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FROM AP: Gang-tackling immigration
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FROM AP: Quotations of the day
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
Our country's founding principles of habeus corpus were in a direct response to the "lock them away in the Tower" abuses in Britain. We were going to be different. Oh, I know Guantanamo isn't on American soil, but our flag flies over that prison -- the same one we pledge "liberty and justice for all" to.
At the brand-new George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Texas, everybody's favorite former president, George W. Bush, wants you to know he tried really, really hard. And he seems to be asking: Would you, average American, have done any better?
A non-governmental, bipartisan task force recently completed a two-year investigation into the U.S. government's treatment of 9/11 detainees, concluding indisputably that the United States government engaged in illegal torture.
The controversy and shortcomings of Zero Dark Thirty has opened a critical conversation and debate. Hopefully it will lead to brave new Hollywood storytelling about these years when America went in search of monsters to destroy, and ended up slaying things once held dear.
They strip him, put a dog collar and leash on him. They hood him, loose dogs on him. They subject him to freezing cold water and leave him naked on cold nights.
Try not to think about dying, because there's nothing you can do about it, because you're tied down, because someone is pouring that water over your face, forcing it into you, drowning you slowly and deliberately. You're helpless. You're in agony.
There was a scarcely noted but classic moment in the Senate hearings on the nomination of John Brennan, the president's counterterrorism "tsar," to become the next CIA director.
When it comes to torture in the post 9/11 era, the record of the United States is so appalling that one must question our claimed abhorrence of the barbarism of other nations.
I've written a good deal on about some of the problems involved with using shock collars in animal training, mostly to stop behaviors. But an even worse application of this form of training is sing the shock to elicit desired behaviors.
Zero Dark Thirty ignores the fact that America's torture program inspired anti-U.S. sentiment around the world, causing many to vow revenge on the U.S. and its allies.
Zero Dark Thirty works as a crime procedural, but its irresponsible, destructive, dishonest stance on torture absolutely ruined it for me, and I feel Zero Dark Thirty should not be on any best-of-the-year lists, nor is it deserving of Oscar consideration.
Understand this, from someone who had some involvement in our "enhanced interrogation" program. Torture does not work; it makes it harder to evaluate what detainees say, and more suspect. It is unnecessary, it is counterproductive, it is illegal, and it is immoral.
In the weeks surrounding the raid on bin Laden, the government, the intelligence community, the media, and the public displayed a wide variance of views on waterboarding. The intelligence community in particular seems marked by inconsistency and outright contradiction.
The premier this week of the movie Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for and killing of Osama bin Laden, has touched off a national debate about the appropriateness of torture. Alarmingly, the conversation has revolved around when to torture, rather than whether to torture.
A widely praised new movie about the assassination of Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty, opens with a series of torture scenes. The movie scenes are brutal, yet sanitized.
It's no surprise that support for torture is strong among Republicans. But it's new and especially bad when they support it for no special reason, addressing no particular dire event or emergency, but just, you know, because.
