Saturday, July 16, 2011

October 17, 2008...thoughts on 9/11 prisoners.

10/17/2008 08:26 pm
Last night a Public Broadcasting System tv show, "Torturing Democracy", explained in detail the facts of "torture" used against terrrorist prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and CIA secret prisons. It explained how the US president felt he was legally allowed to operate above the law. And alluded he could do this because he was the leader of the free world and did not want the unthinkable(all-out nuclear war for example) to happen. That he felt the need to take extraordinary measures to avoid terrorists from ending the world seemed to me a legitimate concern. Though the rule of law, in this case the Geneva Convention, may stipulate the interrogation techniques amount to war crimes, perhaps the US president had the wisdom to look at the world and the human race overall, leading him to make a progressive conservative descision to take appropriate steps. Further, the interrogations had rules of conduct whereby it would not be torture if the subjects were not harmed. Paradoxically two thirds of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners were released eventually. This would seem to indicate a humanitarian aspect to the proceedings, as the terrorists will have learned a hard lesson and be shown that they were given their freedom in an affirmation of the sanctity of human life.

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