Peace Prize Laureates: "Release torture report"

Nobel Peace Prize Laureates to Obama: Release torture report

Oct 27, 2014 - Twelve Nobel Peace Prize winners have written an open letter to US President Barack Obama, urging him to release a Senate report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture.

“When a nation’s leaders condone and even order torture, that nation has lost its way,” said the letter, released Sunday by TheCommunity.com.

The prominent peace activists ask the US president for the “full disclosure to the American people, of the extent and use of torture and rendition by American soldiers, operatives, and contractors, as well as the authorization of torture and rendition by American officials.”

In the letter, the laureates also ask the Obama administration to specify a clear path to closing the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, along with any other US international “black sites” – secret overseas CIA prisons where US forces have conducted torture.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has compiled a 6000-page report on the CIA's use of torture after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Advocates for human rights have been urging the White House for two years to make the report public. read more>>>

* * * The British Iraq War Inquiry * * * Released will carry private communications between GWBush and TBlair, like this already released: TB said there was a danger the Tories would see this as their chance to get rid of him … Bush said they would make it clear to the Tories that if they moved to get rid of TB "we will get rid of them".

* * * Iraq War Promoted Terrorism Rather Than Reducing It * * *

24 April 2014 - Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War promoted terrorism rather than reducing it and was a “strategic failure”, according to a major new report which estimated the cost of all UK conflicts since the end of the Cold War.
The Royal United Services Institute said the UK could face a bill of nearly £65bn, once the cost of long-term care for injured veterans was factored in, with most of the money was spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The study, called Wars in Peace, said both conflicts were largely “strategic failures” for the UK, The Guardian reported."

Facts: Matthew Hoh {former Marine and foreign service officer in Afghanistan}: "We spend a trillion dollars a year on national security in this country."
"And when you add up to the Department of Defense, Department of State, CIA, Veterans Affairs, interest on debt, the number that strikes me the most about how much we're committed financially to these wars and to our current policies is we have spent $250 billion already just on interest payments on the debt we've incurred for the Iraq and Afghan wars." 26 September 2014

Bob Herbert "Losing Our Way" : "And then the staggering costs of these wars, which are borne by the taxpayers. I mean, one of the things that was insane was that, as we're at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration cut taxes. This has never been done in American history. The idea of cutting taxes while you're going to war is just crazy. I mean, it's madness." Bill 'Moyers and Company': Restoring an America That Has Lost its Way 10 Oct. 2014