Wow.

Just wow.

From Salon.com News :: The 13 people who made torture possible:

The Torture 13 exploited the federal bureaucracy to establish a torture regime in two ways. First, they based the enhanced interrogation techniques on techniques used in the U.S. military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program. The program -- which subjects volunteers from the armed services to simulated hostile capture situations -- trains servicemen and -women to withstand coercion well enough to avoid making false confessions if captured. Two retired SERE psychologists contracted with the government to "reverse-engineer" these techniques to use in detainee interrogations.

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The election of pro-wrestler Jesse Ventura as Governor of Minnesota was something of a joke. And yet, I noticed that although I didn't like all of his policy decisions, a great deal of what he said was quite accurate, if bluntly put. In fact, sometimes it seems like he gets things in ways few other politicians, either Republican or Democrat, get and is willing to say it at times when others hesitate. This is one of those times. Here are videos of an interview with Jesse Ventura where it is hard to disagree with much of what he says (thanks to Daily Kos):

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Obama promised to close Guantanamo as quickly as he could. Many kept saying he couldn't, that things aren't that simple, blah, blah blah. Obama is already taking the first steps to keep his promise. From the ACLU:

Within hours of taking office, President Obama took the important first step to close Guantánamo: halting the unconstitutional military commissions by ordering the prosecution to seek a 120-day suspension.

It’s the first step in what we hope will be a series of bold measures to free America from the civil liberties outrages and human rights abuses of the Bush era.

The pundits and political experts told the ACLU we should “hold our horses” -- that it wouldn’t be right to expect swift action from Obama. You and half a million ACLU supporters didn’t listen to them -- and neither did our new President!

Let’s match President Obama’s first step forward with a powerful show of support and encouragement.

Sign the ACLU’s “Thanks for acting on Day One” message to President Obama.
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Let that sink in for a minute.

JANUARY 11, 2008, is the six-year anniversary of the first arrival of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.

The ACLU is calling on everyone opposed to torture, secret prisons, the suspension of habeas corpus and the overall trampling of democracy and the United States Constitution, to wear orange to symbolize the national shame that is Guantánamo Bay.

From their website :

After hundreds of detentions and two Supreme Court decisions rejecting the administration's detention policies at Gitmo, the legal status of the detainees there remains unresolved and the fight continues to end unlawful detention and the denial of due process.

The ACLU is one of four organizations that have been granted status as human rights observers at the military commission proceedings. When the tribunals began in 2004, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero and two ACLU international human rights lawyers attended the proceedings and blogged about the experience so Americans could know the truth of Guantánamo.

The ACLU has continued to hold government leadership accountable by filing Freedom of Information Act requests for documents that reveal systemic torture to prisoners held in U.S. custody. So far, more than 100,000 pages of government documents detailing the torture and abuse of detainees.
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