Thursday, May 5, 2011

Tortured Logic


In an odd twist, Donald Rumsfeld also contradicts Pete King: http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/DonaldRumsfeld-gitmo-waterboarding-osamabinladen/2011/05/02/id/394820

While some conservatives are complaining that we don't vigorously interrogate suspected terrorists anymore, it was the Bush administration that eventually  stopped such practices as threatening to sexually assault a prisoner with a broomstick, have female soldiers pose with naked prisoners in stress positions, and sleep deprivation. Both candidates McCain and Obama acknowledged that brutal interrogations were a betrayal of the Constitution, could provide false information, and a threat to our own soldiers' security. During his imprisonment in Viet Nam, John McCain was tortured and signed an anti-American confession. McCain agreed to admitting lies under torture because that is what his captors wanted, and they eventually got it.

 It's the same story in our President's town of Chicago.  Judge Milton Shadur of the U.S. District Court (N.D. Ill.) found that:

“It is now common knowledge that in the early to mid-1980s Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and many officers working under him in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions.” U.S. ex rel. Maxwell v. Gilmore 37 F. Supp.2d 1078 (N.D. Ill. 1999)
More about torture in Chicago can be found here: http://humanrights.uchicago.edu/chicagotorture/timeline.shtml