Peter T. King Quotes
I don't know anyone at the highest levels who approved Abu Ghraib. If President Barack Obama for a moment thought that somebody at a high level had approved it, he would go after them.
King, Peter T. Interview by Chris Matthews. Hardball with Chris Matthews, MSNBC, 22 Apr. 2009.
The Second World War was not the first time Germany had committed war crimes and atrocities as a matter of government policy. Hitler and the Nazis then expanded on an evil tradition that was already embedded in the German militaristic culture. See {642193} and {642190} for other examples.
The Senate was debating a law to make torture of foreigners and captives illegal under all circumstances. Vice President Cheney was very strongly opposed wanting an exception made for the CIA.
South Africa, with the fall of apartheid, instead of arresting, trying, and sentencing the worst of the old regime, elected a truth commission approach instead.
Abu Ghraib was the prison in Iraq where prisoners were brutalized and treated illegally and immorally. Seymour Hirsh was the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who broke the story. Levy contrasted that where the Algerian War was full of such atrocities but French intellectuals and press would not publicize it. It didn’t stop for the whole war.
Turkey, under the control of the triumvirate of the 3 Young Turks had massacred almost all of the Armenian population in the area claimed by Turkey. At the end of WWI, there were many demands that those who ordered the policy of a Turkish genocide and those who carried it out by brought to justice—tried and punished. The Sultan had done little if anything to stop the slaughters although he was very weak, Turkey under the Young Turks had also picked the wrong side and allied with the Germans. The Sultan and his Grand Vizier were trying to pick up the pieces and maintain the Ottoman Empire as best they could despite they the fact that they lost control of much of their vast territory. At the Paris Peace Conference, the Grand Vizier virtually admitted the crimes and committed the Turkish government to determining the guilty and bringing them to justice. He actually had 50 of the worst offenders arrested (See {620595}.). However, there were a few tried and one governor of a province was hanged and a few others received short jail sentences. Talaat, the worst of The Young Turks regarding the genocide, escaped to Germany. But he was tracked by a surviving Armenian who assassinated Talaat. The assassin was acquitted by a sympathetic German court which ruled that the extermination of the assassin’s family had been so traumatic that temporary insanity relieved the assassin of criminal responsibility.
Abu Ghraib was the major prison in Iraq during the Iraq War. American military committed many crimes on prisoners ranging from murder to sexual humiliation. The actual perpetrators claimed that the higher ranks of officers knew what was ongoing and provided the policies, rules and culture of the prison. The president and the Vice President many thought were the officers responsible and violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Their administration had issued a legal memorandum that for the first time in American history would allow some kinds of torture of prisoners in the War on Terror. A few enlisted personnel were punished and a general was transferred but no senior military or civilian personnel were held responsible or punished.
Chelsea Elizabeth Manning
Peter Thomas King is a former American politician who represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2021. He represented a South Shore Long Island district that includes parts of Nassau County and Suffolk County and was numbered as the 3rd and later the 2nd district.
