This is a good flip-flop: The President's Stance on Torture is now that he's against it. Nice to see that public outrage can still achieve something.
Heartbreaking that it takes massive public outrage just to keep the (official) anti-torture status quo.
Bruce Scheneier, author of “Applied Cryptography” and other wonderful books, has a blog called Schneier on Security. I'm sure it will be very good.
Obsidian Wings has an important Torture Outsourcing Update, with news about the the House Republicans' attempt to legalize “Extraordinary Rendition” and the growing, and horrified, reaction to it. Well, outside of the Ashcroft Justice Dept., which is all for it.
This episode alone fully justifies voting against George Bush.
Katherine R. at Obsidan Wings concludes her update with this query:
I want to ask—very loudly ask— a direct question to any members of the media who might end up reading this post:
Newspapers have reported that the second highest ranking official in the Department of Justice signed the order deporting Maher Arar to Syria, and that the President has signed a secret “finding” authorizing extraordinary renditions.
But George W. Bush and his press secretary have never, ever been asked about what happened to Maher Arar. Nor have they ever been asked about their position on extraordinary rendition.
Why not?
Harsh words, yes, but how else to describe this atrocity?
The Bush administration is supporting a provision in the House leadership's intelligence reform bill that would allow U.S. authorities to deport certain foreigners to countries where they are likely to be tortured or abused, an action prohibited by the international laws against torture the United States signed 20 years ago. …
The provision, human rights advocates said, contradicts pledges President Bush made after the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal erupted this spring that the United States would stand behind the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Hastert spokesman John Feehery said the Justice Department “really wants and supports” the provision.
For background please see Voting Republican This Year = Voting for Torture .
It's not enough that Rumsfeld and probably Bush not just tacitly condoned but actively encouraged studies of optimal torture regimes, creating a climate in which undeniable and disgusting torture was used against Iraqi civilians, including children. And at Guantanamo (more). Even they at least had the hypocrisy to attempt to do the Iraq torture planning under wraps. (Hypocrisy being “the tribute vice pays to virtue”.) Meanwhile, at home, being too delicate to torture domestically, the Administration quietly subcontracted the job to Syria. (See my post almost exactly a year ago, Maher Arar Affair: What is the Pluperfect of 'Cynic'?.)
Comes now a group of Congressional Republicans who are pure vice, and are not even trying to hide it: they have proposed that US law be amended to remove protections against torture — ie to legitimate torture, to plan to torture — for people we label “terrorists” (modern unpersons). The full horrid details are at Obsidian Wings: Legalizing Torture. The key move would be to exclude “terrorists” from the protection of the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The “terrorists” could be held in secret unless they could somehow overcome (without lawyers or witnesses?) a presumption of guilt. When they failed to overcome this impossible burden they could be subject to “extraordinary rendition” which is bureaucrat for “being ported or transferred to a country that may engage in torture”—a deportation that currently would be a serious violation of US law.
Anyone who votes for people capable of supporting these policies has blood on their hands. Not to mention what they are doing to the image of the US as the 'City on the Hill', the beacon to mankind. Once we descend into the torture pit, we're just arguing about circles in Hell.
Hard as it is to believe, it appears that the insanitary and possibly toxic area used to hold demonstrators during the Republican convention was not a city facility, but a property provided by the RNC.
Although there are potentially some complex legal questions lurking around the terms by which RNC might have made the space available to the cops, in several imaginable scenarios — but not all! — the RNC might be liable for any damages caused by toxic exposure. Alternately, or even jointly and severally, the city might be extra liable if it used a facility that it knew or should have known was unsuitable.
I suspect that some plaintiffs' lawyers are going to have a (justified) field day with all this.
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