Cruelty to Animals and CIA Torture (Unrelated, but While We're on the Subject of Cruelty)

Torturing unfit cows in California. http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN3021948220080130

CIA torturing the innocent all over the world too, guess the innocent are unfit:

The ACLU on the El-Masari Case - CIA Torture and the Supreme Court

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/rendition/32108prs20071009.html

"Ben Wizner, an ACLU staff attorney who argued El-Masri's case before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals last November. "By denying justice to an innocent victim of this country's anti-terror policies, the Court has provided the government with complete immunity for its shameful human rights and due process violations."

"The government during the last fifty years has repeatedly invoked the privilege to protect evidence from court review, and the Bush administration has used the privilege more often than previous administrations."

Read about the defining McCarthy-era case and what it has to do with now: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2003/03/iaf031403.html

Can anyone say straw man folks? That's what the recent Supreme Court decision gives us on this one. They said, ok, no, cases can't be stopped in litigation because of the State Secrets Act but...guess what folks, good old GW Veto and the Executive Office of the President can step in and declare a more-a-torium on whatever, whenever they so choose.

Now, I'm aware, and you should be too, that there are reasons for things we do not and cannot understand. And State Secrets are very serious things, I am not disputing that. But the Bush Administration has used the privilege 3 times, as opposed to the 12 times total it has ever been used before.

Exhuming McCarthy?

From the Center for Victims of Torture website, (thanks to a friend for pointing this out to me):

"The president signed an executive order July 20 that prohibits torture and cruel and inhuman treatment. But the order leaves open for interpretation a continuation of the CIA's worst interrogation practices. And it does nothing to ban secret prisons or extraordinary rendition – a policy known as "outsourcing torture."

At the forefront on their site now, they are saying the Senate is getting ready to consider legislation to create one national standard for the interrogation and detention of prisoners. It would prohibit all U.S. personnel, including the CIA and, perhaps more importantly, interrogation contractors, from using cruel, inhumane and degrading torture as clearly specifed in the U.S. Army Field Manual and clearly now being ignored as the above case reflects.

Visit Center for Victims of Torture to contact your Senator and find out more: http://www.cvt.org/main.php

Yes, there is a War and yes, there are always prisoners of war and there are reasons for that but there was this thing called the Geneva Convention...and there's this little thing called a right to trial, and an attorney that used to be one of the primary tennants of the Democracy we're told we're defending...