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Ear to the Ground

Bush Clarifies Official Position on Torture (Kind of)

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Posted on Jul 20, 2007

Were the CIA to potentially, maybe, have a detention and interrogation program it would now have to adhere to President Bush’s new executive order prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees. It’s still unclear whether water-boarding remains on the menu.

AP via New York Times:

President Bush signed an executive order Friday prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment, including humiliation or denigration of religious beliefs, in the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects.

The White House declined to say whether the CIA currently has a detention and interrogation program, but said that if it did it must adhere to the guidelines outlined in the executive order. The order targets captured al-Qaida terrorists who have information on attack plans or the whereabouts of the group’s senior leaders.

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By hidden, July 23, 2007 at 3:57 pm #

Hooray for Democracy and Freedom…..So What the hell have they been doing before this neo-con order?

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By vet240, July 23, 2007 at 3:40 pm #

Anyone who accepts the statement that bu$h clarified this issue must really believe bu$h can read, and is capable of cognative reason.
This man who brags truthfully about having read a book “once”.

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By farmertx, July 23, 2007 at 12:01 pm #

Debra, in defense of those who accepted the Shrubs’ version of causus belli, the American people had never had a President who blatantly lied about such a serious matter. Heck, even Colin Powell was fooled at first. And he is a Republican that this Democrat can respect.
But, as Abe said, you can’t fool all the people all the time. Granted that there are still 25-30% that do believe him; they just can’t face the fact that they bought into a lie,so denial is the only way out.
Just as the Shrub being cheerful and upbeat in interviews. I’m told that nose candy has that effect on some.
But the rest of us have to face reality on a daily basis.
I would hope that all on these forums/blogs are writing their congress critter demanding impeachment of the Shrub and the Shootist—has to be both or they’ll just pardon each other.
‘Course that will just prompt Shrub into declaring a national emergency and declaring martial law and cancelling elections until he has bled this country dry, er I meant, saved this country from its enemies.
Then we will see if anyone remembers the Preamble where it says that when a Government ceases to be responsive to the needs of the Governed, it is the duty of the Governed to remove said Government…or words to that effect.

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By vet240, July 23, 2007 at 12:51 am #

bu$h (or rather his advisers) are in the process of re-writing history. They are also trying to cover his (their) back-sides as they prepare to slip out the windows in 2008.

Impeach these people now!!

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By Enemy of State, July 22, 2007 at 9:46 pm #

Oh but we don’t torture, we may use “harsh interrogation” techniques, which is different. You see “spin” is everything. This order was touted as prohibiting torture. We have banished that word now from our official dictionary of governmentally approved words.

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By kevin99999, July 22, 2007 at 2:44 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Anyone who believes this man and this administration would have to be a total idiot.

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By Debra Istvanik-Strotman, July 22, 2007 at 1:50 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

It was a sad day in the year of 2000, when the Shrub stole the election and moved into the White House. It got down right disgusting when Americans, afraid for their lives gave the shrub full approval to do as he wished.

Want to tortue anyone including Americans, ‘no problem,’ spirit them out of their beds and out of United States and you are free to do anything you please with them.

We can never complain about the treatment of Americans by our enemies as long as we torture,“a tactic proven ineffective.”

Today, sadder than 2000, we see our Constitution, rights of Americans to be heard, and represented by those we put in office, as well as those who hold office by dubious means ‘trampled beneath Bush’s cowboy boot.’

Our ancestors must be proud of the way many quiver when Bush warns of doom, how you hide in fear when Bush tells you the terrorist are coming for us.You sign away our freedom in the name of false safety.

“A brave person may not live a long life, but he will live a full life.” “A frightened person may live a long life, but it will be uneventful as he cowers in in the shadows.

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By Douglas Chalmers, July 21, 2007 at 2:22 pm #

Oh, its not “cruel and inhuman” - its only torture, ha ha! We do it all the time to each other…..!?!?

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By kevin99999, July 20, 2007 at 10:45 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

If there is any hope of improving tarnished image of the United States, the thugs in the White House meed to be not just impeached-though that would be a good start, they need to be put on trial for crimes against humanity.

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By QuyTran, July 20, 2007 at 10:23 pm #

The new executive order prohibiting cruel and inhuman
treatment… means CIA can kill after dark with nobody knows !

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By farmertx, July 20, 2007 at 8:22 pm #

Mr Weiss, Are you aware of any Democrat in contention for the Presidency that could measure up to FDR? And, biting my tongue, the Shrub wasn’t the only President who short-changed the levee’s.
But back to torture. Give me a 6 pack of cokes, a chair and some cord/rope to bind him to that chair and I’ll have Shrub, or any one else, confessing to nailing Jesus to the cross.
This isn’t to say that enemy prisoner’s merit deluxe treatment. Torture is only effective to a point. And it takes a skillful practitioner to know that point.
Every Muslim is granted permission to lie (to infidels) to protect his religion. Their swearing on a Quran would mean as much as the Shrub swearing to preserve the Constitution—diddly squat.
Plus, there is the infamous “Signing Statements” whereby Shrub can negate/nullify anything that he has just signed…in total secrecy.

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By martin weiss, July 20, 2007 at 8:13 pm #

New executive order rescinds previous executive order, under which hundreds of “enemy combatants” were tortured to death, which was signed by Rumsfeld, Gonzales, and Bush.
Violation of a treaty, like the Geneva Convention, is a violation of US law, George.

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By martin weiss, July 20, 2007 at 8:09 pm #

let me simplify that for you, George, it means that “faith-based initiatives” are specifically forbidden.

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By martin weiss, July 20, 2007 at 7:56 pm #

US Constitution, Bill of Rights, Amendment one:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,”

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By martin weiss, July 20, 2007 at 7:28 pm #

Living with a thief and mass murderer in the people’s house who has violated his oath, abolished the Bill of Rights, cut veterans’ benefits and school lunches, who promises to veto childrens’ health insurance, who lies to the people and the Congress, entertains male prostitutes in the Oval Office, uses the Justice Department to defend his illegal acts, claims immunity for revealing the identity of the true authority on weapons of mass destruction, names as vice president the man who sold nuclear technology to Iran and poison gas to Saddam, refuses offers to negotiate from N. Korea in favor of confrontation, allowing the creation of nuclear weapons, cuts levee maintenance funds for New Orleans to save six million dollars which costs thousands of lives and forty billion dollars—
wastes the lives of America’s young soldiers while strengthening the enemy,
gives tax refunds to oil companies who pay no taxes on hundreds of billion dollars per year in pure profit, sending billions abroad to governments who sponsor terrorism—
appoints a supreme court who annuls anti-segregation laws and makes it illegal for a citizen to sue the government for redress of grievances—
hides election theft and political prosecutions behind a spurious claim of executive privilege—
who abolishes the posse comitatus act, federalizing the national guard to act as local police just like Hitler’s SS—
who laughs while killing millions of innocent people—and finally whose cronies make billions of dollars from conflict, crisis, catastrophe and human suffering—

That’s torture.

sincerely,
Martin S. Weiss
Mexico, MO
(note to Bush: if you think you can stage another disaster and cancel elections, just remember what a democrat did to Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo.)

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