Our Nation’s Self-Respect Demands Impeachment

[Echo In Light]

Our Nation’s Self-Respect Demands Impeachment
by Linda Boyd

I wept to see Sami al Haj embrace his young son for the first time after six years in Guantanamo prison. Sami al Haj, a Sudanese news cameraman, was seized in Pakistan while working for al Jazeera News. He was imprisoned, tortured and brutalized by Americans while there. Like most prisoners held at Guantanamo, al Haj was never tried or charged.

After his release, Sami al Haj arrived in Sudan and was immediately rushed to a hospital by ambulance, weakened by his 438-day hunger strike in Guantanamo. His message to our government: “Torture does not stop terrorism, torture is terrorism.”

The U.S. government evidence against him says, “He was trained in the use of cameras by al Jazeera News.”

The American people have a choice ahead of them. They can continue to be shamed as a nation of torturers, or they can put a stop to this administration’s ongoing crimes against humanity.

Abusing and terrorizing innocent people doesn’t make us safer. Imprisoning people without due process doesn’t make us safer. Violating our laws, treaties and values doesn’t make us safer.

U.S. military and FBI interrogation experts affirm that testimony obtained under torture is inaccurate and unreliable. In May, the FBI issued a scathing 371-page report on torture and war crimes compiled from observations at Guantanamo. Even the CIA concluded in a 1963 study that coercion is “not very helpful outside the context of producing false propaganda.”

George W. Bush said, “We do not condone torture. I have never ordered torture. I will never order torture.”

Recently, Bush admitted that he knew top administration officials met repeatedly in the White House to discuss coercive interrogation techniques, including torture, and that he “approved them.”

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and top administration officials have in fact condoned torture, and violated domestic and international laws that ban cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of human beings.

These laws include the Geneva Conventions, the 1984 U.N. Convention Against Torture and the U.S. Constitution. These laws are not invalidated, as the Bush team alleges, if prisoners are not on U.S. soil.

Torture laws are jus cogens, meaning “compelling law,” said constitutional law Professor Marjorie Cohn, in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. “There can be no immunity from criminal liability for violation of a jus cogens prohibition.”

Being a rogue nation is not in our best interest and exposes our soldiers and citizens to grave danger. Why hasn’t Congress stopped torture?

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/01/9347/

[tom_paine]

1. Surely you have noticed the Imperial Amerikan Subject populace has no self-respect

We gorge. We entertain ourselves. We work to pay for more murder and rapine in Iraq and more farud and theft to be perpetrated on ourselves.

Self-respect? We're the biggest bunch of cowardly lickspittles to come along since the 1930s Germans!

[spanone]

2. k&r

[KharmaTrain]

3. We Need To Restore A Democracy First...

Before you can restore this country's sanity, you need to restore the balance of power...especially that of the Legislative that was all but stripped away in 12 years of Repugnican abuse. This regime has been able to hide behind a massive shield of "Executive Privilidge" that is being protected by a court overloaded with Repugnican toadies. This election must be used to root out as much of the corruption...predominately Repugnican...so that a clean break begins and the restoration can truly begin.

Yes, impeachment is a part of that process, but it's not the end-product. It will be the vindication of the restoration of powers and a resetting of the balance, but that now is all but impossible...and unfortunately as long as this regime uses the courts and all sorts of other games to stonewall, and then will surely pardon their way out, it's frustrating, but the job now is to line the ducks up...get the goods on this regime as best as possible and then once its removed to move forward in impeachment and other criminal prosecutions...on the way to war trials for any in that regime that has blood on their hands.

One would hope that the International community can also come out from under their shadow as well...these crimes weren't just against Iraqis but to everyone.

Cheers...

[screembloodymurder]

4. If we let them, people will continue to defend this administration.

Some people will risk everything, rather than admit a mistake. That is why some southerners want another civil war. That is why Bush cannot leave Iraq even though, there's no good reason to stay. People like Bush only admit a mistake when the consequences of their irrational behavior becomes inescapable.

We have a choice.

We who remain rational, can demonstrate the courage of our convictions or suffer the inevitable consequences of others irrational behavior.

[Echo In Light]

5. Agreed. Janeane Garofalo nailed it: part of the denial is merely out of spite