Real News CEO Paul Jay talks with Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights about the Obama Administration doing everything they can do to "run away" from the whole issue of accountability for the premeditated, organized and institutionalized torture program of the Bush Administration, about the need for real transparency as opposed to the false claims of transparency from Obama while reports and information are held back or heavily redacted before release, and about demands now coming from UN human rights advocate Navi Pillay for holding accountable senior Bush Administration officials.


Also see:
Obama Vows to Deal With Torture, But His Pledge Doesn't Apply to the Bush Administration
by Jason Leopold
and
Everyone Should See "Torturing Democracy"
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

Crossposted from Docudharma
We are Americans. We live in and vote in America. We elect our leaders. Thus we are responsible for what our leaders do.

We here may look upon ourselves as different.

But each of the other 7 Billion human beings we share this planet with, looks at us as Americans.

As a country, as an entity. The Americans selected George Bush to lead them. A country is what its leaders do. And our leaders were George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. In the period after 9/11, to the rest of the world, they represented America. The rest of the world was ready to join with America after the attacks. To the rest of the world, they were...and still are...America. What they did...America did.

Each and every American did. It is how we judge others, how we judge other countries....by what their leaders do.

And it is how we will be judged. How we are judged. By what George Bush, Dick Chenmey, and Donald Rumsfeld did. That is just how it works. Fair or not, it is true. America DOES torture.

We are Americans, and this is what we did.

The International Red Cross says so. The United Nations is investigating US.

We are torturers. We try to avoid that fact, here in our comfy little Exceptional American Bubble. But to the rest of the world, until there is justice visited upon the individuals who ordered torture...Americans are torturers. How does that feel?

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