US soldiers torturing a prisoner at Abu Graib in Iraq.
In case you missed it … You paid to have people tortured and possibly murdered. Your tax dollars went to train CIA employees on how to torture people. And according to recently declassified documents, it appears some prisoners died in the process. What’s more disturbing is that since President Obama has not clearly reinstated a prohibition on torture, you can only assume it’s still happening today.
If I were a member of the elite White House press corpse (yeah I know how to spell corps) I’d ask Obama why he doesn’t unequivocally state that his administration will not torture people. Sure, former President Bush said point blank: “We do not torture.” That didn’t mean much, but we have to assume that if Obama is specifically not prohibiting torture, he’s doing so to avoid lying, and thus by getting him to state he won’t torture, that could mean something. I know, it’s stupid wishful thinking.
CIA Report on Torture Program (17MB) 269 pages of pdf
The issue for Obama is that while he may not be using CIA employees to torture and murder people, he continues to pursue the Bush policy of rendition. Rendition is the process of sending prisoners to countries that aren’t bound by international treaties like the Geneva Convention that bans torture. What’s great about rendition is that the Egyptians or Syrians are doing all the torturing and stuff like that, so we don’t have to. Outsourcing.
Obama claims that he’s monitoring the treatment of these prisoners to make sure they aren’t tortured, but if they aren’t being tortured, why bother sending them there at all?
But like I said, I’m not a member of the elite White House press corpse.
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