Why Obama can't shut down Guantanamo and needs to lock people up forever without trial

[Makalakumu]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/busted-pentagon-why-the-p_b_209046.html

The Telegraph of London broke the news - because the US press is in a drugged stupor -- that the photos Obama is refusing to release of detainee abuse depict, among other sexual tortures, an American soldier raping a female detainee and a male translator raping a male prisoner. The paper claims the photos also show anal rape of prisoners with foreign objects such as wires and lightsticks. Major General Antonio Taguba calls the images `horrific' and `indecent' (but absurdly agrees that Obama should not release them - proving once again that the definition of hypocrisy is the assertion that the truth is in poor taste).

I knew about this, but I wanted to give it some time to see if Obama and the Dems would do the right thing and prosecute every single person involved for war crimes, but now I'm fairly convinced that his administration will do nothing of the sort.

As I wrote last year in my piece on sex crime against detainees, 'Sex Crimes in the White House," highly perverse, systematic sexual torture and sexual humiliation was, original documents reveal, directed from the top; Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice were present in meetings where sexual humiliation was discussed as policy; the Defense Authorization Act of 2007 was written specifically to allow certain kinds of sexual abuse, such as forced nakedness, which is completely illegal and understood by domestic and international law to be a form of sexual assault; Rumsfeld is in print and on the record consulting with subordinates about the policy and practice of sexual humiliation, in a collection of documents obtained by the ACLU by a Freedom of Information Act filing, compiled in Jameel Jaffer's important book, The Torture Administration.

President Bush told us that he ordered torture and that he would do it again if he had to. People went to prison for doing this to another human being, and they rightly should, and so should anybody involved. By protecting Bush, Obama is essentially an accomplice. The country should rise up and impeach him for any more stalling on the matter.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/03/pentagon-leaves-hundreds-_n_704880.html

A 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation into the purchase of child pornography online turned up more than 250 civilian and military employees of the Defense Department -- including some with the highest available security clearance -- who used credit cards or PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual situations. But the Pentagon investigated only a handful of the cases, Defense Department records show.

Unfortunately, this is part of a larger picture of sex crimes and torture within the halls of the Defense Department. Apparently, depravity is accepted by this culture and is perfectly reasonable to spend our taxes on. What can people expect when these same people can reduce modern cities to wastelands?

http://www.homepagedaily.com/Pages/article10265-worse-than-hiroshima.aspx

The lightsticks, for instance? We in the human rights world know about the lightsticks. Probably dozens of prisoners were sodomized with lightsticks. In the highly credible and very fully documented Physicians for Human Rights report, Broken Bodies, Broken Lives, doctors investigated the wounds and scars of former prisoners, did analysis of the injuries, assessed the independent verification of their stories, and reported that indeed many detainees had in fact been savagely raped with lightsticks and by other objects inserted into their rectums, many sustaining internal injuries. This same report confirms that female military or other unidentified US-affiliated personnel were used to sexually abuse detainees by smearing menstrual blood on their faces, seizing their genitals violently, or rubbing them against their will in a sexual manner. In other credible accounts collected by human rights organizations, many former prisoners in US-held prisons report that they had been tortured or humiliated by female agents who appeared to be dressed like prostitutes. Indeed, early on intelligence spokespeople boasted in the New York Times of the use of female agents to sexually abuse and humiliate prisoners: it was called in their own material 'invasion of space by a female.'

Is this America?

These photos go to exactly why Obama is burning what is left of the shreds of the Constitution by calling for preemptive detention for about 100 detainees. It ain't because they are `too dangerous,' his pathetic justification. It is because their bodies are crime scenes. It is because the torture, including possibly the sexual assault, they experienced is likely to be so horrific that if they were ever to have their day in court it is others whom Obama needs who would be incriminated.

Obama's mandate was to undue Bush, not push through some gigantic Liberal agenda. He was supposed to get us out of the wars and roll back the abuses of the Bush Administration and actually hold people accountable. Instead, it would seem that we have a third term of the Torturer in Chief and I think that people need to wake up and see this for what it really is.

The culture of our government is sick and twisted and no amount of politicking can excuse it.

 

[Makalakumu]

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/11/1819169/obama-stumps-for-guantanamo-closure.html

President Barack Obama on Friday admitted he fell short on his vow to empty the prison camps at Guantánamo, calling it a rare unfulfilled campaign promise, then stumped for closure by calling the Pentagon outpost too expensive.

:bs::flammad:
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[Ray]

Most of Obama's campaign promises are unfulfilled...

 

[Blade96]

i wanted obama to win, but i agree with maun. Promise unfulfilled.

 

[geezer]

The trouble with going after Obama on this is that anybody you'd replace him with would be far less concerned with human rights than he has been. Sometimes there are just political realities that have to be considered. Personally, I'm surprised that he's gotten as far along with his agenda as he has, considering the total partisan divide in congress. After the next election, I suspect that an influx of far right Republicans will lead to a total impasse as each side threatens to filibuster the other. Boy, it will be fun working our way out of the current mess with a government so divided that it will be unable to accomplish anything.

 

[Bruno@MT]

The trouble with going after Obama on this is that anybody you'd replace him with would be far less concerned with human rights than he has been. Sometimes there are just political realities that have to be considered.

Actually, the political realities do not dictate that this is kept under wrap forever. The world already knows how bad it was. There have been plenty of documentaries about it already. We just haven't seen the pictures in technicolor. The political reality is that the US has already lost all the political goodwill it ever had, and they could win it back by visibly cleaning house and making a public trial for those who are guilty. Hey, the 'following orders' excuse was already dealt with at Nurenberg.

It is interesting how things turn around. The US has become everything the Soviet Union used to stand for. The only difference is that the majority of the people stay happy because they are allowed to pursue personal profit.

 

[Ken Morgan]

Obama never had a chance. There is just way too much to get done. If anyone really thought that in less then two years he would fight the debt, the deficit, high unemployment, fix the environment and get your country, successfully, out of two wars, then they were delusional.

The whole structure, tradition and operation of the American political system is in dire need of major changes if the USA is ever to recover and prosper again. You can’t just keep putting band-aids on gapping wounds.

As an outsider, I see too many interest groups, corporations, lobbyists, regions, cities, unions, and a dozen other entities all want their piece of the pie, and they all step over each other, crushing anyone who gets in their way to the table.

You think the debt crisis is Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland and Portugal rocked the economic world? Wait till you see what happens when the American debt crisis hits full force in a few more years, unless you guys do something about it all right now.

 

[Makalakumu]

Obama never had a chance. There is just way too much to get done. If anyone really thought that in less then two years he would fight the debt, the deficit, high unemployment, fix the environment and get your country, successfully, out of two wars, then they were delusional.

The whole structure, tradition and operation of the American political system is in dire need of major changes if the USA is ever to recover and prosper again. You can’t just keep putting band-aids on gapping wounds.

As an outsider, I see too many interest groups, corporations, lobbyists, regions, cities, unions, and a dozen other entities all want their piece of the pie, and they all step over each other, crushing anyone who gets in their way to the table.

You think the debt crisis is Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland and Portugal rocked the economic world? Wait till you see what happens when the American debt crisis hits full force in a few more years, unless you guys do something about it all right now.

If Obama was for real, he could have released the torture information and used the Justice department to prosecute anyone involved. Let the chips fall where they may. The whole country would turn against these ridiculous wars and we could have made real headway in dismantling the warfare/welfare state. That would be a huge step in getting our country back on the right track.

Our liberty and our wealth is being threatened by the government's largess and we MUST curb it if we are going to survive. The hard thing that many people in other countries are going to have to swallow is that the debt crisis is going to drag everyone down.

This torture in secret dungeons and illegal prisons is just a benchmark for how bad things have gotten.

 

[BloodMoney]

Can you imagine being Obama and arriving in his new office to find the god awful ****** mess left behind by Bush? Jeeeezus I wouldnt want to be in his shoes, he has an almighty mess to clean up and now half the world hates his country lol, I feel for the guy and I doubt there are many people in the world with a harder job.

 

[Ray]

Obama never had a chance.

I agree that Obama never had a chance. I ascribe the reason to the fact that he is inadequate and not to "the job is too big." If the job were too big, he should have interviewed for one that fit him better.

 

[WC_lun]

I feel like he has done a hell of a job considering what he has been having to deal with. I haven't agreed with everything he has done, but calling Obama inadequate after having Bush in office for two terms? Think McCain and Sista Sarah would have done better? From what they have been saying they would have done, I don't think so, but that is my opinion.

 

[Cryozombie]

I feel like he has done a hell of a job considering what he has been having to deal with. I haven't agreed with everything he has done, but calling Obama inadequate after having Bush in office for two terms? Think McCain and Sista Sarah would have done better? From what they have been saying they would have done, I don't think so, but that is my opinion.

I'm sorry but I feel safe in saying Obama was inadequate. Would McCain and Palin have been better? I doubt it, but I do believe that Obama lacked the political experience to come in after such a big cluster **** as we had with the last administration, and he won, IMO, not on his merit as a leader but rather on his "I'm not a Republican" platform. I seriously think the democrats could have run a talking dog and it would have won because it wasn't a republican.

I still feel the whole last election was some kind of silly dog and Pony show with Barak being run because he was Black, and Palin being tossed into the mix by the republicans to try and counter that by getting the "Womans" vote, with the entire election being decided by The Media Coverage (or lack thereof for some candidates).