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Tag: "prisoners"

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By Erich Vieth on August 25th, 2009

The torture done by the United States, in detail.

Glenn Greenwald reports on the torture done in our names, and it’s sickening. You can read succinct descriptions of the sort this terrible conduct.

There’s a lot of wailing and whining by conservatives that disclosing our own reprehensible conduct is inappropriate. That’s because they can’t justify this behavior in the least.

How was it that we now know about the torture done by the United States? No thanks to Congress:

[I]t should be emphasized that yet again, it is not the Congress or the establishment media which is uncovering these abuses and forcing disclosure of government misconduct. Rather, it is the ACLU (with which I consult) that, along with other human rights organizations, has had to fill the void left by those failed institutions, using their own funds to pursue litigation to compel disclosure. Without their efforts, we would know vastly less than we know now about the crimes our government committed.

If any other country tortured Americans, most conservatives would be making sure that everyone knew about the torture and many of them would be trying to declare war on that country.

American Culture • Corruption • Featured • Good and Evil • Politics
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By Erich Vieth on March 05th, 2009

Who were the prisoners of Guantanamo?

Who were the prisoners of Guantanamo? Andy Worthington has compiled a four-part series telling us their stories. Here’s the disturbing bottom line:

[A]t least 93 percent of the 779 men and boys imprisoned in total — were either completely innocent people, seized as a result of dubious intelligence or sold for bounty payments, or Taliban foot soldiers, recruited to fight an inter-Muslim civil war that began long before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or international terrorism.

I don’t pretend to know enough to know whether these accounts are totally accurate, but they are filled with details, personal anecdotes, statistics and reports regarding individual court cases. It has a strong ring of authenticity. Further, these individual accounts corroborate general accounts produced elsewhere. I have no reason to disbelieve any part of Andy Worthington’s work. He is a well-reputed journalist who has published elsewhere, such as this post at Huffington Post.

I am proud to be an American. America does much right in the world and has the potential to do much more that is admirable. This account by Andy Worthington, however, describes America at its shameful worst.

American Culture • Civil Rights • History • Law • Military • Politics • The Middle East • War • ignorance • law and order
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By Erich Vieth on December 01st, 2008

U.S. torture program results in thousands of U.S. deaths

In an interview with The Washington Post, a U.S. Air Force counter-intelligence specialist explains that he was aghast when he saw how the U.S. was continuing to torture prisoners, even after he arrived in 2006.   He further learned, based on first-hand interviews he conducted, that the torture committed by the United States in Iraq was [...]

Good and Evil • Military • War
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By Erich Vieth on January 01st, 2008

What country leads the pack in locking up prisoners?

The United States. Here are some shocking details from Nomi Prins of Alternet:
The United States has more inmates and a higher incarceration rate than any other nation: more than Russia, South Africa, Mexico, Iran, India, Australia, Brazil and Canada combined. Nearly 1 in every 136 US residents is in jail or prison. That’s 2.2 million [...]

Law • War • law and order
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By Erich Vieth on April 05th, 2007

Confessions provoked by torture are OK, as long as the US is doing the torturing

We’re all glad that the British sailors are back home.  Anyone following this story knows that these sailors were treated graciously by their Iranian captors.  Nonetheless, while in captivity, the British sailors admitted that they had been trespassing in Iranian waters when whey were apprehended.
But notice some of the things that have been said about the confessions [...]

Good and Evil • Military • Politics • The Middle East • War
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