Dennis Kucinich Quotes
We need to know how taxpayer dollars are being used to support torture and human rights abuses.
Dennis Kucinich, U. S. Congressman (Democrat, OH) House Hearings on The Human Rights Information Act, May 11, 1998
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This statement was made before the 2012 Syrian Revolution.
Yet we continued to give the government aid.
The School of the Americas has been run by the United States Army and provides training for Latin American Military Officers in Counter-Insurgency Training. The graduates of the school have included some of the worst Latin American killers and torturers (See {41061} for example) who rose to positions of power in their lands. It has also included many leaders who did not ever resort to war crimes and atrocities and also became leaders of their countries. It has been an institution of great controversy since it was discovered that the school at one point taught methods of interrogating insurgents that were tantamount to torture. Defenders of the school claim that but for the school, the military atrocities would have been worse and that it contributed to more human and democratic governments in the Americas.
He was referring to the police interrogation methods that Turkey had used in the past but was in the process of reforming.
Hissine Habre was the President and Dictator of Chad. He was one of the worst war criminal and murderer in the world. He and the other DDS policemen and agents were trained by the United States.
[During the Guatemalan Civil War, the military had often tortured, murdered disappeared and sexually enslaved female relatives of men they suspected of being rebel. The object was to humiliate and emasculate the insurrectionists so that others will not join them and they will cease their revolutionary activities to protect their women. The civil war ended in 1996, and although military war criminals had been tried earlier but never for crimes – sexual crimes against women. 20 year had elapsed since the end of the war and this famous trial. The two war criminals were sentenced to 120 and 240 years in prison respectively, but they had escaped justice for more than two decades. The United States, in the middle of the Red Scare was supporting and financing the Guatemalan government and military. In addition America trained many of the military in counter-insurgency which taught some methods that were contrary to International Law and which were illegal for American soldiers to engage in. After official documents of the era were declassified, it became clear that U. S. officials—–especially the CIA--were aware of the excesses and war crimes of the Guatemalan military, but did little to stop it. See Quotes 583698, and 583699 for more on the American involvement.
When TR came to office, the U. S. was in the midst of war with Philippine insurgents who were fighting an asymmetric , guerrilla war against the U. S. Army. The war had become very brutal with the insurgents using terror and atrocities and some Army units executing prisoners and torturing captives. Roosevelt, actually fired the General who was in charge of the field troops rather than just discipline lower level officers as usually has happened.
Chelsea Elizabeth Manning
The treaty to which he referred was The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. During the George W. Bush administration the CIA had tortured 3 captives in the War on Terror. The CIA destroyed the video tapes of the torture sessions and many Americans wanted President Obama to investigate and prosecute the torturers in accordance with the requirements of the treaty when there is a torture incident. However, a major ethical and legal complication was that the Bush Administration had issued an official legal memorandum to the CIA which said that the forms of torture that they used, water boarding, was not legally torture. Most legal scholars agree that this legal opinion was incorrect and America had previously prosecuted and punished the few American soldiers who had used Waterboarding. President Obama decided that since the CIA torturers, had been authorized in writing, that a criminal prosecution would be unfair. He also declined to have the Justice Department investigate the torture incidents, Many disagreed, and this quotation summarized their point of view. See {642428} for some of the language of the Convention.
Dennis John Kucinich is an American politician. A U.S. Representative from Ohio from 1997 to 2013, he was also a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States in 2004 and 2008. He ran for governor of Ohio in the 2018 election, losing in the primary to Richard Cordray.
