Human
Rights Watch Reports That US Government Tortured Children — Paul Craig Roberts
Human Rights Watch Reports That US Government Tortured
Children
Paul
Craig Roberts
Human
Rights Watch (HRW) has just released its report, “Extreme Measures: Abused Children Detained As National Security
Threats.”
From
my reading of the report, Israel and the US are the two worst abusers.
Boko Haram is a distant third.
Which
country is the worst abuser, Israel or the US? Taking into account that
the US is responsible for the violence in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria that has
resulted in torture and detention, if we include these victims in the American
total, then the US is the Number One torturer of children. As it is unlikely
that Israel could get away with abuse of Palestinian children without
Washington’s support, we can add Israel’s abuses to Washington’s total.
Guantanamo
Bay is a great distance away from Washington’s wars against Muslims in
Afghanistan, North Africa and the Middle East. Yet even at Guantanamo,
where the only violence is the violence that the US military inflicts on
detainees, the US government tortured children, according to the Human Rights Watch
report.
What
kind of military tortures children? The only answer that I can come up
with is a military that has no self-respect.
Think
back to the torture memos written by US Department of Justice (sic) officials
John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee. These memos justifying the US government’s
torture of detainees despite the prohibition of torture by both US statutory
law and international law to which the US is a signatory have been denounced by
civil libertarians as the work of legal incompetents or criminals or
both. Yet, John Yoo is a professor of law at the University of
California, Berkeley, and for his service to the White House torturers Jay
Bybee was appointed a US federal judge to the second highest court. If
Hitlery becomes president, Bybee and Yoo could end up on the Supreme Court.
The
positions held by Yoo and Bybee tell the world all that is needed to know that
the United States is a lawless entity and that this lawlessness is accepted by
America’s legal, political, and educational institutions and by the American
people.
What
self-respecting parent would send a son or daughter to study law at a
university that hosts a “legal scholar” who discounts law in behalf of torture?
If
you were a judge on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals and a torturer was
appointed to the court, would you welcome the criminal or resign in protest
against a government that has no respect for its own laws?
How
many NSA officials have resigned over illegal spying on the American people?
How
many FBI officials have resigned over false flag frame-ups of “terrorists?”
Do
you remember the 775 Guantanamo detainees described by the US Secretary of
Defense and the Vice President of the US as the most dangerous, most violent
men on earth? We will never know how many of these detainees were
tortured in an effort to elicit a confession in support of the government’s
unfounded claims, but nine of them died in custody. We do know that
despite torture and the assurances from the highest officials that the
detainees were dangerous and violent, as of July 12, 2016, 90 percent of the
detainees have been released without charges. Only 76 remain, and
apparently there is no evidence that can be used to charge them.
Apparently, they are being held only in order to save the US government from
being 100 percent wrong. Being 90 percent wrong is close enough for government
work. See:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Guantanamo_Bay_detainees
and http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees
Do
you remember those photos of the torture of the Abu Ghraib prisoners? As
horrifying as the photos are, they are the mild part. Others photos were
not released. The photos reveal more than torture. The photos
reveal the extreme pleasure that the US soldiers got from torturing the
prisoners. They were having the time of their life abusing other humans!
Some
feminists have excused the female soldier, one of the several grunts punished
while the higher officials responsible went scot free, with the rationale that
she was only getting back at the male gender for the abuses she, as a female,
had suffered from men.
The
Abu Ghraib photos required silencing. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the
senior American commander in Iraq, appointed Major General Antonio Taguba to
compile a report based on an investigation of the torture. All Gen.
Taguba had to do was to explain away the torture and be promoted from 2-star to
3-star general.
If
that is what Sanchez intended, he chose the wrong man. Gen. Taguba filed
an honest report, finding:
“That
between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility
(BCCF), numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses
were inflicted on several detainees. This systemic and illegal abuse of
detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military
police guard force (372nd Military Police Company, 320th Military Police
Battalion, 800th MP Brigade), in Tier (section) 1-A of the Abu Ghraib Prison
(BCCF). The allegations of abuse were substantiated by detailed witness
statements (ANNEX 26) and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic
evidence…In addition to the aforementioned crimes, there were also abuses
committed by members of the 325th MI Battalion, 205th MI Brigade, and Joint
Interrogation and Debriefing Center (JIDC).”
Instead
of becoming a 3-star general with lucrative consulting opportunities and board
memberships at the end of his military career, Taguba was sent into retirement.
If
we contrast the fate of Gen. Taguba, who took the US Military Code seriously,
with the mindlessness of Fox “News” and its incoherent insouciant Medal of
Honor winner, Dakota Meyer, who is displayed on need, we can see how integrity
was lost to ignorance and propaganda.
That
is not the way the world sees it. In every world poll, the United States
is ranked overwhelmingly as the greatest threat to peace, with Israel as
the runner-up. The “threats”, such as North Korea and Iran, designated by the
warmongers in Washington hardly register as threats in world polls.
Long
ago Americans were divided into “liberals” and “conservatives” and set against
one another, while those who did the dividing took away our civil liberties and
prosperity. Both the Fox “News” imbecile and the Medal of Honor winner, who
think of themselves as “conservatives,” believe that it is liberals who are
disrespectful of the military and that their hatred of the military is why
“liberals” are opposed to war. Of course, informed Americans are aware
that it was conservatives who did not want to get into wars. It was
conservatives, not liberals who opposed US involvement in WWI and WWII.
Liberals were hot to trot.
It
has escaped Fox “News” and the Medal of Honor winner that Democrat Hitlery is
all in favor of war and wants more of it. The people who don’t want war
are the ones that understand that WWIII will be nuclear and bring an end to
life on earth. The people denigrated by the Fox “News” imbecile and the
insouciant Medal of Honor winner are the people who are trying to save not only
the United States but all life on earth from the stupid, reckless, arrogant war
crowd.
To
whom is America “the beacon of hope”? Is America the beacon of hope to the
millions of peoples who have been killed, maimed, and displaced by America’s
wars during the past 15 years? Is America the beacon of hope to the
Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Ghetto that Israel uses for a shooting
gallery? Is America the beacon of hope to the Latin American peoples whose
representative governments Washington routinely overthrows? Is America the
beacon of hope to the Russians and Chinese who are being encircled with
military bases and demonized with hostile words and misrepresented with lies?
Is America the beacon of hope for the middle class whose jobs and future were
offshored? Is America the beacon of hope to the poor whose public assistance
was wiped out by Clinton’s Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act of 1996?
America
is a beacon of hope only to the One Percent who loot and plunder both our economic
future and our civil liberties.
People
can be intelligent without being brave, and they can be brave without being
intelligent. Our soldiers fit in the later category. They do the work for the
One Percent and are paid for their physical and emotional injuries with medals.
In
the past 15 years “the beacon of hope” has destroyed in whole or part seven
countries–Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, and Syria. The
“beacon of hope” has overthrown representative governments in Honduras, Ukraine,
Egypt, Argentina, and Brazil, installing in their place right-wing crooks, and
is working hard to overthrow the elected governments in Venezuela, Ecuador, and
Bolivia. The extraordinary range of death and suffering for which “the beacon
of hope” is responsible is unprecedented.
As
if this is not enough, “the beacon of hope” is now recklessly and irresponsibly
threatening two nuclear powers–Russia and China–with military encirclement
justified with the most blatant and transparent lies. We hear the propaganda
24/7. Even the “liberal” NPR specializes in telling lies about Russia. Is it
hopeful to convince two nuclear powers that the US is preparing to attack?
It
is Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, who says he doesn’t
want conflict with Russia and sees little point to NATO. Yet, the “liberal”
media doesn’t miss an opportunity to demonize Trump, just as the presstitutes
demonize the peace-seeker, Vladimir Putin.
The
presstitutes are screaming: “Give us Hitlery and more war!”
Feminists
want Hitlery for war on the glass ceiling.
The
neoconservatives want Hitlery in order for them to achieve their ideology of
world hegemony.
The
military/security complex and Wall Street want Hitlery for their profits.
Why
is it Donald Trump, the candidate who says he wants to avoid dangerous conflict
with nuclear powers, who is being demonized?
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