Los Desaparecidos
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called “water-boarding,” which creates a sensation of drowning. (more…)
Cheney says it’s a “no brainer” to him. Well I guess that’s because only if you have no brain could this be deemed an acceptable , moral, practice. It’s interesting to see him try and qualify it by implying that it was only senior al-Qaeda officers that were subjected to this when we know from the Abu Ghraib disgrace that it was a fairly common practice. What that means really is that anyone deemed a “terrorist” under Bush’s new detainee bill can, and probably will be, subjected to this torture with no hope of release or any court date, contact with the outside world, or any ability to improve their situation. This the title of this post.
Los Desaparecidos were the Argentinian citizens that simply disappeared during the reign of terror by the US supported dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
[update Nov. 14, 2006: I can't believe I got that wrong - of course you're right Ms. Parikh, it was a junta in Argentina and Pinochet was in Chile - I'll put it down to oldsheimers 
]
During the 1970s Argentina lived a period of widespread military repression on the civilian population. Under the pretext of the “war against subversion” the military and police authorities develped a machiavellic campaign of terror. All civil rights - freedom of expression, justice, association vote - were eliminated. Thousands of citizens were unjustly put in prison where they endured inhuman conditions and lived under the pain of torture and the fear of death day to day.
How many innocents must disappear into the secret prisons of the Bush administration, never to be heard from again, before the American people stand up for their freedom and imprison Bush and his cabal for their crimes against humanity.
Comment from Barbara Parikh
Time: 11/14/2006, 5:50 am
While I support your intent here, I just want to clarify the facts; Augusto Pinochet was the dictator of Chile (and indeed he was propped up by the U.S.A. after the CIA engineered the assassination of Salavador Allende, the duly elected president of Chile at the time.) During the time of Los Desaparecidos, Argentina was ruled by a military junta.