International Law

John McCain Vs The Bush Administration And Rick Santorum

Ronald Leave a comment

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 GOP Presidential nominee, spent five and a half years in a North Vietnamese prison, and suffered horrible torture.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and other figures in the Bush Administration NEVER suffered torture, and neither did former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who is one of the group of Republicans seeking the Presidency in 2012.

But the Bush loyalists and Senator Santorum continue to assert that waterboarding, a form of torture, helped to bring about the assassination of Osama Bin Laden two weeks ago, despite clearcut evidence from CIA head Leon Panetta that waterboarding had no role in bringing about the demise of Bin Laden.

Senator McCain had the courage last week to condemn those who think torture is an acceptable and useful method to gain information from detainees. McCain has always been against the breaking of international law which the Bush Administration was engaged in by using waterboarding as a method to try to force information from captives in the War on Terror.

If John McCain, who suffered for this country, and CIA head Leon Panetta, both claim that torture did not work, and undermines our values, that should be enough to stop the propaganda endorsing torture, and it is good that Barack Obama has repudiated such a policy in the future, as it diminished the image of the United States as a nation that exists under law and a sense of morality.

Second Thoughts On Osama Bin Laden Assassination!

Ronald Leave a comment

In the flush of excitement over the demise of Al Qaeda terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden, some second thoughts are developing in many people’s minds.

We have learned that a lot of the early news reports were fabricated, or distorted. For instance, it was said that Bin Laden was armed, that he had a woman as a human shield, and that he resisted, and that there was a major battle of our Navy SEALS against others in the compound.

None of that is true, and Michael Moore, the film director, and John Yoo, the Bush aide who justified the use of torture, including waterboarding in the infamous memo that has caused such controversy, both–despite their different sides of the political spectrum–question why Bin Laden could not have been taken alive and put on trial in an international court as the Nazi and Japanese war criminals were subjected to after World War II. Those trials led to executions of most of the war criminals under international law.

There are some observers who claim that what the Obama Administration did was unlawful under international law, and that setting the goal of political assassination, which has been supposedly banned in America since the 1970s, is a dangerous and troubling trend.

Even the publication of the bloody scenes of the three men killed with Bin Laden, one being his son and looking very much like him, is deeply disturbing to many, as the author himself has never seen such horrific photos, and agreed with the Obama Administration decision NOT to publish the photos of the dead Bin Laden. But then, why was not the same care given to sensitivities toward the public for the other three male victims?

While certainly no one mourns the death of Bin Laden, it is much harder in the light of day to be as gleeful and excited about his death, once one considers all of the details we now know, that we did not know on Sunday night!