The Associated Press
WASHINGTON – About 300 houses of worship are displaying anti-torture banners this month in an initiative by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.
Most of the banners are a stark black-and-white and read, “Torture is Wrong” or “Torture is a Moral Issue.” Congregations participating in the month-long campaign include Methodists, Presbyterians, Jews, Muslims, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Quakers and Roman Catholics.
The anti-torture group is lobbying for a congressional investigation of U.S. treatment of suspects and prisoners since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Government lawyers who drew up the legal basis for the Bush administration’s use of harsh interrogation methods against terror suspects argued that the president had broad wartime authority that could not be limited by domestic law or international bans on torture.
One government legal memo defined torture, as recognized by U.S. law, as covering “only extreme acts” causing pain similar in intensity to that caused by organ failure or accompanying death. An internal Justice Department investigation is now considering whether such advice was improper.
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posted June 12, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Hope it will at least get our know-it-all current “lame duck” pretend leader’s attention. Probably won’t even cause him to blink…after all his allowing torture is “keeping us safe”. Right…and how much protest would we hear from our country when our soldiers get tortured in other countries? We lower ourselves to the ways of other countries to “keep us safe?”
posted June 12, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Yes we’ve lowered ourselves to the immorality of, e.g. the USSR. They had gulags where people were sent and not heard from again and were sometimes tortured. We have places people are sent to not be heard from again and are sometimes tortured. The USSR did it to protect themselves and so do we.
And in so doing we’ve lost the moral advantage the US had for decades, perhaps a century. We are no longer looked upon as a country that will do right by others because under Bush and the Republicans we’ve done so many pointless bad things to so many people.
There may possibly be very rare occasions where torture is justified but I don’t know if you ever get trustworthy information by using it. Certainly it should only happen if we knew a WMD was about to be used and we needed to know where.
And none of these situations were like that. Even John McCain has opposed using torture (though he campaigned for Bush and Cheney who were using it).
Good for these church people. Why aren’t there more?
posted June 12, 2008 at 11:19 pm
The fact that we have to use banners and publicize this issue is almost sad beyond tears! That this would even be considered controversial is well beyond the border of insanity.
And yet, here we are.
There is NO – none, zero, a complete absence – religious rationale for torture. It is indefensible and cannot be condoned in any shape or form. Absolutely NO sacred writtings support torture in any form.
posted June 13, 2008 at 11:24 pm
President Bush and Company think they are beyond having to follow the laws of the U.S. and are very sorry examples of Americans.
May they all be tried on war crimes…
posted June 15, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I can’t understand how John McCain can disagree with the Supreme Court on this. He’s old enough to remember the Nuremberg Trials, etc. from the Second WW and forward to nowtimes. Makes no sense or decency IMO.