No torture. No exceptions. Not even by the GOP.
Posted by Thomas Nephew on August 22nd, 2008
The people at “rejecttorture.org” just e-mailed to let me know that the Republican Party is soliciting input for their national platform at http://www.gopplatform2008.com.
The GOP is thus doing something similar what Obama and the Democrats did with the kind of “Listening to America” event I attended — except they’re apparently doing it all online, and calling that “the most grassroots-driven platform in the history of American politics.” They specify that participants need not be Republican to have a voice in their platform process.
Naturally, the “Reject Torture” people are urging all of us to weigh in with variations on “reject torture” and “no torture, no exceptions.” As they noted in their e-mail, the Democrats actually have “reject torture” in the draft Democratic platform,* as well as rejecting the “legal” processes that have kept torture hidden away for years –
We reject the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. We reject the tracking of citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. We reject torture. We reject sweeping claims of “inherent” presidential power. [...]
…To build a freer and safer world, we will lead in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people. We will not ship away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, or detain without trial or charge prisoners who can and should be brought to justice for their crimes, or maintain a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law. …
So let’s take the Republican Party organizers at their word and see what happens. There’s a sign-up process - be sure to check the box next to “Attribute Ideas, so your first name and city will appear — followed by a followup e-mail from the site. Once you use the password in the e-mail to log in, you’re presented with the kind of online form similar to those used by many politicians and businesses, in which your comments are categorized by issue. Since none correspond directly to the issue of torture — surprise, surprise — the “Reject Torture” organizers suggest you categorize your anti-torture input as either “Protecting American Values: Other” or “National Security: Human Rights.”
I chose the latter, and wrote:
The United States should never torture anyone under any circumstances. To do so demeans our country as a whole, and ignores what interrogators tell us over and over again: that torture doesn’t work.
There are better ways to get information from those who have it, instead of having to follow up on every desperate lie told by someone just trying to make the pain or torment or degrading treatment stop. And there are costs and risks every time we stoop to torture: every time it happens, our country runs the real risk of making an enemy out of a bystander, loses any ability to try our true enemies fairly, and loses the respect of more of our friends around the world.
It’s time to draw the line and say “no torture, no exceptions” — not for the military services, not for the intelligence services, not for anyone.
I hope you’ll join me in sending messages like this to Minneapolis, to the Republican Party, and to John McCain.
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* EDIT, 8/23: Democratic platform section added. The cited parts can be found on page 49 of the document, p.54 of 56 PDF pages.
Category: Post. Tags: activism, gop, torture.
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August 23rd, 2008 at 8:09 am
Where do I go to see what the Democratic Party platform says about torture?
OT - admin: The last several posts here have big (multiple screens’ worth) blank spaces in them. It might have to do with embedded videos. I’m using IE 6.x. (No lectures, please.)
August 23rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
OT-admin
Nell! I wouldn’t lecture you. You’re right that this post and the last one have an embedded YouTube video in them. Have these always been a problem? The prior August posts (Reformations, Legal Scandals.., No more important priority, Edwards… Off to Maine for a week) did not have videos in them. One on July 30 (Letterman interviews Jane Mayer) did. Do the prior August ones have the blank spaces? I’ve seen some service online where I can see how the site looks using different browsers, monitor resolutions and so forth. I’ll see what I can figure out.
what the Dem party says about torture
Go here, to p.49 (56 page PDF). It was pretty decent, in the same section as the parts I wrote about when I reviewed it re FISA and the Silver Spring meeting results. I’ll edit this piece to include the information.
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[[[[5pm: Used http://browsershots.org/ to test this page and the Letterman page. That confirmed that neither embedded YouTube vids "showed up" except as broken image links under MSIE6.0 (at least for selected, normal monitor widths and color depths). But it does for Firefox 3.0 and probably others (only tested the Letterman page). I'm a little baffled -- I haven't changed anything about how I embed videos from YouTube. Maybe I need to stop putting off upgrading to Wordpress 2.6 from 2.5.1, maybe I shouldn't blockquote the embedded videos (can't imagine why that would be it though. -- will try here and test with browsershots.) Nell, if you remember that the Letterman video used to work, or earlier ones, that would help a little, esp. if they worked with this site and 3-column theme.
Anyone else having Nell's trouble? If so, leave a comment or e-mail me (thomasn528 at prodigy dot net), with mainly (a) the browser you use, plus, if possible: (b)monitor width, (c)color depth, (d)java enabled or not, (e)flash enabled or not.]]]]
August 23rd, 2008 at 5:22 pm
The two other YouTube videos I embedded after the switch to this 3-column format were in the “German blogger series: Barack in Berlin” post and the “The 4th Amendment: 12/15/1791-7/9/2008?” post, also both in late July. I assume they don’t show up for you now, either; I’m wondering if they ever did. If they used to be visible to you but aren’t any more, either YouTube changed something, Wordpress changed something, or some minuscule thing I did changed something.
August 30th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
The video-less August posts are just fine, no breaks or blank sections.
The Jane Mayer-Letterman post has the long blank.
Here’s something I just discovered: when I view the video-containing posts full-screen (which I never do in real life, just was testing), they line up fine, no big blanks. When I view them with a smaller-than-full-screen video, the video moves down below where the right-hand column text ends, a multi-screen blank.
Hope that helps. Let me know if you need me to test or report anything else.