Thursday, February 28, 2008

The Torture Vote

Paul Haggis, who received an Oscar in 2006 for his film Crash, wore an orange ribbon Sunday night at the Oscars, and told the Washington Post:

"The orange ribbons were worn in protest against state sanctioned torture. I wish we had been wearing them to make a statement about torture in Tibet or Burma or in Chinese labor camps. But the ribbons are the color of the jumpsuits at Guantanamo Bay, and at our secret detention camps, where prisoners are kept indefinitely, in violation of our constitution, and tortured. This is something that our government has long condemned as the heinous behavior of dictators, but something that unbelievably we now condone. . Every American of any political party should be loudly condemning this grossly un-American activity, but is barely even mentioned anymore. The orange wrist bands some of us wore said simply "Torture + Silence = Complicity". I received mine from The World Can't Wait campaign."

Debra Sweet, Director of World Can't Wait, wrote yesterday:

"George Bush is threatening to veto a bill passed by the Senate which doesn’t allow the CIA to use waterboarding, limiting it to interrogations allowed in the U.S. Army Field Manual. "

Sweet also notes that Senator McCain voted against the bill. "
I will not restrict the CIA to only the Army Field Manual," McCain explained. Neither Senator Clinton nor Senator Obama voted.

You can read the entire article on the World Can't Wait website.




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