America: The Leading Torture Nation

From the Washington Post, here's the current legal opinion:

Daniel Pines, an assistant general counsel at the CIA, has asserted in a law journal that the abduction of terrorism suspects abroad is legal under U.S. law, even when the suspect is turned over to countries notorious for torture.

“There are virtually no legal restrictions on these types of operations,” Pines asserts in the current edition of the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal.

“Indeed, U.S. law does not even preclude the United States from rendering individuals to a third country in instances where the third country may subject the rendered individual to torture. The only restrictions that do exist under U.S. law preclude U.S. officials from themselves torturing or inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on individuals during rendition operations, or rendering individuals from a place of actual armed conflict or occupation -- all of which prove to be narrow limitations indeed,” Pines writes.

One example of the US "rendering" an innocent individual to a third country for torture is Maher Arar. Canada has apologized and given him $10.5 million for mistakenly giving his name to the US. The US refuses to apologize or do any reparation for the harm they did to this innocent man.

Here's a video about him:

Part 1:


Part 2:


I find it very, very interesting that the Mr. "Change You Can Believe In" Obama has done nothing to stop this policy of torture. He claimed he wanted to shut down Guantanamo, but that torture centre continues "business as usual". In short, the US is deeply, deeply committed to lawlessness and torture. And the US wonders why it has enemies abroad. Strange, eh?

Oh... and the mid-term elections just handed a huge majority in Congress to the political party that started up this public torture policy, the Republicans. That sure sends a "comforting" message to the rest of the world! The US never joined the ICC (International Criminal Court) for the very reason that the US wants a free hand to torture, start illegal wars, and generally run roughshod over the rest of the world. Way to go USA!