The people who'd authorize and commit torture are monsters. So too those who'd ignore it.

[originalpckelly]

You might say we all have a monster in us, but the thing that keeps us from turning into that monster is the law. A government that can authorize/commit torture in complete secrecy is a government without real laws. A government that thinks it can cover torture up is a government without laws. A government that thinks it can ignore torture is a government without laws.

If the people who committed the crime were Republicans, and the people who are now finally getting around to covering it up are Democrats, that leaves us with no viable option. We can wait four years to vote this guy out, or two years to vote out Congress, but if he was the fresh blood who'd take care of this problem, then no new blood will do anything to end it.

A government that can authorize torture in secret or cover it up or ignore it is a government that can do whatever it pleases.

There are no ifs, ands or buts. That's it. Plain and simple. What else can a government legalize in secret? About the only thing worse than torture is mass abduction, mass torture or even mass extermination. When it gets that far, then there's nothing that can be done to stop it.

Torture is a line in the sand, and ignoring torture, almost as if we're talking about unpaid parking tickets, is THE line in the sand. That's it. No more, no further. Any further and the government has become Nazi Germany's government. It's already pretty damn close when you have people with medical knowledge like psychologists participating in the torture of human beings.

Not just once or twice, no, the new details released show at least one guy was tortured 183 times. Even if torture were excusable, 183 times is obviously not excusable.

If any citizen in this country were to be accused of such a crime, there would be no hesitation to prosecute us. Why should it be any different for members of government?

Even if a police officer was accused of committing torture under those circumstances, there would be a massive outrage, it might even be worse than a regular citizen doing that.

Why should it be any different for CIA officers or the members of the former administration?

Not prosecuting torture is a furtherance of the original crime, it is a criminal conspiracy, and I see no reason why the current administration shouldn't be prosecuted for not prosecuting.

They refused to impeach the original criminals, so we had an election, and the person elected apparently refuses to prosecute torture, what can we do within this system to stop this?

We could sue them, but if these people weren't bound by the laws on the books, why should they be bound by the decision of a court?

This matter cannot be solved by the the last three branches of government mentioned in the US Constitution.

Even after more than 220 years, that document's real name can still be seen. The first three words ring out through history. WE THE PEOPLE.

The people who wrote those words were not perfect by any means, you might even go so far to call them hypocrites. They really did a half-assed job on this country, but they did get one thing right, they put WE THE PEOPLE right at the start. That's because a government without the people is no government of, by or for the people.

The government of, by and for the people was abducted, shipped halfway around the world wearing a black hood, locked away in a secret prison, and tortured 183 times. That's what these people were really doing when they were torturing "bad guys" they were really torturing the real government of America. Don't let them tell you any different. There are no "bad guys" who are so bad we can suspend our most basic laws or our most fundamental principles.

The only thing that keeps us from being bad guys is those laws, those principles. That's it. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. They wanted us to think there are, but they were lying to us. These people played to the actual monster inside of us, fear. It has been out for too long. It's time to put the monster away, time to lock him up for life. He's not fit to walk the streets, nor are the people who became the monster by doing this.

It's not going to be easy, but WE THE PEOPLE must lock this monster away. If we shrink from this responsibility, then we become the monster ourselves.

To frame it this way is not an hyperbole, accepting torture is an hyperbole. Accepting torture is more outrageous than fighting to prosecute it. You would have to be a monster to think any different. This is one of the few topics there is no real debate about, that's the monster telling you there is. The monster is afraid that it might be locked away.

Well I have news for it, it better go outside one last time and get some fresh air, because it's not going to be getting any for a very long time.

I have just about the same advice for the people who turned into the monster as well. They can try to run, but they can never hide from the truth. The truth will track them down like a well-trained bounty hunter and bring them in.

Public outrage will grow over this issue, and that outrage will force the monster back. The best thing we can do is to keep talking about it. Let the truth be known. Let the people of this nation know it is our responsibility now. We must do this. Every television program, every radio show, all of YouTube will eventually be filled with people trying to put the monster back where it came from. It's only through pressure from the public that anything will ever really happen.

We must veto the actions of the other branches of government. We must rule them unconstitutional. We must repeal this law ourselves.

[navarth]

1. K & R well spoken.

All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.

[mod mom]

2. Paul Krugman agrees w you RE: monsters

April 19, 2009, 3:25 PM
183
Back from a partly medical absence. Before I do some economics posts, I think I ought to say something about the torture memos — namely, that there is now no way to view the people who ruled us these past 8 years as anything but monsters. We had all these rationalizations of torture over the “ticking clock” and all that — then we learn, for example, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month.

I really don’t even want to think about all this. But this was our government — and these people might be back.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/183/

[originalpckelly]

3. The problem is that no one thought what kind of danger there is...

with a government that can torture people in secret.

I don't know about you, but a government that tortures in secret sounds a lot more dangerous to me than any terrorist. We know from history that a government that can do that stuff can kill more than 3,000 people, it can kill millions.

[indepat]

4. Proud to have kicked to the greatest page

;)

[DonCoquixote]

5. I do think

That there needs to be prosecutions, though I want the people at the top who gave the orders. Getting grunts and even lieutenants wont stop the wheels from turning, but, their heads should be on the table, as that is the only way to do plea bargains to get the big fish.

That being said, I still think Obama is playing chess, making people think they are secure until a fever is whipped up to prosecute. If he came out for hanging these folks from the get go, the first tea party would have drowned any enthusiasm, as the media would be quick to make sure such sentiment was just to distract from the stimulus.

[originalpckelly]

8. What about the Democrats who never impeached Bush?

Were they just waiting for the right moment too? Just playing chess? It seems like the right moment is always off in the future, somewhere out there. The moment was right the day this happened, and every moment after then has been the right moment too.

[DonCoquixote]

21. Of course

The right moment was to do that in office, but they did NOT, and Obama knows this same Democratic congress is what he has to work with, these same backstabbing people who frankly, are a much bugger threat to him than the ruins of the gop. As is, Evan Bayh is attacking the stimulus, dogbone that it is, you think he does not know that if he does this, the same crew will saw the beam behind us. Yes, this is ugly, but I do not want yet another "idealistic" gesture that will once again march into the machine gun nests of Washington, so that the WH can be handed right back to the GOP, and the DINOS can go right back to saying "Sorry, we are just doing our job." If you want to see these people actually end up in jail, we cannot use weapons we know they are armored against.

[NNN0LHI]

6. Torture is a line in the sand ...

It is for me too.

Don

[dysfunctional press]

7. "Public outrage will grow over this issue"...no, it won't. not to any great degree, anyway.

it's not even an issue to most americans- they're more concerned about their jobs(or lack of) and how they're going to keep a roof over their heads.
you're welcome to take this issue as far as you can- but don't be surprised if it doesn't get very far.

[originalpckelly]

9. The monster is telling you it's impossible to do anything to stop it.

Believing that's true makes it so.

[dysfunctional press]

11. no- familiarity with history and common sense are.

but you're entitled to whatever opinion you wish to hold.

i don't believe in gods OR monsters.

[originalpckelly]

13. Well, maybe you need to go back and re-read history...

because I seem to see a history that tells us people who do nothing are a part of the problem.

It's not common sense to think that a small group of people have any real power to tell the rest of us what to do. It's never like that, we always give them the power of us.

[dysfunctional press]

14. like i said- you're entitled to your opinion.

but it's not going to change the facts. and the fact is that this is not a major issue with the vast majority of americans- they're more concerned about what the future holds for them and theirs, than in fretting about the past. and even if they did put any effort into past events- unfortunately, MOST of them probably feel that the torture was justified, or can be easily manipulated into patriotic approval of it.

[ElboRuum]

15. He/she is right.

America is not a nation of activists, even if some are.

The "monster" has nothing to do with it.

[derby378]

10. George W. Bush made sure of that

He tossed Barack Obama an economic hand grenade on his way out of the Oval Office.

But even so, Obama really needs to take Rahm Emanuel to the woodshet on this and lecture him on how no American is above the law.

[originalpckelly]

12. You're missing a couple of things here:

1. No real precedent has been set to forbade a future President from authorizing torture again. The President unilaterally outlawed torture. This is actually an affirmation of the legal principle that caused the torture in the first place. Making laws outside of the process outlined in the US Constitution is the problem here.

2. We have absolutely no idea what's really going on here, we don't even know that these memos are 100% accurate, but the officials who support torture seem to act like they are, so I guess that means they are.

3. We have no idea if there are any more memos. The President or his advisers are the ones with all the power here, and if there are more memos, perhaps implicating Democratic members of Congress in this, then they have no reason to declassify them. We will never get the real truth so long as they are the ones deciding what we get to see. They must be forced to give up the goods.

4. We have already been the victims of a thing called a "limited hangout" it's an spy trick that lets people know a little of the truth, but spins it the way the people releasing the truth want it spun. John Kiriakou a "former CIA Officer" told us a lie. He specifically stated that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded just once, and that it was such an effective method, he broke that first time. If these memos are to be believed, then he was waterboarded 83 times. Waterboarding seems a little bit more rational if it is such an effective method that it can break someone after only one use, but it isn't.

Here is the original ABC News story about Kiriakou:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=3978231

Here is a story about the 83 waterboardings of Abu Zubayda:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/20/waterboarding-alqaida-khalid-sheikh-mohammed

Here is a short bit on limited hangouts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout

How do we know these memos aren't limited hangouts themselves?

This is the kind of shit they pulled in Watergate, to try and trick people into looking the other way. Well, as a great man once said, "Fool me once, shame on me, fool me, won't get fooled again."

[timtom]

16. K & R!

And bookmarked for future review.

[Hydra]

17. You and dysfunctional press are unfortunately correct

This is the line in the sand...but we crossed it decades ago. Now, we're being told to march over it, en-masse.

DP is correct, though- most Americans don't care that we are torturing "Those other people." Not until it happens to them will they care.

Me? :scared:

[Mnemosyne]

18. KnR for greater visibility. Heinous is too weak a word to describe these actions. n/t

[Javaman]

19. So many times, sadly, here on DU we read posted stories regarding

a husband that has been raping and beating his daughter and that the mother has known all along and did nothing and/or looked the other way.

We all get outraged.

So now, here we have moron* and his* group of dopes, who ordered the torture of prisoners, and the CIA agents and military guards carrying out those orders.

Now we have Obama and his folks looking the other way.

Disregarding the difference in the scale; tell me exactly how this is different?

[bvar22]

20. K&R

There is no such thing as
Torturing "in Good Faith" as Obama would have you believe.
Torturers are Criminals,
even when they have a note from their lawyer.