Letter on Torture submitted to the editor
Ottawa Citizen, January 21, 2008
By Diane V. McLoughlin
Canadian Foreign Affairs minister Maxime Bernier: "I regret
the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the
manual..."; referring to an internal document that rightly lists
the U.S. and Israel amongst countries that practice torture.
Bernier says the manual "wrongly includes some of our
closest allies. " He has, "directed that the manual be
reviewed and rewritten".
How dare the government equivocate with the truth? The U.S.
and Israel countenance torture. It is one of several deliberate
tactics used to terrorize. The U.S. and Israel , then, are state
terrorists.
The point of torture is to get information. The point of torture
is to break down resistance to questions. It elicits from the
detained whatever the torturer wants - the information is
useless. As a public service, the Citizen should rerun in its
entirety Dan Gardner's series on torture.
The U.S. picks up who it wants, including American citizens,
and has shredded the Constitution to the degree it can hold
whom it wants, even American citizens, where ever without
charge, indefinitely, and tortures at will.
The American Ambassador to Canada should spend more
time defending the attacks on the Constitution at home,
rather than defending the indefensible abroad.
And before Wilkins wonders to himself whether he can get
the Canadian government to shut me up too, a word. My
father served with distinction in the American army in the
Philippines in the Second WW. Empire or Republic? The
time when Americans still have a choice grows short.
Empires, history instructs, never survive in the long term.
See e-mail on same from NDP leader, Jack Layton, here.
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