Tag Archives: Torture

News

Should Iran really be on the UN Commission on the Status of Women?

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Here’s a story from MKHammer in the Weekly Standard. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani, a 42-year-old mother of two, confessed to the crime of adultery in 2006 after being subjected to 99 lashes. She later recanted her statement, but was found guilty despite the fact that there were no witnesses to her adultery, as is supposed to be required in the Iranian justice system. Her conviction was upheld through all levels of the courts, which value a woman’s testimony at only a fraction of a man’s. Ashtiani will be put to death by stoning. She will be buried to her chest in the ground, at which point stones “large enough to cause pain but not so large as to kill her immediately” will be hurled at her head. The public will not be allowed to see the execution for fear of a backlash against leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Islamic Republic of Iran was named to a four-year seat on the UN Commission on the Status of Women in April. In its capacity there, Iran will be part of the “principal global policy-making body” on women’s rights. According to the UN, “the Commission also makes recommendations to the Council on urgent problems requiring immediate attention in the field of women’s rights.”

I’m for capital punishment when it’s warranted, but this is just ridiculous!

Look what the Independent Women’s Forum says:

“Article 74 of the Iranian penal code requires at least four witnesses — four men or three men and two women — for an adulterer to receive a stoning sentence, said Mina Ahadi, coordinator for the International Committee Against Stoning. But there were no witnesses in Ashtiani’s case. Often, said Ahadi, husbands turn wives in to get out of a marriage.”

I don’t know why we as a nation don’t denounce Iran when they treat women like this – and especially protest their appointment to this UN Commission on the Status of Women, even though the UN is an evil organization. The Iranian court gave this woman 99 lashes and forced her to confess to a crime she didn’t even commit! That’s coercion! Iran doesn’t treat women fairly at all – look at those two Iranian Christian women they imprisoned just for being Christians. Imprisoning people just for their religion? That’s not fair!

Check out this Conservative MP from Canada, Pierre Poilievre. He’s talking about Coptic Christians being persecuted.

Here’s another Conservative MP from Canada, Jason Kenney. He’s talking about victims of communist regimes.

Why can’t we do that? We’re the United States of America! Everyone expects us to be the good guys.

News

Democrats favor terrorist rights over national security in latest intelligence bill

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Story here from National Review. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

While the country and the Congress have their eyes on today’s dog-and-pony show on socialized medicine, House Democrats last night stashed a new provision in the intelligence bill which is to be voted on today.  It is an attack on the CIA: the enactment of a criminal statute that would ban “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” (See here, scoll to p. 32.)

The provision is impossibly vague — who knows what “degrading” means? Proponents will say that they have itemized conduct that would trigger the statute (I’ll get to that in a second), but it is not true. The proposal says the conduct reached by the statute “includes but is not limited to” the itemized conduct. (My italics.) That means any interrogation tactic that a prosecutor subjectively believes is “degrading” (e.g., subjecting a Muslim detainee to interrogation by a female CIA officer) could be the basis for indicting a CIA interrogator.

The act goes on to make it a crime to use tactics that have been shown to be effective in obtaining life saving information and that are far removed from torture.

[…]What’s more, the proposed bill is directed at “any officer or employee of the intelligence community” conducting a “covered interrogation.” The definition of “covered interrogation” is sweeping — including any interrogation done outside the U.S., in the course of a person’s official duties on behalf of the government.

[…]Here is the fact: Democrats are saying they would prefer to see tens of thousands of Americans die than to see a KSM subjected to sleep-deprivation or to have his “phobias exploited.” I doubt that this reflects the values of most Americans.

They would rather put us all at risk of a terrorist attack than upset the terrorists. National security, Democrat style.

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Videos

MUST-SEE: Marc Thiessen defends water-boarding against Christiane Amanpour

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The debate spans two videos. (H/T Newsbusters via ECM)

Part 1:

Part 2:

The transcript is here.

Here is a good part:

THIESSEN: Excuse me, Philippe. I thought you said we’re not going to interrupt each other. Let me — it does. Let me tell you something. We – – we waterboarded in the CIA — the CIA waterboarded three terrorists, just three. Nobody waterboarded in Guantanamo. You know who else the U.S. government has waterboarded? Tens of thousands of American servicemembers during their SERE training.

We do not pull off their fingernails. We do not electrocute them with cattle prods. We do not pour hot oil down their nostrils or other forms of interrogation or do the things that were done to them in S-21. But we do waterboard them.

Do you not think, if waterboarding was torture, that one of those American servicemembers would have complained to his congressman, there would have been congressional hearings, and we would have — and it would have been banned by law? If we had been pulling off their fingernails, that would have happened.

And better still:

THIESSEN: But why would we give them Geneva Convention protections? They don’t merit Geneva Conventions protections. They’re terrorists.

The — the Geneva Conventions — this is one of the biggest myths about the Geneva Convention — it is not designed to govern the treatment of prisoners of war. It is designed to protect civilians, to get people to follow the laws of war. So if you give the same protections to someone who violates the laws of war as someone who follows them, you completely undermine the Geneva Conventions.

But the point is, these techniques, as applied by the CIA, produced intelligence that stopped a terrorist attack to blow up our consulate in Karachi, to blow up our Marine camp in Djibouti, to blow — for Al Qaida, who was — they were planning to hijack an airplane and fly it into Heathrow Airport and — and buildings in downtown London — I hope nowhere near your offices, Philippe — and they were planning to fly an airplane into Library Tower in — in — in Los Angeles.

So my question to Philippe is, which of these attacks would you prefer we hadn’t stopped?

This debate really shows the ignorance of national security issues on radically leftist propaganda networks like CNN. Facts are irrelevant to the left. They’re ignorant of the way the world really works, and their job is to act as an arm of leftist political parties. Republicans are grown-ups and Democrats are children. Children who are going to get us killed because they are dangerously unqualified to protect us from terrorist attacks. In 2010, we need to vote as many children as possible out of office.