Bush regime and torture – Verdict: Guilty

This Government tortures people, states former President Jimmy Carter, who claims that for the first time in his life, he has seen the United States of America abandoning the upholding of human rights as a mainstay of its policy.

Photo: Bush regime and torture – Verdict: Guilty

In an interview with CNN this week, Jimmy Carter, President of the United States of America between 1977 and 1981, declared that far from believing that the Bush Government commits torture, he knows it for certain. Denying the veracity of George Bush’s claim on Thursday that “This Government does not torture people,” he added that “Our country, for the first time in my life, has abandoned the basic principle of human rights. We have said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply for those detained in the prison in Abu Ghraib and in the base at Guantanamo, and we have decided that we can torture prisoners.”

For Jimmy Carter, the influence of Vice President Cheney on foreign affairs in general and over George Bush in particular, has been “disastrous” for the USA.

The declarations of Jimmy Carter, who through the Carter Centre, in its own words, is “committed to advancing human rights and alleviating unnecessary human suffering... creating a world in which every man, woman, and child has the opportunity to enjoy good health and live in peace” has travelled the world promoting human rights, comes at the same moment when Michael Hayden, Director of the CIA, has admitted that this Agency used torture against three detainees.

The practice used in this medieval torture chamber style of operating was waterboarding, or simulated drowning, confirming the statement by ex-CIA operative John Kiriakou in December that US prisoners were tortured.

Hayden admitted that “waterboarding” had been used on three “suspects”, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd Al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

The President of the United States of America says his country does not torture prisoners. The Director of the CIA and operatives admit that the United States of America does indeed torture prisoners. The Director of the CIA states that torture was “only” used on these three prisoners.

It sounds like the great American heroine, Lynndie England, stating that they were “just playing around” in Abu Ghraib, wiring up prisoners’ genitals, setting dogs on them, urinating in their food, depriving them of sleep, and sodomising them. Great fun! So once again, we have sheer barefaced lies alongside sheer and pure unadulterated evil at an institutional level coming from Washington.

We have George Bush proclaiming that Saddam Hussein “stiffed the world” with his “stories” that he had no Weapons of Mass Destruction. We have President Bush proclaiming that his country does not torture prisoners, we have the Director of the CIA saying “well, only three” and we have blatant evidence that in fact, the practice of torture has been a mainstay of US policy for several years, in several continents and in dozens if not hundreds of cases – why else would evidence have been destroyed in a cover-up attempt (Mukasey criminal investigation in January 2008 over the destruction of video tapes of interrogation of suspects by CA agents)?

If torture had only been used on three prisoners, how come there were so many photographs of so many different prisoners in so many humiliating positions in so many cells, surrounded by so many agents? Could it be that Bush and Hayden are telling the truth?

That the United States of America does not torture prisoners, or well, only three? Or that both the President and the Director of the CIA are barefaced liars and are both ultimately responsible for criminal acts and war crimes?

This being the case, if indeed the United States of America is a country based upon the rule of law and respect for human rights, which it is patently obvious it is not, at least in the grip of the criminal clique of elitists i.e. the Bush regime, where is the accountability? There isn’t any.

Then we can conclude that the one who “stiffed” the world, his country, his people, and the noble precepts upon which his country and its institutions were founded, is George W. Bush, the President who leaves his country with the images of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo firmly in the hearts and minds of the international community.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru