Torture, Murder and Donald Trump : Information Clearing House - ICH
Torture,
Murder and Donald Trump
By Patrick
Martin
February
11, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"WSWS"
-
Only four days
after his public defense of torture and “a hell of a
lot worse” in US military-intelligence
interrogations, billionaire Donald Trump added
assassination to his foreign policy arsenal as well.
Speaking Wednesday on the “CBS This Morning”
program, Trump said that his solution to the US
conflict with North Korea over its nuclear weapons
program would be to eliminate North Korean leader
Kim Jong-un.
“I would
get China to make that guy disappear in one form or
another very quickly,” Trump told interviewer Norah
O’Donnell. When she followed up by asking if that
meant having Kim Jong-un assassinated, Trump
replied, “Well, I’ve heard of worse things, frankly.
I mean, this guy’s a bad dude.”
Trump was
responding to the declaration by US Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper, who told a
Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday that
Pyongyang had made progress in developing both
nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and could
conceivably reach parts of the United States with a
nuclear warhead.
The
billionaire demagogue, fresh off a victory in the
New Hampshire primary Tuesday that confirmed his
status as the frontrunner for the Republican
presidential nomination, said the US government
could engineer Kim’s removal through China. Beijing
has “absolute control” over North Korea, he said,
and “I would force the Chinese to do
it—economically.”
“I wouldn’t
leave it up to them. I would say, ‘You gotta do it.
You gotta do it,’” Trump said.
If China
refuses, he said he would repeat the demand and “do
it a little more forcefully.”
Trump was
escalating the thuggish, gangster language that has
been the hallmark of his campaign for the Republican
presidential nomination. At last Saturday’s debate
in New Hampshire, he declared his support for
waterboarding, adding, “I would bring back
waterboarding and I’d bring back a hell of a lot
worse than waterboarding.”
At a
campaign rally the next day, Trump used a vulgar
term for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, one of his major
rivals for the nomination, because Cruz expressed
some reservations about waterboarding, suggesting
that its use should be infrequent rather than
widespread.
The
candidate took the same tack in a series of
appearances on Sunday network television interview
programs. On CNN, NBC and ABC he was asked about his
comments on waterboarding, and each instance he
reiterated his support for torture, although he
declined to spell out what methods of interrogation
would be “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
On CNN,
interviewer Jake Tapper pointed out that US law bans
treatment of prisoners that causes “serious and
nontransitory mental harm,” like waterboarding, then
asked Trump, “How would you bring it back, if it is
currently a war crime under US law?”
Trump
responded, “I would go through a process and get it
declassified, frankly.” He portrayed this form of
torture as necessary retribution for the methods of
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, even if it was
ineffective in extracting information. “They laugh
at us when they hear that we’re not going to approve
waterboarding,” he said, “and then they will have a
James Foley and others where they cut off their
heads. And, you know, you can say what you want. I
have no doubt that it does work in terms of
information and other things, and maybe not always,
but nothing works always. But I have no doubt that
it works. But, more importantly, when they’re
chopping off the heads of people, and innocent
people in most cases, beyond waterboarding is fine
with me.”
On NBC’s
“Meet the Press” program, interviewer Chuck Todd
asked Trump what was worse than waterboarding, but
Trump declined to define it.
Todd
suggested, referring to ISIS, “They want to be
barbaric. We’re not barbaric.” Trump disagreed,
declaring, “OK. They can do it, but we can’t?” Then
he added, “You can do waterboarding and you can go a
step beyond waterboarding. It wouldn’t bother me
even a little bit.”
On the ABC
program “This Week,” interviewer George
Stephanopoulos asked directly, “As president, you
would authorize torture?” Trump replied, “I would
absolutely authorize something beyond waterboarding.
And believe me, it will be effective. If we need
information, George, you have our enemy cutting
heads off of Christians and plenty of others, by the
hundreds, by the thousands.”
This
exchange followed:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do we win by being more like them?
TRUMP: Yes.
I’m sorry. You have to do it that way. And I’m not
sure everybody agrees with me. I guess a lot of
people don’t. We are living in a time that’s as evil
as any time that there has ever been. You know, when
I was a young man, I studied Medieval times. That’s
what they did, they chopped off heads. That’s what
we have ...
STEPHANOPOULOS: So we’re going to chop off heads?
TRUMP:
We’re going to do things beyond waterboarding
perhaps, if that happens to come.
Stephanopoulos was the only interviewer to pose the
torture question to another candidate, in this case
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican. Rubio
declared that there shouldn’t be public discussion
of specific interrogation techniques, such as
waterboarding, to avoid alerting suspected
terrorists. But he made it clear he had no
differences with Trump on resuming waterboarding and
other forms of torture-interrogation.
With that,
the corporate-controlled media has turned the page,
more or less dropping the subject. The question was
not raised during the saturation coverage of the New
Hampshire primary Tuesday. Network television news
broadcasts on Wednesday did not mention Trump’s call
to assassinate Kim Jong-un or his campaign for
torture.
Significantly, neither Democratic candidate, Senator
Bernie Sanders or former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, criticized Trump for his embrace of torture
and murder. Clinton, of course, has her own record
of endorsing barbarism, with her notorious comment
during the US-NATO war against Libya, referring
laughingly to the torture and murder of Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi, “We came. We saw. He died.”
Clinton was
part of the Obama administration during the initial
campaign of drone missile assassinations, including
the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011 and his
teenage son two weeks afterward. She was in the
cabinet when Obama made his decision to block any
prosecution of CIA officials for torture, when he
suppressed evidence of torture, including graphic
photos, and while the CIA fought a protracted battle
against the release of the Senate Intelligence
Committee report on torture.
- See more at: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44186.htm#sthash.IIY3fjPk.dpuf
Murder and Donald Trump
By Patrick
Martin
February
11, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"WSWS"
-
Only four days
after his public defense of torture and “a hell of a
lot worse” in US military-intelligence
interrogations, billionaire Donald Trump added
assassination to his foreign policy arsenal as well.
Speaking Wednesday on the “CBS This Morning”
program, Trump said that his solution to the US
conflict with North Korea over its nuclear weapons
program would be to eliminate North Korean leader
Kim Jong-un.
“I would
get China to make that guy disappear in one form or
another very quickly,” Trump told interviewer Norah
O’Donnell. When she followed up by asking if that
meant having Kim Jong-un assassinated, Trump
replied, “Well, I’ve heard of worse things, frankly.
I mean, this guy’s a bad dude.”
Trump was
responding to the declaration by US Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper, who told a
Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday that
Pyongyang had made progress in developing both
nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and could
conceivably reach parts of the United States with a
nuclear warhead.
The
billionaire demagogue, fresh off a victory in the
New Hampshire primary Tuesday that confirmed his
status as the frontrunner for the Republican
presidential nomination, said the US government
could engineer Kim’s removal through China. Beijing
has “absolute control” over North Korea, he said,
and “I would force the Chinese to do
it—economically.”
“I wouldn’t
leave it up to them. I would say, ‘You gotta do it.
You gotta do it,’” Trump said.
If China
refuses, he said he would repeat the demand and “do
it a little more forcefully.”
Trump was
escalating the thuggish, gangster language that has
been the hallmark of his campaign for the Republican
presidential nomination. At last Saturday’s debate
in New Hampshire, he declared his support for
waterboarding, adding, “I would bring back
waterboarding and I’d bring back a hell of a lot
worse than waterboarding.”
At a
campaign rally the next day, Trump used a vulgar
term for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, one of his major
rivals for the nomination, because Cruz expressed
some reservations about waterboarding, suggesting
that its use should be infrequent rather than
widespread.
The
candidate took the same tack in a series of
appearances on Sunday network television interview
programs. On CNN, NBC and ABC he was asked about his
comments on waterboarding, and each instance he
reiterated his support for torture, although he
declined to spell out what methods of interrogation
would be “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
On CNN,
interviewer Jake Tapper pointed out that US law bans
treatment of prisoners that causes “serious and
nontransitory mental harm,” like waterboarding, then
asked Trump, “How would you bring it back, if it is
currently a war crime under US law?”
Trump
responded, “I would go through a process and get it
declassified, frankly.” He portrayed this form of
torture as necessary retribution for the methods of
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, even if it was
ineffective in extracting information. “They laugh
at us when they hear that we’re not going to approve
waterboarding,” he said, “and then they will have a
James Foley and others where they cut off their
heads. And, you know, you can say what you want. I
have no doubt that it does work in terms of
information and other things, and maybe not always,
but nothing works always. But I have no doubt that
it works. But, more importantly, when they’re
chopping off the heads of people, and innocent
people in most cases, beyond waterboarding is fine
with me.”
On NBC’s
“Meet the Press” program, interviewer Chuck Todd
asked Trump what was worse than waterboarding, but
Trump declined to define it.
Todd
suggested, referring to ISIS, “They want to be
barbaric. We’re not barbaric.” Trump disagreed,
declaring, “OK. They can do it, but we can’t?” Then
he added, “You can do waterboarding and you can go a
step beyond waterboarding. It wouldn’t bother me
even a little bit.”
On the ABC
program “This Week,” interviewer George
Stephanopoulos asked directly, “As president, you
would authorize torture?” Trump replied, “I would
absolutely authorize something beyond waterboarding.
And believe me, it will be effective. If we need
information, George, you have our enemy cutting
heads off of Christians and plenty of others, by the
hundreds, by the thousands.”
This
exchange followed:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do we win by being more like them?
TRUMP: Yes.
I’m sorry. You have to do it that way. And I’m not
sure everybody agrees with me. I guess a lot of
people don’t. We are living in a time that’s as evil
as any time that there has ever been. You know, when
I was a young man, I studied Medieval times. That’s
what they did, they chopped off heads. That’s what
we have ...
STEPHANOPOULOS: So we’re going to chop off heads?
TRUMP:
We’re going to do things beyond waterboarding
perhaps, if that happens to come.
Stephanopoulos was the only interviewer to pose the
torture question to another candidate, in this case
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican. Rubio
declared that there shouldn’t be public discussion
of specific interrogation techniques, such as
waterboarding, to avoid alerting suspected
terrorists. But he made it clear he had no
differences with Trump on resuming waterboarding and
other forms of torture-interrogation.
With that,
the corporate-controlled media has turned the page,
more or less dropping the subject. The question was
not raised during the saturation coverage of the New
Hampshire primary Tuesday. Network television news
broadcasts on Wednesday did not mention Trump’s call
to assassinate Kim Jong-un or his campaign for
torture.
Significantly, neither Democratic candidate, Senator
Bernie Sanders or former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, criticized Trump for his embrace of torture
and murder. Clinton, of course, has her own record
of endorsing barbarism, with her notorious comment
during the US-NATO war against Libya, referring
laughingly to the torture and murder of Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi, “We came. We saw. He died.”
Clinton was
part of the Obama administration during the initial
campaign of drone missile assassinations, including
the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011 and his
teenage son two weeks afterward. She was in the
cabinet when Obama made his decision to block any
prosecution of CIA officials for torture, when he
suppressed evidence of torture, including graphic
photos, and while the CIA fought a protracted battle
against the release of the Senate Intelligence
Committee report on torture.
- See more at: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44186.htm#sthash.IIY3fjPk.dpuf
Torture,
Murder and Donald Trump
By Patrick
Martin
February
11, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"WSWS"
-
Only four days
after his public defense of torture and “a hell of a
lot worse” in US military-intelligence
interrogations, billionaire Donald Trump added
assassination to his foreign policy arsenal as well.
Speaking Wednesday on the “CBS This Morning”
program, Trump said that his solution to the US
conflict with North Korea over its nuclear weapons
program would be to eliminate North Korean leader
Kim Jong-un.
“I would
get China to make that guy disappear in one form or
another very quickly,” Trump told interviewer Norah
O’Donnell. When she followed up by asking if that
meant having Kim Jong-un assassinated, Trump
replied, “Well, I’ve heard of worse things, frankly.
I mean, this guy’s a bad dude.”
Trump was
responding to the declaration by US Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper, who told a
Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday that
Pyongyang had made progress in developing both
nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and could
conceivably reach parts of the United States with a
nuclear warhead.
The
billionaire demagogue, fresh off a victory in the
New Hampshire primary Tuesday that confirmed his
status as the frontrunner for the Republican
presidential nomination, said the US government
could engineer Kim’s removal through China. Beijing
has “absolute control” over North Korea, he said,
and “I would force the Chinese to do
it—economically.”
“I wouldn’t
leave it up to them. I would say, ‘You gotta do it.
You gotta do it,’” Trump said.
If China
refuses, he said he would repeat the demand and “do
it a little more forcefully.”
Trump was
escalating the thuggish, gangster language that has
been the hallmark of his campaign for the Republican
presidential nomination. At last Saturday’s debate
in New Hampshire, he declared his support for
waterboarding, adding, “I would bring back
waterboarding and I’d bring back a hell of a lot
worse than waterboarding.”
At a
campaign rally the next day, Trump used a vulgar
term for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, one of his major
rivals for the nomination, because Cruz expressed
some reservations about waterboarding, suggesting
that its use should be infrequent rather than
widespread.
The
candidate took the same tack in a series of
appearances on Sunday network television interview
programs. On CNN, NBC and ABC he was asked about his
comments on waterboarding, and each instance he
reiterated his support for torture, although he
declined to spell out what methods of interrogation
would be “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
On CNN,
interviewer Jake Tapper pointed out that US law bans
treatment of prisoners that causes “serious and
nontransitory mental harm,” like waterboarding, then
asked Trump, “How would you bring it back, if it is
currently a war crime under US law?”
Trump
responded, “I would go through a process and get it
declassified, frankly.” He portrayed this form of
torture as necessary retribution for the methods of
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, even if it was
ineffective in extracting information. “They laugh
at us when they hear that we’re not going to approve
waterboarding,” he said, “and then they will have a
James Foley and others where they cut off their
heads. And, you know, you can say what you want. I
have no doubt that it does work in terms of
information and other things, and maybe not always,
but nothing works always. But I have no doubt that
it works. But, more importantly, when they’re
chopping off the heads of people, and innocent
people in most cases, beyond waterboarding is fine
with me.”
On NBC’s
“Meet the Press” program, interviewer Chuck Todd
asked Trump what was worse than waterboarding, but
Trump declined to define it.
Todd
suggested, referring to ISIS, “They want to be
barbaric. We’re not barbaric.” Trump disagreed,
declaring, “OK. They can do it, but we can’t?” Then
he added, “You can do waterboarding and you can go a
step beyond waterboarding. It wouldn’t bother me
even a little bit.”
On the ABC
program “This Week,” interviewer George
Stephanopoulos asked directly, “As president, you
would authorize torture?” Trump replied, “I would
absolutely authorize something beyond waterboarding.
And believe me, it will be effective. If we need
information, George, you have our enemy cutting
heads off of Christians and plenty of others, by the
hundreds, by the thousands.”
This
exchange followed:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do we win by being more like them?
TRUMP: Yes.
I’m sorry. You have to do it that way. And I’m not
sure everybody agrees with me. I guess a lot of
people don’t. We are living in a time that’s as evil
as any time that there has ever been. You know, when
I was a young man, I studied Medieval times. That’s
what they did, they chopped off heads. That’s what
we have ...
STEPHANOPOULOS: So we’re going to chop off heads?
TRUMP:
We’re going to do things beyond waterboarding
perhaps, if that happens to come.
Stephanopoulos was the only interviewer to pose the
torture question to another candidate, in this case
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican. Rubio
declared that there shouldn’t be public discussion
of specific interrogation techniques, such as
waterboarding, to avoid alerting suspected
terrorists. But he made it clear he had no
differences with Trump on resuming waterboarding and
other forms of torture-interrogation.
With that,
the corporate-controlled media has turned the page,
more or less dropping the subject. The question was
not raised during the saturation coverage of the New
Hampshire primary Tuesday. Network television news
broadcasts on Wednesday did not mention Trump’s call
to assassinate Kim Jong-un or his campaign for
torture.
Significantly, neither Democratic candidate, Senator
Bernie Sanders or former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, criticized Trump for his embrace of torture
and murder. Clinton, of course, has her own record
of endorsing barbarism, with her notorious comment
during the US-NATO war against Libya, referring
laughingly to the torture and murder of Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi, “We came. We saw. He died.”
Clinton was
part of the Obama administration during the initial
campaign of drone missile assassinations, including
the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011 and his
teenage son two weeks afterward. She was in the
cabinet when Obama made his decision to block any
prosecution of CIA officials for torture, when he
suppressed evidence of torture, including graphic
photos, and while the CIA fought a protracted battle
against the release of the Senate Intelligence
Committee report on torture.
- See more at: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44186.htm#sthash.IIY3fjPk.dpuf
Murder and Donald Trump
By Patrick
Martin
February
11, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"WSWS"
-
Only four days
after his public defense of torture and “a hell of a
lot worse” in US military-intelligence
interrogations, billionaire Donald Trump added
assassination to his foreign policy arsenal as well.
Speaking Wednesday on the “CBS This Morning”
program, Trump said that his solution to the US
conflict with North Korea over its nuclear weapons
program would be to eliminate North Korean leader
Kim Jong-un.
“I would
get China to make that guy disappear in one form or
another very quickly,” Trump told interviewer Norah
O’Donnell. When she followed up by asking if that
meant having Kim Jong-un assassinated, Trump
replied, “Well, I’ve heard of worse things, frankly.
I mean, this guy’s a bad dude.”
Trump was
responding to the declaration by US Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper, who told a
Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday that
Pyongyang had made progress in developing both
nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and could
conceivably reach parts of the United States with a
nuclear warhead.
The
billionaire demagogue, fresh off a victory in the
New Hampshire primary Tuesday that confirmed his
status as the frontrunner for the Republican
presidential nomination, said the US government
could engineer Kim’s removal through China. Beijing
has “absolute control” over North Korea, he said,
and “I would force the Chinese to do
it—economically.”
“I wouldn’t
leave it up to them. I would say, ‘You gotta do it.
You gotta do it,’” Trump said.
If China
refuses, he said he would repeat the demand and “do
it a little more forcefully.”
Trump was
escalating the thuggish, gangster language that has
been the hallmark of his campaign for the Republican
presidential nomination. At last Saturday’s debate
in New Hampshire, he declared his support for
waterboarding, adding, “I would bring back
waterboarding and I’d bring back a hell of a lot
worse than waterboarding.”
At a
campaign rally the next day, Trump used a vulgar
term for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, one of his major
rivals for the nomination, because Cruz expressed
some reservations about waterboarding, suggesting
that its use should be infrequent rather than
widespread.
The
candidate took the same tack in a series of
appearances on Sunday network television interview
programs. On CNN, NBC and ABC he was asked about his
comments on waterboarding, and each instance he
reiterated his support for torture, although he
declined to spell out what methods of interrogation
would be “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
On CNN,
interviewer Jake Tapper pointed out that US law bans
treatment of prisoners that causes “serious and
nontransitory mental harm,” like waterboarding, then
asked Trump, “How would you bring it back, if it is
currently a war crime under US law?”
Trump
responded, “I would go through a process and get it
declassified, frankly.” He portrayed this form of
torture as necessary retribution for the methods of
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, even if it was
ineffective in extracting information. “They laugh
at us when they hear that we’re not going to approve
waterboarding,” he said, “and then they will have a
James Foley and others where they cut off their
heads. And, you know, you can say what you want. I
have no doubt that it does work in terms of
information and other things, and maybe not always,
but nothing works always. But I have no doubt that
it works. But, more importantly, when they’re
chopping off the heads of people, and innocent
people in most cases, beyond waterboarding is fine
with me.”
On NBC’s
“Meet the Press” program, interviewer Chuck Todd
asked Trump what was worse than waterboarding, but
Trump declined to define it.
Todd
suggested, referring to ISIS, “They want to be
barbaric. We’re not barbaric.” Trump disagreed,
declaring, “OK. They can do it, but we can’t?” Then
he added, “You can do waterboarding and you can go a
step beyond waterboarding. It wouldn’t bother me
even a little bit.”
On the ABC
program “This Week,” interviewer George
Stephanopoulos asked directly, “As president, you
would authorize torture?” Trump replied, “I would
absolutely authorize something beyond waterboarding.
And believe me, it will be effective. If we need
information, George, you have our enemy cutting
heads off of Christians and plenty of others, by the
hundreds, by the thousands.”
This
exchange followed:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do we win by being more like them?
TRUMP: Yes.
I’m sorry. You have to do it that way. And I’m not
sure everybody agrees with me. I guess a lot of
people don’t. We are living in a time that’s as evil
as any time that there has ever been. You know, when
I was a young man, I studied Medieval times. That’s
what they did, they chopped off heads. That’s what
we have ...
STEPHANOPOULOS: So we’re going to chop off heads?
TRUMP:
We’re going to do things beyond waterboarding
perhaps, if that happens to come.
Stephanopoulos was the only interviewer to pose the
torture question to another candidate, in this case
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican. Rubio
declared that there shouldn’t be public discussion
of specific interrogation techniques, such as
waterboarding, to avoid alerting suspected
terrorists. But he made it clear he had no
differences with Trump on resuming waterboarding and
other forms of torture-interrogation.
With that,
the corporate-controlled media has turned the page,
more or less dropping the subject. The question was
not raised during the saturation coverage of the New
Hampshire primary Tuesday. Network television news
broadcasts on Wednesday did not mention Trump’s call
to assassinate Kim Jong-un or his campaign for
torture.
Significantly, neither Democratic candidate, Senator
Bernie Sanders or former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, criticized Trump for his embrace of torture
and murder. Clinton, of course, has her own record
of endorsing barbarism, with her notorious comment
during the US-NATO war against Libya, referring
laughingly to the torture and murder of Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi, “We came. We saw. He died.”
Clinton was
part of the Obama administration during the initial
campaign of drone missile assassinations, including
the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011 and his
teenage son two weeks afterward. She was in the
cabinet when Obama made his decision to block any
prosecution of CIA officials for torture, when he
suppressed evidence of torture, including graphic
photos, and while the CIA fought a protracted battle
against the release of the Senate Intelligence
Committee report on torture.
- See more at: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44186.htm#sthash.IIY3fjPk.dpuf
Torture,
Murder and Donald Trump
By Patrick
Martin
February
11, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"WSWS"
-
Only four days
after his public defense of torture and “a hell of a
lot worse” in US military-intelligence
interrogations, billionaire Donald Trump added
assassination to his foreign policy arsenal as well.
Speaking Wednesday on the “CBS This Morning”
program, Trump said that his solution to the US
conflict with North Korea over its nuclear weapons
program would be to eliminate North Korean leader
Kim Jong-un.
“I would
get China to make that guy disappear in one form or
another very quickly,” Trump told interviewer Norah
O’Donnell. When she followed up by asking if that
meant having Kim Jong-un assassinated, Trump
replied, “Well, I’ve heard of worse things, frankly.
I mean, this guy’s a bad dude.”
Trump was
responding to the declaration by US Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper, who told a
Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday that
Pyongyang had made progress in developing both
nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and could
conceivably reach parts of the United States with a
nuclear warhead.
The
billionaire demagogue, fresh off a victory in the
New Hampshire primary Tuesday that confirmed his
status as the frontrunner for the Republican
presidential nomination, said the US government
could engineer Kim’s removal through China. Beijing
has “absolute control” over North Korea, he said,
and “I would force the Chinese to do
it—economically.”
“I wouldn’t
leave it up to them. I would say, ‘You gotta do it.
You gotta do it,’” Trump said.
If China
refuses, he said he would repeat the demand and “do
it a little more forcefully.”
Trump was
escalating the thuggish, gangster language that has
been the hallmark of his campaign for the Republican
presidential nomination. At last Saturday’s debate
in New Hampshire, he declared his support for
waterboarding, adding, “I would bring back
waterboarding and I’d bring back a hell of a lot
worse than waterboarding.”
At a
campaign rally the next day, Trump used a vulgar
term for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, one of his major
rivals for the nomination, because Cruz expressed
some reservations about waterboarding, suggesting
that its use should be infrequent rather than
widespread.
The
candidate took the same tack in a series of
appearances on Sunday network television interview
programs. On CNN, NBC and ABC he was asked about his
comments on waterboarding, and each instance he
reiterated his support for torture, although he
declined to spell out what methods of interrogation
would be “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
On CNN,
interviewer Jake Tapper pointed out that US law bans
treatment of prisoners that causes “serious and
nontransitory mental harm,” like waterboarding, then
asked Trump, “How would you bring it back, if it is
currently a war crime under US law?”
Trump
responded, “I would go through a process and get it
declassified, frankly.” He portrayed this form of
torture as necessary retribution for the methods of
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, even if it was
ineffective in extracting information. “They laugh
at us when they hear that we’re not going to approve
waterboarding,” he said, “and then they will have a
James Foley and others where they cut off their
heads. And, you know, you can say what you want. I
have no doubt that it does work in terms of
information and other things, and maybe not always,
but nothing works always. But I have no doubt that
it works. But, more importantly, when they’re
chopping off the heads of people, and innocent
people in most cases, beyond waterboarding is fine
with me.”
On NBC’s
“Meet the Press” program, interviewer Chuck Todd
asked Trump what was worse than waterboarding, but
Trump declined to define it.
Todd
suggested, referring to ISIS, “They want to be
barbaric. We’re not barbaric.” Trump disagreed,
declaring, “OK. They can do it, but we can’t?” Then
he added, “You can do waterboarding and you can go a
step beyond waterboarding. It wouldn’t bother me
even a little bit.”
On the ABC
program “This Week,” interviewer George
Stephanopoulos asked directly, “As president, you
would authorize torture?” Trump replied, “I would
absolutely authorize something beyond waterboarding.
And believe me, it will be effective. If we need
information, George, you have our enemy cutting
heads off of Christians and plenty of others, by the
hundreds, by the thousands.”
This
exchange followed:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do we win by being more like them?
TRUMP: Yes.
I’m sorry. You have to do it that way. And I’m not
sure everybody agrees with me. I guess a lot of
people don’t. We are living in a time that’s as evil
as any time that there has ever been. You know, when
I was a young man, I studied Medieval times. That’s
what they did, they chopped off heads. That’s what
we have ...
STEPHANOPOULOS: So we’re going to chop off heads?
TRUMP:
We’re going to do things beyond waterboarding
perhaps, if that happens to come.
Stephanopoulos was the only interviewer to pose the
torture question to another candidate, in this case
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican. Rubio
declared that there shouldn’t be public discussion
of specific interrogation techniques, such as
waterboarding, to avoid alerting suspected
terrorists. But he made it clear he had no
differences with Trump on resuming waterboarding and
other forms of torture-interrogation.
With that,
the corporate-controlled media has turned the page,
more or less dropping the subject. The question was
not raised during the saturation coverage of the New
Hampshire primary Tuesday. Network television news
broadcasts on Wednesday did not mention Trump’s call
to assassinate Kim Jong-un or his campaign for
torture.
Significantly, neither Democratic candidate, Senator
Bernie Sanders or former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, criticized Trump for his embrace of torture
and murder. Clinton, of course, has her own record
of endorsing barbarism, with her notorious comment
during the US-NATO war against Libya, referring
laughingly to the torture and murder of Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi, “We came. We saw. He died.”
Clinton was
part of the Obama administration during the initial
campaign of drone missile assassinations, including
the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011 and his
teenage son two weeks afterward. She was in the
cabinet when Obama made his decision to block any
prosecution of CIA officials for torture, when he
suppressed evidence of torture, including graphic
photos, and while the CIA fought a protracted battle
against the release of the Senate Intelligence
Committee report on torture.
- See more at: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44186.htm#sthash.IIY3fjPk.dpuf
Murder and Donald Trump
By Patrick
Martin
February
11, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"WSWS"
-
Only four days
after his public defense of torture and “a hell of a
lot worse” in US military-intelligence
interrogations, billionaire Donald Trump added
assassination to his foreign policy arsenal as well.
Speaking Wednesday on the “CBS This Morning”
program, Trump said that his solution to the US
conflict with North Korea over its nuclear weapons
program would be to eliminate North Korean leader
Kim Jong-un.
“I would
get China to make that guy disappear in one form or
another very quickly,” Trump told interviewer Norah
O’Donnell. When she followed up by asking if that
meant having Kim Jong-un assassinated, Trump
replied, “Well, I’ve heard of worse things, frankly.
I mean, this guy’s a bad dude.”
Trump was
responding to the declaration by US Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper, who told a
Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday that
Pyongyang had made progress in developing both
nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and could
conceivably reach parts of the United States with a
nuclear warhead.
The
billionaire demagogue, fresh off a victory in the
New Hampshire primary Tuesday that confirmed his
status as the frontrunner for the Republican
presidential nomination, said the US government
could engineer Kim’s removal through China. Beijing
has “absolute control” over North Korea, he said,
and “I would force the Chinese to do
it—economically.”
“I wouldn’t
leave it up to them. I would say, ‘You gotta do it.
You gotta do it,’” Trump said.
If China
refuses, he said he would repeat the demand and “do
it a little more forcefully.”
Trump was
escalating the thuggish, gangster language that has
been the hallmark of his campaign for the Republican
presidential nomination. At last Saturday’s debate
in New Hampshire, he declared his support for
waterboarding, adding, “I would bring back
waterboarding and I’d bring back a hell of a lot
worse than waterboarding.”
At a
campaign rally the next day, Trump used a vulgar
term for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, one of his major
rivals for the nomination, because Cruz expressed
some reservations about waterboarding, suggesting
that its use should be infrequent rather than
widespread.
The
candidate took the same tack in a series of
appearances on Sunday network television interview
programs. On CNN, NBC and ABC he was asked about his
comments on waterboarding, and each instance he
reiterated his support for torture, although he
declined to spell out what methods of interrogation
would be “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
On CNN,
interviewer Jake Tapper pointed out that US law bans
treatment of prisoners that causes “serious and
nontransitory mental harm,” like waterboarding, then
asked Trump, “How would you bring it back, if it is
currently a war crime under US law?”
Trump
responded, “I would go through a process and get it
declassified, frankly.” He portrayed this form of
torture as necessary retribution for the methods of
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, even if it was
ineffective in extracting information. “They laugh
at us when they hear that we’re not going to approve
waterboarding,” he said, “and then they will have a
James Foley and others where they cut off their
heads. And, you know, you can say what you want. I
have no doubt that it does work in terms of
information and other things, and maybe not always,
but nothing works always. But I have no doubt that
it works. But, more importantly, when they’re
chopping off the heads of people, and innocent
people in most cases, beyond waterboarding is fine
with me.”
On NBC’s
“Meet the Press” program, interviewer Chuck Todd
asked Trump what was worse than waterboarding, but
Trump declined to define it.
Todd
suggested, referring to ISIS, “They want to be
barbaric. We’re not barbaric.” Trump disagreed,
declaring, “OK. They can do it, but we can’t?” Then
he added, “You can do waterboarding and you can go a
step beyond waterboarding. It wouldn’t bother me
even a little bit.”
On the ABC
program “This Week,” interviewer George
Stephanopoulos asked directly, “As president, you
would authorize torture?” Trump replied, “I would
absolutely authorize something beyond waterboarding.
And believe me, it will be effective. If we need
information, George, you have our enemy cutting
heads off of Christians and plenty of others, by the
hundreds, by the thousands.”
This
exchange followed:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do we win by being more like them?
TRUMP: Yes.
I’m sorry. You have to do it that way. And I’m not
sure everybody agrees with me. I guess a lot of
people don’t. We are living in a time that’s as evil
as any time that there has ever been. You know, when
I was a young man, I studied Medieval times. That’s
what they did, they chopped off heads. That’s what
we have ...
STEPHANOPOULOS: So we’re going to chop off heads?
TRUMP:
We’re going to do things beyond waterboarding
perhaps, if that happens to come.
Stephanopoulos was the only interviewer to pose the
torture question to another candidate, in this case
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican. Rubio
declared that there shouldn’t be public discussion
of specific interrogation techniques, such as
waterboarding, to avoid alerting suspected
terrorists. But he made it clear he had no
differences with Trump on resuming waterboarding and
other forms of torture-interrogation.
With that,
the corporate-controlled media has turned the page,
more or less dropping the subject. The question was
not raised during the saturation coverage of the New
Hampshire primary Tuesday. Network television news
broadcasts on Wednesday did not mention Trump’s call
to assassinate Kim Jong-un or his campaign for
torture.
Significantly, neither Democratic candidate, Senator
Bernie Sanders or former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, criticized Trump for his embrace of torture
and murder. Clinton, of course, has her own record
of endorsing barbarism, with her notorious comment
during the US-NATO war against Libya, referring
laughingly to the torture and murder of Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi, “We came. We saw. He died.”
Clinton was
part of the Obama administration during the initial
campaign of drone missile assassinations, including
the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011 and his
teenage son two weeks afterward. She was in the
cabinet when Obama made his decision to block any
prosecution of CIA officials for torture, when he
suppressed evidence of torture, including graphic
photos, and while the CIA fought a protracted battle
against the release of the Senate Intelligence
Committee report on torture.
- See more at: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44186.htm#sthash.IIY3fjPk.dpuf
Torture,
Murder and Donald Trump
By Patrick
Martin
February
11, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"WSWS"
-
Only four days
after his public defense of torture and “a hell of a
lot worse” in US military-intelligence
interrogations, billionaire Donald Trump added
assassination to his foreign policy arsenal as well.
Speaking Wednesday on the “CBS This Morning”
program, Trump said that his solution to the US
conflict with North Korea over its nuclear weapons
program would be to eliminate North Korean leader
Kim Jong-un.
“I would
get China to make that guy disappear in one form or
another very quickly,” Trump told interviewer Norah
O’Donnell. When she followed up by asking if that
meant having Kim Jong-un assassinated, Trump
replied, “Well, I’ve heard of worse things, frankly.
I mean, this guy’s a bad dude.”
Trump was
responding to the declaration by US Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper, who told a
Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday that
Pyongyang had made progress in developing both
nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and could
conceivably reach parts of the United States with a
nuclear warhead.
The
billionaire demagogue, fresh off a victory in the
New Hampshire primary Tuesday that confirmed his
status as the frontrunner for the Republican
presidential nomination, said the US government
could engineer Kim’s removal through China. Beijing
has “absolute control” over North Korea, he said,
and “I would force the Chinese to do
it—economically.”
“I wouldn’t
leave it up to them. I would say, ‘You gotta do it.
You gotta do it,’” Trump said.
If China
refuses, he said he would repeat the demand and “do
it a little more forcefully.”
Trump was
escalating the thuggish, gangster language that has
been the hallmark of his campaign for the Republican
presidential nomination. At last Saturday’s debate
in New Hampshire, he declared his support for
waterboarding, adding, “I would bring back
waterboarding and I’d bring back a hell of a lot
worse than waterboarding.”
At a
campaign rally the next day, Trump used a vulgar
term for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, one of his major
rivals for the nomination, because Cruz expressed
some reservations about waterboarding, suggesting
that its use should be infrequent rather than
widespread.
The
candidate took the same tack in a series of
appearances on Sunday network television interview
programs. On CNN, NBC and ABC he was asked about his
comments on waterboarding, and each instance he
reiterated his support for torture, although he
declined to spell out what methods of interrogation
would be “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
On CNN,
interviewer Jake Tapper pointed out that US law bans
treatment of prisoners that causes “serious and
nontransitory mental harm,” like waterboarding, then
asked Trump, “How would you bring it back, if it is
currently a war crime under US law?”
Trump
responded, “I would go through a process and get it
declassified, frankly.” He portrayed this form of
torture as necessary retribution for the methods of
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, even if it was
ineffective in extracting information. “They laugh
at us when they hear that we’re not going to approve
waterboarding,” he said, “and then they will have a
James Foley and others where they cut off their
heads. And, you know, you can say what you want. I
have no doubt that it does work in terms of
information and other things, and maybe not always,
but nothing works always. But I have no doubt that
it works. But, more importantly, when they’re
chopping off the heads of people, and innocent
people in most cases, beyond waterboarding is fine
with me.”
On NBC’s
“Meet the Press” program, interviewer Chuck Todd
asked Trump what was worse than waterboarding, but
Trump declined to define it.
Todd
suggested, referring to ISIS, “They want to be
barbaric. We’re not barbaric.” Trump disagreed,
declaring, “OK. They can do it, but we can’t?” Then
he added, “You can do waterboarding and you can go a
step beyond waterboarding. It wouldn’t bother me
even a little bit.”
On the ABC
program “This Week,” interviewer George
Stephanopoulos asked directly, “As president, you
would authorize torture?” Trump replied, “I would
absolutely authorize something beyond waterboarding.
And believe me, it will be effective. If we need
information, George, you have our enemy cutting
heads off of Christians and plenty of others, by the
hundreds, by the thousands.”
This
exchange followed:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do we win by being more like them?
TRUMP: Yes.
I’m sorry. You have to do it that way. And I’m not
sure everybody agrees with me. I guess a lot of
people don’t. We are living in a time that’s as evil
as any time that there has ever been. You know, when
I was a young man, I studied Medieval times. That’s
what they did, they chopped off heads. That’s what
we have ...
STEPHANOPOULOS: So we’re going to chop off heads?
TRUMP:
We’re going to do things beyond waterboarding
perhaps, if that happens to come.
Stephanopoulos was the only interviewer to pose the
torture question to another candidate, in this case
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican. Rubio
declared that there shouldn’t be public discussion
of specific interrogation techniques, such as
waterboarding, to avoid alerting suspected
terrorists. But he made it clear he had no
differences with Trump on resuming waterboarding and
other forms of torture-interrogation.
With that,
the corporate-controlled media has turned the page,
more or less dropping the subject. The question was
not raised during the saturation coverage of the New
Hampshire primary Tuesday. Network television news
broadcasts on Wednesday did not mention Trump’s call
to assassinate Kim Jong-un or his campaign for
torture.
Significantly, neither Democratic candidate, Senator
Bernie Sanders or former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, criticized Trump for his embrace of torture
and murder. Clinton, of course, has her own record
of endorsing barbarism, with her notorious comment
during the US-NATO war against Libya, referring
laughingly to the torture and murder of Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi, “We came. We saw. He died.”
Clinton was
part of the Obama administration during the initial
campaign of drone missile assassinations, including
the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011 and his
teenage son two weeks afterward. She was in the
cabinet when Obama made his decision to block any
prosecution of CIA officials for torture, when he
suppressed evidence of torture, including graphic
photos, and while the CIA fought a protracted battle
against the release of the Senate Intelligence
Committee report on torture.
- See more at: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44186.htm#sthash.IIY3fjPk.dpufV
Murder and Donald Trump
By Patrick
Martin
February
11, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"WSWS"
-
Only four days
after his public defense of torture and “a hell of a
lot worse” in US military-intelligence
interrogations, billionaire Donald Trump added
assassination to his foreign policy arsenal as well.
Speaking Wednesday on the “CBS This Morning”
program, Trump said that his solution to the US
conflict with North Korea over its nuclear weapons
program would be to eliminate North Korean leader
Kim Jong-un.
“I would
get China to make that guy disappear in one form or
another very quickly,” Trump told interviewer Norah
O’Donnell. When she followed up by asking if that
meant having Kim Jong-un assassinated, Trump
replied, “Well, I’ve heard of worse things, frankly.
I mean, this guy’s a bad dude.”
Trump was
responding to the declaration by US Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper, who told a
Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday that
Pyongyang had made progress in developing both
nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and could
conceivably reach parts of the United States with a
nuclear warhead.
The
billionaire demagogue, fresh off a victory in the
New Hampshire primary Tuesday that confirmed his
status as the frontrunner for the Republican
presidential nomination, said the US government
could engineer Kim’s removal through China. Beijing
has “absolute control” over North Korea, he said,
and “I would force the Chinese to do
it—economically.”
“I wouldn’t
leave it up to them. I would say, ‘You gotta do it.
You gotta do it,’” Trump said.
If China
refuses, he said he would repeat the demand and “do
it a little more forcefully.”
Trump was
escalating the thuggish, gangster language that has
been the hallmark of his campaign for the Republican
presidential nomination. At last Saturday’s debate
in New Hampshire, he declared his support for
waterboarding, adding, “I would bring back
waterboarding and I’d bring back a hell of a lot
worse than waterboarding.”
At a
campaign rally the next day, Trump used a vulgar
term for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, one of his major
rivals for the nomination, because Cruz expressed
some reservations about waterboarding, suggesting
that its use should be infrequent rather than
widespread.
The
candidate took the same tack in a series of
appearances on Sunday network television interview
programs. On CNN, NBC and ABC he was asked about his
comments on waterboarding, and each instance he
reiterated his support for torture, although he
declined to spell out what methods of interrogation
would be “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
On CNN,
interviewer Jake Tapper pointed out that US law bans
treatment of prisoners that causes “serious and
nontransitory mental harm,” like waterboarding, then
asked Trump, “How would you bring it back, if it is
currently a war crime under US law?”
Trump
responded, “I would go through a process and get it
declassified, frankly.” He portrayed this form of
torture as necessary retribution for the methods of
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, even if it was
ineffective in extracting information. “They laugh
at us when they hear that we’re not going to approve
waterboarding,” he said, “and then they will have a
James Foley and others where they cut off their
heads. And, you know, you can say what you want. I
have no doubt that it does work in terms of
information and other things, and maybe not always,
but nothing works always. But I have no doubt that
it works. But, more importantly, when they’re
chopping off the heads of people, and innocent
people in most cases, beyond waterboarding is fine
with me.”
On NBC’s
“Meet the Press” program, interviewer Chuck Todd
asked Trump what was worse than waterboarding, but
Trump declined to define it.
Todd
suggested, referring to ISIS, “They want to be
barbaric. We’re not barbaric.” Trump disagreed,
declaring, “OK. They can do it, but we can’t?” Then
he added, “You can do waterboarding and you can go a
step beyond waterboarding. It wouldn’t bother me
even a little bit.”
On the ABC
program “This Week,” interviewer George
Stephanopoulos asked directly, “As president, you
would authorize torture?” Trump replied, “I would
absolutely authorize something beyond waterboarding.
And believe me, it will be effective. If we need
information, George, you have our enemy cutting
heads off of Christians and plenty of others, by the
hundreds, by the thousands.”
This
exchange followed:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do we win by being more like them?
TRUMP: Yes.
I’m sorry. You have to do it that way. And I’m not
sure everybody agrees with me. I guess a lot of
people don’t. We are living in a time that’s as evil
as any time that there has ever been. You know, when
I was a young man, I studied Medieval times. That’s
what they did, they chopped off heads. That’s what
we have ...
STEPHANOPOULOS: So we’re going to chop off heads?
TRUMP:
We’re going to do things beyond waterboarding
perhaps, if that happens to come.
Stephanopoulos was the only interviewer to pose the
torture question to another candidate, in this case
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican. Rubio
declared that there shouldn’t be public discussion
of specific interrogation techniques, such as
waterboarding, to avoid alerting suspected
terrorists. But he made it clear he had no
differences with Trump on resuming waterboarding and
other forms of torture-interrogation.
With that,
the corporate-controlled media has turned the page,
more or less dropping the subject. The question was
not raised during the saturation coverage of the New
Hampshire primary Tuesday. Network television news
broadcasts on Wednesday did not mention Trump’s call
to assassinate Kim Jong-un or his campaign for
torture.
Significantly, neither Democratic candidate, Senator
Bernie Sanders or former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, criticized Trump for his embrace of torture
and murder. Clinton, of course, has her own record
of endorsing barbarism, with her notorious comment
during the US-NATO war against Libya, referring
laughingly to the torture and murder of Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi, “We came. We saw. He died.”
Clinton was
part of the Obama administration during the initial
campaign of drone missile assassinations, including
the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011 and his
teenage son two weeks afterward. She was in the
cabinet when Obama made his decision to block any
prosecution of CIA officials for torture, when he
suppressed evidence of torture, including graphic
photos, and while the CIA fought a protracted battle
against the release of the Senate Intelligence
Committee report on torture.
- See more at: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44186.htm#sthash.IIY3fjPk.dpufV
Comments