the average joe sixpack knows that it is not quite right, normally. And any prosecutor in the country will tell you it is foolish to bring a case to trial that you would likely lose. It’s called prosecutorial discretion.
That said, the game isn’t up yet, and there are people from justice investigating under the radar looking to find out the details of what happened, for informed decisions to be made later. I will repeat what I have always said on this topic. The Bush torture regime cannot just be swept under the rug as some anomaly by a few bad apples under duress, or whatever. It was systematic, with complex infrastructure built and ordered from the top, with scurrilous legal opinions. IT WAS OFFICIAL AMERICAN POLICY. That is a first for the US to embrace such a policy, and stands out like a big sore thumb amongst all the other wicked shit this countries government has wrought over it’s lifetime. There has to be some reckoning of this in the public square, so we shall see.
But anyone who thinks Obama going full bore on charging the Bush administration with crimes against humanity will go over well with an approving public, is smoking too much of the libtard hash. He could forget a second term, but if he gets one, then he is free from electoral and popular opinion politics. We shall see then
James E. Powell
@Hypnos:
No, we cannot. That pretense is the only thing most Americans have going for them, identity-wise. Well, that and white supremacy.
James E Powell
@sb:
I graduated high school in 1973. George Wallace and Lt. William Calley were regarded as heroes by many Americans, perhaps a majority. It seems like the same country that I grew up in.
Martin
Well, some local good news on a different prisoner front:
CA has had 5 executions in the last decade.
burnspbesq
Ever the optimist, Stuck.
Statutes of limitation are running.
If now isn’t the right time to convene grand juries and courts martial, when will there ever be a right time?
What’s that old quote: “all that is required for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.” or something like that.
I grow increasingly tired of waiting.
joeyess
It’s a good thing they took impeachment off of the table, wasn’t it? Fools, cowards or complicit. You make the call.
Loneoak
Just in case some of you aren’t aware of it, PLoS Medicine (and all PLoS journals) are open access, so you can read the study and editorial for free.
@jl:
EDIT: Sorry, jl, missed your comment.
Calouste
@Chris:
De Gaulle had nukes. They give independence.
America did the same shit after WWII in Italy and Greece that the Soviets did in most of Eastern Europe, except of course the US did it to keep the communists out of power and the SU did it to get the communists in power. Well, maybe a few less guns and a few more CIA.
General Stuck
@burnspbesq:
I said a
Doesn’t have to be formal prosecutions in federal courts, can be some type of truth and reconciliation commission. Some of those folks died in captivity, and I wonder about if there exists otherwise statutes of limitations. I am quite certain, or near so, GWB, or Dick Cheney will ever see the inside of a court room, though never say never is a good personal policy to have.
The main thing is to bring all this malignant shit out into the sunshine in a formal official way. Ever how it’s done.
Bob Loblaw
@General Stuck:
No, we won’t “see then,” you pie-in-the-sky fuckhead. Administrations do not prosecute their predecessors in any but the most exceptional circumstances in any democracy on the planet.
They just don’t.
That’s not a knock on Obama. It’s an impossible expectation. And you idiots who are “let down” by this, or expect some secret master plan to come to fruition sometime in the future, are completely fucking delusional.
burnspbesq
@joeyess:
Aw, come on. You can count to 67 just as well as anyone else can. What would have been the benefit?
dr. bloor
@jl:
Every place but here, I would imagine.
Omnes Omnibus
@General Stuck:
@Bob Loblaw:
The best we will ever see on this is some low to mid-level people being prosecuted and maybe some form of truth and reconciliation commission, maybe. Hopefully, none of the high ranking national security people for the Bush administration will be able to travel abroad for fear of being Pinocheted.
General Stuck
@Bob Loblaw:
Oh gee, Loblaw got that stick still stuck in his ass. Did I say to expect trials and prosecutions? When are you going to learn to read before jumping with both feet into a bucket of stupid.
Read, read read and think some before spouting off your mouth loblaw. It is embarrassing making you look like a fool so often.
Chris
@Calouste:
In France too, believe it or not. Less guns, more CIA, and a hell of a lot more hired local Mafia. (In France and Italy, that is. It was less subtle in Greece and Turkey).
And you think the Soviets would have tolerated Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia developing nukes? They’d have Red Armied their ass in a New York nanosecond.
joeyess
@burnspbesq: Who said anything about a conviction? Here’s the reason: The trial itself. The investigations that would have taken place, the discovery, the absolute destruction of the word conservative for generations.
But guess what? President Obama owns this now and I wouldn’t put it past the GOP to investigate him for it. They wouldn’t bat an eye at the backlash or the fact that they gave the green light for this in the first place or bold-faced facts thrown in their faces. Do you know why? Because they lie without care or worry.
Steven
I suspect that the small chance that Obama, in a second term, would support an investigation into the crimes of the Bush administration is the explanation for the Republicans’ reckless obstruction and fear-mongering. They’re terrified of what truth about Bush would mean for their party’s survival and the Koch banana republic project they’ve bet on.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Chris:
Not to mention what the heirs of Stalin would have done about the whole Jerry-Lewis-is-a-genius thing if that nonsense had broken out on their side of the Iron Curtain [shudders].
Martin
@Bob Loblaw: Yep. If an executive commits a crime, there’s a process to deal with that. The public and Congress decided to not pursue that process. It’s not up to the next holder of the executive office to do it. That’s simply how it works.
And even if that were different, the result wouldn’t be. The establishment and enforcement of crimes is far more arbitrary than anyone’s moral compass wishes it to be. The public only tolerates laws as far as they feel it benefits them. If drugs don’t benefit them, it’s criminalized. If drugs do benefit, it’s not criminalized. Between the two points there’s a sliding scale on enforcement.
A number of years back was a story in a small town somewhere in the midwest or south about the local sheriff being elected out and a new tough-on-crime guy getting elected in. Being a farm town, and the difficulty of reliably running a farm year-in and year-out, many, many farmers had a little marijuana plot on their property. If the crop came in, they’d turn the plants under. If the crop didn’t come in, they had something to fall back on to make the mortgage. It was too much of a crime to do when not necessary but too little of a crime to throw the farm away over. Anyway, the new sheriff cracked down on the farmers in a year when crops were bad, and they immediately recalled him and installed the old guy, who looked the other way in the bad crop years but didn’t let people get greedy in the good years.
Laws are only enforced when there is public support to do it. There just aren’t enough people in this country who care about the issue to justify kicking over the political shit bucket.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: To the extent that anything would be prosecuted as a war crime, no statute of limitations applies.
alwhite
I read accounts by people who were tortured & they said the worst days were the ones that they were seen by a doctor. The doctors job was to tell the torturers how much further they could go. They might patch you up a little but only so you could withstand more torture.
There has to be a special hell for people who would do that.
General Stuck
I think it’s sort of cool though, somebody on this blog saying i am “let down” or disappointed in something Obama has responsibility for. It makes me feel so “progressive” and just a little faint. Thank you lobslaw, you art my personal hero for today.
WHERE’S MY BUSH PROSECUTION PONY!!
Kucinich/Greenwald 2012 !!
Lydgate
@alwhite: If not hell, at least their state medical board.
Cermet
Yes, when the public doesn’t support enforcement of laws against high public officials … wait, Clinton was Impeached yet the public didn’t support that but the thugs did it and are winning electrons still – bull shit. Demorats helped by actively looking the other way and Obama only wants to be a good House … uh, Servant and look forward. He only wants everyone to forget the monsters, what they did and make this a part of acceptable behavior by presidents and his CIA dogs, DoD ass lickers and skin head led inferior court.
Torture, it was the shit sandwich the thugs forced us all to eat and if we continue to look the other way, someday we will be hit hard by this illegal, immoral criminal behavior again and mostly amerikans will suffer from it – just wait.
Omnes Omnibus
@Lydgate: Yes, I have trouble with the idea that these guys would keep their licenses to practice medicine.
Bob Loblaw
@Omnes Omnibus:
That would be even worse than just doing nothing. Fucking over low level non-decision makers and forcing them to take pleas rather than use their testimony to prosecute higher up the chain of command is the opposite of the pursuit of justice. It’s just a fancier cover-up.
Unless you think the Abu Ghraib outcome was fair and well handled.
singfoom
I wish prosecutions would happen. I know they won’t. A hearty fuck you to anyone who is bothered by the fact that I’m offended that the rule of law has not been upheld.
The stain on our nation will not be removed unless actual justice is achieved. If you want to insult the fact that I care deeply about the rule of law, then fuck you.
You call it a pony, I call it the basis for our nation.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob Loblaw: Let me change it to “the most …” rather than “the best ….”
General Stuck
@singfoom:
I was spoofin with the pony quip, and agree with you in principle 100 percent. But lobslaw, like a full moon is right once in a cycle about democracies, and double so ours having a current regime prosecute the former. There have been lower level prosecutions, like Watergate and Iran/Contra. But the founders put in venue for dealing with scoflaws in office, and that is impeachment and senate trial for removal from office. The fact that our current state of political polarization makes that near impossible, especially when most of the country agrees with Bush and Cheney did and don’t see it as torture.
There is a stability issue of the country that is real in such events as one party trying to lock up the top leaders of the other party, and while rule of law is vital, it shouldn’t be a suicide pact either. At least something to think about.
Calouste
@Chris:
None of the Soviet satellite states had the research capacity or enough desert/Pacific atol available to actually develop and test an A-bomb, so that question is moot.
transmaniacon
@Bob Loblaw:
Whoa, who said anything about a secret master plan?
cmorenc
@Hypnos:
Actually, there was a brief, supernova-bright time in our nation’s history when we DID come fairly close to living up to our “shining city on a hill”, and that was the era during World War II and the immediate postwar period running up through about the start of the Korean War, when we truly were in a do-or-die battle against truly evil imperialism under Hitler’s Germany and Japan. That, and the country surviving the crisis of the long Great Depression which preceded it, emerging into a magnificent postwar economic boom which, together with the GI bill, supported an enormous expansion of upward social mobility and growth of a solid, secure middle class. Those who lived as part of the generation who fought and won World War II really did persevere, sacrifice, and succeed through something enormous difficulty, self-sacrifice, a shared experience spread broadly across all classes and walks of society. See either the HBO series “Band of Brothers” or “The Pacific” and you’ll get a sense of what they lived through.
This WW II era and its immediate aftermath, together with the emerging menace of Soviet Russia and the fall of China to the Communists, different sorts of totalitarian menaces than the one we had just defeated with the bitter, dangerous taste of Fascist totalitarian imperialism fresh in our mouths, strongly reinforced our earned self-image as a nation of do-righters standing on a bright shining city on a hill. But alas, it also set us up for hubris and self-deception and reckless misadventures, starting with Vietnam. There are wide swaths of Americans who are unable to let go of this magnificent image of American exceptionalism, and see the flawed, decadent, and even sometimes evil misdeeds and misadventures this country has engaged in, whether it be Vietnam, meddling in Iran and Central America in the supposed pursuit of anti-communism but which has come back to bite us hard over the following decades, and while we’re at it, Bush’s war against Iraq. Or, the way Bush misused our united sense of patriotism and justified outrage at 9/11 to trick us into a totally unnecessary war, and to take this country down the path of indefinite extralegal detention and torture. Many people simply cannot and will not face up to our hard fall from the shining city on a hill.
coloradoblue
Obama is a war criminal. I don’t support war criminals or others who support war criminals.
Shame on this nation.
The ‘good Nazis’ get away again.
soonergrunt
@Bob Loblaw:
It wasn’t. But that does not excuse the conduct of those who were tried and convicted in the least.
I have hope that there will be a reckoning. Maybe that’s naive, but I’m under no illusions that GW Bush will ever pay for his crimes.
Cheney, maybe. He’s hated just enough, and just enough people believe he was the brains anyway.
Yoo, Bybee, Addington, Rice, Rumsfeld, and the other fucks. They can’t hide behind a statute of limitations.
I still hope.
Omnes Omnibus
@coloradoblue: I’ll bite. what is/are Obama’s war crime/s?
General Stuck
@transmaniacon:
Isn’t it cool that loblaw makes a delusional accusation regarding someone having “a master secret plan” in the same sentence. Secret don’t mean what it used to, I guess.
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt: If prosecutions get as high as Yoo, Bybee, and Addington, I will be quite pleased. If nothing else, we should encourage other countries to invite those fuckers overseas for lecture tours so someone can snatch and try them.
General Stuck
@Omnes Omnibus:
Wish you hadn’t bit. In the past, when I’ve asked that question, it was followed by about 40 Greenwald links.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I’ll throw out a bad historical analogy for you all to rip it to pieces. Obama’s denunciation of Bush admin. torture policies while in campaign mode in 2008 combined with the failure of his DOJ to prosecute them has a parallel in the way that Nikita Krushchev denounced Stalin’s Personality Cult in his secret speech at the 20th Party Congress in 1956, while conspicuously failing to do anything to punish Stalin’s henchmen (of which he himself had been one).
I see the same complex mixture of political bravery and timidity/cowardice in the face of evil, and the constraints imposed on a leader by the larger political system of which he himself is only a part, albeit on a much smaller scale here in the US.
singfoom
@General Stuck: I agree, it shouldn’t be a suicide pact, but I heartily object to the idea that I shouldn’t be disappointed at the dearth of prosecutions, regardless of the level.
I agree that that the Obama Administration had no possible way to prosecute the Bush Administration. It couldn’t have operated the government if it had really tried.
That said, it should be something they are ashamed that they couldn’t do, and something that might be considered in the second term.
The rule of law is the cornerstone of this country. I understand that the reality right now is that there are two sets of rules.
The rules for the normal people, like us and the rules for those with power and/or money/influence.
I find this dual rule of law to be the biggest problem in our Republic right now, because many many bad outcomes are sourced in that.
Please, to everyone. If you want to say that desiring any prosecution of the Bush administration’s crime is naive, fine, go ahead.
I find that beyond cynical and defeatist. But to say that desiring the rule of law to be followed by all people in the land, the very cornerstone of our nation is a pony and to minimize the real love of country and patriotism that is behind that desire for prosecution is really offensive.
General Stuck
@singfoom:
good comment, agree with all of it
Bob Loblaw
@transmaniacon:
Come on now.
The administration couldn’t even try 9/11 conspirators inside the country proper, let alone within 500 miles of lower Manhattan. It’s all over. Move on.
Dennis SGMM
C’mon gang; we all know that it was just a few bad apples. I’m absolutely positive that they’ll find the enlisted men who were the masterminds of the whole sordid thing and persecute them to the full extent of the law.
mclaren
@Martin:
Yes: declare it legal.
Omnes Omnibus
@singfoom: I don’t think anyone is arguing that prosecutions are not warranted. If I thought the Obama administration or any subsequent administration could survive pursuing them, I would be in favor. This is something over which the Bushies would go to the mattresses and, unfortunately, a lot of people would support them.
Mnemosyne
@Cermet:
Given the events of the past couple of days, I thought I would just let this hang there to remind us all that it’s not just Republicans who fall back on racist tropes when it comes to the president.
joeyess
@singfoom: yep
singfoom
@Omnes Omnibus: Eh, it was all mostly a response to Bob LobLaw lashing out at people for being “let down”.
Here’s the thing, if the price of justice is an administration and without paying that price, we normalize the behavior that we’re discussing so that it’ll never be prosecuted in the future, then I’m willing to pay that price.
Please note the conditional in the above paragraph.
Perhaps the calculus is different for others, but for me, any group of people or specific person in an office is worth a hell of a lot less than our soul and our honor.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
President Obama is certainly extremely courageous to not prosecute any of the war criminals of the last administration. It’s all those deranged Obama critics who are the true cowards.
.
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Lydgate
I’m trying to decide if physicians are low enough on the food chain to face any sort of accountability.
Mandramas
@Chris: France is a secondary power. That buys independence, in a way. What do you expect, american tanks on Paris? Of course America allowed France to develop nukes, and even Britain borrowed them plutonium for the Indochina wars. A rogue France was better that a Soviet allied France.
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
good catch. Talk about timing.
transmaniacon
@Bob Loblaw:
I know you’re just joshing “Bob”, but if there truly is a master conspiracy…I want in.
eemom
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
you are so. fucking. boring.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandramas: The point was that the Soviets would not have allowed Romania or Poland to do the same thing.
scav
@Lydgate: Nice thing about doctors is they’ve got two angles of accountability don’t they? Can’t they be decertified or at least censured?
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@eemom:
.
.
Balloonbagger assholes often say that.
BTW, your reply unfortunately got cut off before the scintillating part began.
.
.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@singfoom:
.
.
As you may have noticed, balloonbaggers have no ethics, no soul, and no honor. They’re all situational realpolitik and sports spectacles, and prefer enslaved animals to other people except for celebrities of the day.
.
.
transmaniacon
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
You should look into getting a hug box.
I’ve heard it does wonders.
singfoom
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
:)
:)
:)
:)
I find your format irritating and pedantic and your epithet against this community offensive and a false generalization that indicates a certain hypocrisy.
:)
:)
Mnemosyne
All I know about UCT is that he seems inordinately fond of pie. Or, since I did my own edits, cupcakes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne:”… and the zookeeper is very fond of rum.” I don’t know why but your comment brought that to mind.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
zebras are reactionary, antelopes are missionary….
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: It amused me.
Mako
No one cares. There is an NFL thread.
grandpajohn
@cmorenc: @General Stuck: In future history books, other than those in Texas, George the lessers reign will be depicted as one of the darkest periods of America’s history, a blight and a stain on the entire concept that our country was founded on and an acceleration of the destruction of our constitutional government.
Omnes Omnibus
@grandpajohn: I will agree with almost all of that. The destruction has not been written in stone. W’s years and the reaction to Obama could be enough to lead to a “moment of clarity” that causes us to turn things back around. It could happen.
grandpajohn
@Omnes Omnibus: true if we could but reach the Don Quixote vision of life rather than his reality;of it.
. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!
mclaren
Since America is now the world’s torturer, this represents a peek into the future.
Within the near future, our best and brightest will soon go to Georgetown University and Harvard Law School in order to major in Torture (it’ll be called Enhanced Interrogation but all the same…it’ll be torture).
Soon, the president of the United States will have a cabinet position who reports to him daily: the Secretary of Torture.
Kids’ TV shows will be made about torturers, and children will play enthusiastically with action figures of torturers and victims.
This country is lost, and heading down in a death spiral into a very dark place.
Chris
@Mandramas:
Sure, why not? There were German tanks in Paris less than two decades before, and America was a much bigger power than Germany by then.
The Tim Channel
@Omnes Omnibus: Failure to prosecute proud war criminals who go on TV and brag about how they’d do it again.
Also, see treatment of Bradley Manning.
Enjoy.
Murc
I’d like to note just one thing.
The medical professionals complicit at Gunatanamo Bay? They’re not doctors.
I don’t know what they are, and I don’t care what whatever pieces of paper they have might say, but they’re certainly not doctors in any way.
4jkb4ia
The first link is so horrible, I got nothing. Those doctors were supposed to be the line of defense that torture wasn’t occurring, and even that was unethical.
Keenanjay
@James E Powell: I too graduated in 73 and went on to Cal and then the Army. Funny thing, though, to this day there is a widespread amnesia in the Army about My Lai. Kinda like with Ollie North – a hero of the right.