US manipulating Iranian human rights to justify committing worse violations against it
Countries responsible for the most human rights accusations against Iran rank first in the list of human rights violators if their performances are examined in a fair and impartial manner said Iranian Foreign Minister spokesman Tuesday, citing United States crimes of American agents in Iraq and Afghanistan, crimes against Palestinians, and crimes of torture and inhumane behaviors that U.S. civil and human rights groups also condemn. The Obama administration is manipulating Iranian human rights record in a psychological operation against Americans and others to justify illegal aggression against Iran while evidence, such as a new torture video, continues surfacing, proving some of the worst rights abuses being committed by Americans with impunity.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said countries that initiated the recent United Nations anti-Iran resolution are among greatest human rights violators and he "regretted that human rights issues have become a political tool in the hands of hegemonic and oppressive countries," reported IRNA News in its article, "FM spokesman: Human rights manipulated by certain countries."
U.S. crimes in different countries should be dealt when talking about fair and frank examination of human rights records of countries said the FM spokesperson according to the news report.
Despite the U.N. rapporteur reporting Israel’s crimes, Washington "has not dared to condemn them so far," said Mehmanparast.
He also cited Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghriab prisons as other proofs of the prevailing U.S. atmosphere of violating human rights and the "American administration advocating torture and inhuman behaviors."
Mehmanparast's accuations do not refer to former torture officials. The Obama administration is also demonstrating grave human rights violations while President Obama states reasons to uphold them.
Furthermore, some Republican presidential candidates have already announced to the world that they advocate torture.
American human rights advocates also condemn U.S. rights abuses
Mehmanparast is not the only one pointing the finger at Americans for U.S. human rights abuses while condemning and using military aggression on other nations, using rights violations as justification for the illegal aggression against them. Anyone who looks at reality can see the U.S. is violating human rights by continuing torture says the human rights publishing group, Invictus.
Republican candidates Heman Cain and Michelle Bachman recently publicly advocated torture, followed Saturday by a LiveLeak exposing American torture in a video that went viral.
Responding to the Republican president hopefuls, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, Marjorie Cohn, commented on water-boarding torture:
"Cain said, 'I don't see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique,' which is what the Bush administration used to call its policy of torture and abuse.
Bachman declared, 'If I were president, I would be willing to use waterboarding. I think it was very effective. It gained information for our country.'
And after the debate, Mitt Romney’s aides told CNN that he does not think waterboarding is torture.
"The United States has long considered waterboarding to be torture," stated Cohn. "Several federal court opinions refer to waterboarding as torture.
"Our government prosecuted, convicted and hung Japanese military leaders following World War II for waterboarding.
"The U.S. War Crimes Act defines torture as a war crime.
"George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and John Yoo have all admitted participating in decisions to waterboard detainees, knowing that interrogators would carry out their orders. Under the doctrine of command responsibility, commanders all the way up the chain of command to the commander-in-chief can be prosecuted for war crimes if they knew or should have known their subordinates would commit them and the commanders did nothing to stop or prevent it. Therefore, Bush, Cheney, and Yoo have admitted to the commission of war crimes."
Responding to the Republicans' advocating torture, President Obama waterboarding “is contrary to America’s tradition, it’s contrary to our ideals. That’s not who we are. That’s not how we operate. We don’t need it in order to prosecute the war on terrorism. We did the right thing by ending that practice. If we want to lead around the world part of our leadership is setting a good example.”
Obama's own nominated candidate for CIA director, however, supports waterboarding and the other torture techniques designated "enhanced interrogation" during the Bush/Cheney regime. Furthermore, as Cohn highlights, the Obama administration refusing to investigate the Bush/Cheney regime admitted torturers gives them "a free pass," the type of human rights violation Iran's spokesperson referred.
"The Obama administration does support torture... in the old-fashioned U.S. way, through official and/or plausible denial," says Cohn.
General David Petraeus, Commander, U.S. Central Command, advocated the "global Phoenix Program," alluding to the notorious Vietnam-era CIA data-base operation used to torture and assassinate innocent civilians due to their political beliefs. (Tom Hayden, "Reviving Vietnam War Tactics," The Nation, 2008 cited in ("Monarch no-touch torture of US targets press conference slated")
"in the U.S. official Army Field Manual on interrogation, numerous commentators have found clear evidence of the use of torture, including use of debilitating isolation, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, manipulation of phobias, use of drugs, and other 'techniques.' Some of these techniques, such as use of isolation and sleep deprivation are limited to supposed 'illegal' combatants, such as those captured in the 'war on terror,' as discussed in the AFM's Appendix M (PDF)."
Human rights defender Sharon Tipton has said, "A trickle down torture culture is seen in increased violence, and even torture. A teacher was found to have water-boarded her autistic student. Torture is common in prisons." "We will not be silent. Dupré interviews Torture Judge Bybee protester Sharon Tipton")
With impunity, the U.S. has put 80,000 people through its "rendition" system, kidnapped and taken them to secret prisons that torture according to Reprieve. Specialists such as U.S. Air Force reservist, Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley report that the American public has only seen "tip of the iceberg" of torture horrors secretly practiced in their name.
The secret was further exposed last week with the posting of a shocking video of American soldiers torturing a man in Afghanistan, trying to get him to admit what they wanted him to say.
(Watch "A must see!!! American Secret Agents torturing a detainee in Afghanistan [PART 2]" Youtube video embedded on this page.)
Responding to the recent video showing in shocking detail such a horror, the Invictus' article further exposing the U.S. human rights violations that mainstream media and surprisingly, others have supported:
"The investigation of the Guantanamo 'suicides' by Horton and Seton Hall University School of Law, Center for Policy and Research (PDF) was the subject of a slur campaign in the media last May, with Horton's article in particular attacked by former Bush Administration officials. Then, strangely, Adweek writer Alex Koppelman and his former Salon.com collaborator Mark Benjamin, jumped in to defend Guantanamo Defense Department authorities' version of events."
Former high level FBI interrogators, including Ali Soufan and Dan Coleman, say the person being tortured will say anything to get the torture to stop – even providing false information, and best results are obtained with humane methods.
Reprieve has listed 21 black sites, secret prisons, most of which are where Americans take their kidnapped subjects, mainly individuals innocent of crimes who are stripped of legal rights, to torture or have them tortured with immunity and impunity, contrary to Obama's promises during his presidential campaign and as President, his ordering the closure of all black sites.
A comment under the Youtube video showing Americans torturing states one reason the Occupy movement will not be silenced: "It's easy to hate Americans, but it's their government that is marching across the world destroying everything in its path, not the average working class guy whose only recourse against the government he hates as well is to vote every few years in a system that is so corrupt that the vote won't even matter."
"Americans don't want war, they don't want to occupy foreign countries or assassinate their leaders, because all of this goes against their own interests."
Comments