Speaking Truth to Torturers
BY Scott Horton - Oct12, 2007
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/10/hbc-90001399”I don’t think it, I know it”
Each time he is confronted with evidence of his own policies condoning torture, President Bush responds with the same phrase: “We do not torture.” It is a lie. A brazen lie. The American public now recognizes this (see next item). But in the etiquette of American politics, no one is prepared to say that the Emperor is wearing no clothes.
But now President Jimmy Carter speaks Truth to Power.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml;jsessionid=BME4HS1ETENA1QFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/10/12/wcarter112.xml&site=5&page=0 Asked by the CNN news channel whether he thought the Bush Administration had tortured suspects, Mr Carter said: “I don’t think it, I know it, certainly.” Confronted with Mr Bush’s public denial last week that the US had ever tortured detainees, Mr Carter replied: “That’s not an accurate statement if you use the international norms of torture as has always been honoured, certainly in the last 60 years, since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated.”
Last week, the New York Times obtained memos written by the US justice department in 2005. These argued that techniques such as simulated drowning, head-slapping and keeping detainees in freezing temperatures did not constitute torture and could therefore be used. But Mr Carter, 84, said: “You can make your own definition of human rights and say, ‘we don’t violate them’. And you can make your own definition of torture and say ‘we don’t violate it’.
“The president is self-defining what we have done and authorised in the torture of prisoners.”
Poll: Americans Agree, Bush is Lying About Torture
A Rasmussen poll shows .....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/rasmussen/20071010/pl_rasmussen/torturepoll20071010.............