Never pass up a chance to sit down or relieve yourself. -old Apache saying

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Reckoning w/Torture

Ultimately, there has to be a reckoning. 

This country's leaders broke several laws, including the Geneva Convention and the UN Convention Against Torture rules against torture, after we were attacked on 9/11.  And yet, they all got to walk scot-free.  Free men.  This is not right and we must have some justice.

If we do not dispense some sort of justice, what is to keep any future governments from doing the same things, or worse?  One deterrent from future crimes might be the prosecution of past Presidents for breaking the law.  Why is this so far-fetched?  Why are they above the law?


You don't just let criminals walk around with no repercussions from their crimes.  It emboldens them.  President Obama and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi erred grievously when they chose to NOT prosecute Bush, et al, for the blatant violations of rights and laws.  When running for President in 2008, Obama declared that we should "not look backward, but forward."

Total bullshit!  If we don't learn from the past, we'll do the same shit again.  And, try a mental exercise and just switch the political parties.  Do you for one second think that if a Democrat committed Bush's crimes and we had a Republican House and Senate at the time that the Republicans would turn the other cheek and let the Democrat walk?  If you think so, you are deluded.  Still, just because Republicans would have prosecuted (and impeached) a Democratic President is no real reason for the Dems to prosecute Bush.  You do it because it is the right thing to do.  Remember the rule of law?  Or is that all just forgotten when circumstances go haywire?

Doug Liman, the director of The Bourne Identity and Fair Game, has teamed up with the ACLU and PEN American Center on a collaborative film project that will hopefully bring this issue back to the limelight.  America has some unfinished business.  Our leaders blatantly broke the law, and our turning away from it does not set a good example for the rest of the world. 

Liman invites you to download some of the torture memos and read them aloud, while filming it.  He believes that reading these memos out loud will change your life.  And maybe it will help to prod this country towards a truth and reconciliation commission of our own.  I don't necessarily want Bush, et al, thrown in jail for what they did after 9/11, but at the very least charges should be filed!


Go to the Reckoning with Torture website here.  Then, maybe we can talk about the illegal wiretapping.

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He's always watching

He's always watching