US violated Geneva Conventions, Bush Iraq commander says
Published: May 29, 2009
Updated 5 months ago
The head of the US Central Command, General David Petraeus, said Friday that the US had violated the Geneva Conventions in a stunning admission from President Bush’s onetime top general in Iraq that the US may have violated international law.
“When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward I think it’s important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those,” Gen. Petraeus said on Fox News Friday afternoon.
Petraeus made the comment in the context of being asked about the Bush administration’s so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The now-Central Command chief said he believed that banning the more extreme techniques had taken away “a tool” employed by “our enemies” as a moral argument against the United States.
Petraeus didn’t say which parts of the Geneva Conventions he thought he and other administration officials had violated.
Asked about a “ticking time bomb” scenario — which is often employed by torture’s defenders — Petraeus said that interrogation methods approved for use in the Army Field Manual were generally sufficient.
“There might be an exception and that would require extraordinary but very rapid approval to deal with but for the vast majority of the cases our experience… is that the techniques that are in the Army Field Manual that lays out how we treat detainees, how we interrogate them, those techniques work, that’s our experience in this business,” he said.
He also acknowledged that the US prison at Guantanamo Bay has inflamed anti-US hostility.
“I do support is what has been termed the responsible closure of Gitmo,” Petraeus said. “Gitmo has caused us problems, there’s no question about it. I oversee a region in which the existence of Gitmo has been used by the enemy against us. We have not been without missteps or mistakes in our activity since 9/11 and again Gitmo is a lingering reminder for the use of some in that regard.”
“I don’t think we should be afraid of our values we’re fighting for,” he added. “What we stand for and so indeed we need to embrace them and we need to ope rationalize them in how we carry out what it is we’re doing on the battle field and everywhere else. So one has to have some faith I think in the legal system. One has to have a degree of confidence that individuals that have conducted such extremist activity would indeed be found guilty in our courts of law.”
This video is from Fox’s Live Desk, broadcast May 29, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.com
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WOW, few stories surprise me, this does.
I thought he was one of the GOP lackey, zombie and all.
Good on him for speaking up and telling the unpleasant Truth.
Respect,
S*D
Well, like any good soldier he has to follow what his commander and chief* tells him to follow. now that moron* is off to pre-school, he can now speak his mind given the fact that Obama likes to have people with brains around them, but more so, people who use their brains.
Like Powell, after stepping down/being replaced he is potentially granting himself leniency should the US or world courts decide to prosecute.
Powell knew for a fact he was lying about ‘mobile wmd labs’ yet he did it anyway to galvanize support to invade iraq.
Bush Family’s Partnership with Killers of Americans: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/10_09_01_carlyle.html
250+ 9/11 Smoking Guns: http://thewebfairy.com/killtown/911smokingguns.html
with those two ghouls glaring over his shoulders, and the stench of death strong enough to take the paint off the front row seats
Don’t be surprised. He’s probably trying to save his own skin.
Petraus is against the troops!
Whoops!
He is the troops!
“I don’t think we should be afraid of our values we’re fighting for” - Really? I think we should be very afraid of any moron that supports a war where we’re fighing for our ‘values’.
“we need to ope rationalize them in how we carry out what it is we’re doing on the battle field and everywhere else.” - Well, that’s what the U.S. military is all about, rationalizing murder. In this case, rationalizing murder by endlessly blathering about a few tortures. 1 torture isn’t worse than 1 murder, 3 tortures isn’t worse than hundreds of thousands of murders.
I think the message here is, we’re going to let the world know we denounce torture, and somehow that will legitimize endless perpetual war. Brilliant.
“One has to have a degree of confidence that individuals that have conducted such extremist activity would indeed be found guilty in our courts of law.” - Lol, it’d be at least kind of funny if some combatants dropped a huge fucking bomb on his family.
I can’t let you off the hook on this one, hornéd head, just because the typist accidentally put a space in “operationalize”.
I.e., shaping your whole post around the word-fragment “rationalize” is like Christopher Robin and Pooh debating whether “Trespassers Will” stood for “William”.
I give the guy credit, who have ridiculed him previously. I am very pleased with his remarks.
That said, I agree in general that the US empire is the #1 terrorizer in the world today, and for decades past. But the idea that a modest beginning of a climbdown is worthy of derision misses the point that a clean slate is not going to appear suddenly, if at all, just as ocean liners can’t do a 90° turn on a dime.
It behooves us to dwell in the realm of the possible (no slur meant about your hooves).
“When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward I think it’s important to again live our values, ”
It is impossible to move forward and live our values while simultaneously burying the fact that our previous presidential administration raped, tortured and murdered prisoners in our name, and likely as well committed mass murder for the purpose of fomenting war in the Middle East.
Therefore, General, it is impossible to move forward as Americans without first investigating and punishing those who committed high crimes in our name. Instead, we appear to be moving forward as fascists, with you standing by Obama leading the charge.
If you were a Patriot, then you would call for the appointment of a special prosecutor, with full subpoena power, and a top secret security clearance.
But General, your allegiance is to the Plutocracy, not to the People. You are basically just talking shit, like all of your ilk do.
Conscious finally catch up to you, General? Now then, take it like a man…
Finally, a Bush Political General Admits Torture.
Time to start the Prosecutions for violation of our US Torture Laws.
SIGN THE PETITION To Prosecute Them For Torture
http://ANGRYVOTERS.ORG
Over 250,000 have signed
Join them and call yourself a Patriot
.
They’re flaunting the fact they broke international law and they’re getting away with it.
I smell a neocon mutiny.
Hey, Dave! To completely reconcile your conscience, we’re just going to need some documentation and a couple dozen sworn statements about all the evil shit that these wars were founded upon.
Welcome, sort of, to the side of Appeasement.
Has everybody read yet about the monstrous Lieberman/Graham bill, the Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act, designed to abrogate the FOIA law for this specific case?
As Sen. Sam Ervin famously said in the Watergate investigation, quoting John 3:19-21:
Ohh — we can’t let the world see what we did, even though they know what Sy Hersh said about it. It will cause them to come after us and kill us! We need to hide it!
Just as Poppy Bush told Sarah McClendon in 1992, “If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched.”
Okay, so we broke the law but lets not look at that, lets look forward.
Does anyone else see anything wrong with this picture? Maybe we should just not prosecute any other crimes by ANYONE on these grounds huh?
Then these assholes say that under exigent circumstances ot is alright to move things around. Under WHO’S authority? Do any of these assholes know we have a Constitution and Bill of Rights here? This is simply pathetic!
Bought and paid for media to hell with it all!
“When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward…”
A true ‘noblesse oblige’ admission by someone that has absolutely no fear of prosecution:
“When we have taken steps that have violated Federal Statutes, we have rightly been criticized, so as we move forward we should pay extra attention to follow most laws as they apply to our business ventures”.
— Prescott Sheldon Bush
Would you still support torture if Dick Cheney is lying about what the torture memos say?
http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=5392
.
Thank you General. That took courage…
Nothing like trying to cover your own ass, General. Of course this bullshit was still taking place under your watch and you never said a fucking word about it until now. Respect for this fucking slimeball? Not from me! His ass should burn like the rest of the Bush-Cheney stalag crew.
Wake up people! We are the Evil Empire. We wage war for profit. Our government is above the law. If you believe the official 911 story then you are a victim of mind control. Thousands of hours of watching violence on TV telling us that violence is the way to solve problems. Violence is gratifying. It feels good to kill. Our government has been taken over by a criminal corporate syndicate. Presidents from Andrew Jackson to Woodrow Wilson to Eisenhower to Kennedy have tried to warn us of this criminal element.
“Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain.” Chop wood, carry water.
One by one the small fish will come over and tell us what they know -the big fish will find themselves more and more alone. Whats happening now is the best kind of truth commission, the kind without pardons. When there finally are prosecutions, the guilty will face many hostile witnesses and will have no effective defense. The jury pool will be thoroughly tainted, but that doesn’t matter with military commissions.
To little, to late David. (you don’t even deserve being called General).
The world has known for years what you have just acknowledged.
Your admission reels of cover my ass talk.
You are a disgrace to the uniform you wear and should get out of it immediately. You were chaged by being in that uniform to prevent these type things from happening, even from the commander in chief.
Your career was more inportant to you than being a TRUE AMERICAN.
If you want to become a true american, then get out of the uniform, go before congress and tell, under oath, all you know.
Then let the american people clean this mess up.
You can do as all old soldiers should do,,slowly fade away.
No, No ,No! There were crimes committed. Crimes there can be no excuse for. We are either a nation governed by laws or we are some third world police state ruled by Israel. Which is it? We are waiting to see. Are these criminals going to be executed or not?
But General, what about the right-wingers who want desperately to torture someone? What will they do and where will they go if we abandon torture? Will they somehow find a way to carry on? So many worries.
I was in a family for more than 26 years who after marrying in started laundering driminal money for a huge Political criminal system. In the eary 90’s they added a new business in Florida to air ship TONS of cocaine workdwide and to participate in Rendition Flights with the CIA. The family often bragged about being CIA Assets.
Meet the family:
Mexico drug plane used for US ‘rendition’ flights: report
Sep 4, 2008
– http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j6QonBKKMo2gw1e3ql-xUcQEZbVg
Realize that the picture in the above article shows ~4 tons of cocaine!
Clyde O’Connor is my ex-sister-in-law’s brother. Her husband is my ex-wife’s brother and business partner. Obama while working at a law firm in Chicago in the early 90’s assisted the family with setting up their drug distribution business in Florida per that family.
Dr Orl Taits, attorney in California recently found that Obama owns more than 130 properties. Property is used as payment for serives done in the drug business with the family.
In 1996, the family talked about 911 only then there were three sites being reviewed with New Yiork Twin towers being one of them. 911 was State Run Terrorism. There were many other State Run Terrorism attacks that I knew about before they happened but that would be for another time. I also knew about the Prisons, known now as Detention Camps however what many don’t know is that the family said they are modeled after what happened in Europe during Hirtlers time.
Marty Didier
Northbrook, IL