CIA Torture Probe: The Good, Bad & Ugly | Six Months in Jail For Yawning? | A Victory for Troy Davis

Rights & Liberties Newsletter August 26th, 2009 More from Rights & Liberties »

The White House Needs to Go a Lot Further with the Torture Inquiry By John Nichols, TheNation.com The investigation into torture could be thwarted by a GOP counter-attack and an echo chamber determined to protect Bush and Cheney. Read more »   On Monday, news broke that Attorney General Eric Holder has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate CIA torture. This was a long awaited announcement, in large part the result of the tireless efforts by such organizations as the ACLU, who pushed for five years for the release of the 2004 CIA Inspector General's report, which outlines the now-familiar details of gruesome mistreatment by interrogators of suspects in U.S. custody. That's the good news. The bad news is that despite Holder's courage in pushing forward with such a politically complicated investigation -- although some would argue he has no choice, given all we know already of the torture that was inflicted in the name of the "war on terror" -- by all accounts, it's looking like his investigation may prove to be a total whitewash. Why? Because rather than going after the Bush administration higher-ups -- the lawyers and top White House brass who designed and authorized the program -- the scope of the investigation will be limited to those interrogators who carried out the torture. Call it the Abu Ghraib approach. It has been said a thousand times, but it bears repeating: U.S. torture was not the fault of a few bad apples. It was official U.S. policy. Those who instituted it must be held to account. Check out AlterNet's Rights & Liberties section for more on this critical topic. And thanks for reading. Liliana Segura, Editor, Rights & Liberties Special Coverage     Political Fireworks Over Torture Prosecutor: Report Reveals Threats to Kill Children, CIA Director in 'Screaming Match' AlterNet Senate Dems and progressives are pushing for AG Eric Holder to expand the investigation that CIA director Leon Panetta has threatened to quit over. Read more »   Holder Tapping Prosecutor to Probe 'Nearly a Dozen' CIA Interrogations By Stephen Webster, Raw Story America's torture debate is nowhere near over. Read more »   GOP Senators: U.S. Faces Terrorist Attack if Holder Probes Bush's Torture Program By Jason Leopold, TruthOut.org In a craven attempt to keep CIA abuses under wraps, nine senators wrote to the attorney general warning him not to appoint a special prosecutor. Read more »   How Yawning Got One Court Spectator Six Months in the Slammer and Other Disturbing Acts of Judicial Tyranny By Liliana Segura, AlterNet When judges take on airs and lash out in fits of whimsical bullying, innocent people can end up paying the price with jail time -- or their lives. Read more »   Supreme Court Shocker: Troy Davis Will Get a Chance to Prove His Innocence In Court By Amy Goodman, AlterNet Georgia death row prisoner Troy Davis has had three execution dates despite overwhelming proof of his innocence. Now he'll finally have his day in court. Read more »   Pressuring Obama To Ditch the Defense of Marriage Act Is AlterNet's Top Take Action Campaign This Week By Byard Duncan, AlterNet DOMA is an offensive relic. Time to give it the boot. Read more »   Stop the Humiliating 'Sex-Testing' of Champion Runner Caster Semenya By Dave Zirin, Sherry Wolf, The Nation South African runner Caster Semenya shouldn't be the one humiliated by "gender testing"-- it's the outdated views of athletic officials that are embarrassing. Read more »   PEEK and Video: The hottest buzz and videos on the web     Gitmo Prisoner Captured As Teenager and Tortured in U.S. Custody Is Free By Suzanne Ito, Blog of Rights Mohammed Jawad attempted suicide in December 2003 by repeatedly slamming his head against his cell wall. Read more »   CIA Report Reveals Interrogator Threatened to Kill Detainee's Children By Nate Carlile, Think Progress A long-awaited CIA Inspector General report reveals that interrogators also threatened to sexually assault the mother of a key terror suspect. Read more »   SATIRE: How Capital Punishment Can Be Fun For The Whole Family!! [white families] By Lee Camp Do you know the #1 determinant of whether the defendant in a murder trial gets executed? Read more »

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