{"id":124975,"date":"2014-06-18T17:59:08","date_gmt":"2014-06-18T17:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=124975"},"modified":"2014-06-18T17:59:08","modified_gmt":"2014-06-18T17:59:08","slug":"america-always-torture-approval-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/america-always-torture-approval-month\/","title":{"rendered":"In America, It\u2019s Always Torture Approval Month"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ll bet you didn\u2019t know that June is \u201ctorture awareness month\u201d thanks to the fact that, on June 26, 1987, the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment\u00a0<a style=\"color: #9b3921;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nrcat.org\/torture-awareness-month-june\" target=\"_blank\">went into effect<\/a>\u00a0internationally. In this country, however, as a recent\u00a0<a style=\"color: #9b3921;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amnesty.org\/en\/library\/asset\/ACT40\/005\/2014\/en\/571ddea2-66dd-4f77-81e3-053339d3a096\/act400052014en.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Amnesty International survey<\/a>\u00a0indicated, Americans are essentially living in Torture Unawareness Month, or perhaps even Torture Approval Month, and not just in June 2014 but every month of the year.<\/p>\n<p>One simple fact of the post-9\/11 era should make this clear and also boggle the mind, but has had almost no impact here. But for this you need a little background from the early years of what was once called the Global War on Terror. In addition to a stream of international<a style=\"color: #9b3921;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/post\/7789\/engelhardt_la_dolce_vita\" target=\"_blank\">kidnappings<\/a>\u00a0(euphemistically called \u201crenditions\u201d) of terror suspects, including completely innocent people the CIA snatched off the streets of global cities, as well as from the backlands of the planet and \u201crendered\u201d into the hands of well-known torturing regimes (with the help of\u00a0<a style=\"color: #9b3921;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/post\/175650\/tomgram%3A_greg_grandin,_why_latin_america_didn%27t_join_washington%27s_counterterrorism_posse\/\" target=\"_blank\">54 other countries<\/a>) and the setting up of a network of \u201cblack sites\u201d or offshore prisons where anything went, the CIA\u00a0<a style=\"color: #9b3921;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/post\/175636\/tomgram%3A_karen_greenberg,_how_zero_dark_thirty_brought_back_the_bush_administration_\/\" target=\"_blank\">tortured<\/a>\u00a0up a storm.<\/p>\n<p>And it did so at the behest of the top officials of the Bush administration, including the president and vice president who were convinced that it was time for Washington to \u201c<a style=\"color: #9b3921;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/post\/63903\/mark_danner_bush's_state_of_exception\" target=\"_blank\">take the gloves off<\/a>.\u201d In those years, torture techniques were reportedly\u00a0<a style=\"color: #9b3921;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-558812\/Dick-Cheney-Condoleezza-Rice-authorised-waterboarding-torture-Al-Qaeda-prisoners.html#ixzz0M0uvDCRj\" target=\"_blank\">demonstrated<\/a>\u00a0in the White House to some of those officials, including the vice president and national security advisor. At the time, they went by the euphemistic, administration-approved term \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques,\u201d which was quickly picked up and\u00a0<a style=\"color: #9b3921;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2010\/06\/30\/once-america-started-wate_n_631447.html\" target=\"_blank\">used<\/a>\u00a0in the U.S. mainstream media in place of the word \u201ctorture\u201d &#8212; though only when the enhanced interrogators were American, of course. The bad guys out there continued to \u201ctorture\u201d in the usual fashion.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/post\/175857\/tomgram%3A_ariel_dorfman%2C_a_tale_of_torture_and_forgiveness\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ll bet you didn\u2019t know that June is \u201ctorture awareness month\u201d thanks to the fact that, on June 26, 1987, the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment\u00a0went into effect\u00a0internationally. In this country, however, as a recent\u00a0Amnesty International survey\u00a0indicated, Americans are essentially living in Torture Unawareness Month, or perhaps even [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1616],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-124975","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news","7":"category-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}