Quote of the Day
"The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called 'universal jurisdiction.' Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution." —President Ronald Reagan, 1984
And don't tell me it was a different time -- before the evildoers. In 1984 there were more than 37,000 Soviet nuclear missiles aimed at the United States and our allies. This was a year afterthe Marine Corp barracks in Beirut was bombed by two suicide bombers, killing 241 American soldiers, 58 French soldiers and 6 civilians. An additional 75 people were injured.
The rest of Reagan's speech can be found here.
Thanks Bob, I forgot to tell you I was borrowing this.
12 comments:
Love this! Thanks for coming by the blog.
Riot Kitty - I saw that and then went to the link for the whole thing and just had to post it. Take that Rethuglicans!
I'll be comin' back.
Thanks for coming by here.
Good work! Bob Cesca's site is one of my favorites.
Wow. Ronnie had balls. While he was muttering about prosecuting torture, he was funneling U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund the torture of Central Americans.
ZIRGAR - I like the stuff Bob does, too. I've gotten other leads from him in the past.
Agi - That was that old Rethuglican double standard thing.
People tend to forget that our current fears about terrorist groups detonating a small nuclear device in an American city--legitimate as those fears might be--pale compared to what seemed like the looming inevitability of all out thermonuclear war possibly eliminating all life from the earth. Anyway, here's another historical tidbit: the United States executed Japanese soldiers who used waterboarding for war crimes: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-begala/yes-inational-reviewi-we_b_191153.html
Thanks for the link, YogaforCynics.
Good evening Eddie. I posted a piece on torture, came over here where you had posted this piece. Great minds...and all that! Good post.
When I was young, my excited visions of what life would be like in the 21st century didn't include a national debate justifying the use of torture. Living on the moon, yes. Living under a regime modeled after Medeival times... nope.
Good Morning Nancy.
Glad to see you're back, missed your conversation and posts.
Hope the week of relaxing and refreshing was good.
Shea - I hear ya pal. I thought the new millennium would start out a whole lot different than it has. I, too, thought we would be progressing to a new and glorious future and not regressing to a stone-age past.
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