XPost: uk.politics.misc, alt.politics.british, alt.conspiracy   
   XPost: alt.conspiracy.new-world-order, alt.america, alt.conspira   
   y.america-at-war   
   XPost: us.politics   
   From: oO@oO.com   
      
   Alex Callinicos   
      
   Torture is built into the system   
   The current debate about torture is an astonishing symptom of how a   
   civilization can regress morally and politically despite the technological   
   advances it may make.   
      
   For the Enlightenment of the 18th century, torture was one of the   
   barbarities of the old absolutist regimes that the great bourgeois   
   revolutions were to sweep away.   
      
   The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, adopted in   
   1791, which forbade "cruel and unusual punishments", was a product of that   
   era. Yet now we have Dick Cheney, vice-president of the US under that same   
   constitution, mounting a fierce battle in the Senate in defence of the right   
   of the CIA to use torture.   
      
   George Bush says the US "doesn't do torture". But in August 2002 his   
   satirically named department of justice issued a legal opinion which said   
   (according to the summary in the New York Times) "interrogation methods just   
   short of those that might cause pain comparable to 'organ failure,   
   impairment of bodily function or even death' could be allowable without   
   being considered torture".   
      
   Charles Krauthammer, a leading US neo-conservative commentator, is less   
   mealy mouthed.   
      
   Writing last week in the Weekly Standard, he argues that there are "very   
   real cases in which we are morally permitted-indeed morally compelled" to   
   torture terrorist suspects.   
      
   He also gloats over the torture meted out to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an   
   al-Qaida leader:   
      
   "There is water-boarding, a terrifying and deeply shocking torture technique   
   in which the prisoner has his face exposed to water in a way that gives the   
   feeling of drowning. According to CIA sources cited by ABC News, Khalid   
   Sheikh Mohammed 'was able to last between two and two and a half minutes   
   before begging to confess'."   
      
   The recent revelations that the CIA has been using airports around Europe as   
   stop-offs for flights carrying prisoners for torture in so called "black   
   sites"-secret prisons-in central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East   
   couldn't have been worse timed for the Bush administration.   
      
   They came as secretary of state Condoleezza Rice was setting off on a   
   European tour. This was intended as a continuation of the efforts that Bush   
   and Rice have been making to woo European governments since his re-election.   
      
   The Bush administration seemed to have recognised it can't run the world   
   without the help of the European Union (EU) as junior partners. Nato, under   
   European leadership, is due to take over responsibility for the occupation   
   of Afghanistan.   
      
   The torture flight revelations threatened to reopen and deepen the divide   
   between the US and the EU. Rice initially said the US respects the   
   sovereignty of its allies, implying that European intelligence agencies had   
   known what was going on.   
      
   But she was forced to beat a retreat, issuing a statement in Ukraine last   
   week that US personnel were bound by the UN convention against torture   
   whether they were based at home or abroad. The US state department spun this   
   as a policy shift.   
      
   Previously the Bush administration had claimed the convention didn't govern   
   its activities outside the US. The White House seemed to be ditching Cheney   
   and trying to negotiate a deal with senator John McCain. He has proposed   
   legislation imposing an absolute ban on US personnel using torture.   
      
   This apparent retreat by the Bush administration is a reflection of its   
   growing domestic unpopularity and its international isolation. Like its   
   failure to sabotage the Montreal conference on climate change, it shows the   
   depth of the international crisis of legitimacy the US is suffering.   
      
   But the shift was more symbolic than real. Rice's statement implied that the   
   administration still believes itself not to be legally bound by the   
   convention against torture, but merely chooses to observe it as a matter of   
   policy. The whole point of "extraordinary renditions" is to sub contract   
   torture by flying prisoners to dictatorships where the pain is inflicted by   
   non-US personnel anyway.   
      
   Torture is an instrument of imperial rule, used by the US and its clients to   
   maintain global domination. The only way to free the world of this barbarity   
   is to get rid of the system responsible for it.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)