By Charles.S.Perera

Barack Obama the President of USA has admitted that the CIA official who interrogated suspects after the 9/11 attacks crossed a line” into torture.  That is while the whole world knows that CIA spells not only torture but all sorts of criminal subversive activities in  Sovereign States at a global level.  His accepting CIA crossing a line’ into torture after  the 9/11 attack does not mitigate or absolve the CIA from its Criminal activities of the past and the present.

Barrack Obama added that, we did some things that were contrary to our values.” And went on to say , “….it’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had.”  President Barack Obama is trying to minimise the crimes USA has committed and continues to commit.

The President Barrack Obama speaks of  American values, but what values can USA speak about when tracing the path of it sinister policies carried out  by its State Department with the support of its crimes department -the CIA.

After Barrack Obama’s admission of shame, Global Research reported, We applaud Obama admitting to this unsavoury chapter in US history. The government has denied for years that the US torture…even though we in the alternative media exposed torture 10 years ago.  But there is a lot that Obama didn’t say… Initially it wasn’t  just some folks” we tortured.  The torture was wide spread and systematic. And  it wasn’t just  bad guys  who were tortured:

(i) the commander of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq Janis Karpinski  estimates 90% of  detainees  in the prison were innocent.

(ii) the number two man at the State Department under Colin Powell, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson , says that many of those being held  at Guantanamo Bay were innocent, and that top Bush Administration officials knew that they were innocent.

(iii)U.S.Military files  show that many  Guantanamo Prisoners  were held on the flimsiest grounds such as wearing a Casio watch, being a prisoner in a Taliban prison jail, driving cabs in certain geographic regions , or being Al Jazeera reporters.

(iv) Many say that those tortured  were mainly innocent farmers, villagers, or those against whom neighbours held a grudge. Indeed, people received a nice cash reward from the U.S. government for turning people in as suspected terrorists”.

(http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-admits-u-s-tortured-some-folks-heres-what-he-didnt-say/5394566)

But in Sri Lanka there were no torture committed against the terrorists.   There were no torture of the terrorists for the simple reason that in the war against terrorism in  Sri Lanka the Armed Forces knew where exactly the terrorists were and there was  no necessity to interrogate  terrorists taken as prisoners under tortured to get information with regard to; movements of terrorists or where they were hiding.  There were also Tamil civilians who gave information of meeting sites of terrorists to enable the Sri Lanka Air Force  use precision bombing.

The stories about torture were those made up by the UK Channel 4 and the pro-terrorists Tamil diaspora and included in the Darusman Report.  The NGO’s or the terrorist friendly foreign dignitaries such as the US Ambassador Robert O’Blake who wined and dined with the terrorists  often in Kilinochchi did not speak about Sri Lanka Armed Forces having torture camps for terrorists.

Sri Lanka’s war against terrorism was unlike any such wars  against terrorist carried out  and continue to be carried on by USA and its allies. Sri Lanka Armed Forces had a double responsibility in its war against the terrorists.  One was to eliminate terrorisms completely, and the second to safeguard the Tamil civilian population in the areas where military operations against the terrorists were being carried out.

The NGO’s , Frances Harrison, and a UN employee Gordon Weiss who were friends of the terrorists  and had no fear of terrorists attacking them, were asked by the Government to leave the war affected areas as the army could not assure their safety.  They were living in great comfort and regretted having to give it up, and turned against the Armed Forces and the Government for depriving of that comfortable living conditions and wrote books exaggerating numbers who may have died at the last phase of the military operations against terrorists to 40,000.  But yet they have not mentioned torture by Armed Forces.

Gordon Weiss, Frances Harrison , UK Channel 4, the report of Ban Ki Moon’s Darusman Panel consist of vindictive writing, without any acceptable evidence.  Even Colonel Khan and Colonel De Toit of the food convoy to North giving macabre descriptions of carnage they say they witnessed do not provide any substantial evidence to prove their recitals.  Gordon Weiss’s writings are a contradiction speaking well of the great generosity and humanity of the soldiers of the Sri Lanka armed forces and at the same time  opine that even the good could do wrong.

The following  excerpts are taken from the review of the Gordon Weiss’s book The Cage by an anti government journalist of the GroundView Sanjana Hattatotuwa:

During the course of research for this book, dozens of Tamils described the Sinhalese as inherently kind and gentle people. The front-line soldiers who received the first civilians as they escaped to government lines, those who guarded them in the camps and the civilian and military doctors who provided vital treatment distinguished themselves most commonly through their mercy and care.”

Further on in the book, Weiss gives examples of soldiers who tried their utmost to distinguish between LTTE combatants and civilians in incredibly confusing and stressful ground conditions, gave up their own rations to feed those who were dying of hunger in the internment camps established by the government just after the war and other incredible stories of compassion and mercy towards injured Tamil civilians – mothers, children, infants and men – in the hellish last weeks and days of war. This ostensibly echoes what for example Brigadier Prasanna de Silva from the 55^th Division says in the film directed by Guy Guneratne The Truth That Wasn’t There. However, Weiss also then unequivocally asserts that this does not mean that soldiers did not directly kill thousands of civilians in the heat of combat” and notes that … Survivors testify that advancing soldiers lobbed grenades methodically into bunkers that often held civilians.”

No credit could be given to Gordon Weiss’s book -The Cage. He has made factual errors such as  stating that  G.L.Peiris was at the time the Attorney General of Sri Lanka, and  that when Gotabhaya Rajapakse escaped from a suicide bomb while travelling in a Mercedes, where as he had been travelling at the time in an armour plated BMW7.

Sanjaya Hattotuwa himself says in his review: The vociferous support of the UN Secretary General’s report by many sections of the pro-LTTE Tamil diaspora is pegged to its repeated and deep consternation over instances where government armed forces actively targeted civilians. What the UN report also makes explicitly clear and Weiss in The Cage repeatedly underscores are the unimaginably barbaric actions of the LTTE to fire artillery into their own people” based on the terrible calculation that with enough dead Tamils, a toll would eventually be reached that would lead to international outrage and intervention.” Here’s the rub – with their leadership decimated, there’s no one in the LTTE to hold accountable.”

http://groundviews.org/2011/05/24/a-review-of-the-cage-the-fight-for-sri-lankan-the-last-days-of-the-tamil-tigers/

There are accusations of  violation of human rights and deaths of civilians  totalling up to an incredible number of 40,000 killed at the last phase of the military operations against the terrorists by the Government Armed Forces, but nowhere there is any evidence of torture committed by the Sri Lanka Armed forces except by the unsubstantiated false video footings prepared by the UK Channel four,  the Darusman report prepared on evidence collected from pro terrorist Tamil diaspora and unnamed witnesses,  and the pro-terrorist Tamil Diaspora.

As against this there is clear documented evidence of the torture committed by the US Armed Forces which has been accepted by the President of USA himself. The acceptance by the US President Barrack Obama of the torture committed by the CIA does not absolve the perpetrators of the crime of torture.

Sri Lanka which carried out a just war to deliver its people from untold suffering under terrorism and protects its people and the country, unlike USA going out to foreign countries in search and massacre Al Qaeda terrorists, has committed no war crimes  at any stage. If a certain number of civilians had died at the last phase of its terrorist war it was not  through deliberate shooting  of the Tamil civilians, or not at all a preconceived  plan to kill civilians.

If it was so why did the Sri Lanka Armed Forces rescued 300,000 Tamils civilians from the terrorist held areas taking great risks to their own lives. They were easy targets and they could have shot every one of them if the Sri Lanka Armed Forces were brutal and inhuman.………

There are malicious accusations made against the Armed Forces of Sri Lanka for killing unarmed terrorists  carrying white flags, killing of journalists, and sinister White Van kidnappings as a part of a smear campaign to discredit a great Armed Force acclaimed by the people of Sri Lanka as heroic for ending a 30 year long suffering under terrorism.  The Sri Lanka armed Forces are accused without eye witnesses or any credible evidence  for crimes it had not committed.

There is therefore no  necessity for either an International or a local investigation into the conduct of the Soldiers of the Sri Lanka Armed Forces during the last phase of its military operations to eliminate terrorists. On the other hand the Armed Forces of Sri Lanka should be felicitated and rewarded for showing to the world that terrorism could be eliminated  by an army of patriotic soldiers dedicated and determined not to turn back without achieving the target it has set.  A recipe for  a military success in elimination of terrorism  has been shown by the Armed Forces of Sri Lanka as carrying out their duties as soldiers with out hatred even for the enemy, and affection for those Tamil civilians  suffering under terrorism, as their own kith and kin.

The Armed Forces had been seen  treating the captured terrorists humanly offering them meals, and taking all risks to save the lives of the innocent Tamil civilians even carrying the old and the wounded in their arms .

The perpetrators of torture in CIA admitted to by the President Barrack Obama should be investigated and  made to pay for their crimes.

This  confession of the US President  makes  the Navi Pillai’s probe into violation of human rights and war crimes by the Armed Forces of Sri Lanka an abuse of  power, a personal vengeance against the  Sri Lanka Armed Forces.  It should therefore  be called off with an apology to Sri Lanka Government and its Armed Forces.