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Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive

By Jeralyn, Section Other Politics
Posted on Fri Jan 21, 2005 at 03:29:45 PM EST
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Nat Hentoff's new column at the Village Voice recaps Alberto Gonzales' unsatisfactory answers at his confirmation hearing, in particular, those on rendition - sending people to countries where they could be subjected to torture..

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    Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive | 12 comments (12 topical)
    Re: Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Jan 21, 2005 at 05:53:43 PM EST
    "What fun" this is going to be! but understand one fact, torture is only torture if you don't report it. Oh yes do you know what Gonzale was doing back in tx, for bush?

    Re: Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Jan 22, 2005 at 12:04:13 AM EST
    Merriam-Websters Collegiate 10th ed.: "Render n(1647): to return esp. in goods or services due from a feudal tenant to his lord." So...the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, because their government was (*US-supported) tyrannical, are Bush-Amerika's feudal tenants, delivered themselves into torture, at the pleasure of their dominator, their owner, to whom they owe duties. So on these ships and on this plane the CIA is flying -- when do we get to see the photos of the interior where slaves are transported, chained lying next to each other, naked in their own feces? Because Bush the Racist is practicing overt slavery (and sitting around with his CCC pals laughing about it). Let's look again at his evil speech in Africa: "For 250 years the captives endured an assault on their culture and their dignity. The spirit of Africans in America did not break. Yet the spirit of their captors was corrupted. Small men took on the powers and airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished brutality and bullying and rape produced a dullness and hardness of conscience. Christian men and women became blind to the clearest commands of their faith and added hypocrisy to injustice." Just look at what this b*stard is doing.

    Re: Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive (none / 0) (#3)
    by soccerdad on Sat Jan 22, 2005 at 06:08:23 AM EST
    Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive Its brain dead on life support. Who really cares? Not our elected officials Repubs or Dems, even fromer POWs like McCain. Not the media. Not most religious leaders. The campaign to vilify Iraqis has been hugely successful. By backing Bush in the last election a majority of this country doesn't care. Might makes right!! Its just one more step in our trip to moaral bankruptcy.

    Re: Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive (none / 0) (#4)
    by theologicus on Sat Jan 22, 2005 at 06:33:55 AM EST
    Frank Rich has an important article in this Sunday's NYT, but it's already online. He points out that the torture issue has been invisible to the broad public, because it hasn't been covered much on TV. The question of extraordinary rendition is doubly invisible. Apart from a few notable articles in the Times/UK and the WP, only a few paragraphs buried near the end of long articles in other papers have been devoted to it. Good for Hentoff, who has tracked this issue regularly. And many thanks to Jeralyn for keeping this matter before us. A time may come when history will look back at the torture issue and the American indifference to rendition as the end of the democratic experiment in America. The president stresses "liberty" instead of human rights. Opposition to "tyranny" indeed! I recall what Alasdair MacIntyre once wrote: The new dark ages are upon us.

    Re: Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive (none / 0) (#5)
    by soccerdad on Sat Jan 22, 2005 at 07:04:50 AM EST
    But can you truly have liberty without human rights?

    Re: Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive (none / 0) (#6)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Jan 22, 2005 at 07:23:11 AM EST
    It's appalling that this guy and Condi are getting such a walk in confirmation. It's going to be a hard two years til the midterm elections. I don't know if or when the electorate (or that part of the electorate that wants to vote and get their vote counted) will have an epiphany by then. God help us all. Everyone of us, Osama, Dubya, Alberto, all of us.

    Re: Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive (none / 0) (#7)
    by soccerdad on Sat Jan 22, 2005 at 08:18:41 AM EST
    This is for PPJ and the rest of "bad apple" crowd
    "This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed . were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees.": Rudolf Hoess, the SS commandant at Auschwitz.


    Re: Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive (none / 0) (#8)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Jan 22, 2005 at 08:41:02 AM EST
    "Who really cares? Not our elected officials Repubs or Dems," No, soccerdad, you didn't get a REAL news feed from the hearings. Read all about it

    Re: Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive (none / 0) (#9)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Jan 22, 2005 at 08:45:52 AM EST
    Maybe that didn't need relinking, but if you skipped it, you missed it. I wish people would refrain from using the royal we for the royal W. NOT IN OUR NAME is as true today as it was two years ago. Politics will lag behind traitors; that's only normal. Democracies are weak, but they do have teeth, and W Sawyer has come to the end of others being willing to paint his fence. Don't get a splinter, W. Your salad days are numbered.

    Re: Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive (none / 0) (#10)
    by soccerdad on Sat Jan 22, 2005 at 10:09:00 AM EST
    Ok a few care- big deal. The fact that this moron is going to be AG without much of a fight is pitiful.

    Re: Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive (none / 0) (#11)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Jan 22, 2005 at 04:19:52 PM EST
    Thanks to SD for the nazi quote. Had not seen that one before. The wingnuts get all up in arms when the term nazi and fascist is mentioned in connection with the current cabal, but this quote helps put the comparison in perspective. Auschwitz was sort of like a really big frat party, I guess. Just letting off steam. They never had it so good, as Jim would have said at the time.

    Re: Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive (none / 0) (#12)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Jan 22, 2005 at 04:52:59 PM EST
    "Posted by soccerdad: "Ok a few care- big deal. The fact that this moron is going to be AG without much of a fight is pitiful." It's not that a few care; it's that there aren't the votes. But that's missing the point too. Kennedy just threw the first ball in the warcrimes impeachment, and it stuck like glue to Gonzales' head. These are crimes, in evidence. Can you renegotiate fifty year old treaties to make land office profits in a needless, lied pretext for war? Probably not.

    Keeping the Gonzales Torture Debate Alive | 12 comments (12 topical)