Torture, A Brutal Tool Of Their Trade.

        We know every state does it, some more subtle, some more brutal, but they all have their methods. I'm talking about torture, it is a tool of the state and it will do everything in its power to hold onto it in one form or another. The more we expose it the more difficult it becomes for them, they have to work harder at justifying it, or concealing it, or devising new methods. Torture will continue until we rid ourselves of that shackle on our freedom, the state. That doesn't mean we should ignore torture until that day arrives, we have to expose it and campaign against it, when ever we get any information regarding torture. Never forget, it is a human being that is being tortured, no matter the name the state puts on that being, it may be an autocratic institution that sanctions the act, but it is also human beings that implement those actions.

This interesting article from Human Rights First:

       The argument about whether torture works is still raging. Four years after President Obama ended the torture program, torture proponents continue to claim that torture saved American lives and was necessary to find criminals like Osama bin Laden. Just last week, Condoleezza Rice said that because of torture, “we have not had a successful attack on our territory.”

       I served the CIA for 23 years, and I was directly involved in the “enhanced interrogation” program. I know from experience that torture not only undermined our values and Constitution, it made us less safe.

        The Senate Intelligence Committee has produced the most comprehensive report on the post-9/11 CIA torture program, based on a review of more than 6 million pages of official records. Those who have read the report say that it shows the CIA torture program was much more widespread and cruel than we thought, and much less effective at gathering actionable intelligence than torture proponents claim.

      However, the Obama Administration is sitting on this report and has delayed its release. On Friday, Vice President Biden supported the report's release. Ask President Obama to work with Congress to declassify the torture report.

      Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and national security experts (me included) have said publicly that torture did not lead to bin Laden or save American lives. But until this report is released, torture proponents will continue to argue that we should return to torture.

     Let’s be clear: torture is un-American, illegal, and immoral. Let’s end this debate once and for all. Urge President Obama to work with Congress to declassify the torture report.

Sincerely,

Glenn Carle
Former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats, National Intelligence Council
Author, The Interrogator

ann arky's home.

WHY AFGHANISTAN?

          The war in Afghanistan has been a costly, bloody and brutal affair, it has been 11years of savage conflict where the NATO countries have poured in money and young lives. The total NATO deaths has passed the 3,000 mark, of those more than 2,000 were American forces and over 400 were from UK forces. On top of that there has been tens of thousands of physically injured and mentally scarred young people from the NATO forces. Then of course there is the figures that get very little coverage in that babbling brook of bullshit, Western media, Afghan civilians killed. The figures are horrendous, according the UN figures almost 13,000 have been killed in the last six years, 2,332 in 2011 alone, a 10% increase on the previous year. Then it being a capitalist war we have to look at the financial side. The estimated cost to the US tax payer, calculated up to September this year, will be a staggering $487.6 billion, and to the UK tax payer it will be £20billion. How much is that in social services?

        Why have the Western nations poured so much in suffering and money into this poor country? To catch/kill, Osama bib Laden? To bring democracy to the Afghans? Well they have succeed the first mentioned, at what cost? They have of course failed miserably in the latter.

       However could the reason for this costly savage slaughter be clarified by this extract from a BBC article:

 

      Afghanistan is known to have vast reserves of oil, gas, copper, cobalt, gold and lithium. In late 2011, a consortium of Indian companies inked a deal to begin mining some of the country's large stores of iron. But the country is known to have a wider array of mineral resources; in 2010, the Afghan ministry of mines claimed a value of its reserves of nearly a trillion dollars, then carrying out tours to promote investment in them.

Continue READING:

       Of course a Western compliant puppet government in Afghanistan would see them control those assets as the have done in Libya and Iraq, with Syria and Iran in their radar.

ann arky's home.

OK CORRAL MENTALITY.

     

      With all the hooray, back-slapping and triumphalism of Obama's visit to this country so soon after the assassination of Osama Bin Laden gives the impression that we all agree with this action, a state action that defies the rule of law. It makes his statement that America and Britain have, “the ability to lead the world not by force but by example” all the more hypocritical. When has Britain or America lead the world by the rule of law, both countries have bombed and blasted innumerable countries into submissive arrangements, all "just wars" of course.

     

      We should read his patronising statement as no more than simply a bit of UK public ego stroking, what he really meant was that America will lead the world. Of course he doesn't consult with the world as to whether it wants to be lead by America or any other nation for that matter. It is the same old macho Americanism, the OK Corral culture still prevails, dressed up in modern clothes but just as selfish and just brutal.

ann arky's home.

SHINING EXAMPLE OF WESTERN HYPOCRISY.

        So Osama Bin Laden is dead, after 10 years of war, several trillion dollars and the destruction of a country, and already they are talking about “Bin Laden” model 2. I suppose it is a matter of the king is dead, long live the king. The headlines in The Sunday Times, May 8, US launches drone airstrike on 'new Bin Laden' in Yemen. So how many will there be, at 10 years a time this could be the 100 years war and at the same time bankrupt the world. How far down the chain of command will they go, perhaps some guy in some quiet corner of the world looking at an Islamic move could be targeted and then maybe his pal down the road, just in case.

       Ten years and several trillion dollars to get rid of some guy the CIA trained, armed and funded to go out and fight the Russians. It seems like a very bad deal. Their little exercise in Afghanistan has left the country a far more dangerous place than ever it has been, plus they killed thousands of Afghan civilians in the process. This is how you bring democracy to the world, Western style.

      The manner in which he was executed is being applauded by all and sundry in the West, yet when the the Israeli's assassinated Hamas co-founder, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi in Gaza our former British foreign secretary, Jack Straw stated, “The British government has made it repeatedly clear that so-called 'targeted assassinations' of this kind are unlawful, unjustified and unproductive.” Come on Jack, let's hear it for Osama Bin Laden, and what's your view on the attempted assassination of Colonel Gaddafi?

      Think of a world where any country can send a band of armed killers into any other country and execute anybody they feel has harmed their country. This is the ideology of the Western power mongers, the so called leaders of the “free world”, but woe betide anyone outside their little club how tries it in their country. When you're the big bully you don't need to bother with the rules, hypocrisy, the main ingredient in Western democracy.

ann arky's home.