Wednesday, June 01, 2005
The Art and Craft of Torture
Which nation can claim clean hands?
Torture takes different forms---physical and psychological. Retraction by Newsweek of the report about desecration of the Koran notwithstanding, torture happens.
Torture of prisoners not new and it is not going to go away. The Catholic Church used it during the Spanish Inquisition; the Nazis took it to new heights during Hitler's Third Reich; the North Vietnamese tortured their prisoners and so did the South Vietnamese with our full knowledge. Prisoners have been tortured at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. The "rendition" program is the icing on the cake. Under this program we clandestinely ship prisoners to other countries where the Geneva Convention is a joke. It has been aptly described by some as outsourcing of torture.
Naomi Klein's report in The Guardian (5/14/05) sheds light on one particularly horrendous case involving a prisoner who was "renditioned".
It is interesting to note that our own School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia, graduated many officers of the armed forces from Latin American countries who were later found to be directly involved in torturing and killing political dissidents. The school offcially closed on Dec.15, 2000, and now operates under the name of Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC).
George Monbiot of The Guardian wrote a fascinating report about the School of the Americas way back in 2001.
Links:
Naomi Klein-The Guardian,UK
George Monbiot-The Guardian - Backyard Terrorism
Torture takes different forms---physical and psychological. Retraction by Newsweek of the report about desecration of the Koran notwithstanding, torture happens.
Torture of prisoners not new and it is not going to go away. The Catholic Church used it during the Spanish Inquisition; the Nazis took it to new heights during Hitler's Third Reich; the North Vietnamese tortured their prisoners and so did the South Vietnamese with our full knowledge. Prisoners have been tortured at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. The "rendition" program is the icing on the cake. Under this program we clandestinely ship prisoners to other countries where the Geneva Convention is a joke. It has been aptly described by some as outsourcing of torture.
Naomi Klein's report in The Guardian (5/14/05) sheds light on one particularly horrendous case involving a prisoner who was "renditioned".
It is interesting to note that our own School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia, graduated many officers of the armed forces from Latin American countries who were later found to be directly involved in torturing and killing political dissidents. The school offcially closed on Dec.15, 2000, and now operates under the name of Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC).
George Monbiot of The Guardian wrote a fascinating report about the School of the Americas way back in 2001.
Links:
Naomi Klein-The Guardian,UK
George Monbiot-The Guardian - Backyard Terrorism
