In his latest column, Ron Paul challenges the current administration to release evidence of torture by the previous administration. Doing so would allow us to limit culpability for torture to those few lawbreakers who were truly responsible for these crimes against humanity, while looking the other way will further radicalize our enemies and make all of us a target for blowback. — tmartin
Download the column as an MP3 file here (3:48 minutes).
Torturing the Rule of Law
by Ron Paul
While Congress is sidetracked by who said what to whom and when, our nation finds itself at a crossroads on the issue of torture. We are at a point where we must decide if torture is something that is now going to be considered justifiable and reasonable under certain circumstances, or is America better than that?
“Enhanced interrogation” as some prefer to call it, has been used throughout history, usually by despotic governments, to cruelly punish or to extract politically useful statements from prisoners. Governments that do these things invariably bring shame on themselves.
In addition, information obtained under duress is incredibly unreliable, which is why it is not admissible in a court of law. Legally valid information is freely given by someone of sound mind and body. Someone in excruciating pain, or brought close to death by some horrific procedure is not in any state of mind to give reliable information, and certainly no actions should be taken solely based upon it.
For these reasons, it is illegal in the United States and illegal under Geneva Conventions. Simulated drowning, or water boarding, was not considered an exception to these laws when it was used by the Japanese against US soldiers in World War II. In fact, we hanged Japanese officers for war crimes in 1945 for water boarding. Its status as torture has already been decided by our own courts under this precedent. To look the other way now, when Americans do it, is the very definition of hypocrisy.
Matthew Alexander, author of “How to Break a Terrorist” used non-torture methods of interrogation in Iraq with much success. In fact, one cooperative jihadist told him, “I thought you would torture me, and when you didn’t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That’s why I decided to cooperate.” Alexander also found that in Iraq “the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq.” Alexander’s experiences unequivocally demonstrate that losing our humanity is not beneficial or necessary in fighting terror.
The current administration has reversed its position on releasing evidence of torture by the previous administration and we must ask why. A great and moral nation would have the courage to face the truth so it could abide by the rule of law. To look the other way necessarily implicates all of us and would of course further radicalize people against our troops on the ground. Instead, we have the chance to limit culpability for torture to those who were truly responsible for these crimes against humanity.
Not everyone who was given illegal orders obeyed them. Many FBI agents understood that an illegal order must be disobeyed and they did so. The others must be held accountable, so that all of us are not targeted for blowback for the complicity of some.
The government’s own actions and operations in torturing people, and in acting on illegally obtained and unreliable information to kill and capture, are the most radicalizing forces at work today, not any religion, nor the fact that we are rich and free. The fact that our government engages in evil behavior under the auspices of the American people is what poses the greatest threat to the American people, and it must not be allowed to stand.
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In regards to the Organized Gang Stalking comment, check out the Violent Person Registry. People are being put on lists without their knowledge and followed around. The Violent Person Registry is the U.K. version, but other countries have similar under community health and safely.
Have a problem with an authority figure, employer, etc, you could be on a list. It goes with the Gang Stalking.
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Please Congressman Paul,
Look into the “torture” that is taking place right here at home with U.S. Surveillance Policy.
Is COINTELPRO Back Using Organized Gang Stalking?
Imagine what it is like to be stalked by 20, 30, or 40 people a day, to have one of them there when you leave your house in the morning, there when you come home at night. That is what organized gang stalking targets go through. They are stalked at intersections, in parks, in stores, as they walk along streets, as they enter or exit buildings, everywhere they go. Now imagine that this organized gang stalking happens not for one day or for a week or for a month, but for years.
A target’s property might have trash thrown on it. There might be car alarms set off or beeping of horns if they try to take a walk, when the go to throw out the trash. There might be noise scheduled to disrupt their sleep. Neighbors might be enlisted to join in the harassment in an attempt to socially isolate the target. Dogs might be used to intimidate, running up to the target, or jumping out of car windows. There might be wrong numbers to the target’s phone, vehicles stopping and standing in front of the target’s home.
What organized gang stalkers do is sensitize the target to a stimulus that all the gang stalkers use. The stimulus is often an everyday thing – for instance, the color “red.” The thing that makes the stimulus so aversive is the frequency with which it occurs. A group of 20 or 30 or 40 or more of organized gang stalkers might be involved in harassing the target, so the target is continuously harassed with the same stimulus but by different individuals. Every time the target enters or leaves his or her home, for instance, an organized gang stalker will be there with something red on. The target’s routines are ascertained. Neighbors – afraid of being gang stalked themselves – might alert the gang stalkers when the target is leaving his or her home. When the target walks on the beach, three or four gang stalkers wearing red might be there. When the target opens his or her blinds in the morning, the first thing he or she will see will be a gang stalker in red. It is the frequency of the stimulus and the duration of the gang stalking that makes it so aversive along with the isolation of the target.
Some of the tactics used in gang stalking are similar to tactics used in the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) between 1956 and 1971. Brian Glick, an attorney, tells us in his book, War at Home, the four main methods used by the FBI during COINTELPRO were psychological warfare, infiltration, harassment through the legal system, and extralegal force and violence. Just as neighbors today are solicited to join in gang stalking a target, back in the fifties and sixties, the FBI would pressure parents, employers, landlords. school officials and others in the life of targets to cause problems for them. Back then the FBI used dirty tricks to discredit targets, just as today in organized gang stalking misinformation about targets is spread. Brian Glick tells us the FBI used psychological warfare in their COINTELPRO program in the 50’s and 60’s against targets; today in organized gang stalking psychological tactics are used where ordinary everyday items are repetively used to create doublebinds. Open garage doors, lawn mowers left on front lawns are repetitively used by all the gang stalkers to attract the target’s notice where to notice and report such everything things makes the target sound crazy – the intent of the gang stalkers. In the 50’s and 60’s FBI agents would infiltrate groups pretending to be members; gang stalking targets today allege infiltration is taking place again with those feigning to be gang stalking targets making outrageous claims to create the impression targets are paranoid.
Is COINTELPRO back? Let’s look at the facts. The Attorney General’s Guidelines released on May 30, 2002 rescinded anti-COINTELPRO regulations opening the door to further COINTELPRO operations. Allegations have been made that organized gang stalkers are using red cars, red trucks, wearing-carrying red. The FBI has used conspicuous surveillance before. Moreover, the Bush Administration wanted to get community groups such as the Neighborhood Watch Groups to play a broader role of surveillance in the War on Terror. Its Justice Department put forth the Terrorist Information and Prevention System, Operation TIPS, which planned to involve millions of workers nationwide as informants in the War on Terror. Through a Citizen Corp George Bush hoped to get Americans across the country engaged in homeland security. The Bill of Rights Defense Committee said the TIPS program would get citizens to “secretly provide information to the government about any persons whom they consider suspicious, and for the government to set up files on these persons.” The fear of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee was that doing that “may potentially damage someone’s record due to innocent activities that are misunderstood or are invented or enhanced by the caller because of a personal vendetta.” Under pressure from Congress the TIPS program was supposedly not put into effect. But it has been said a version of it was put into effect in secret. Regardless, a team of inspectors general in July, 2009 reported that the Bush administration did put into effect an unprecedented surveillance operation by executive order after the 9/11 attack. We don’t know what the surveillance programs were because they are classified. Representative Jane Harman expressed shock when she heard of these classified surveillance programs. Senator Patrick Leahy called for a nonpartisan inquiry into the government’s information-gathering programs. When in response to two Freedom of Information Act lawsuits the FBI published on its website its Domestic Investigations and Operations Guidelines, it deleted almost the entire section on the “undisclosed participation” by the FBI or its informants in domestic groups. So the question is who are the FBI’s informants in domestic groups? Is there a relationship between what it is trying to hide and the citizens with red cars, red trucks, wearing and carrying red who are part of the organized gang stalkers harassing American citizens.
COINTELPRO in the 50’s and 60’s targeted members of the women’s rights movement, the National Lawyer’s Guild, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, groups protesting the Vietnam War, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People among others. The Church Committee concluded our government undertook government surveillance of people because of their political beliefs even when there was no threat of violence or criminal behavior on behalf of a foreign power. The American Civil Liberties Union tells us today Section 802 of the USA Patriot Act expanded the type of conduct the government can investigate when investigating terrorism. “The definition of domestic terrorism is broad enough to encompass the activities of several prominent activist campaigns and organizations.” The ACLU names Greenpeace, Operation Rescue, Vieques Island and WTO protestors and the Environmental Liberation Front” as having engaged in activities that could be branded domestic terrorism. While the right is complaining the label domestic terrorist is being attached to supporters of Ron Paul, Bob Barr, libertarians, those who have written about the constitution, Tea Party Activists and a host of others.
Senator Feingold, the chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, before he even knew who would succeed George Bush, called on the incoming President “to pledge his commitment to restoring the rule of law” in America. In his Report Card on the First 100 Days of the Obama Administration he has given an “Incomplete” in every area of Obama’s record on Domestic Surveillance and Privacy: an incomplete on “declassifying info about implementation of controversial provisions of the Patriot Act,” an incomplete on “cooperate with a review of domestic intelligence activities and authorities,” an incomplete on “support legislative changes to the FISA Amendments Act,” an incomplete on “reconsider the new Attorney General Guidelines governing FBI investigations.” In testimony given to the Senate Committee On The Judiciary, Subcommittee On The Constitution, Civil Rights, And Property Rights, which Senator Feingold chairs – Frederick A.O. Schwarz, Jr., Senior Counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York City, wrote “a bipartisan independent investigatory Commission should be established by the next Congress and President, first to determine what has gone wrong (and right) with our policies and practices in confronting terrorists since September 11, 2001, and then to recommend lasting solutions to address past mistakes.” Later in his testimony he wrote, “A Commission would serve several functions. It would reveal the many as-yet-unknown aspects of what our government has done and how it evaluated or rationalized its action. And there is much we do not know. We still do not know, for example, the legal justifications advanced for the so-called ‘extraordinary rendition’ or ‘terrorist surveillance’ programs. We do not know with sufficient detail who was responsible for advocating and implementing the troubling policies based on these legal opinions. Nor do we know whether there are other secret programs that have not yet been revealed. But, as former Attorney General Nicholas deB. Katzenbach and I have argued elsewhere, in a country whose government is premised on the rule of law, there is never a justification for keeping binding legal decisions secret.”
The last COINTELPRO program was only made public when an FBI field office was burglarized by left-wing radicals and files there were passed to news agencies (many who wouldn’t publish the information). If organized gang stalking is the latest tactic being used in a new version of COINTELPRO with the same old objective of – neutralizing dissidents – how will we ever find out without a Commission to look into the classified surveillance programs started by George Bush and continued by Barach Obama as part of the War on Terror?
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Excellent writing Bonnie; – thank you!
Justin, TI Ottawa, Canada.
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Complaint to stop enforced vaccinations in Washington State
http://www.theflucase.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=352%3Acomplaint-to-stop-enforced-vaccinations-in-washington-state&catid=1%3Alatest-news&lang=en
YEAH!! You can file a case as well to stop the mandatory vaccinations of our citizens! She says it’s easy. Instructions below.
http://www.theflucase.com
http://www.bird666.wordpress.com
A Guide to Filing for an Injunction in a State
http://www.theflucase.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=351%3Aa-guide-to-filing-an-injunction-in-a-state&catid=1%3Alatest-news&lang=en
The Sates are to uphold our constitutional rights!!
Liberty, not Tyranny! File a complaint in your state!
End this senseless terror inside our country!
Power is in the hands of the people! …in the constitution.
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I strongly suggest that everyone get educated and pay attention to what is happening concerning the upcoming government-controlled, mass, forced flu vaccination plan. We only have a couple of months before we will be hit with something larger than any other issue. This is designed to change our country, the world as we know it.
Much has already been posted on the several “Health” sections of this forum. Please check out the information, especially more towards the bottom of the entries.
For anyone who is working towards preserving our liberty, freedom from tyranny…check out the agenda (there’s always an agenda) from the Swine Flu Conference held in Washington D.C., especially #2 & #6
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/32605.html
http://www.new-fields.com/ISFC/brochure.pdf
Jane Bergermeister has filed a criminal indictment against the World Health Organization (WHO) and Obama due to the evidence she has about contaminated flu vaccines being distributed for mass depopulation. Know her story, her case.
Important Websites to Keep Informed
http://birdflu666.wordpress.com
http://theflucase.com
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My brother, a Sgt in the Marines, has been put through extensive training and gone through torture for information himself. And like the soldier he was trained to be, he didn’t crack.
Rather than trying to cooperate with these terrorists, or torture them, we need to be protecting our own people. Not every man or terrorist is the same, and not every method will work on them the same.
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Dfens reminds me of the Japanese officers in the Phillipines, Spring of ‘42.
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More talking out of your ass! Have you ever tortured anyone? We are told by those who have tortured these terrorist bastards whose rights you are so worried about that these techniques work just fine. Who should I believe those who have done it, or some dumbass off the street? Or Ron Paul? They teach our pilots that they will be tortured by the enemy and that they will break and tell everything they know. All of our military and intelligence agencies operate from the assumption that prisoners will be broken by torture within a week or so of capture, but you know better than all of them? You don’t know spit. Neither does Ron Paul. This is all nothing more than hypocrisy. A bunch of flaccid wimps imposing their morality on others while sitting back in their easy chairs and demanding protection of their “rights”.
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Ok genious.. Bob Baer? The guy on on the Bill Maher show? From what i understand the guy who you have saying torture DOES work is Dick Chenney? WOW the guy who authorized it…. REAL SMART. Stop hearing what you want to hear you imbecile.
Bob Baer, a former CIA officer visits the set of Real Time with Bill Maher and explains why torture doesn’t work and why waterboarding is torture. Baer also notes that we haven’t even seen the worst of what happened because there are ninety two CIA cases that were destroyed because what was in them was so horrific.
Their you have it moron, a CIA officer/operative even states it doesnt work. Im sure the reasons are too complex for a hillbilly like you to understand though. Just because you would squeel like a girl if someone twisted your arm, it doesnt mean these “terrorists” would ok?. Be realistic and listen to
what other people are saying.
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I’ve tortured plenty of people. It always worked. I beat the hell out of one guy who with two of his buddies were harassing a girl from church. Real remarkable how I tortured them in to stopping that behavior. Was that “immoral”? I guess if you’re some sort of bleeding heart liberal it might be considered that. Another time way back in grade school I beat a guy and twisted his arm behind his back so he’d tell me where he and his buddies were hiding a couple of the littler kids they’d been harassing. Funny how he lead me right to where they were hiding those kids. Threatening to break his arm worked just fine. Told the little kids to go play and let me know of those bastards ever harassed them again. Never had another problem after that. Was that immoral? You bunch of panty waist wimps. You wouldn’t know how to fight your way out of a paper bag. You should have grown up on my side of the tracks, you might know something about how life really works.
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Ok Dfens, We are not panty waist wimps, and you dont even know any of us. You sound a lot like an ignorant hick to me. Ive been trying to explain that these people have lost their familes, and TORTURE DOESNT WORK ON THEM. If it worked, you would hear a different argument im sure, but it doesnt. So its morons like you that say.. GEE LETS KEEP TORTURIN EM… IM SURE ITLL WORK SOME DAY. It isnt working, Not 1 useful piece of information has been obtained through it. Do you understand? These guys dont harrass us for fun, they seek REVENGE. If we keep doing this (which we are), we are going to get a horrible reputation around the world. THATS WHAT OPENS US UP TO TERRORISM. Im sorry dfens but terrorists arent jealous of your “free and prosperous” life. I know its so hard to believe, but, its the truth!
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I don’t think that you can say “torture doesn’t produce useful information” until the facts are in as to what exactly was produced. Dick Cheney has been angling for these memos to be published. Maybe he’s just trying to get the spotlight and garner some attention and the memos don’t really exist, maybe not.
In the end, I agree with Defens. If you have a terrorist in the U.S. and you want to stop an imminent threat, then you need to use any means necessary to stop them. It’s the same reason that in times of war, the president can use executive powers to make decisions quickly to protect the nation.
It is a tough call, though, and all the facts are definitely not in.
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Dfens, You cant say that Ron Paul is full of crap. First off maybe if you knew anything about the people that were tortured through waterboarding, sleep deprivation, etc. You would see that ABSOLUTELY NO USEFUL INFORMATION was obtained.
Seriously who do you think these “enemies” are? They are people who’s lives have been destroyed, torn apart, because we bomb thier countries. We kill thousands and thousands of innocent women and children. You might call that “collateral damage”, but regardless of what you call it… In the end its just Blowback.
You think putting these guys through sleep deprivation or waterboarding is going to get any useful information? be realistic
Lets say the USA was a lot smaller, and for the past 5 or 10 years, its been getting bombed by Iraq. 1 day you come home from work and you realize your house got blown apart… But even worse your family was inside when it happened! Wouldnt you want revenge? You really think torture is going to Defer you from your goal of getting revenge? I think not.
It doesnt work. End of story.
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“I thought you would torture me, and when you didn’t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That’s why I decided to cooperate.”
Yes, that is ABSOLUTELY the most proven way to obtain information.
Hysterical.
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I guess this is the issue where Ron Paul proves he’s just like every other politician, full of crap. He’s never been in a war himself, but he’s all checked out on the “morality” of war. If you don’t believe it, he’s willing to blab about it all day long. And he’s so sure that his morality is superior to that of our troops in the field that he’s willing to enforce his morality on them at the point of a gun. This is a guy who won’t stand up to drug dealers because they might shoot back, but he’ll put our own military officers in jail for the horrific evil of “torture” in a heartbeat. He’ll even give a list of the names of those he deems responsible to our enemies and let them have a go at them. I guess that’s supposed to show us where the buck really stops, right Ron?
And Ron, we get what you’re saying when you tell us that torture doesn’t really work. You’re saying that the only reason our military guys do it is because they enjoy it. We get it, and you’re full of crap. We’re fighting an enemy that didn’t sign the Geneva Convention, Ron. If they’re not going to sign it and they’re clearly not going to live by it, then it sucks to be them.
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Ron Paul is the champion of the Constitution which states in Amendment 8 “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” We want to live by the rule of law. You are the one that is full of crap.
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