Former acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel Steven G. Bradbury was spotted outside the Office of Presidential Personnel last week reports Ryan J. Reilly to The Huffington Post, ostensibly peddling his expertise in abusive treatment of political prisoners to the Trump administration.
Bradbury coauthored (with his pals Jay Bybee and John Yoo) the infamous “torture memos” — legal opinions to justify CIA brutality at Guantanamo and “black sites” around the globe — one of which authorized the use of 13 different “enhanced interrogation techniques”: dietary manipulation, nudity, attention grasp, walling, facial hold, facial slap or insult slap, abdominal slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, water dousing, sleep deprivation of more than 48 hours, and waterboarding.
That last technique (waterboarding) holds particular appeal to Donald Trump, who wants to reinstitute the practice, saying “absolutely” he believes torture works, that “as far as [he’s] concerned, we have to fight fire with fire.” Torture’s also a War Crime, a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions ratified by the United States in 1949.
“The President appears hell bent on creating a world where all nations stoop to the most base behavior, where nothing is off limits, where no one upholds decency, human rights and the rule of law,” reads a comment to The Northern Echo. Former Bush officials appear only too happy to collaborate with the legion of white supremacists, woman haters, science deniers, religious fundamentalist zealots, and war mongers inflicting repression and suffering on people in this country, violence on people across the globe, and destruction of the planet itself.
Voices of Conscience demand that these criminal practices stop now. We have an obligation not only to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity after they occur but to put an end to the shameful policies which allow them to continue.
We say NO! to Torture and NO! to Trump Supporters who advocate its use. We refuse to accept the dictates of an illegitimate government!