Common assumptions about terrorist detainees is that they are guilty until proven innocent. It is also commonly assumed that torture works. This article rebuts those assumptions, asking for proactivity from you, just ten minutes a week will do, and spreading the phrase around nation-wide:"NO CRIME ON MY DIME!" Thank you for your help.

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"No Crime on My Dime!" I want to see this word phrase chanted all over the country, written to newspapers, posted as plaques, posted to the internet, dialed in to radio talk shows, etc.

Because the common assumption among most Americans (not those writing or reading here) is that most "Terrorist" detainees are automatically guilty until proven innocent.

"Terrorists should be tortured, and swift! They don't deserve a trial" said a Republican vote-activist at the Farmer's Market who I talked with. "If a bomb is in someone's car, they should go to jail" he continued.

Ignorance is not always bliss, at least not for those subjected to the whims of others. Because obviously, you and I both know that bombs can be planted in someone's car, people can be "framed", etc and it does happen. In fact, it even has been known to happen.

But where Guantanamo detainees are concerned, it's more than just a matter of false incarceration. It's much worse than that.

According to the ACLU's attorney Ben Wizner, more than 99% of Guantanamo detainees are innocent (posted by Ben Wizner to the Blog of Rights, ACLU's website, after his own visit to Guantanamo). The Red Cross estimates 75% or more are innocent, the Center for Constitutional Rights and Amnesty International are vociferous, and what's interesting is that they all agree: These "terrorists" in captivity are almost solely innocent, by proof from their attorneys.

Held without charge in most cases, tortured as euphemism (more about this later), with no access to their attorneys (if they are lucky enough to have one) and no day in court, these men are more than just suffering as do wrongfully incarcerated prisoners. In fact, they endure the equivalent of murder on a frequent basis, while that is called "interrogation". Confessions squealed up under the most horrific forms of physical violence---false confessions of course--- are permissible under the Military Commissions Act as "evidence" in "Court" which is conducted in absence of the detainee. So the military judges basically have arbitrary power based on false confessions squealed up under what "violence" can hardly begin to adequately define. More info:

For example, Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild, writes that the Military Commissions Act defines torture as pain levels equivalent to severe organ failure or death. She writes about testicles of detainees' sons being squeezed flat, and other horrible things. Subjected to threats to their families if they don't "confess" to a horrific terrorist crime which they never committed, or else having their own testicles carved with scalpels if they don't cough up such false guilt (an "admission" of "guilt" which counts against them in court, and no legal help available nor access to any human counsel), these mostly innocent "Terrorists" actually have been reported to experience mental illness symptoms (in some cases), to "show signs consistent with extreme stress" (as per Ben Wizner on the Blog of Rights), etc.

Is this what innocent people "Deserve, and swift" while the guilty walk around free?

Is this what the Obama Administration is covering up, with Attorney General Eric Holder's false invocation of the "state secrets" privilege?

Hey, what of the question about the efficacy of torture? Does it actually work? Consider: Out of sheer self-preservation, just to get the torture to stop, false confessions abound under torture. Don't let any CIA agent fake you out with statements that torture is good for obtaining needed intelligence: They are lying. What's more is that they know it. Studies have proven that treating detainees kindly results in reliable information, as compared to the false "information" obtained by severely abusing detainees in this way.

Makes sense?

This needs to be spread around the country, because most people ignorantly assume otherwise.

If Obama wrote executive orders forbidding torture, he is faking us out. Or, he is covering his own hide at the expense of others, to say the least. Because obviously, if he prosecutes the Bush Administration, he will himself be vulnerable to Bush's own whims (whatever those may be) and the rest is um, history.

Let's hope that he is not planning to torture any more victims, innocent or guilty, and that he also is not planning to render any more people to countries overseas for torture. Let's hope instead, that Attorney General Eric Holder's false invocation of the State Secrets privilege is to protect Obama from assassination, but not an indication of Obama's actual plans for further abuse. We've got to keep an eye out: Only time will tell.

We simply must, as a collective, put pressure on the Media to print the clear and non-truncated facts about torture.

And we, as responsible citizens, must act in lieu of the uncooperative media to get the facts out on the public radar.

Please let us take matters into our own hands by taking the following actions, just ten minutes per week will do. Choose one or more of the following, depending on what your time allows:

A) Send articles around the Web.

B) Email the same article to a chain of concerned friends, asking them to pass it on to at least five other concerned individuals.

C) Dial in to radio talk shows and speak! Send them the articles you have read and demand, on the airwaves, that they review it.

D) In so doing, please rebut the assumption that terrorists are automatically guilty:

~Is a mere newspaper photograph ample burden of proof? (Wake up, Americans!)

~Is a "trial" based on violently-forced "Evidence" (false confessions) done without due process of law, adequate "proof" for us Americans that any given detainee is a "terrorist" as accused?

~Should we Americans rest easy, knowing that the guilty walk free and the innocent are tortured? Does this really "protect" us from terrorism?

~Are we perfectly content to fund such Charles Manson-like crimes on our tax dime? Would we pay Charles Manson and his gang?

~Where our learned helplessness is concerned, who is paying who? Remind the public to remind Congress: We pay them to uphold, protect and defend the Constitution! (And, to protect America from negative press overseas and Americans themselves from the consequences of that bad press).

E) Please spread the word phrase around: "No Crime on My Dime!" Ask others to spread it too.

F) Write an article granting permission for readers to freely seed it around the web.

G) Write a letter to your local college newsletter editor. College kids are much more likely to print such material than mainstream media, and what's more is that they talk to their parents, thus helping to wake the sleeping giant. It's a smart strategy which will work!

LET'S PUT PRESSURE ON THE MEDIA:

Please write the newspapers, letting them know that you are carbon copying them (with their email address in plain view) to a chain of concerned citizens. While blind-carbon-copying those citizens, let the papers know that you and your friends will stop patronizing them if they do not print full-disclosure truth about torture matters, including techniques that frankly make water boarding look pale by comparison.

Let them know, further, that you and your concerned friends have every intention of posting your demands of the newspapers to the Internet, of dialing in to radio talk shows, etc. to expose the paper and give them some unwanted bad publicity. And let them know that the email is a chain letter, which will be passed around and posted to the Web in open format.

NO CRIME ON MY DIME! THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP!

Authors Bio:
This quote summarizes the nature of my concerns and the content of personal experiences which stir my activism:

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement on human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves". --Paul Revere, House of Commons