Dick Cheney says that even if innocent people die in captivity, that is OK because US must be protected. The disappearance of victims continues so that Americans don't have to confront who we are.
Ever since the torture report was released last week, U.S. television outlets have endlessly featured American torturers and torture proponents. But there was one group that was almost never heard from: the victims of their torture, not even the ones recognized by the U.S. Government itself as innocent, not even the family members of the ones they tortured to death. Whether by design (most likely) or effect, this inexcusable omission radically distorts coverage.
Going to a bigger picture of what we did to the country and people of Iraq, the US does not get any idea of who we are and what we do in the world. The empire is celebrated. Was the torture report released just before XMAS when people are distracted by the season?
Here is the Shoe Tosser, the one who threw the shoe at W Bush. He spend 9 months in jail but here in the USA with our military policing, he probably would have been filled with bullets. And if Edward Snowden had been captured, he would have been disapeared as well.
I added the bold to remind people how we destroyed even more people by our wars than by our torture.
I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.
Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country.
We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shia would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ. This despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than a decade.
Why I threw the shoe I am no hero. I just acted as an Iraqi who witnessed the pain and bloodshed of too many innocents
It seems quaint to speak of truth and lies.
We got into the Iraq war on a boat load of lies. We see the lying continue in the media to discount the torture report by the Senate. You might recall that that report did not interview victims
Senate Torture Investigation Fails to Interview Key Torture Victims
Attorneys for detainees say that the U.S. government has 'no desire to credibly investigate or in any other way hold accountable' those who approved or conducted torture
And those who point out that CIA personnel were not interviewed for the torture report, but, but, .... The FBI did interview CIA personnel and the Obama administration is keeping that secret.
And you might recall that Obama was going to release more of the photos of what we did but that was halted. We wouldn't want Americans to see what we do, would we?
The Obama administration is withholding hundreds, perhaps even thousands of photographs showing the U.S. government’s brutal treatment of detainees, meaning that revelations about detainee abuse could well continue, possibly compounding the outrage generated by the Senate “torture report” now in the public eye.
Some photos show American troops posing with corpses; others depict U.S. forces holding guns to people’s heads or simulating forced sodomization. All of them could be released to the public, depending on how a federal judge in New York rules—and how hard the government fights to appeal. The government has a Friday deadline to submit to that judge its evidence for why it thinks each individual photograph should continue to be kept hidden away.
The Detainee Abuse Photos Obama Didn’t Want You To See
If you thought the Senate’s ‘torture report’ was shocking, imagine the prospect of the Obama administration releasing hundreds, maybe thousands of photographs depicting detainee abuse.
This diary builds on Glenn Greenwald's article from today about how the media keeps "citizens" in the dark by not interviewing victims.
The first paragraph of this diary is from Greenwald's article linked below. Lets hear more from Glenn... I added all the bold
Whenever America is forced to confront its heinous acts, the central strategy is to disappear the victims, render them invisible. That’s what robs them of their humanity: it’s the process of dehumanization. That, in turns, is what enables American elites first to support atrocities, and then, when forced to reckon with them, tell themselves that - despite some isolated and well-intentioned bad acts – they are still really good, elevated, noble, admirable people. It’s hardly surprising, then, that a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this morning found that a large majority of Americans believe torture is justified even when you call it “torture.” Not having to think about actual human victims makes it easy to justify any sort of crime
the rule of law is totally out the window when the elites can, in Glenn's words,
makes it easy to justify any sort of crime
But to the rescue we have the "liberal" voice that leads us into wars, leading a noble tribe of US "citizens"?....Go for it Tom, you have the stage
“We are a beacon of opportunity and freedom, and also [] these foreigners know in their bones that we do things differently from other big powers in history,” the beloved-by-DC columnist wrote after reading about forced rectal feeding and freezing detainees to death. For the opinion-making class, even America’s savage torture is proof of its superiority and inherent Goodness: “this act of self-examination is not only what keeps our society as a whole healthy, it’s what keeps us a model that others want to emulate, partner with and immigrate to.” Friedman, who himself unleashed one of the most (literally) psychotic defenses of the Iraq War, ended his torture discussion by approvingly quoting John McCain on America’s enduring moral superiority: “Even in the worst of times, ‘we are always Americans, and different, stronger, and better than those who would destroy us.’”
It is another excellent article by Glenn which shows that he continues his important work to expose the sins of empire. Recommend that you read the whole article which describes some of the victims who have been disappeared from corporate media.
This self-glorifying ritual can be sustained only by completely suppressing America’s victims.
U.S. TV PROVIDES AMPLE PLATFORM FOR AMERICAN TORTURERS, BUT NONE TO THEIR VICTIMS
I just had a final thought. Recall the tactic of dictators to "disappear" people - thousands if not hundreds of thousands in Latin America. Is the media disappearance of victims in any way like these other crimes against humanity?