You're the enemy, so we can do whatever we want to you

The reasons why we must elect a Democrat to the White House next fall are almost too many to list here. But here's one of the biggest, and also a big reason why I think the Democrat best suited to take this on is Hillary Clinton. From ABC News:

Sources: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

And who are these "Principals," you ask?

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies.

Critics at home and abroad have harshly criticized the interrogation program, which pushed the limits of international law and, they say, condoned torture. Bush and his top aides have consistently defended the program. They say it is legal and did not constitute torture.

We cannot allow this era of torture to stand in the history books without a strong and definitive action by the Democratic party. And the only way that will happen is if we have a strong Democratic president who will stand up to the thugs who have run our country into the ground for the past 8 years. I just don't have confidence that a President Obama would be able or interested in taking on this task. I do think Hillary Clinton would be forceful enough and would also understand the importance on a global scale of making a public investigation and rebuking of these tactics that were undertaken in our name as Americans.

America. We torture our enemies. Are you o.k. with that? I mean, even Tom Ridge, former secretary of the Homeland Security Department knows its wrong:

"One of America's greatest strengths is the soft power of our value system and how we treat prisoners of war, and we don't torture. And I believe, unlike others in the administration, that waterboarding was, is — and will always be — torture. That's a simple statement."

Navy JAG Andrew Williams Resigns Over Torture

As reported by ThinkProgress, a JAG officer with the U.S. Naval Reserve has resigned his commission over the alleged use of torture by the United States and the destruction of video tapes said to contain instances of that torture.

Explaining his resignation in a letter to his Gig Harbor, WA, newspaper — the Peninsula Gateway — Williams said Hartmann’s testimony was “the final straw”:

The final straw for me was listening to General Hartmann, the highest-ranking military lawyer in charge of the military commissions, testify that he refused to say that waterboarding captured U.S. soldiers by Iranian operatives would be torture.

His testimony had just sold all the soldiers and sailors at risk of capture and subsequent torture down the river. Indeed, he would not rule out waterboarding as torture when done by the United States and indeed felt evidence obtained by such methods could be used in future trials.

Thank you, General Hartmann, for finally admitting the United States is now part of a long tradition of torturers going back to the Inquisition.

If we can't state categorically that waterboarding is torture, then you can be certain the practice will be used on any of our own military men or women unlucky enough to be captured by someone determined to show the world what a hypocrite the United States has become. Read the rest of the story here.

Rumsfeld on the run to avoid arrest in France

From AlterNet:

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today fearing arrest over charges of "ordering and authorizing" torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S. military's detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.

U.S. embassy officials whisked Rumsfeld away yesterday from a breakfast meeting in Paris organized by the Foreign Policy magazine after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the man who spearheaded President George W. Bush's "war on terror" for six years.

Under international law, authorities in France are obliged to open an investigation when a complaint is made while the alleged torturer is on French soil.

Read more here.