Nick Harkaway Quotes

The Bush administration will go down in history as the Torture Team.

Torture is not a thing we can tolerate.

In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever may be invoked to justify torture, including war, threat of war, internal political instability, public emergency, terrorist acts, violent crime, or any form of armed conflict..

Things like Abu Ghraib and even Guantanamo are not new things: there are many precedents.

Human-rights advocates, for example, claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush's 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

I strongly disapprove of torture and have never and would never provide assistance in its process.

Shamefully we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management, U.S. management.

The photographs of Iraqi prisoners being subjected to degrading and humiliating treatment by their captors, and the reports of acts of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and other acts of maltreatment shock the conscience.

What's happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is one of the grossest violations of human rights under the Geneva Conventions that we have record of. It is simply monstrous.

I mean, we've had all these awful pictures from the prison in Iraq and these sort of memos floating around about justifying torture, all this kind of stuff. And it makes you want to take a shower, you know?

However, the Department of Defense treats these detainees in accord with the Geneva Convention, even though that is not required because of the inhumane methods used by these killers.

Torture is illegal, both in the U.S. and abroad. So - and that is true for the Bush administration and for any other administration.

So, it, of course, makes one wonder how many other people there might be who are completely innocent, who have been sent by the U.S. to countries where they've been interrogated, and in some instances it seems tortured.

Since January 2002, when the United States began detaining at Guantanamo Bay enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other fronts in the war on terror, critics have complained of human rights abuses.

This is not to condone torture, which is still prohibited by the Torture Convention and federal criminal law.

Regrettably, it has become clear that torture of detainees in United States custody is not limited to Abu Ghraib or even Iraq. Since Abu Ghraib, there have been increasing reports of torture.

Torture, including practices like waterboarding, violates the legal and moral standards of all civilized nations.

It seems nothing good comes out of Abu Ghraib.

The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody has severely undermined our Nation's position in the world.

I'm not for it [waterboarding torture] but it doesn't have anything to do with the Constitution .... Just as the Constitution is silent about lots of other horrible things.

[The new Congolese] security forces committed unlawful killings, torture, beatings, acts of rape, extortion and other abuses, largely with impunity.

We need to know how taxpayer dollars are being used to support torture and human rights abuses.

Legal issues aside, the American people and government should never abide the use of torture by our military or intelligence agencies. A decent society never accepts or justifies torture. It dehumanizes both torturer and victim, yet seldom produces reliable intelligence. Torture by rogue American troops or agents puts all Americans at risk, especially our rank-and-file soldiers stationed in dozens of dangerous places around the globe. God forbid terrorists take American soldiers or travelers hostage and torture them as some kind of sick retaliation for Abu Gharib.

The Syrian people deserve much more than complicit silence, or timid criticism from those who have failed to refer the regime to the International Criminal Court despite acknowledgement if its crimes.