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Rove 'Proud' Of US Waterboarding Terror Suspects
Rove 'proud' of US waterboarding terror suspects | BBC
A senior adviser to former US President George W Bush has defended tough interrogation techniques, saying their use helped prevent terrorist attacks....
He said waterboarding, which simulates drowning, should not be considered torture....
"Yes, I'm proud that we kept the world safer than it was, by the use of these techniques. They're appropriate, they're in conformity with our international requirements and with US law." Read more, watch Rove in video.
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Stay warm this winter in a black hooded sweatshirt. Order one. Order them by the dozen and donate them to occupations!
"Court Allows Torture Suit Against Rumsfeld"
by Andy Thayer, Huffington Post, Mar 11, 2010, originally March 8th
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18062
I've wondered why people are concerned about Rover when Rumsfeld should be focused on or upon.
The above article begins by saying that "Federal Judge Wayne R. Andersen issued a historic ruling Friday allowing a suit charging former Defense Secretary with authorizing torture".
The third and fourth paragraphs reads as follows.
"While many previous civil suit attempts to prosecute Bush-era cabinet officials for authorizing torture have failed, the suit brought by Chicago-based Loevy and Loevy Attorneys at Law, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel v. Donald Rumsfeld, United States of America and Unidentified Agents, will now proceed to discovery and a trial.
Donald Vance, a Navy veteran, accuses U.S. forces in Iraq of imprisoning him without charges for over three months in 2006, and torturing him during much of that time. Vance, a private security employee at the time of his arrest in Baghdad, named former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a defendant for his role in overseeing the military prison system in Iraq."
Donald Vance's three months of "imprisonment at the notorious Camp Cropper near Baghdad International Airport" was almost entirely "in solitary confinement in a continuously lit, windowless cell", but he also "was physically abused and denied the right to counsel, the right of access to the courts, and any legitimate process to challenge his illegal detention".
Both he and the other SGS security company employee, Nathan Ertel, were interrogated for the three-month period, and they were put through this treatment after reporting that SGS was committing "illegal activity", like paying "local sheiks for influence in obtaining government contracts and of other illegal dealings". The two "became unpaid informants to the FBI in Chicago and U.S. officials in Iraq", and because their lives were threatened by SGS, they asked the U.S. military in Iraq to rescue them. They were brought to Camp Cropper, but the rescue turned out obviously different from what they expected and hoped for.
Hence the trial against Rumsfeld.
I'm not an expert in law, but nevertheless perceive more than only the crime of torture in this story and wonder why any real court of law would stop with only prosecuting Rumsfeld for the torturous treatment of these two former SGS employees. It was also criminal to arrest and imprison them, and in doing this, the U.S. military and ... all the way up the chain of command also became guilty of covering up illegal activity by a security company employed by the government of the USA. And SGS should be investigated for the illegal activities the two men said that they believed, or else knew, were being committed by this company.
If I'm right about these additional crimes, then there should also be prosecutions against the people guilty for these crimes. Perhaps the trial the article's about can't take on the prosecutions for these other crimes, since the guilty people aren't Rumsfeld, or involve more people than only him; but there should be prosecutions for these crimes.
I hope, though doubt, that Rumsfeld will be convicted, but if he is and justly enough, according to the crime he's guilty of having committed, then let Rover continue his barking or whining.
Right now, with his new book, Rover should be a laughing stock across the USA.
But maybe he's also laughing in the faces of all of us, too. He knows he and ilk are highly protected from real indictments, prosecutions, convictions and, therefore, sentencing for their crimes; and he surely knows Obama doesn't make Bush Jr look bad. He knows the real elites who control the government of the USA, including whether the USA will go to and continue to war, will protect the political people who are and who have been useful to them. And he surely knows many Americans realise he's blatantly or flagrantly lying in his book. After all, he's surely aware that many of the things, if not everything, he says has already been proven to be lies, and that many Americans know this.
When Bush Jr went to Calgary in March, 2009, he perhaps was internally laughing in the faces of all Canadians; certainly all opposed to the war on Iraq, and to the perhaps even greater number opposed to the war on Afghanistan. If he wasn't intelligent enough to be aware that he was in a position that permitted him to condescendingly, say, laugh in the faces of all of these Canadians, then ruling U.S. elites did, and surely Canadian ruling elites also did.
They must laugh about how powerless we are, and about how many were naively suckered into believing all or many of the lies used to so-called justify the wars to begin with. They laugh all the way to the bank.
Some day, however, they may not be the ones to have the last laugh.
Will the trial against Rumsfeld end up such that he'll again laugh at us, even if he does this in private so that we don't see him laughing at us?
I hope not.
And, lastly, isn't putting Rumsfeld on trial for having been signing-authority for the use of torture more important than what Yoo and Bybee are guilty of in relation to torture? Rumsfeld knew it was against U.S. law, and I don't think the executive branch has the right to unilaterally change U.S. law in whatever ways the branch's officials please. And, as far as I'm aware anyway, Congress never gave any explicit authorization for the use of torture, which was against U.S. law, as well as against international law, convention or treaty the U.S. is a co-signer of and which the U.S. Constitution states must be respected, stating that it becomes [supreme law of the land] for the USA when the U.S. is a co-signatory.
I might be mistaken about this, but what Yoo and Bybee did and how many Americans have focused a lot on this, while leaving aside greater crimes, seems to have served as distraction, instead of beneficial. Imo, it's the people guilty of the worst crimes that we should work on having indicted, tried, convicted, etcetera.
And I believe it's CCR, Citizens for Constitutional Rights, which filed against Rumsfeld in Germany for his authorization of torture. I think this filing was two or three years ago, and that Rumsfeld was traveling to Germany at that time or soon after this legal filing against was made there. It's as if this has been forgotten by most Americans, while many have focused on Yoo and Bybee over recent months.
I hope he gets what he deserves in the present trial against him.
Mike Corbeil
the canadians are trying sts in canada, the judge stoped the hearings befor the two witnesses could testify in his dehalf saying they have seen enough in his two files submitted as evedence, to tell him if he saw g.w.bush with his own eyes he did have a right to citisens arrest him for war crimes, then he told him the court would anounce there disission june 7 when they resume . so they only appear though smoke and mirror propaganda to have eludded accountbility . the hague has countrys sighned on that respect their laws against wars of aggression, crimes against humanitty, torchure. the bush addministration may not be able to fix their mess much longer.
You're very right about STS's two witnesses, who were to be Cynthia McKinney, who flew to Calgary from London to assist STS's defence, and professor Anthony J. Hall. I find it disheartening that this was shut down on the second day of what was supposed to be a four-day trial. Preventing the two witnesses from making their court statements strikes me as [wrong] of the court to do. But you're also right about the June 7th schedule for the judge's ruling and I hope it's an honourable one.
Like Prof. Hall says in his following article, Calgary is in Alberta, the PETROL. province of Canada, so maybe this is the real reason the judge shut down the trial when he did. The only other reason I can think for his decision is that Canadian Business wants to definitely protect its relations with U.S. Business, which includes business with the government of the U.S.A.; and, of course, petrol. is one of the businesses involved. In this latter case, however, the shutting down of the trial before Cynthia McKinney and Prof. Hall got to present their statements in assisting STS would simply be due to more than only Oil Canada wanting this process cut short.
"Attempted Citizen's Arrest of Alleged War Criminal George W. Bush in a Canadian Court"
by Anthony J. Hall, March 11, 2010
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18049
During the run-up politics to the launching of the war on Iraq, the CEO of CAE, Canadian Aeronautics Engineering, and the president or some speaker for the Canadian Business Club based in Toronto, which I think is like Business Capital of Canada, both demanded that the then PM of Canada, Jean Chretien, fully embark the CAF, Canadian Armed Forces, or the Army anyway, in the war on Iraq. Their stated reasons? The CEO of CAE said that it was necessary for Canada to do this in order to make sure that CAE didn't lose business opportunities with the U.S. The president or speaker for the Cdn Bus. Club said Canada needed to do this in order to protect all Canadian businesses that have business with the U.S. These were the reasons publicly stated by these two people, in respective order.
Their statements were public; available for everyone to hear on televised news.
Since I perceived their public statements as actually being criminal, I stated this in a discussion forum or two about the threat of war on Iraq at CBC.ca, which got rid of the forums years ago. I tried to find them at cbc.ca last year or the year before, and could not find anything about those discussion forums having even existed, much less finding archived copies.
Their public statements were criminal, I believe.
In any case, Canada's government is not one that particularly respects law. It continues genocidal conduct against the First Nations peoples of the country and the UNHRC has basically accused the Cdn govt of this and demanded that the govt cease this conduct. The UNHRC has done this a few or several times over the past couple of decades, but the Cdn govt works for Business Canada and when it comes to First Nations territories, land, there are mining resources there, so .... And the Cdn govt criminally continues its imperialist, ... ways against the First Nations families and victims who were criminally, ..., horrifically treated during the roughly 100 years of the Residential School System, a history that ended, I believe, in the 1980's, but which people can learn volumes about at www.hiddenfromhistory.org.
That website, "Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust", is by Rev. Kevin Annett, who is a former United Church minister who discovered the terrifying and genocidal treatment that the main Canadian Churches and the Cdn govt, and RCMP, had committed with the Residential School System, and who exposed this to the public; although, probably new of the main news media bothered to help in exposing the crimes that had been committed. He was outed from the church he was a member in due to exposing these crimes and the guilty parties, but continued to be a Christian minister while living with the Squamish (I believe that's the right name) tribe of Vancouver, BC, and vicinity.
He produced or at least is speaker in a "feature length documentary film", which has the title of, "UNREPENTANT: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide". It was produced or released in January 2007 and it's available at his website, but there are also copies at Google; apparently full-length copies. And his website provides, or used to provide anyway, a link to another website that he uses strictly for all of the documentation. HFH is the active website and people can find audios and possibly videos of victims of the Residential School System history who speak about their experiences; and by victims, I mean those who were forcibly removed from their families by the Cdn govt and its RCMP, and thrown into this concentration camp sort of system, as well as families who suffered seeing themselves and their children treated this way.
Plenty of informative articles are provided at and by the hosts of www.mohawknationnews.com, about other criminal conduct of the Cdn govt against First Nations Canadians, as well as crimes against American Indians. The hosts are Kahentinetha Horn and her daughter, who are both grandmothers; or at least they were the hosts a couple of years ago and earlier. And it's a news, activist, and education website; plenty of good content in all categories.
This is a sampling of Cdn govt criminality in Canada and then we can consider the Cdn govt's criminality when we consider Haiti, as well as the Cdn govt doing nothing to make sure that Cdn corporations operate legally, ethically, ... in foreign countries, like GoldCorp in Honduras, among other examples that can be considered.
The Cdn govt's so-called peacekeeping troops participated in the assassination of former Congolese Parliamentary Minister Patrice Lumumba; Canada and Belgium having committed this horrific and extreme crime. There are one or more documentary films about this online; certainly at Google anyway. Simply searching for Google videos using "Patrice Lumumba" will provide results.
The Cdn govt and its so-called peacekeeping military were also criminally guilty with respect to the war on Kosovo in 1999 and has been since.
For Canada and NATO, and (I guess especially) the U.S. having been guilty of criminality that fueled, or seriously worsened the conflicts in the Balkans, some Americans and others, like people with articles at www.globalresearch.ca, f.e., have written good articles about this; but there's also Scott Taylor, a former CAF soldier or officer (?), who provides videos and articles at his website, which is a Canadian military magazine, www.espritdecorps.ca (url's a French phrase, but the website's content is in English).
The reason I think the information he provides is particularly interesting is because he began his military magazine in, I believe, 1987 and he went to the Balkans to do regular reporting. As he continued to work there, he started to realise that the situation really was not how it was described by the U.S. and its allies, which is typical. He discovered a starkly different reality and the real truth, and he provides some or all of this information.
There's "The Black Book on (or of?) Canadian Foreign Policy" by Yves Engler, which is a book to refer to for plenty more.
As a U.S. citizen, I am mostly focused on U.S. matters, national and international, but I don't the U.S. the center of the universe or Earth and like to learn about more than only the U.S. Also, in terms of U.S.-led wars, we can discover some truths about them when learning about truths about U.S. allies in the wars. Whichever way the truth becomes learned and first exposed doesn't matter, as long as we get the truth; and the sooner we do, the better.
The above is a considerable sampling of examples of Canadian government and military criminality, but it's not for the purpose of trying to make anyone depressed about the trial of or against STS and morality, and law, that I referred to the above Canadian criminality. The reason I did is to illustrate why I would not consider the Canadian govt, military, and elite moral, ethical, honourable people, which they clearly aren't.
That unfortunately does cause me to not feel good about the shutting down of the trial of STS and what this represents in terms of upholding, or not, laws, treaties, and conventions that are, imo anyway, legally binding, so laws or like laws; but I HOPE that the ruling that the judge will be declaring on June 7th will be an honourable one.
All the U.S. elite need is for allies to be equally, or about as rogue as the U.S. elite are. They don't like it when allies act in honourable ways; it screws up the plans of the U.S. elite. It's like an argument that I posted some years ago, about an alternative way of considering the U.S.-led wars; to think of the U.S., in its war-making, as a superstructure. We know that superstructures are supported by buttresses, and we know that if the latter are removed, then the superstructure won't be able to continue to stand. Remove the war allies, that is stop them, or have them stop, and the U.S. won't be able to continue alone. The U.S. would not be able to achieve the present global plans of the U.S. elite, who would, therefore, need to modify their plans.
If we can change the U.S. govt, the Congress, ..., as David Swanson has written and spoken about, and can get the U.S. to then stop the wars, then all allies will follow suit. If this isn't achieved, but populations of allied countries in the U.S.-led wars can get their govts to stop and withdraw, then this will cause a change in plans among the U.S. war elite, who'll realise that their plans can no longer be carried out as previously projected and therefore require modification; or full withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The cause of STS and his allies in defence is about the Cdn govt honourably respecting laws, treaties and conventions, and if these people win, then this should help to get the Cdn govt to finally stop contributing in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan; and possibly to also cease Canada's secret contributions to the war in Iraq.
And it should help to get the Cdn govt to cease its criminal support for the continuing crime against Haitians and President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, too.
All war-supporting "buttresses" need to be withdrawn; the sooner, the better. The rogue superstructure superpower U.S. govt must be stopped by doing so "head-on", or indirectly. Either way will make me happy.
And so I hope the ruling on June 7th will be very good.
Mike Corbeil