"Torture is terrorism", ex-Guantanamo man tells US

[struggle4progress]

Fri May 2, 2008 1:56pm EDT
By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM, May 2 (Reuters) - Al Jazeera journalist Sami al-Haj returned home to Sudan on Friday after more than six years in the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay prison, urging Washington to respect human rights and branding torture as terrorism ...

"Security and human rights are inseparable issues -- you cannot have one without the other," he told Reuters in an interview.

"Human rights are not only for times of peace -- you need to hold onto them always even during difficult times and times of war," he added.

"My last message to the U.S. administration is that torture will not stop terrorism -- torture is terrorism" ... http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL02898954

[NanceGreggs]

1. Torture is terrorism." n/t

[judasdisney]

2. "Torture is terrorism" -- cannot be repeated enough

[Canuckistanian]

3. Torture IS terrorism

And ESPECIALLY the way torture is being used by these Bush fascists.

Are they getting valuable information and 'saving lives'? No.

They're torturing hundreds, then releasing them so they can go back home to serve as a "warning".

That is, by definition, terrorism.

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. The former SAS soldier, Andy McNab, now an author, wrote an interesting

article in a Sunday paper here in the UK recently, explaining that the official sadism that goes on in wars is calculated precisely to instil terror.

In the Middle Ages, conquering armies practised mutilation on the citizens of cities that resisted them for precisely the same reason. To "encourage" others not to resist them. The arrest, incarceration in Abu Ghraib, and torture of Iraqis, irrespective of their "guilt" or innocence, would not have been solely to obtain information, it seems, but rather to terrorise the population.

In our world, today, i.e. since WWII, winning the "minds and hearts" of occupied peoples has been considered crucial for any kind of lasting hegemony. The odd thing about the neocons is that they give the impression that they think on the level of youngsters playing computer-games; the mailed fist, shock and awe, is all. As if they had an endless supply of cannnon fodder at their disposal, if not all in the US, in South America and other countries where mercenaries can be bought for a song.