The First Global Bobby Sands
This is a round-up of the global trade in war & torture (and our complicity in it)...
Q: what would do you get for murdering someone during interrogation?
A: In America today, a slap on the wrist.
A military jury has recommended that an officer once facing up to life in prison for the interrogation death of an Iraqi general be given only a reprimand, a decision that drew applause from soldiers. Initially charged with murder, Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. now faces no jail time, the forfeiture of $6,000 in salary and what amounts largely to a barracks restriction for 60 days. More on US legal barbarism here.
None of this can be separated from utterances like this, from John Yoo:"Congress's definition of torture in those laws - the infliction of severe mental or physical pain - leaves room for interrogation methods that go beyond polite conversation."
I really hate to even link to The Times - which is a shitebag of a paper - but here's their story on the imminent death of prisoners on hunger strike in Guantanamo, which raises the question, who's to be the the first global Bobby Sands.
"Despite force feeding by the American military, several hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay may be close to death, according to lawyers acting for the detainees. The condition of two emaciated Yemeni hunger strikers who have been refusing solid food since August is causing particular concern. There are also fears for the life of a hospitalised Saudi prisoner.
The prisoners being force fed have a permanent tube in the nose, which descends to the stomach and is attached to another tube for feeding. If they do not rip it out, the US military say they are consenting to be fed even if the tube was inserted under duress."
Meanwhile - in better news - currently, more than 50 percent of Iraqi cancer patients are children under the age of 5, up from 13 percent. Children are especially vulnerable because they tend to play in areas that are heavily polluted by depleted uranium.
More here and closer to home here, Scotland UXB.
According to the Irish Examiner leading US academic Noam Chomsky has said the Irish Government could be complicit in war crimes for allowing the US military to use Shannon Airport as part of its war in Iraq.
Professor Chomsky made the claim while delivering the annual Amnesty International lecture before an audience of 2,000 people at the RDS in Dublin last night.
He used his speech, entitled War on Terror, to argue that the US/British invasion of Iraq had increased the risk of terrorism and nuclear proliferation.
He also challenged the US and Europe to consider how their foreign policies have actually increased the risk of terrorism worldwide.
When answering questions from the floor, Prof. Chomsky suggested that the passage of US soldiers through Shannon Airport could amount to participation in a war of aggression, which the Nuremburg Tribunal declared to be "the supreme international crime which encompasses within itself all of the evil that follows".
God knows what's true of the Irish is true at home in Scotland. Kind of puts pay to the idea that self-determination automatically brings an injection of ethics though eh?
