US Applying Fascism in Policies
Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.
-Jean-Paul Sartre
Source: //existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2006/07/human-rights- watch-bush-administration .html
In a 53-page report, "No Blood, No Foul: Soldiers' Accounts of Detainee Abuse in Iraq," US soldiers reveal that contrary to previous statements by the Bush administration, detainees were routinely beaten, put in stressful positions, deprived of sleep and exposed to hot and cold extremes. Human Rights Watch bases its report on interviews, memoranda and sworn statements.
Surprise, surprise, the Administration has been caught in another lie. We're supposed to trust a government that continually lies and gets caught. For me it also begs me to question my own party and why they are not screaming at the top of their lungs to impeach Bush.
The report, consists of first-hand accounts by U.S. military personnel and provide details of detainee abuses that are at odds with previous statements by the Bush administration. The official program of torture took place at "...an off-limits facility at Baghdad airport and at other detention centers throughout Iraq." Soldier accounts allege that abusive techniques "...were authorized by the military chain of command". This directly contradicts various Pentagon statements and cover stories. It directly refutes the "few bad apples" defense.
Soldiers were told that the Geneva Conventions did not apply, and that interrogators could use abusive techniques to get detainees to talk. These accounts rebut U.S. government claims that torture and abuse in Iraq was unauthorized and exceptional - on the contrary, it was condoned and commonly used."
-John Sifton, the author of the report and the senior researcher on terrorism and counterterrorism at Human Rights Watch.
From the Report:
Many of the crimes detailed in this report are violations of international humanitarian law, U.S. military law, and U.S. federal criminal law. The U.S. government's failure to properly investigate these violations is an affront to the victims of the abuses, and a violation of U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions, which obligate states to prosecute serious violations of the conventions' provisions ("grave breaches").
The accounts in this report are further evidence that detainee abuse was an established and apparently authorized part of detention and interrogation processes in Iraq for much of 2003-2005. The cases also show that U.S. military personnel have faced systemic obstacles to reporting or exposing abuses, that the U.S. military in numerous cases has not taken adequate measures to stop reported abuses. The report also shows that the U.S. military has often failed to properly investigate and prosecute perpetrators, including officers who allowed abuses to occur on their watch.
In other words, prohibitions against torture and ill-treatment of prisoners are absolute despite Bush's various efforts to re-define torture and to make legal, after the fact, the crimes that he's already committed.
Many do not realize if we do not hold ourselves to the Geneva Convention, international law or even our own law, what stops our "enemies" from treating our soldiers in the same manner. In no circumstance will I ever condone the torturing of people. And we're supposed to have been better than Saddam Hussein? This is just another example of the BUSH Admin's hypocrisy an attempt to move us toward fascism.