Torture Jets 2

[segovius]

Looks like the torture programme has gone up a gear on to a new level.

The Sunday Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1471913,00.html) is reporting that a radical cleric has been kidnapped from Italy and flown to Egypt for extensive torture.

ITALIAN police are investigating allegations that American intelligence agents kidnapped an Islamic militant in Milan and transported him to Egypt, where he was tortured.

Osama Moustafa Nasr, an Egyptian dissident with alleged links to Al-Qaeda, disappeared in Milan on February 16, 2003, after eyewitnesses saw him being approached by three men as he walked to a mosque.

A kidnap inquiry was opened in Italy after Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was temporarily released from custody in Egypt last year and telephoned his wife and friends to tell them what had happened.

He claimed he had been tortured so badly by secret police in Cairo that he had lost hearing in one ear. Italian officers who intercepted the call believe he has since been rearrested

Although details of the inquiry remain confidential, the Italians are thought to be investigating claims that Nasr was taken by US intelligence agents to Aviano airbase and flown to Egypt in an American plane.

There are several issues here:

1) Not the torture itself - we all know now that the Bush admin has sunk to the barbarism it falsely claims to fight and torture is official policy in all but name, it is only because they are too hypocritical to have the guts to admit it they collude with 'evil' regimes that it is secret, certainly the sheep would buy it, some would (and do) welcome it - no, the issue here is the collaboration, co-operation and planning that goes into arranging the torture with the regimes concerned: Saudi, Egypt and Jordan.

All of them prime candidates for regime change in a moral sense, all barbaric and all ok with Bush and granted a license to klill. That is the smoking gun that the WOT, 'democracy' and 'freedom' are nothing but a sick lie.

2) The abolition of rights, suspension of due process and general dismantling of established civilized law is the leitmotif of Bush rule in the US but now they are interfering with the sovereign law of other nations - let me rephrase that - interfering is wrong, I should have said trampling on.

Italy - a so called 'ally' in the WOT - was preparing to prosecute this man under Italian law for crimes he allegedly committed in Italy. Fair enough.

Except, Italy's friend and ally had no respect for this process and removed this man for illegal torture at the hands of a regime similar to the one the 'coalition' are supposed to be fighting - wtf ????

If the US does turn out to be responsible for this then it is illegal and a breach of Italian law (as the torture jets are a breach of international law). We are approaching the point where we have to face the issue that the US is breaking these laws and either call it to account or regard it as a rogue state.

[Harald]

They did it a German, too, (http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1390256,00.html) and the German government is not entirely happy about it.

Same story from AP. (http://www.able2know.com/forums/about43342.html)

Don't forget folks, increasing anti-Americanism is based on jealousy of the American way, anti-semitism and the liberal media. Not because the US is acting like ...

[Common Man]

I don't support these methods,but I wonder how different things are now than they have always been. Do you think this sort of thing went on during WW1 and WWII? during the Cold War and Korea and Vn? How about during the US involvments in Latin America in the 1980s? Has much really changed? I don't know the answer.

[segovius]

Originally posted by Common Man
I don't support these methods,but I wonder how different things are now than they have always been. Do you think this sort of thing went on during WW1 and WWII? during the Cold War and Korea and Vn? How about during the US involvments in Latin America in the 1980s? Has much really changed? I don't know the answer.

I think little has changed in the practices - the thing that has changed is the 'legitimization' of the practices and following on from that, a disregard for the rule of law.

Because the terrorists threw away the rule of law (as they always have - from IRA to Hamas) then an established State and Government has felt justified in doing so also - and that is the thing that is different.

As many have said already - that is why the terrorists have already won.

[Common Man]

"As many have said already - that is why the terrorists have already won."

Yes, I have thought for awhile that the goal of people like OBL is not as much to physically destroy their enemies (they know that don't have the ability), but rather to push their enemies to their worst an in essence rot from within. If that is the plan, people like GWB have fallen fast into the trap.

[Anders]

Originally posted by Common Man
"As many have said already - that is why the terrorists have already won."

Yes, I have thought for awhile that the goal of people like OBL is not as much to physically destroy their enemies (they know that don't have the ability), but rather to push their enemies to their worst an in essence rot from within. If that is the plan, people like GWB have fallen fast into the trap.

Its like what RAF did in the 70´s. Did they really think they alone could bring on the revolution? No they thought the democratic liberal state was a fake and by using extreme methods it could reveal its true violent nature and thus gain support from disillusioned people. West Germany more or less stood up against this test. We failed.

EDIT: Hmm. I knew I had said something like that before (http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=637131&highlight=Rote#post637131)

[midwinter]

Originally posted by Captain Picard

There is a saying... which many
of us have heard since we were
school children... "With the first
link, the chain is forged. The
first speech censured, the first
thought forbidden, the first
freedom denied -- chains us all,
irrevocably."

[Anders]

Picard is/was/will be a commie!

[Gon]

Law is about objective standards. If you are a government and want to play "global policeman", to have any credibility you have to subject yourself to an objective standard. That means laws - either your own or someone else's. Regardless of what soil the supposed criminals are standing on, to remain honest, I hold that the government will have to accept the following: anyone in their custody is either under US' law as a criminal, under US' law as a POW of a clearly defined war, or must be turned over to the locals where he was taken into custody. Anything less than this is dishonest and lacks integrity. It would also be possible to use "international law" - as practiced in the Hague - as the yardstick, but both myself and the US in general have a distrust for the fairness of such a facility.

If the truth is that the government approves of something that isn't possible on their own soil, they should change their own laws to make that something possible. If they don't do that but go around it because their own people wouldn't allow it, they're crooks, plain and simple.

[segovius]

Originally posted by Gon
If the truth is that the government approves of something that isn't possible on their own soil, they should change their own laws to make that something possible. If they don't do that but go around it because their own people wouldn't allow it, they're crooks, plain and simple.

But then you have another potential problem - Governments make laws but they aren't the source of laws. That is to say if the US brings in a law to make such and such a thing illegal, it isn't illegal because the US says so but rather (in an ideal world) the law would reflect a common acceptance of the practice's illegality.

Most civilized societies defer to a 'higher law' or moral ethos which guides the lawmaking. If they don't you have situations like in Germany on the 30's where laws are changed suit specific agendas rather than for the benefit of all.

[segovius]

According to this article (http://headlines.sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13664337) which cites a report coming up in the New Yorker next week, an former FBI agent is speaking out against what he calls 'bureaucratized' torture by the Bush administration, and claims that the practice of kidnapping for torture is "out of control."

Aside from the hypocrisy (and worse) with which Bush speaks out against the human rights abuses of places like Syria and then kidnaps people to send them there for torture, the report claims that the practice has:

jeopardized its chances of convicting hundreds of suspected terrorists, or even of using them as witnesses in almost any court in the world

It's not just that they are torturing as a matter of course, not just that they are breaking the law to do it - it's that they are doing it badly and making the situation a hundred times worse than if they had done nothing.

I wonder if we can get any figures on how many people the US has radicalized during it's spurious WOT.

[kneelbeforezod]

Do you think this sort of thing went on during WW1 and WWII? during the Cold War and Korea and Vn? How about during the US involvments in Latin America in the 1980s? Has much really changed?
I imagine that this sort of thing as gone on for as long as it has been considered unacceptable for the governments of western democracies to perform their own torture. I would also be very surprised to find that the US is the only major western power that has acted like this. (Although it does appear that, under the current administration, the US has become a particularly egregious offender.)

There is one thing that worries me much more than the hypocrisy and lies. If the Bush administration is eventually found to have been directly responsible for the use of torture lite at US facilities and of full torture at 3rd party facilities - and with the free movement of information being what it is these days I expect it is only a matter of time - will they attempt to recast torture as an acceptable tool "when it could save thousands of lives"?