U.N. anti-torture panel question U.S. officials

How about the Afghani, Iraqi, Al-qaeda and Taliban organizations?

This is rediculous. NK's concentration camps go unpunished while this theater is going on.

@scipantheist

So as long as some other country is torturing people, the Americans get a free pass?

What torture has US committed? Water boarding? I'd rather be water boarded in Gitmo over a beheading in the ME. Or a labor camp in NK.

Bringing up the Michael Brown issue is silly. We don't know what exactly happened yet. Just because Brown had no weapon does not mean he was no threat. He was a large man and that is threat enough.

A U.N. panel began grilling American officials Wednesday over the U.S. government’s compliance with a key anti-torture treaty, raising a series of alleged violations since the 9/11 attacks.

Meaning: we heard there was a possibility, but we really don't know for sure.

It's generally banana republics, theocracies and dictatorships who engage in torture. Civilised countries shouldn't if they want to call themselves civilised. Comparing your behaviour to that of the dictatorship ( some have argued theocracy ) in North Korea is a pretty depressing argument.

It's interesting that right now Obama is warning Myanmar about backsliding on democratic reforms when his administration has carried on many of the regressive social justice policies of GWB and even escalated criminal drone killings of women and children.

Fluffy love n cuddle em left wing brigade hard at work here.

How do these fools expect the people who need the info get the job done ?

Mind you I have heard stories from guys coming back from the middle east threatening detainees by telling them that if they didn't tell them what they wanted to know they were going to stuff ham sandwiches and bacon down their throats.

They did say that scared the living day lights out of them and usually worked, so I wonder if the UN would call that cruel and demeaning behaviour ?

UN is a pathetic joke and only goes after easy targets, why don't they tell isis to be fair and stop the demeaning actions or the other nutjobs in NK, or Somalia, note they don't, they go after the soft targets.

Bass4funk: water boarding? Not torture maybe?

I hope they drag Bush and Cheney in for a grilling. That the USA ever stooped to torture is appalling.

That said I have to agree that the UN is going after the easy targets while the really nasty actors are left to keep on torturing at will. Then they'll wring their hands and the UN and EU will whine to the USA to send in troops to stop the bloodshed. Bunch of gutless wonders.

How about UN calling ISIS and Al Qaeda to front UN Human Right Commissioner?

UN and EU Human right Commissioners should take responsible when terrorists attacking on innocent civilians. UN and other Human Right organizations are ignoring result come out from torture on terrorists. They knew terrorists won't talk and reveal their plans and connection by a cup of tea and Cigarette.

I don't think terrorists, murderers, rapists and other serious criminals should have same human right ordinary peoples.

This is rediculous. NK's concentration camps go unpunished while this theater is going on.

As far as I know, nobody in the U.S. is being punished by the U.N. either.

This is happening specifically because the Bush Administration lawyers came up with a whopper of a lie when they claimed the international treaty against torture definition of "torture" doesn't apply in certain cases. This allowed the Bush Administration to claim they weren't torturing detainees, only applying "enhanced interrogations". Even though Obama spoke out against those "enhanced interrogations" when he took office, he never made it clear what the U.S.'s official stance was now. Thus, the U.N. hearing.

water boarding? Not torture maybe?

They didn't die, they recovered within minutes and there were no lasting side effects, scars, or bruising afterwards, so no, it's not torture, it maybe not be comfortable, but that's about it.