{"id":136335,"date":"2014-08-12T16:43:15","date_gmt":"2014-08-12T16:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=136335"},"modified":"2014-08-12T16:43:15","modified_gmt":"2014-08-12T16:43:15","slug":"still-tolerating-torture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/human-rights\/still-tolerating-torture\/","title":{"rendered":"Still Tolerating Torture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"color: #444444;\"><em>William Blum<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #444444;\">Since the \u201cwar on terror,\u201d the \u00a0before \u00a0, there was the argument pretense that Two of the things that governments tend to cover-up or lie about the most are assassinations and torture, both of which are widely looked upon as exceedingly immoral and unlawful, even uncivilized.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #444444;\">Since the end of the Second World War the United States has attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders and has led the world in torture; not only the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance and encouragement by American instructors, particularly in Latin America.<\/p>\n<p>Thus it is somewhat to the credit of President Barack Obama that at his Aug. 1 press conference he declared \u201cWe did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured\u00a0<em>some folks<\/em>. We did some things that were contrary to our values.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And he actually used the word \u201ctorture\u201d at that moment, not \u201cenhanced interrogation,\u201d which has been the euphemism of preference the past decade, although two minutes later the president used \u201cextraordinary interrogation techniques.\u201d And \u201ctortured some folks\u201d makes me wince. The man is clearly uncomfortable with the subject.<\/p>\n<p>But all this is minor. Much more important is the fact that for several years Mr. Obama\u2019s supporters have credited him with having put an end to the practice of torture. And they simply have no right to make that claim.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2014\/08\/12\/still-tolerating-torture\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>William Blum Since the \u201cwar on terror,\u201d the \u00a0before \u00a0, there was the argument pretense that Two of the things that governments tend to cover-up or lie about the most are assassinations and torture, both of which are widely looked upon as exceedingly immoral and unlawful, even uncivilized. Since the end of the Second World [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":136336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,21],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-136335","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-human-rights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}