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America's Grotesque Legacy of Torture

by Gil Villagrán, MSW (gvillagran [at] casa.sjsu.edu)
The eight-year Bush-Cheney regime will forever be a despicable era of lawlessness where our Constitution, Bill of Rights guarantees, and laws, including Universal Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions (against torture), which are incorporated by treaty into federal law have been disregarded.
The Justice Department must restore the rule of law by investigating this abuse of power, and prosecuting anyone who has broken our laws by ordering, enabling, or committing torture.
America's Grotesque Legacy of Torture

By Gil Villagrán, MSW July 1, 2009

The Inauguration of President Barack Obama seemed like a new day in America--a rebirth of democracy and the rule of law--after the eight-year Bush-Cheney reign of corruption, ineptitude and war based on faked intelligence. The regime began with Cheney's still secret Energy Task Force plan that reaped a tripling cost of energy, followed by the vacationing Bush napping through CIA warning that Al Qaida planned to attack our nation. The brutal wakeup on September 11 was immediately recognized by the Bush-Cheney team as the "Second Pearl Harbor" required for their "Project for a New American Century" to control the Middle East, ensuring cheap petroleum to U.S. petro corporations throughout the next century. 


The hopeful promises by candidate Obama included: 1. Ending the war in Iraq, 2. Closing of Guantanamo and other secret prisons, and. 3. Re-storing justice at the Justice Department.

Six months into Obama time in Washington appear to be melting into a diminished business-as-usual, getting along with Congress by going along. 
In spite of June 30 National Sovereignty Day celebrations in Iraq, declaring complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from most cities in Iraq, more than 130,000 American soldiers and untold mercenaries will remain to support the tenuous peace-paying former insurgents to fight Al Qaeda rather than their own government or our forces, training their army and police, and disbursing untold billions to rebuild this broken country. Our troops will leave most cities, but not our massive bases, and venture out mostly at night. Certainly, American casualties will continue to arrive at Dover Air Force Base.

Meanwhile, the war in Afghanistan spirals further into chaos, as well as in Pakistan, in spite of billions in aid that disappear, only to be accounted for as insurgent weapons captured in both countries, with U.S. manufactured serial numbers. As in all wars, the certain winners are the arms merchants. 



Guantanamo detainees continue to be abused by Bush era "harsh interrogations," stubbornly yielding no news of ticking time bombs after an average of five years of water boarding (near drowning), walling (heads thrown against walls), using dogs or insects to intimate, hours of stress positions, extreme cold or heat, or weeks of sleep deprivation, forced nudity, and other inhumane treatment--illegal by U.S. law, United Nations treaties, and in Obama's words, "American values and traditions." 
Individuals, kidnapped and "extraordinarily rendered" to sites in the U.S., in military bases or other nations, are kept secret from their families, possibly from their governments, and from the Red Cross. These prisoners are not listed, often are not charged with any specific crime, and certainly without access to legal representation or trail in any open court of law.


If we are truly a nation of laws, and not of men, President Obama must restore the quest for justice by our Justice Department. The eight-year Bush-Cheney regime will forever be a despicable era of lawlessness where our Constitution, Bill of Rights guarantees, and laws, including Universal Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions (against torture), which are incorporated by treaty into federal law have been disregarded. The Justice Department must restore the rule of law by investigating this abuse of power, and prosecuting anyone who has broken our laws by ordering, enabling, or committing torture. We must cleanse our nation of this Grotesque Legacy of Torture.
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by Sxe
Why are morons flooding the indy sites recently? This soft, propaganda, compromising speech is just plain nauseating. Justice department has nothing to do with justice. Only 8 years of torture. Yeah right. Where you been hiding...America has been torturing since its first conception. It is the nature of america to torture. Maybe you should check out some of the brutal abuses dropped upon numerous African and native americans from day one to this day. Boy america has no morality. It was founded by rich white business men in order to protect their own property and expand control. People who voted for Obama are complete morons. I have no respect for them whatsoever. They are political chumps. Like my man said. They are responsible for what he has done so far. The mass killing of civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Good job people. You knew that before he was elected. Take part is his war crimes and go watch american idol or gladiators and drink more beer you retards and be proud to live in the land of hypocrisy.

Regarding Iraq, that whole thing about bad evidence or a mistake was a farce. They knew they didn't have anything, but they needed an excuse to give to the mass public. A show for the public. The only reason they went into Iraq was to get their oil and have control in the middle east. That is the same reason for Afghanistan. Including the pipeline to indian ocean. Obama and bush and the rest of them don't give a fuck one bit about the people that live there. America has no morality, the entire government is corrupt. Pushing for expansion of empire. All the congress and court justices are in bed with the corporations. All they do is serve interests of their fuck buddies and play the nice husband for the American people. Good job america you have been lied to so many times, yet you still believe. I guess you like being rammed from behind. Don't worry all the happens over there will eventually come back to you.
There will never be an investigation or trial for the torture supporters because congress is guilty of war crimes, and the support of torture. Justice department is also guilty. sheep.
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