Israel As A Haven For Perps, Doug Feith Squawks & Other Bush Torture Regime News
Being Israel and protecting the values on which it was founded is one helluva tough job, but a funny thing happened on the way to the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state: It has subsumed some of those values for political convenience and is kissing George Bush’s ass when it comes to torture.
This has great pertinence because Israel apparently is one of the relatively few countries that would roll out the welcome mat for administration officials who approved of and participated in the use of torture at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere in the Rumsfeld Gulag in violation of international law. As a consequence, they might risk arrest as war criminals in, say, France, Germany or Italy.
Said Lawrence Wilkerson, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff of those officials — all practicing attorneys — in a pointed public statement:
“Haynes, Feith Yoo, Bybee, Gonzalez and — at the apex — Addington, should never travel outside the U.S., except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In the future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court.”
It should be noted that Wilkerson can be outspoken to the point of intemperance, and he is no friend of the conservatives who run Israel.
It is no surprise that he would mention Saudia Arabia, a safe country for sure for those administration lawyers given its own religious and cultural embrace of torture. But Israel? A nation that emerged phoenix-like from the ashes of the Holocaust and the Nazi’s embrace of the very torture techniques that the CIA and other U.S. operatives have used?
How terribly sad.
Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House and here for an index and links to previous torture-related posts.
53 Responses to “Israel As A Haven For Perps, Doug Feith Squawks & Other Bush Torture Regime News”
Shaun – NP.
Doing this exercise helped me to realize more deeply both my ambivalence towards torture in particular, and from articulating my true feelings on the other issues, reminded me that reflexively countering what I feel are often over-wrought extensions and exaggerations of positions that I basically do agree with has led me to be too virulently negative and in some of my responses. This has also led to me leaving a false impression of where I do actually stand on many issues.
And while I definitely disagree with you on many basic issues, and even the details on a lot that we do agree upon, I will take this opportunity to admit that I have made too much a sport of denigrating you, and launching ad hominem attacks.
I apologize, and will try to tone it down.
Awwww… are AR and Shaun making up?
Chris. Him, yes. You, no.