Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Torture, an American value?
Bush (Oct. 5) thinks that "a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head slapping,simulated drowning and frigid temperatures" not to be torture.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/opinion/07sun1.html
On Monday the Supreme Court did not grant review for a case that involved rendition of an innocent person. A German citizen of Lebanese heritage --Khaled el-Marsri-- was literally kidnapped in 2003, and tortured while he was detained in one of our secret overseas prisons in Afghanistan. Lower federal courts took the side of the government which said that the case would render national security at risk, they hid under the state secrets doctrine, so the case never even made it to evidence in lower courts.
What power this gives our government: to torture people, and to do so without any controls or safeguards! Clearly the checks and balances that our founders put in place --in this case judicial scrutiny of executive actions--are folding to the government's trump card of "national security."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/opinion/07sun1.html
On Monday the Supreme Court did not grant review for a case that involved rendition of an innocent person. A German citizen of Lebanese heritage --Khaled el-Marsri-- was literally kidnapped in 2003, and tortured while he was detained in one of our secret overseas prisons in Afghanistan. Lower federal courts took the side of the government which said that the case would render national security at risk, they hid under the state secrets doctrine, so the case never even made it to evidence in lower courts.
What power this gives our government: to torture people, and to do so without any controls or safeguards! Clearly the checks and balances that our founders put in place --in this case judicial scrutiny of executive actions--are folding to the government's trump card of "national security."
