Excerpts on Death Penalty

The Death Penalty is a form of torture

The cruelty of torture is evident. Like torture, an execution constitutes an extreme physical and mental assault on a person already rendered helpless by government authorities. Abolitionist groups claim that the cruelty of the death penalty is manifest not only in the execution but in the time spent under sentence of death, during which the prisoner is constantly contemplating his or her own death at the hands of the state. Prison is an extraordinarily severe punishment that should not be exacerbated with torture or the death penalty.

Torture Defined

Torture of prisoners violates the Eight Amendment’s provision against Cruel and Unusual Punishment, and also constitutes a violation of several international laws. The United Nations Convention on Torture defined torture as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.”

An example of torture in the US Criminal Justice System

In May 1998, a lawsuit was filed concerning conditions for death row inmates in Idaho Maximum Security Institution. The suit states that inmates are held in solitary confinement for 163 of every week's 168 hours in small concrete and steel cells with solid metal doors and a narrow slit for a window. Inmates are allowed out of their cells for a maximum of one hour a day, excluding weekends, for recreation, alone and handcuffed in one of 12 enclosed wire mesh pens measuring approximately seven by 15 feet. The prisoner named in the lawsuit, Randy McKinney, states that he has lived under such a regime for 16 years, and that such treatment constitutes torture.

Sinking of the Lusitania

This attacked occured on May of 1915 and was not precisely in America, but in the Atlantic ocean near the coast of Ireland.
In that time World War One was taking place and Germans had warned that any ship sailing in the "European War Zone" would be a target for their submarines. America was a neutral country.
The warnings of Germans were published in newspapers and people talked about, and for that reason the ship only had half of its capacity to go to Liverpool.
The attack started when a torpedo fired by the Germans slammed into the side of the ship followed by an explosion that ripped the ship apart. Very few passengers had a chance. From the 1,924 passengers traveling in the Lusitania, less than a thousand survived. It only took the Lusitania 18 minutes to sink.

The ship was made by the British Admiralty. Supposedly the Lusitania had munitions hidden for British war effort.

I think that was a huge mistake, you can't trust everyone and the americans trusted in other countries when they shouldn't have because a World War was taking place. The result of all this is that America declared war.

Bombing of USS Cole

On 12 October 2000, USS Cole set in to Aden harbor for a routine fuel stop. Cole completed mooring at 09:30. Refueling started at 10:30. Around 11:18 local time, a small craft approached the port side of the destroyer, and an explosion occurred, putting a 40-by-60-feet gash in the ship's port side according to the memorial plate to those that lost their lives.

The blast appeared to be caused by explosives molded into a shaped charge against the hull of the boat. It was reported that the boat was so close that the attackers aboard the boat and the sailors exchanged greetings before the blast. It is believed that sailors aboard the USS Cole thought the boat was just a garbage service boat.The blast hit the ship's galley, where crew were lining up for lunch.The crew fought flooding in the engineering spaces and had the damage under control by the evening. Divers inspected the hull and determined the keel was not damaged.

Seventeen sailors were killed and thirty nine others were injured in the blast. The attack was the deadliest against a U.S. Naval vessel since the Iraqi attack on the us on 17 May 1987.The asymmetric warfare attack was organized and directed by Osama bin Laden s al-Qaeda terrorist organization. In June 2001, an al-Qaeda recruitment video featuring bin Laden boasted about the attack and encouraged similar attacks.

Bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma

I chose bombing of the Murrah builging. Well this attack took place on April 19, 1995 at oklahoma city. An office complex in downtown Oklahoma City, was bombed. Until the September 11, 2001 attacks, it was the deadliest act of terrorism on United Stated. In this attack were killed 168 people and more than 800 people injured.

A little time after the explosion Oklahoma state trooper Charlie Hanger stopped Timothy McVeigh of 26 years old, for driving without a license and for unlawfully carrying a weapon, and him was arrested for that. Within days after the bombing, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were both arrested for their roles in the bombing.
Mcveigh was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001 and Nichols was sentenced to life in prision, and a third conspirator Michael Fortier who testified against McVeigh and Nichols was sentenced to 12 years in prision for failing to warn the U.S goverment.

On April 19, 2000, the Oklahoma City National Memorial was dedicated on the site of the Murrah Federal Building to commemorate the victims of the bombing and annual remembrance services are held at the time of the explosion.

Attack on Pearl Harbor

These events occurred in United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941.

The surprise was complete. The attacking planes came in two waves; the first hit its target at 7:53 AM, the second at 8:55. By 9:55 it was all over. By 1:00 PM the carriers that launched the planes from 274 miles off the coast of Oahu were heading back to Japan.

The strike was intended to neutralize the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and hence protect Japan's advance into Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, where Japan sought access to natural resources such as oil and rubber. 405 aircraft were intended to be used: 360 for the two attack waves, 48 on defensive combat air patrol (CAP), including nine fighters from the first wave. The first wave was to be the primary attack, while the second wave was to finish whatever tasks remained. The first wave contained the bulk of the weapons to attack capital ships, mainly torpedoes. The aircrews were ordered to select the highest value targets (battleships and aircraft carriers) or, if either were not present, any other high value ships (cruisers and destroyers). Dive bombers were to attack ground targets. Fighters were ordered to strafe and destroy as many parked aircraft as possible to ensure they did not get into the air to counterattack the bombers, especially in the first wave. Before the attack commenced, two reconnaissance aircraft launched from cruisers were sent to scout over Oahu and report on enemy fleet composition and location. Another four scout planes patrolled the area between the Kido Butai and Niihau, in order to prevent the task force from being caught by a surprise counterattack.

Behind them they left chaos, 2,403 dead, 188 destroyed planes and a crippled Pacific Fleet that included 8 damaged or destroyed battleships. After this, United States declared war to Japan, becoming enemies of Germany and Italy, leading to World War II.

Anthrax letters in New York and Washington, DC

The anthrax attacks in the United States began on September 18, 2001, 1 exact week after the WTC attacks. Letters that contained anthrax spores were sended by mail to several news media offices and two Democratic US Senators. The attacked killed 5 people and 17 infected. The primary suspect was Bruce Edwards Ivins, who suicide on August 1, 2008 after been told about his prosecution.
The anthrax attacks came in two waves. The first was on September 18, 2001. Letters were sent to NBC, CBS, and ABC News, and The New York Post, all in New York City, and one letter to the National Enquirer at AMI in Boca Raton, Florida. Scientists examining the anthrax from the New York Post letter said it appeared as a coarse brown granular material looking like Purina Dog Show.
The second attack occured 3 weeks after the first. The letters were adressed to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. The material in this letters was more potent than the first ones, consisting on about 1 gram of nearly pure anthrax spores.
The US government has not found any guilties for the attack, although they insisted on blaming Al Qaeda and Iraq, since the attacks coincided with the tragedy on 9/11.
The role of technology in this attack clearly is the tool used to find a responsable person for the attack.

Beirut barracks bombing

United States Marine Corps barracks , in Beirut Airport was October 23, 1983 like at 6:20 am 241 American servicemen, 58 French servicemen, 6 civilians ,2 suicide bombers a rainbow Mercedes-Benz truck drove to Beirut International Airport, where the 1st Battalion 8th Marines under the 2nd Marine Division had set up its local headquarters. The truck had been substituted for a hijacked water delivery truck. The truck turned onto an access road leading to the Marines' compound and circled a parking lot. The driver then accelerated and crashed through a barbed wire fence around the parking lot, passed between two sentry posts, crashed through a gate and drove into the lobby of the Marine headquarters. The Marine sentries at the gate were operating under rules of engagement which made it very difficult to respond quickly to the truck. By the time the two sentries had locked, loaded, and shouldered their weapons, the truck was already inside the building's entry way.
The suicide bomber detonated his explosives, which were equivalent to 5,400 kg (12,000 pounds) of TNT. The force of the explosion collapsed the four-story cinder-block building into rubble, crushing many inside. In retaliation for the attacks, France launched an airstrike in the Beqaa Valley against alleged Islamic Revolutionary Guards positions. President Reagan assembled his national security team and planned to target the Sheik Abdullah barracks in Baalbek, Lebanon, which housed Iranian Revolutionary Guards believed to be training Hezbollah fighters. A joint American-French air assault on the camp where the bombing was planned was also approved by Reagan and Mitterrand. Defense Secretary Weinberger, however, lobbied successfully against the missions.
Besides a few shellings, there was no serious retaliation for the Beirut bombing from the Americans. In December 1983, U.S. aircraft attacked Syrian targets in Lebanon, but this was in response to Syrian missile attacks on planes, not the barracks bombing.
In the meantime, the attack gave a boost to the growth of the Shi'ite organization Hezbollah. Hezbollah denied involvement in the attacks but was seen by Lebanese as involved nonetheless as it praised the "two martyr mujahideen" who "set out to inflict upon the U.S. Administration an utter defeat not experienced since Vietnam ..."Hezbollah was now seen by many as "the spearhead of the sacred Muslim struggle against foreign occupation".
Amal militia leader Nabih Berri, who had previously supported U.S. mediation efforts, asked the U.S. and France to leave Lebanon and accused the U.S. and France of seeking to commit 'massacres' against the Lebanese and creating a "climate of racism" against the Shia. Islamic Jihad phoned in new threats against the MNF "pledging that 'the earth would tremble' unless the MNF withdrew by New Year's Day 1984.The Marines were moved offshore where they could not be targeted. On February 7, 1984, President Reagan ordered the Marines to begin withdrawal from Lebanon. This was completed on February 26, four months after the barracks bombing; the rest of the Multinational Force was withdrawn by April.