Just Thinking

I sent this to the NZ Listener on 5th December 2005 but it was not published.

The Listener
Dear Editor

The Watergate plus 30 years programme on TV1 last night was extremely interesting and timely. It shows that US government can be filled with people that are quite prepared to make decisions that are total unlawful and to commit perjury about it afterwards. No-one took a moral position and stood up to President Nixon and said that these things must not be done.

Now, we see that President Bush is rather more cunning. He has passed secret legislation that does give him the almost unbridled power that Nixon had wrongly claimed to have. This legislation is the first and second so-called "Patriot Acts" that bypass most of the constitutional rights on freedom in the US and allow imprisonment indefinitely without charges, without trial, without appeal to courts and certainly without justice. All this in the name of fighting terrorism and protecting freedom.

It is some time since the torture and humiliation episodes embarrassed the US and UK. Investigations predictably did not find any higher authorities had any responsibility even though it was very clear that they did, and the little guys took the fall. Now we find that the White House is trying to stop a bill that bans torture and inhumane techniques of interrogation. Both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney claim that the US does not use torture. Why then are they so strongly motivated to prevent this anti-torture bill including the CIA?

There is no doubt that torture is routinely practiced by the CIA, with the Independent newspaper reporting yesterday that "Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was US Secretary of State, said last week that he knew of more than 70 "questionable deaths" of detainees under US supervision up to the end of 2002, when he left office. That figure, he added, was now around 90."

If the US Government is what we depend on for the freedom and justice in the world then we are all in deep trouble.

Sincerely
Ray Tomes