Paul Joseph Watson / Prison Planet & Mark G. Levey / Democratic Underground – 2006-10-01 23:57:50
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/september2006/290906sexuallytorture.htm
US Given Authority To Sexually Torture American Children
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com |
(September 29, 2006) — Slamming the final nail in the coffin of everything America used to stand for, the boot-licking US Senate last night gave President Bush the legal authority to abduct and sexually mutilate American citizens and American children in the name of the war on terror.
There is nothing in the “detainee” legislation that protects American citizens from being kidnapped by their own government and tortured.
Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman states in the LA Times, “The compromise legislation….authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.”
Similarly, law Professor Marty Lederman explains: “this [subsection (ii) of the definition of ‘unlawful enemy combatant’] means that if the Pentagon says you’re an unlawful enemy combatant — using whatever criteria they wish — then as far as Congress, and US law, is concerned, you are one, whether or not you have had any connection to ‘hostilities’ at all.”
We have established that the bill allows the President to define American citizens as enemy combatants. Now let’s take it one step further.
Before this article is dismissed as another extremist hyperbolic rant, please take a few minutes out of your day to check for yourself the claim that Bush now has not only the legal authority but the active blessings of his own advisors to torture American children.
The backdrop of the Bush administration’s push to obliterate the Geneva Conventions was encapsulated by John „torture‰ Yoo, professor of law at Berkeley, co-author of the PATRIOT Act, author of torture memos and White House advisor.
During a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel, John Yoo gave the green light for the scope of torture to legally include sexual torture of infants.
Cassel: If the president deems that he‚s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person‚s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress — that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo….
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.
So if the President thinks he needs to order children’s penises to be put in vices, there is no law that can stop him and after last night’s vote, the Senate and Congress, exemplified by sicko 16-year-old boy groomer Mark Foley (R-FL), has graciously provided Bush its full support for kids around the world to be molested in the name of stopping terror.
Yoo’s comments were made before the passage of the torture legislation last night. Up until that point Bush had merely cited his role as dictator-in-chief as carte-blanche excuse for ordering torture — now his regime have the audacity to openly put it in writing — going one step further than even the Nazis did.
Again, for those who are still deluded into thinking the extent of the “pressure” is loud music and cold water being thrown over Johnny Jihad in Ragheadistan, consider for a moment the fact that your own Congress and President who, according to the Constitution, are mandated to serve you, have just legalized abducting your kids from your home and electric shocking their genitals.
Now that the criminals have declared themselves outside of the law does that mean we’ll see Bush barbecuing babies on the White House lawn? Of course not, but the policy of torturing children in front of their parents has already been signed off on by the Pentagon and enacted under the Copper Green program and it happened at Abu Ghraib.
Women who were arrested with their children were forced to watch their boys being sodomized with chemical glow sticks as the cameras rolled. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says that the US government is still withholding the tapes because of the horror of the “soundtrack of the shrieking boys” and their mothers begging to be killed in favor of seeing their children raped and tortured.
Your government has just lobbied for and Congress has passed legislation to discard the Geneva Conventions and mandate all this.
Pedophiles nationwide should rejoice — they can comfortably take a stroll down to the local swimming pool, grab whoever they like, drag them home, rape and torture them, and then in their defense cite the US government as an example of how one should conduct themselves.
The bill also retroactively gives Bush, the Neo-Cons or any of their henchmen immunity from war crimes charges dating back to September 11. Ask yourself why they would be so careful to protect themselves from accusations of war crimes.
Could that possibly be because they are knowingly committing war crimes?
The legislating of torture itself should be a criminal act. All laws that contradict the US Constitution are null and void. It was once a law that black people were slaves.
Only by engaging in civil disobedience and refusing to tolerate or acknowledge the laws of a criminal regime that has greased the skids for sexually torturing kids can we ever have a hope of returning America to its past glory.
Pinochet Also Thought He Could “Legalize” Torture And Immunize Himself
Mark G. Levey / Democratic Underground – DailyKos.com
(September 29, 2006) — On September 11, 1973, Gen. Augusto Pinochet headed a military coup that overthrew the democratically-elected government of President Salvador Allende. Chile at that time was one of the world’s oldest constitutional democracies.
In the months that followed, in a round up of “terrorists”, Chilean military and intelligence officers arrested 30,000 Chileans and some foreign nationals. Virtually all were tortured, and 3,000 “disappeared”, many dumped alive from military aircraft into the Pacific Ocean.
The Junta’s secret police also sought out its critics abroad, a few weeks later blowing up the former Ambassador, Orlando Letelier, in his car as he drove through downtown Washington, DC.
In the years that followed, “President” Pinochet ruled through emergency “anti-terrorism” decrees, before he retired as a Senator for life. Before he left the presidential palace, however, the General assured himself that he would never be brought to trial for his crimes.
While the country was still effectively controlled by the military Junta he headed, the runner-stamp legislature passed laws granting amnesty to those officials who had committed torture and murder during the “state of exception” to constitutional rule. The amnesty laws also granted lifetime “legislative immunity” to members of Parliament, including, of course, Senator Pincochet.
Even though Spain, France and several other countries had issued warrants for Pinochet’s role in commanding the murder of their citizens in Chile following the coup, Pinochet travelled the world in luxury and, he thought, security from arrest. As former “head of state”, most countries would not touch him.
But, that changed in 1998, when during a visit to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and other Right-wing friends in Britain, he was detained on an extradition request from Spain.
After a long court battle, a three-member Court of the House of Lords, the highest appellate tribunal in the UK, found that Pinochet’s claims to immunity as former head of state and to legislative immunity were invalid in the face of charges of violation of international laws against genocide, torture and crimes against humanity.
The Blair Government ended up sending him back to Chile, where the new democratic government and courts stripped his immunity, and placed Pinochet, now 87 years old, under indefinite house arrest.
There should be a lesson here for Bush and the GOP Congress. While you might believe today that you can legalize torture and other crimes against humanity, some day they will come for you. Power does not trump the law forever. You are naked before the world, and it’s only a matter of time.
© 2006. Mark G. Levey
Posted in accordance with Title 17, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
