Nicholas D. Kristof

wait so Japan was punished for acts committed during and as part of wartime/warfare? oh hell we’re screwed.

nationalpost:

Amnesty: Canada ‘required’ to arrest George W. Bush
Amnesty International called on Canadian authorities Wednesday to arrest and prosecute George W. Bush, saying the former U.S. president authorized “torture” when he directed the U.S.-led war on terror.

Bush is expected to attend an economic summit in Surrey in Canada’s westernmost British Columbia province on October 20.

The London-based group charged that Bush has legal responsibility for a series of human rights violations in a memorandum submitted last month to Canada’s attorney general but only now released to the media.

“Canada is required by its international obligations to arrest and prosecute former president Bush given his responsibility for crimes under international law including torture,” Amnesty’s Susan Lee said in a statement.

“As the U.S. authorities have, so far, failed to bring former president Bush to justice, the international community must step in. A failure by Canada to take action during his visit would violate the UN Convention Against Torture and demonstrate contempt for fundamental human rights,” Lee said. (Photo: Larry Downing/Reuters)

(via yajnaseni)

(Source: socialuprooting)

mohandasgandhi:

mehreenkasana:

Time for the US to Investigate Torture

There’s overwhelming evidence of torture by the Bush administration. The Obama administration has a legal obligation to investigate. Jessie Graham reports.

“The widespread abuse across three continents was not the result of low ranking soldiers who broke the rules. It was the result of high administration officials who cast the rules aside to shape their own desires.

[…]

When the United States refuses to investigate American officials for their involvement in torture and ill treatment, it undermines the global effort to press for accountability for human rights abuses in other countries. The US is right to call for justice in places like Darfur, Libya or Sri Lanka but there can’t be double standards.”

For the uninitiated, a few links below have been provided to give you an idea of how the Bush regime not only administrated torture methods on detainees but also justified each and every one of them:

• George W Bush recounted in his memoir, Decision Points, that when he was asked in 2002 if it was permissible to waterboard a detainee held in secret CIA custody outside the United States, he answered “damn right”. This “decision point” led to the waterboarding of that person 183 times in one month. More here and here.
• Bush administration acknowledges and defends use of torture technique.
• Insects, sleep deprivation and waterboarding among approved techniques by the Bush administration.

Appalling, to say the least.

As much as I’d like to see these guys nailed for authorizing the use of torture, I’d be shocked if I saw it happen. Although U.S. legal scholars have made a decent case, I don’t see it leaving academia. The Obama administration made it clear right away that they wouldn’t be investigating any Bush officials and the United States isn’t going to let a foreign government prosecute U.S. officials at all. (See Khaled el-Masri) The U.S. can put political pressure on foreign governments, place economic sanctions on them, or whatever in order to deter any investigations.

Furthermore, they really blew it when they let John Yoo, from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, go, citing that there was no misconduct present in the interrogation memos, just “poor judgement.”

I think they got away with this one.

I just read all about waterboarding and I am so disgusted with the world.

PLEASE READ THIS. People should know that these things happen. This isn’t about left/right, liberal/conservative, dem/rep - at least, it shouldn’t be. You’d just have to be a sick, evil person to think that doing this to other humans was acceptable.