and the media is complicit.

my country, right or wrong? never.

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We live in topsy-turvy world. The innocent are imprisoned and tortured. Meanwhile, genocidal war-criminals walk free among us.

What is truly sad is that, even with the SLIGHT media focus on this issue, many Americans still believe that ALL "war-on-terrrrr" detainees are guilty of being "very bad people", and those detainees actually deserve to be tortured.

The thing is, this case highlighted by 60 Minutes is just one of many many such cases. All those who even just pretend to be concerned about justice and human rights should be absolutely outraged by all of this.

Is America populated by sadists who allow this evil to be carried out in our names? Why no effective outcry from the public, then? We should all be ashamed.

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and the media is complicit.

my country, right or wrong? never. not in my name.

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Supposing a goal of bringing the potus and members of his cabinet to justice as war criminals:

What would be the procedure for doing this? I know little about law, but from what I do know - I cannot figure out how it could be done. Would the US armed forces not intervene in an international effort to arrest and try the president? Who on earth can claim standing and jurisdiction to pull off a war crimes trial (without being laughed off by our government)?

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I'm really not sure how the US military can deny that they use torture and have always used torture as a tool of occupation and empire.

But apparently the flat out denials continue to prevail. I know that it is a difficult thing to prove legally that the US gov't implements torture, it kinda becomes a he said she said because of the wall of legal protection the gov't has created, but i think one has to look at the US as a serial torturer, meaning evidence of past torture should play into any criminal proceedings, just as it does with serial rapists, etc...

I travelled to con son prison complex on the con dao islands to document a previous US torture facility, and to the US war crimes museum in saigon to look at evidence and read testimonials of US war crimes.

I went through the same small door senator tom harkin did in 1970, and entered the hidden torture facilities he uncovered. I looked at pictures of US soldiers rounding up villagers and putting them in helicopters, and i paid witness to the blurry images of villagers being thrown from those helicopters...

I filmed the con son prison complex for the purposes of explaining water torture and the power of sun and cold to destroy the bodies and minds of those snared by the illegal occupation. i did this to show a pathology, which i hope will help suspend disbelief that the US tortures and has always tortured to achieve its imperial aims.

con son video

sen harkin at conson

CIA, Pheonix operation, and con son

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I'm so tired of hearing about these blatant human rights violations. This country needs to open up its eyes. It started with the indisputable theft of the 2000 presidential election. Then, after 9/11, all reason went out the door.

Everyone was in lockstep and afraid to process any logical, rational thought. Rather than rising above the childish, tabloid, junior-high style of thinking and acting, our elected leaders decided to play it safe. They decided that their reelection was more important than logically debating the situation at hand. That was a test of leadership if there ever was one, and they failed miserably.

The congress allowed the president and his seasoned group of power hungry criminals to do whatever they pleased. Illegally spy on Americans? Sure. Round up people indiscriminately and torture them for the sake of torture? Sure. Award them the power to invade a country that was no threat to anyone? Sure.

At the time all of this was happening, my coworkers and some friends also decided to forgo their right to debate and dissent. Sadly, they did the most cowardly thing possible; they blindly trusted our elected officials.

I have to say that I am so tired of hearing people use the soldiers in their arguments for all of these flawed decisions. And I'm tired of seeing how people choose to elevate armed forces personnel to some sort of infallible status. That their opinion overrides that of the average citizens because of their occupation.

Let me ask you something. How is it logical to concede foreign policy decisions/opinions to people who are trained to unquestioningly follow orders from those of higher rank? Their initial training is meant to strip them down and rebuild them into men and women that follow orders.

They go where they are told to, they fight who they are told to fight. They are a necessary tool that we need for the defense of our nation. This does not mean that they should tell us what to think. In this capacity, they can also be used to carry out the corrupt ambitions of a government that was elected by people who willingly conceded their control.

We as civilians are supposed to steer this country from the bottom up, this is our solemn responsibility. Why are all of these politicians that have failed us in every way still in power? They haven't even had the resolve to stop our government from kidnapping and torturing people.

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1) Buy Murat Kurnaz's book: Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo .

2) Request that your local library buy the book.

3) Share this man's story with as many people as you can.

4) Make illegal detentions and torture an issue in U.S. presidential politics right now and into the fall election.

5) Write Mr. Kurnaz and apologize for our government's illegal and reprehensible behavior. Until he has a web presence, contact him through his publisher Palgrave Macmillan.

6) Write your Senators and Congressperson and demand justice for Mr. Kurnaz.

7) Stop paying taxes for torture.

The truth shall set us free. Love is the only way forward.

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Poor George: he was born with his foot in his mouth and his head up his ass. How else can you explain his "unblemished" list of failures?

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What is leadership? Leadership means getting out in front of where people are and waking them up. Right now, given these violent possible threats to us and our families, we are sleeping.

Which is why I am formally coming out of the closet with my support for Senator Barack Obama. Of all the candidates running now, he is the leader on understanding the threat to the Constitution and actually taking action, not just mouthing soundbites, on the need to deny torturers space in our nation and to restore the rule of law.

"Lawyers for Gitmo detainees endorse Obama," read a recent headline on the Boston Globe's political blog. In the article, reporter Charlie Savage notes that "More than 80 volunteer lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees today endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama's presidential bid. The attorneys said in a joint statement that they believed Obama was the best choice to roll back the Bush-Cheney administration's detention policies in the war on terrorism and thereby to 'restore the rule of law, demonstrate our commitment to human rights, and repair our reputation in the world community.'"

The lawyers who signed this letter -- prominent names on the list included Washington lawyer Thomas Wilner, retired federal appeals court judge John Gibbons, and retired Rear Admiral Donald Guter, who was the Navy's top JAG officer from 2000 to 2002 -- applauded Obama for having stood up in 2006 against aspects of the Military Commissions Act. Unfortunately, his fight was ultimately unsuccessful -- which is why we are all still in danger. But unlike other candidates he truly fought and he understood the nature of the danger: "When we were walking the halls of the Capitol trying to win over enough Senators to beat back the Administration's bill, Senator Obama made his key staffers and even his offices available to help us," the lawyers wrote. "Senator Obama worked with us to count the votes, and he personally lobbied colleagues who worried about the political ramifications of voting to preserve habeas corpus for the men held at Guantanamo. He has understood that our strength as a nation stems from our commitment to our core values, and that we are strong enough to protect both our security and those values. Senator Obama demonstrated real leadership then and since, continuing to raise Guantanamo and habeas corpus in his speeches and in the debates."

Remember: when activists started to push hard to raise awareness of the dangers of torture and indefinite detention, many on the Hill were scared to join the fight because it was then politically unpopular. But to me, if you are not really against torture -- always and under every political change in climate, and let us note that former torture victim and prisoner of war John McCain shamefully dropped his fight against the torture loopholes in the law as well -- then you are not really, in my view, fit to be an American President.

Gender has nothing to do with it. Race has nothing to do with it.

Integrity has something to do with it.

That is why Barack Obama has my vote. Of all the leading candidates, he is the only one on these issues who has consistently acted like a true American.

Naomi Wolf is the author of The End of America (Chelsea Green) and the co-founder of the American Freedom Campaign.

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This makes me sick. How am I supposed to believe anything our government tells me after hearing something like this? I can not blindly follow the government. As a free thinker, I can only see that what the administration is perpetrating is tantamount to what Stalin and Hitler did in the early 20th century and Pol Pot did in the 1970's.
What have we become?
Is this the new Amerika?
How long will it be before your neighbors turn you in to a government that will label you an enemy combatant or undesirable and put you in a prison where nobody knows you are there except the guys who beat and torture you daily?
It saddens me to see that we have become what our fathers and grandfathers fought to defeat during World War II.
It is time that the Bush administration is held to task. The International Court needs to get involved and those responsible must answer to civilized men and women.

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I would like someone to explain to me how this is different from the atrocities the Nazis committed during the Second World War.

How will Americans feel when History points the finger at them and says "You did nothing. You were content to live your lives like none of this mattered. You knew, but you did nothing"

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This 2008 Academy Award winning documentary has already disappeared pretty much from theaters, even in the liberal bastion of Brookline-Cambridge-Boston, MA. It seems that no one is interested in viewing the horrors of what our government is doing. The central case in the movie was an Afghan taxi driver named Dilwar. He died in Bagram. There was no more evidence against him that against Kurnaz and hundreds others whose names are hardly known.

Good for "60 Minutes" to air Kurnaz's story. But will anyone be talking about it next week?
Where are the presidential candidates????

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