Go Ahead, Congratulate Yourselves
From the Christian Science Monitor:
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
The United Nation's special investigator on torture said Thursday that torture may now be worse in Iraq than it was during the regime of deposed leader Saddam Hussein. The Associated Press reports that Manfred Nowak, who was making a brief to the United Nations Human Rights Council about the treatment of detainees at the US prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, said the torture situation in Iraq was "totally out of hand.""The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein." Nowak added, "That means something, because the torture methods applied under Saddam Hussein were the worst you could imagine."...
Some allegations of torture were undoubtedly credible, with government forces among the perpetrators, he said, citing "very serious allegations of torture within the official Iraqi detention centers. You have terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these militias. There are so many people who are actually abducted, seriously tortured and finally killed," Nowak told reporters at the UN's European headquarters.
The Times of London reports that the Bush administration rejected the claim made by Nowak.A State Department official in Washington, asked about Professor Nowak's comments, told The Times: "How anyone could compare state-sanctioned torture under a dictator to the situation today is beyond us.
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
posted by JimK at 9:08 PM
4 Comments:
"Some allegations of torture were undoubtedly credible"
Well, let's hear some details.
How did they torture them? By refusing to tell them which direction was East?
Hello JimK and all,
Why do religious leaders and followers so often participate in and support blatant evil?
History is replete with examples of religious leaders and followers advocating, supporting, and participating in blatant evil. Regardless of attempts to shift or deny blame, history clearly records the widespread crimes of Christianity. Whether we're talking about the abominations of the Inquisition, Crusades, the greed and genocide of colonizers, slavery in the Americas, or the Bush administration's recent deeds and results, Christianity has always spawned great evil. The deeds of many Muslims and the state of Israel are also prime examples.
The paradox of adherents who speak of peace and good deeds contrasted with leaders and willing cohorts knowingly using religion for evil keeps the cycle of violence spinning through time. Why does religion seem to represent good while always serving as a constant source of deception, conflict, and the chosen tool of great deceivers? The answer is simple. The combination of faith and religion is a strong delusion purposely designed to affect one's ability to reason clearly. Regardless of the current pope's duplicitous talk about reason, faith and religion are the opposite of truth, wisdom, and justice and completely incompatible with logic.
Religion, like politics and money, creates a spiritual, conceptual, and karmic endless loop. By their very nature, they always create opponents and losers which leads to a never ending cycle of losers striving to become winners again, ad infinitum. This purposeful logic trap always creates myriad sources of conflict and injustice, regardless of often-stated ideals, which are always diluted by ignorance and delusion. The only way to stop the cycle is to convert or kill off all opponents or to end the systems and concepts that drive it.
Think it through, would the Creator of all knowledge and wisdom insist that you remain ignorant by simply believing what you have been told by obviously duplicitous religious founders and leaders? Would a compassionate Creator want you to participate in a system that guarantees injustice and suffering to your fellow souls? Isn’t it far more likely that religion is a tool of greedy men seeking to profit from the ignorance of followers and the strife it constantly foments? When you mix religion with the equally destructive delusions of money and politics, injustice, chaos, and the profits they generate are guaranteed.
Read More...
Peace…
"Well, let's hear some details."
How did they torture them? By refusing to tell them which direction was East?
09-28-06 - 40 tortured bodies found in Baghdad: Car bomb kills 5, wounds 34 at eatery while other attacks leave 21 dead
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The bodies of 40 men, more apparent victims of sectarian death squads, have been found in Baghdad over the past 24 hours, Iraqi police said Thursday.
Meantime, a car bomb killed five people and wounded another 34 after it exploded near a restaurant in central Baghdad, police said. Other bombing and shootings killed at least 21 people in and around the capital.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15041886/
09-20-06 - Torture rampant in Iraqi prisons, streets, UN says
By Irwin Arieff, Reuters UNITED NATIONS - Torture is rampant in Iraqi detention centers and in the widespread sectarian killings seen across the country, the United Nations reported on Wednesday, based on the signs of abuse on victims' bodies.
"Detainees' bodies show signs of beating using electrical cables, wounds in different parts of their bodies including in the head and genitals, broken bones of legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns," the human rights office of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq said in a new report.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14929716/
08-09-06 - Torture chambers found in Iraq
Washington - The senior commander of US and Iraqi forces in northern Iraq said Friday that a small number of "torture chambers" apparently used for sectarian violence were discovered along the Diyala River.
Major General Thomas R Turner II, whose area of responsibility stretches from the Iranian border north to Turkey and west to the Syrian border, told reporters at the defence department that two or three small rooms were found in May or June.
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1995737,00.html
11-15-05 - Iraq finds 'tortured' detainees
Baghdad - More than 170 malnourished Iraqi detainees found at an interior ministry detention centre appear to have been tortured, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said on Tuesday.
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1834868,00.html
Here are some more "details" you might have missed:
09-21-06 - UN: Iraq Civilian Deaths Hit a Record
UNITED NATIONS - The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August hit 6,599, a record-high number that is far greater than initial estimates suggested, the United Nations said Wednesday.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14931525/
09-12-06 - U. S. Excluded bombs from Iraq murder toll: Military says mass attacks left out of report showing dramatic death drop
The American military did not count people killed by bombs, mortars, rockets or other mass attacks including suicide bombings when it reported a dramatic drop in the number of murders in the Baghdad area last month, the U.S. command said Monday.
The decision to include only victims of drive-by shootings and those killed by torture and execution, usually at the hands of death squads, allowed U.S. officials to argue that a security crackdown that began in the capital Aug. 7 had more than halved the city's murder rate.
But the types of slayings, including suicide bombings, that the U.S. excluded from the category of "murder" were not made explicit at the time. That led to confusion after Iraqi Health Ministry figures showed that 1,536 people died violently in and around Baghdad in August, nearly the same number as in July.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14801520/
07-05-06 - Bodies flood Baghdad morgue: Close to 1,600 Iraqis die in and around Baghdad in June, majority were shot
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Baghdad’s central morgue received nearly 1,600 bodies last month -- the highest number since the February bombing of a Shiite shrine sparked a wave of sectarian killings, a morgue official said on Wednesday.
The figures show the level of violence in Iraq has increased even after the killing on June 7 of al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air strike.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13715637/
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