(no subject)

[kyra_ojosverdes]

What. The. Fuck.

The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to military officials, a step that would mark a potentially permanent shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nymphette_/]

merciful god.

Impeach him.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Was there ever a time when people accepted that the only time a moral position had meaning was if it was held to when tested?

Hey, newsflash for the idiotic assholes out there: yes, we were attacked on 9/11. And that means that if we start abandoning our principles, it proves that we never actually had any, because we were only willing to hold to them while they were easy, while no one had any strong temptation to abandon them.

[dimfuture.livejournal.com]

A fuckin' men.

[jakeexperience.livejournal.com]

Impeach.

[nephthys510.livejournal.com]

Nay. Baby steps.

Vote the Republicans out. Get a Democratic House and Senate and start a real investigation.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

A real investigation is what we need. We need to know what orders were given to whom, and where it led to.

I have to confess, I think that will inexorably lead to impeachment, unless there's a huge tide of "Oh, poor, poor, *POOR* Bush, he didn't personally *order* these things, he was just pushed around by other people who said that they were necessary."

You'd hope that wouldn't happen. He is, after all, "the decider". But you can't be sure these days.

[nephthys510.livejournal.com]

Take them all down. Rove, Cheney, Rummy, the whole rotten bunch, because even if Bush pulls a "I was just following orders" (god forfend) there was collusion throughout this administration.

Put Lieberman in stocks and let us throw rotten veggies at him for good measure, too.

[samvimes.livejournal.com]

Been reading The Case for Impeachment. Along with about a dozen other impeachable offenses, they discuss torture in detail. It's definitely been traced to Rumsfeld, and there are broad hints that Cheney has encouraged the practice since days after 9/11. The cover-up, at the very least, can probably be traced to Bush (and when you think cover-up, think Nixon). The Geneva Convention outlaws inhumane treatment of prisoners, segregating them in individual cells, and all forms of torture, including treatment that is "degrading or humiliating"--those have all been broken. The U.S. is a signatory of the Geneva Convention, making it the executive's duty to enforce it. On top of that, there are the Nuremberg Charter and the 1996 War Crimes Act to consider.

If the measure is how well he defends the Constitution and enforces the law--and that's certainly my understanding of the President's job, and that of the executive as a whole--then in my opinion, we have the worst, and most impeachable, President in all of United States history. A full investigation, of the whole gang, is absolutely called for. Thoughts on why this hasn't already happened will probably be going into a separate post...

[kightp.livejournal.com]

What he said.

ITMFA (http://www.itmfa.com/)...

[nephthys510.livejournal.com]

This pisses me off no end and sent me into a blind rage when I saw it.

What the HELL is happening to my country??

Dear God, make it stop before we are all destroyed.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

This is not the America we knew...

[wandereringray.livejournal.com]

Sad thing is this has been pretty much standard policy since 2001. *shakes head* Now they're just putting in writing (or attempting to) so that they can wiggle around protests from the UN and other human rights organizations.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

They won't be able to wiggle around protests from the UN or other human rights organizations... but the base will be able to whine "but it's not *ILLEGAL*!"

As if the law determined what was right and wrong.

[samvimes.livejournal.com]

but the base will be able to whine "but it's not *ILLEGAL*!"

Not convincingly--see my comment above.

So um

[themagdalen.livejournal.com]

we won't be outraged when furriners do this stuff to U.S. troops, right?
and civilian hostages?

'cause after all we wrote ourselves out of that part of the treaty?

is the not-so-bad-kind-of-torture fair game for all sides now?