Torture News Strike

By David Swanson

Chairman John Conyers' reasons not to impeach Bush or Cheney do not even include an assertion that they have not committed impeachable offenses or crimes. How could they, when Conyers is selling a book listing many of Bush and Cheney's impeachable offenses and crimes? Conyers' reasons do not include an assertion that he can end the ongoing crimes through some other approach. And they do not include any claim that a successful impeachment wouldn't end the crimes effectively and deter their future commission. Impeachment, in fact, could and would end, among much else, torture by U.S. public servants.

Conyers' reasons not to proceed are, in that context, laughable. Here are the excuses he recently provided to Code Pink - New York activists:

"1. The majority does not want impeachment."

By Dave Lindorff

Is anyone surprised that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that the Bush/Cheney administration’s authorization of torture of captives has been consistently legal and in compliance with all treaties the US has signed, including the Geneva Conventions?

After all, she was at the meetings in the White House in 2001 at which various acts of torture, ranging from waterboarding to exposure to extreme heat and cold, to enforced long periods in stress positions, and to treatments which have not been disclosed (no doubt because they are so outrageous and offensive to common decency) were dreamed up, proposed and approved for use—meetings that were manifestly criminal in nature and in violation of international and US law.

By Dave Lindorff

Back in late 2006, it was widely reported in the Latin American media that President Bush, or perhaps his old man, had bought a 100,000-acre farm in a remote area of Paraguay.

What struck people at the time was the choice of country. Paraguay, of course, has gained a certain Club Med status among the world's villains and criminal elements as the place to go when the law's on your tail. The country, ruled for six decades by the dictatorial and fascist Colorado Party of Gen. Alfredo Stroesser, an almost cartoon charicature of a Latin American dictator, has no extradition treaty with any nation.

That's why it has long harbored aging Nazis, bank robbers, and a string of ousted or retired Latin American dictators and their assistants over the years.