Paul Craig Roberts
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has just released its report, “Extreme Measures: Abused Children Detained As National Security Threats”.
From my reading of the report, Israel and the US are the two worst abusers. Boko Haram is a distant third.
Which country is the worst abuser, Israel or the US? Taking into account that the US is responsible for the violence in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria that has resulted in torture and detention, if we include these victims in the American total, then the US is the Number One torturer of children. As it is unlikely that Israel could get away with abuse of Palestinian children without Washington’s support, we can add Israel’s abuses to Washington’s total.
Guantanamo Bay is a great distance away from Washington’s wars against Muslims in Afghanistan, North Africa and the Middle East. Yet even at Guantanamo, where the only violence is the violence that the US military inflicts on detainees, the US government tortured children, according to the Human Rights Watch report.
What kind of military tortures children? The only answer that I can come up with is a military that has no self-respect.
What kind of US government would pay two US psychologists $81 million to help the CIA devise torture techniques? Only a lawless government with no respect for US law and international law.
Think back to the torture memos written by US Department of Justice (sic) officials John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee. These memos justifying the US government’s torture of detainees despite the prohibition of torture by both US statutory law and international law to which the US is a signatory have been denounced by civil libertarians as the work of legal incompetents or criminals or both. Yet, John Yoo is a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, and for his service to the White House torturers Jay Bybee was appointed a US federal judge to the second highest court. If Hitlery becomes president, Bybee and Yoo could end up on the Supreme Court.
The positions held by Yoo and Bybee tell the world all that is needed to know that the United States is a lawless entity and that this lawlessness is accepted by America’s legal, political, and educational institutions and by the American people.
What self-respecting parent would send a son or daughter to study law at a university that hosts a “legal scholar” who discounts law in behalf of torture?
If you were a judge on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals and a torturer was appointed to the court, would you welcome the criminal or resign in protest against a government that has no respect for its own laws?
How many NSA officials have resigned over illegal spying on the American people?
How many FBI officials have resigned over false flag frame-ups of “terrorists”?
When the Democratic National Committee can hire Americans for $50 per night to fill up the empty seats at the Democratic convention, what does that tell you about the price of American integrity?
Do you remember the 775 Guantanamo detainees described by the US Secretary of Defense and the Vice President of the US as the most dangerous, most violent men on earth? We will never know how many of these detainees were tortured in an effort to elicit a confession in support of the government’s unfounded claims, but nine of them died in custody. We do know that despite torture and the assurances from the highest officials that the detainees were dangerous and violent, as of July 12, 2016, 90 percent of the detainees have been released without charges. Only 76 remain, and apparently there is no evidence that can be used to charge them. Apparently, they are being held only in order to save the US government from being 100 percent wrong. Being 90 percent wrong is close enough for government work. See here.
Do you remember those photos of the torture of the Abu Ghraib prisoners? As horrifying as the photos are, they are the mild part. Others photos were not released. The photos reveal more than torture. The photos reveal the extreme pleasure that the US soldiers got from torturing the prisoners. They were having the time of their life abusing other humans!
Some feminists have excused the female soldier, one of the several grunts punished while the higher officials responsible went scot free, with the rationale that she was only getting back at the male gender for the abuses she, as a female, had suffered from men.
The Abu Ghraib photos required silencing. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the senior American commander in Iraq, appointed Major General Antonio Taguba to compile a report based on an investigation of the torture. All Gen. Taguba had to do was to explain away the torture and be promoted from 2-star to 3-star general.
If that is what Sanchez intended, he chose the wrong man. Gen. Taguba filed an honest report, finding:“That between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility (BCCF), numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees. This systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force (372nd Military Police Company, 320th Military Police Battalion, 800th MP Brigade), in Tier (section) 1-A of the Abu Ghraib Prison (BCCF). The allegations of abuse were substantiated by detailed witness statements (ANNEX 26) and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence… In addition to the aforementioned crimes, there were also abuses committed by members of the 325th MI Battalion, 205th MI Brigade, and Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center (JIDC).”
Instead of becoming a 3-star general with lucrative consulting opportunities and board memberships at the end of his military career, Taguba was sent into retirement.
Seymour Hersh’s report on “The General’s Report” shows a US military whose leaders, both military and civilian, are devoid of integrity.
If we contrast the fate of Gen. Taguba, who took the US Military Code seriously, with the mindlessness of Fox “News” and its incoherent insouciant Medal of Honor winner, Dakota Meyer, who is displayed on need, we can see how integrity was lost to ignorance and propaganda.
Mischaracterizing Democratic convention delegates protests, “no more war”, as disrespect for the military, Dakota Meyer declares that “America is the beacon of hope”.
That is not the way the world sees it. In every world poll, the United States is ranked overwhelmingly as the greatest threat to peace, with Israel as the runner-up. The “threats”, such as North Korea and Iran, designated by the warmongers in Washington hardly register as threats in world polls.
Long ago Americans were divided into “liberals” and “conservatives” and set against one another, while those who did the dividing took away our civil liberties and prosperity. Both the Fox “News” imbecile and the Medal of Honor winner, who think of themselves as “conservatives”, believe that it is liberals who are disrespectful of the military and that their hatred of the military is why “liberals” are opposed to war. Of course, informed Americans are aware that it was conservatives who did not want to get into wars. It was conservatives, not liberals who opposed US involvement in WWI and WWII. Liberals were hot to trot.
It has escaped Fox “News” and the Medal of Honor winner that Democrat Hitlery is all in favor of war and wants more of it. The people who don’t want war are the ones that understand that WWIII will be nuclear and bring an end to life on earth. The people denigrated by the Fox “News” imbecile and the insouciant Medal of Honor winner are the people who are trying to save not only the United States but all life on earth from the stupid, reckless, arrogant war crowd.
To whom is America “the beacon of hope”? Is America the beacon of hope to the millions of peoples who have been killed, maimed, and displaced by America’s wars during the past 15 years? Is America the beacon of hope to the Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Ghetto that Israel uses for a shooting gallery? Is America the beacon of hope to the Latin American peoples whose representative governments Washington routinely overthrows? Is America the beacon of hope to the Russians and Chinese who are being encircled with military bases and demonized with hostile words and misrepresented with lies? Is America the beacon of hope for the middle class whose jobs and future were offshored? Is America the beacon of hope to the poor whose public assistance was wiped out by Clinton’s Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996?
America is a beacon of hope only to the One Percent who loot and plunder both our economic future and our civil liberties.
People can be intelligent without being brave, and they can be brave without being intelligent. Our soldiers fit in the later category. They do the work for the One Percent and are paid for their physical and emotional injuries with medals.
In the past 15 years “the beacon of hope” has destroyed in whole or part seven countries–Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, and Syria. The “beacon of hope” has overthrown representative governments in Honduras, Ukraine, Egypt, Argentina, and Brazil, installing in their place right-wing crooks, and is working hard to overthrow the elected governments in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. The extraordinary range of death and suffering for which “the beacon of hope” is responsible is unprecedented.
As if this is not enough, “the beacon of hope” is now recklessly and irresponsibly threatening two nuclear powers–Russia and China–with military encirclement justified with the most blatant and transparent lies. We hear the propaganda 24/7. Even the “liberal” NPR specializes in telling lies about Russia. Is it hopeful to convince two nuclear powers that the US is preparing to attack?
It is Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, who says he doesn’t want conflict with Russia and sees little point to NATO. Yet, the “liberal” media doesn’t miss an opportunity to demonize Trump, just as the presstitutes demonize the peace-seeker, Vladimir Putin.
The presstitutes are screaming: “Give us Hitlery and more war!”
Feminists want Hitlery for war on the glass ceiling.
The neoconservatives want Hitlery in order for them to achieve their ideology of world hegemony.
The military/security complex and Wall Street want Hitlery for their profits.
Why is it Donald Trump, the candidate who says he wants to avoid dangerous conflict with nuclear powers, who is being demonized?
