Robert Fisk: We are all complicit in these vile acts of torture -

[mom cat]

We are all complicit in these vile acts of torture - but what can we do about it?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9194.htm
If our government uses information drained out of these creatures, it is we who are holding the whips

by Robert Fisk

06/18/05 "The Independent" - - We are all complicit in these vile acts of torture - but what can we do about it? If our government uses information drained out of these creatures, it is we who are holding the whips.

I still have my notes from a man who knew all about torture, a Druze friend in the 1980s, during the Lebanese war, pleased with himself because he'd just caught two Christian militiamen trying to plant a car bomb on the Beirut seafront. "I saw two Phalangists over there. I knew who they were. They had a bomb in their car. I called the PSP and they took them off for questioning." What happened to them? "Well, they knew what would happen to them; they knew there was no hope. They were questioned here for a couple of days and then they were taken up to Beit Eddin."

Ah, Beit Eddin, one of the prettiest villages in Lebanon, the palace of the Emir Bashir the Second, site now of one of the country's finest music festivals - run by Jumblatt's glamorous wife Nora. But Beit Eddin was different in the 1980s. "The guys are always told that they are going to die, that there's no point in suffering - because they are going to be killed when they've talked," my Druze friend told me. "There's a center. They don't survive. There are people there who just press them until they talk. They put things into a man's anus until he screams. Boiling eggs, that sort of thing. They kill them in the end. It's only a few days and it's all over. I don't really like that sort of thing. I really don't. But what can I do?"

It's a good question again now. What can we do? What can we do when an American president dispatches "suspects" to third countries where they will be stripped, wired up, electrocuted, ripped open and tortured until they wish they had never been born? What can we do with a prime minister - ours - who believes that information from torture victims may be of use to us and may be collected by us? How can we clean our hands when we know that men are being subject to "rendition" through our own airports? Doesn't a policeman have the right to go aboard these CIA contract jets that touch down in Britain and take a look at the victim inside and - if he believes the man may be tortured - take him off the plane?

[smoogatz]

1. ALL complicit?

Even those who voted against Bush, protested the Iraq war, and continue to dissent (loudly) regarding the policies that led to abuse at Abu Ghraib, GITMO and elsewhere? Speak for yourself, Mr. Fisk.

[oblivious]

2. Yes, what an asinine generalization.

[reprehensor]

3. Fascinating read. Thanks for posting.

Fisk is brilliant.