Tag: torture

Reading Around on August 25th

swanksalot0 comment

Some additional reading August 25th from 10:32 to 16:21:

  • Emptywheel » Was John Yoo Free-Lancing When He Approved the “Legal Principles”? –

    “Earlier today, I showed that there is a CIA document on the “Legal Principles” on torture that included legal justifications that had not been in any of the August 1, 2002 OLC memos authorizing torture. I showed that the document changed over time, but that when CIA asked Jack Goldsmith to “re-affirm” the Legal Principles in March 2004, he stated that he did not consider the document to be a product of OLC.

    I have further inquired into the circumstances surrounding the creation of the bullet points in the spring of 2003. These inquiries have reconfirmed what I have conveyed to you before, namely, that the bullet points did not and do not represent an opinion or a statement of the views of this Office.

    It seems–reading Jack Goldsmith and John Ashcroft’s objections to the CIA IG Report–that John Yoo was free-lancing when he worked with CIA on them.”

    Why does John Yoo have a job at Berkley? and why does he *still* have it?

    VoodooFront.jpg

  • AP again advances falsehood that health reform “will mean cuts in Medicare benefits” | Media Matters for America – AP again advances falsehood that health reform “will mean cuts in Medicare benefits” In an August 24 article, the Associated Press uncritically reported that “[s]eniors worry that paying for the $1 trillion-plus, 10-year [health care] overhaul will mean cuts in Medicare benefits” without noting that, in the words of FactCheck.org, “[t]he claim that Obama and Congress are cutting seniors’ Medicare benefits to pay for the health care overhaul is outright false.” Additionally, AARP has also rebutted the notion that health reform will reduce Medicare benefits
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  • “Fela: This Bitch of a Life” (Carlos Moore)

  • Music Monday: Fela Kuti’s Bitch of a Life – Carlos Moore’s Fela: This Bitch of a Life, the newly rereleased 1982 authorized biography of Africa’s greatest musician, Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Well, sexism and police brutality. The book, translated from the French, is essentially a well-organized and very long interview of Fela at his peak. For die-hard fans of the original Black President this may be a enticing read

CIA and torture

Seth Anderson0 comment

Here’s why there needs to be a formal, public investigation into what crimes were committed during the Bush years in the name of The War On Terra. The news will come out, and the world will be paying attention to how the United States follows its own rules prohibiting such atrocities. Are we a rogue nation? or a nation of liberty?

I_hate_dentists.jpg

CIA interrogators carried out mock executions and threatened an al Qaeda commander with a gun and an electric drill, according to an internal report that provides new details of abuses inside’s the agency’s secret prisons, two leading U.S. newspapers reported on Saturday.

…

The tactics — which one official described to the Post as a threatened execution — were used on Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri by CIA jailers who held the handgun and drill close to the prisoner to frighten him into giving up information.

Nashiri, who was captured in November 2002 and held for four years in one of the CIA’s “black site” prisons, was one of three al-Qaeda chieftains later subjected to a form of simulated drowning known as waterboarding, the paper said.

The report, completed in 2004 by the inspector general, John L. Helgerson, also says that a mock execution was staged in a room next to one terrorism suspect. CIA officers fired a gun in the next room, leading the prisoner to believe that a second detainee had been killed, the Times said.

…

A federal judge in New York has ordered a redacted version of the classified CIA report to be made public on Monday, in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

[Click to continue reading CIA report has new details of prisoner abuse | U.S. | Reuters ]

There’s no excuse for government officials condoning torture, none. There isn’t really an excuse for sadists conducting the torture either, but even worse, in my eyes, are the bosses who thought this would be a good policy to approve.

Further information about the CIA torture case from the NYT:

The Justice Department’s ethics office has recommended reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, potentially exposing Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors to prosecution for brutal treatment of terrorism suspects, according to a person officially briefed on the matter.

…

Former government lawyers said that while some detainees died and others suffered serious abuses, prosecutors decided they would be unlikely to prevail because of problems with mishandled evidence and, in some cases, the inability to locate witnesses or even those said to be the victims.

A few of the cases are well known, like that of Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in 2003 in C.I.A. custody at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq after he was first captured by a team of Navy Seals. Prosecutors said he probably received his fatal injuries during his capture, but lawyers for the Seals denied it.

Over the years, some Democratic lawmakers sought more details about the cases and why the Justice Department took no action. They received summaries of the number of cases under scrutiny but few facts about the episodes or the department’s decisions not to prosecute.

The cases do not center on allegations of abuse by C.I.A. officers who conducted the forceful interrogations of high-level Qaeda suspects at secret sites, although it is not out of the question that a new investigation would also examine their conduct.

That could mean a look at the case in which C.I.A. officers threatened one prisoner with a handgun and a power drill if he did not cooperate. The detainee, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was suspected as the master plotter behind the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole.

All civilian employees of the government, including those at the C.I.A., were required to comply with guidelines for interrogations detailed in a series of legal opinions written by the Justice Department. Those opinions, since abandoned by the Obama administration, were the central focus of the Justice Department’s internal inquiry.

It has been known that the Justice Department ethics report had criticized the authors of the legal opinions and, in some cases, would recommend referrals to local bar associations for discipline.

But the internal inquiry also examined how the opinions were carried out and how referrals of possible violations were made — a process that led ethics investigators to find misconduct serious enough to warrant renewed criminal investigation.

[Click to continue reading Justice Dept. Report Advises Pursuing C.I.A. Abuse Cases – NYTimes.com]

Torture Special Prosecutor

Seth Anderson0 comment

Possible good news.

The Obama administration is close to appointing a special criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged abuses by the CIA of prisoners held at detention centres around the world.

Eric Holder, the US attorney general, is tilting towards prosecution after reviewing Bush-era memos detailing individual cases relating to the treatment of prisoners. He is said to have been “sickened” by what he read. One of the memos, written in 2003, is due to be published, at least in part, later this month.

The US approach contrasts with that of the UK, where the foreign secretary, David Miliband, and the home secretary, Alan Johnson, yesterday continued to resist pressure over the torture and abuse of detainees abroad, saying it was not possible to eradicate the risk of mistreatment,

A US criminal investigation would focus on CIA agents and others alleged to have gone beyond guidelines laid down by senior figures in the Bush administration.

[Click to continue reading Obama administration close to investigating alleged abuses by CIA | World news | The Guardian]

I’d be a lot more happy if the Bush Cheney gang of thugs were included in an indictment instead of low-level employees who were just Sergeant Schultz, following orders.

Torture is Torture

Seth Anderson0 comment

As part of an instructive and interesting conversation between pro-torture NBC journalist Chuck Todd1 and Salon’s Glenn Greenwald

Greenwald: Let me ask you this question: The United States is a party to a treaty – I don’t know if you ever read it or not, it’s called the Convention Against Torture – and one of the things it does is it obligates all signatories to the treaty to prosecute any acts of torture. And it was signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988, and when he transmitted that treaty to the Senate, explaining what that treaty does, he wrote, quote, “Each state party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory, or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.”

Do you think the U.S. should be bound, is bound by that treaty?

[Click to continue reading Salon Radio: Chuck Todd – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com]

The audio file of the interview is also available here.

Complete text of the Convention Against Torture is here, the Wikipedia entry says:

Article 1 of the Convention defines 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.
– Convention Against Torture, Article 1.1

Actions which fall short of torture may still constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment under Article 16.

Article 2 of the convention prohibits torture, and requires parties to take effective measures to prevent it in any territory under its jurisdiction. This prohibition is absolute and non-derogable. “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever” may be invoked to justify torture, including war, threat of war, internal political instability, public emergency, terrorist acts, violent crime, or any form of armed conflict. Torture cannot be justified as a means to protect public safety or prevent emergencies. Neither can it be justified by orders from superior officers or public officials. The prohibition on torture applies to all territories under a party’s effective jurisdiction, and protects all people under its effective control, regardless of citizenship or how that control is exercised. Since the Conventions entry into force, this absolute prohibition has become accepted as a principle of customary international law.

Because it is often difficult to distinguish between cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and torture, the Committee regards Article 16’s prohibition of such treatment as similarly absolute and non-derogable.
The other articles of part I lay out specific obligations intended to implement this absolute prohibition by preventing, investigating and punishing acts of torture.

[Click to continue reading United Nations Convention Against Torture – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

Footnotes:
  1. no, not really, I suppose the more precise term would be that Chuck Todd doesn’t believe in prosecuting Republican administration crimes that occurred last week, only prosecuting future crimes [↩]

Idiots running Washington Post fires its best columnist

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Sorry to hear that Dan Froomkin (a frequent source of material for this blog, and many others) has been fired.

Glenn Greenwald speculates it might be because of the whiny-titty-ass-baby, Charlie Krauthammer complaining.

Charles Krauthammer last night said that Obama critics on Fox News are “a lot like [Hugo Chavez’] Caracas where all the media, except one, are state run.” But right-wing polemicists like Krauthammer are all over the media.

…

In addition to his Rupert Murdoch perch at Fox, Krauthammer remains as a regular columnist at the Post, alongside fellow right-wing Obama haters such as Bill Kristol, George Will, Jim Hoagland, Michael Gerson and Robert Kagan — as well as a whole bevy of typical, banal establishment spokespeople who are highly supportive of whatever the permanent Washington establishment favors (David Ignatius, Fred Hiatt, Ruth Marcus, David Broder, Richard Cohen, Howie Kurtz, etc. etc.). And that’s to say nothing of the regular Op-Ed appearances by typical Krauthammer-mimicking neoconservative voices such as John Bolton, Joe Lieberman, and Douglas Feith — and the Post Editorial Page itself. “Caracas” indeed.

Notably, Froomkin just recently had a somewhat acrimonious exchange with the oh-so-oppressed Krauthammer over torture, after Froomkin criticized Krauthammer’s explicit endorsement of torture and Krauthammer responded by calling Froomkin’s criticisms “stupid.” And now — weeks later — Froomkin is fired by the Post while the persecuted Krauthammer, comparing himself to endangered journalists in Venezuela, remains at the Post, along with countless others there who think and write just like he does:  i.e., standard neoconservative pablum. Froomkin was previously criticized for being “highly opinionated and liberal” by Post ombudsman Deborah Howell (even as she refused to criticize blatant right-wing journalists).

All of this underscores a critical and oft-overlooked point:  what one finds virtually nowhere in the establishment press are those who criticize Obama not in order to advance their tawdry right-wing agenda but because the principles that led them to criticize Bush compel similar criticism of Obama.

[Click to continue reading The Washington Post fires its best columnist. Why? – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com]

Nothing Can Go Wrong in Blue

From my humble experience, the only reason I ever (and I mean ever) visited the Washington Post was to read Dan Froomkin’s column, then to read his blog. I guess I’m the wrong demographic for Washington Post, I’m unabashedly liberal, educated, technologically savvy, and even (shudder) bourgeois, by income if not by mentality. The Washington Post is happy competing for conservative readers, and following the Washington Times Fox News model of all Republican news all the time. I trust Mr. Froomkin will land somewhere soon, and continue his responsible journalistic approach.

Dan Froomkin comments:

I’m terribly disappointed. I was told that it had been determined that my White House Watch blog wasn’t “working” anymore. But from what I could tell, it was still working very well. I also thought White House Watch was a great fit with The Washington Post brand, and what its readers reasonably expect from the Post online.

As I’ve written elsewhere, I think that the future success of our business depends on journalists enthusiastically pursuing accountability and calling it like they see it. That’s what I tried to do every day. Now I guess I’ll have to try to do it someplace else.

Krauthammer might have burst into tears when he read this article:

Charles Krauthammer, in his Washington Post opinion column this morning, tries to find loopholes for impermissible evil.

“Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances,” he writes.

“The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent’s life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy.”

Actually, no. The ticking time bomb scenario only exists in two places: On TV and in the dark fantasies of power-crazed and morally deficient authoritarians. In real life, things are never that certain. And trained interrogators say that even in the most extreme circumstances, traditional methods are the most effective.

Krauthammer continues: “Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander.”

Actually, no. They are normal people who share the post-World War II international consensus that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Indeed, the idea of putting someone without a healthy respect for human rights at Centcom is abhorrent — unless of course you believe that human rights don’t matter.

[Click to continue reading White House Watch – Krauthammer’s Asterisks ]

After flaying Krauthammer a bit more, Mr. Froomkin concludes:

Precisely what members of Congress were told and how they responded should absolutely be a part of any thorough official investigation into the abuses of the Bush years. The enablers must be exposed as surely as the complicit. And members of Congress who knew what was happening and remained silent must be held to public account for their moral cowardice.

But their failure to speak out does not change the fundamental moral equation.

If the United States is to live up to its core values, if it is to once again be a beacon of human rights to the world and a champion of human dignity, then when it comes to torture — to impermissible evil, as Krauthammer himself puts it — there can be no asterisks.

Reading Around on June 7th through June 10th

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected June 7th through June 10th:

  • Don’t mess with Kris – "“One of country music’s brightest stars,” by the way, was Toby Keith — the Jonah Goldberg of country music. It was 2003, remember: Dickhead Nation was in the ascendant and Keith was whoopin’ along with the rest of the rumpus room warriors all lathered up to start bombing brown-skinned people in Iraq. He’d had a hit with “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” so Keith felt entitled to play pompous ass in the presence of Paul Simon and Ray Charles, who had recorded more classics than Toby Keith could ever hope to make, years before Toby Keith was even out of grade school.

    That little encounter between Keith and Kristofferson is one of the most entertaining things I’ve read since “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” in which Gay Talese described young writer Harlan Ellison facing down Ol’ Blue Mouth during an encounter at a night club."

  • Firedoglake » Breaking: Lieberman-Graham Dropped From Supplemental – "According to sources on the Hill, the Lieberman-Graham detainee photo suppression amendment is out of the conference report of the supplemental.

    For everyone who made phone calls — pat yourself on the back.

    Let us all now sit back and enjoy the spectacle of Joe Lieberman throwing a tantrum. "

  • Hullabaloo – Goldilocks Journalists – But the media critiques of the left and the right are substantially different. The right thinks the media is filled with liberal operatives pushing the Democratic agenda. The left thinks the media is filled with insular, shallow and out of touch stenographers. If it makes Milbank and his friends think the anger at the media stems from the last election it's just more proof that the left's critique is correct.

Cheney Is to Blame for the Next Attack

Seth Anderson0 comment

Frank Rich writes about everybody’s favorite Darth Vader figure, Diamond Dick Cheney

Patches of sky

The Beltway antics that greeted the great Cheney-Obama torture debate were an unsettling return to the post-9/11 dynamic that landed America in Iraq. Once again Cheney and his cohort were using lies and fear to try to gain political advantage — this time to rewrite history and escape accountability for the failed Bush presidency rather than to drum up a new war. Once again Democrats in Congress were cowed. And once again too much of the so-called liberal news media parroted the right’s scare tactics, putting America’s real security interests at risk by failing to challenge any Washington politician carrying a big stick.

Cheney’s “no middle ground” speech on torture at the American Enterprise Institute arrived with the kind of orchestrated media campaign that he, his boss and Karl Rove patented in the good old days. It was bookended by a pair of Republican attack ads on the Web that crosscut President Obama’s planned closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention center with apocalyptic imagery — graphic video of the burning twin towers in one ad, a roar of nuclear holocaust (borrowed from the L.B.J. “daisy” ad of 1964) in the other.

The speech itself, with 20 mentions of 9/11, struck the same cynical note as the ads, as if the G.O.P. was almost rooting for a terrorist attack on Obama’s watch.

[Click to continue reading Frank Rich – Who Is to Blame for the Next Attack? – NYTimes.com]

and there is the Fourth Estate, both good and bad, though by volume, more bad journalism than good as is usually the case:

Most of the punditocracy scored the fight on a curve, setting up a false equivalence between the men’s ideas. Cheney’s pugnacious certitude edged out Obama’s law-professor nuance. “On policy grounds, you’ve got a real legitimate fight here,” David Gregory insisted on “Meet the Press” as he regurgitated the former vice president’s argument (“You can’t compromise on these matters”) and questioned whether the president could “really bring” his brand of pragmatism “to the issue of the war on terror.”

One New York Daily News columnist summed up Cheney’s supposed TKO this way: “The key to Cheney’s powerful performance: facts, facts, facts.” But the facts, as usual, were wrong.

At the McClatchy newspapers’ Washington bureau, the reporters Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel detailed 10 whoppers. With selective quotations, Cheney falsified the views of the director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, on the supposed intelligence value of waterboarding. Equally bogus was Cheney’s boast that his administration had “moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks.” In truth, the Bush administration had lost Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, not least because it started diverting huge assets to Iraq before accomplishing the mission of vanquishing Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. That decision makes us less safe to this very minute.

Military interrogator says torture cost Thousands of American lives

Seth Anderson0 comment

A 14-year military interrogator has undercut one of the key arguments posited by Vice President Dick Cheney in favor of the Bush Administration’s torture techniques and alleged that the use of torture has cost “hundreds if not thousands” of American lives.

The interrogator, who uses the name “Matthew Alexander,” says he oversaw more than 1,000 interrogations, conducting more than 300 in Iraq personally. His statements are captured in a new video by Brave New Films (excerpt).

“Torture does not save lives,” Alexander said in his interview. “And the reason why is that our enemies use it, number one, as a recruiting tool…These same foreign fighters who came to Iraq to fight because of torture and abuse….literally cost us hundreds if not thousands of American lives.”

Moreover, Alexander avers that many — as many as 90 percent — of those captured in Iraq said they joined the fight against the United States because of the torture conducted at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

[Click to continue reading Raw Story » Former military interrogator says torture cost hundreds ‘if not thousands’ of American lives]

Wonder how widely this allegation was reported, especially in the broadcast journalism field. I suspect not widely at all – too many Republicans as executives in corporate media outlets.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfYov5o5_2s

Reading Around on May 22nd through May 26th

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected May 22nd through May 26th:

  • Concurring Opinions » Some Thoughts on the Supreme Court’s Reversal Rate – "Overall, this past term the Supreme Court reversed 75.3 percent of the cases they considered on their merits. The pattern holds true for the 2004 and 2005 terms as well, when the Supremes had overall reversal rates of 76.8 percent and 75.6 percent, respectively.

    It is interesting how remarkably constant the reversal percentage is — 75%. It suggests that the Supreme Court primarily takes cases it wants to reverse, with only a few exceptions. Assuming the Court takes about 70 cases a term, it will only affirm in about 17 of them. So perhaps the new game for commentators should be listing those 17 lucky cases that will get affirmed."

  • BW Online | April 26, 2004 | Trader Joe's: The Trendy American Cousin – "Welcome to Trader Joe's. About all this 210-store U.S. chain shares with Germany's Aldi Group — besides being owned by a trust created by Aldi co-founder Theo Albrecht — is its rigorous control over costs. But where Aldi carries such basics as toilet paper and canned peas, TJ's, as it's known, stocks eclectic and upscale foodstuffs for the wine-and-cheese set at down-to-earth prices."
  • Mad Dog Blog – Mark Madsen actually makes a lot of sense:
    "If Congress and the government allocate and allow so much time to pursue professional athletes and their statements about their own, or others’ possible steroid use, perhaps we should examine statements of elected officials and the CIA when it relates to interrogation, torture and national security. Surely we must pursue these issues with the same energy and effort with which we pursue the statements of professional athletes on personal steroid use."

Reading Around on May 19th

swanksalot0 comment

Some additional reading May 19th from 19:48 to 22:04:

  • AND HE SHALL BE JUDGED: GQ Features on men.style.com – AND HE SHALL BE JUDGED Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has always answered his detractors by claiming that history will one day judge him kindly. But as he waits for that day, a new group of critics—his administration peers—are suddenly speaking out for the first time. What they’re saying? It isn’t pretty
  • O Lucky Man! – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – As one of the film’s songs says: Smile while you’re makin’ it, Laugh while you’re takin’ it, Even though you’re fakin’ it, Nobody’s gonna know. In O Lucky Man!, Travis progresses from coffee salesman (working for Imperial Coffee in the North East of England and Scotland), a victim of torture in a government installation and a medical research subject, under the supervision of Dr Millar (Crowden).
  • Donald Ewen Cameron – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – In addition to LSD, Cameron also experimented with various paralytic drugs, as well as electroconvulsive therapy at 30 to 40 times the normal power. His “driving” experiments consisted of putting subjects into drug-induced coma for months on end (up to three in one case) while playing tape loops of noise or simple repetitive statements. His experiments were typically carried out on patients who had entered the institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and post-partum depression, many of whom suffered permanently from his actions. It was during this era that Cameron became known worldwide, serving as the second President of the World Psychiatric Association, as well as president of the American and Canadian psychiatric associations. He was also a member of the Nuremberg medical tribunal a decade earlier, where he accused German medics of things he himself did between 1934–60 or later, though his scientific work during World War II for the OSS has never been a secret.

Reading Around on May 11th through May 12th

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected May 11th through May 12th:

  • Du laisser-faire à la loi : ce que font les autres pays pour lutter contre le piratage – Politique – Le Monde.fr – French newspaper Le Monde republished a photo of mine. Wonder what the article is about?
    FlickR/swanksalot
    Les eurodéputés ont pris le contre-pied du projet de loi français en confirmant, mercredi 6 mai, leur opposition à toute coupure de l'accès internet décidée par une autorité administrative.
  • Jesse Ventura: You Give Me a Water Board, Dick Cheney and One Hour, and I'll Have Him Confess to the Sharon Tate Murders | Video Cafe – I'm bothered over Guantanamo because it seems we have created our own Hanoi Hilton. We can live with that? I have a problem. I will criticize President Obama on this level; it's a good thing I'm not president because I would prosecute every person that was involved in that torture. I would prosecute the people that did it. I would prosecute the people that ordered it. Because torture is against the law. (KING: You were a Navy SEAL.)
    That's right. I was water boarded, so I know — at SERE School, Survival Escape Resistance Evasion. It was a required school you had to go to prior to going into the combat zone, which in my era was Vietnam. All of us had to go there. We were all, in essence — every one of us was water boarded. It is torture.

    It's drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you — I'll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.

  • Burning and Dodging with Adjustment Layers – "Burning & Dodging With Adjustment Layers And Masks"

    a useful little tutorial

Waterboarding is Torture part the 99th

Seth Anderson0 comment

In Dan Froomkin’s roundup of torture news, he points to this op-ed by Joseph Margulies:

In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, Joseph Margulies, a lawyer representing detainee Abu Zubaydah, reminds us “that there was a human being strapped to that board. His name is Zayn al Abidin Mohamed Hussein, known to the world as Abu Zubaydah….

“They tormented a clerk….[and] Abu Zubaydah paid with his mind….

“Today, he suffers blinding headaches and has permanent brain damage. He has an excruciating sensitivity to sounds, hearing what others do not. The slightest noise drives him nearly insane. In the last two years alone, he has experienced about 200 seizures.

“But physical pain is a passing thing. The enduring torment is the taunting reminder that darkness encroaches. Already, he cannot picture his mother’s face or recall his father’s name. Gradually, his past, like his future, eludes him.”

[From White House Watch – Torture Watch ]

Take Your Stand

More disgusting details from Mr. Margulies:

First, they beat [Abu Zubaydah]. As authorized by the Justice Department and confirmed by the Red Cross, they wrapped a collar around his neck and smashed him over and over against a wall. They forced his body into a tiny, pitch-dark box and left him for hours. They stripped him naked and suspended him from hooks in the ceiling. They kept him awake for days.

And they strapped him to an inverted board and poured water over his covered nose and mouth to “produce the sensation of suffocation and incipient panic.” Eighty-three times. I leave it to others to debate whether we should call this torture. I am content with the self-evident truth that it was wrong.

Second, his treatment was motivated by the bane of our post-9/11 world: rotten intel. The beat him because they believed he was evil. Not long after his arrest, President Bush described him as “one of the top three leaders” in Al Qaeda and “Al Qaeda’s chief of operations.” In fact, the CIA brass at Langley, Va., ordered his interrogators to keep at it long after the latter warned that he had been wrung dry.

But Abu Zubaydah, we now understand, was nothing like what the president believed. He was never Al Qaeda. The journalist Ron Suskind was the first to ask the right questions. In his 2006 book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” he described Abu Zubaydah as a minor logistics man, a travel agent.

Later and more detailed reporting in the Washington Post, quoting Justice Department officials, said he provided “above-ground support. … To make him the mastermind of anything is ridiculous.” More recently, the New York Times, relying on current and former intelligence officers, said the initial assessment was “highly inflated” and reflected “a profound misunderstanding” of Abu Zubaydah. Far from a leader, he was “a personnel clerk.”

I don’t care if the agents on the ground were just following orders from the lawless Bush Adminstration, they should be prosecuted for war crimes too. Torture is torture, and I am sickened and dismayed reading how agents of my government abused other humans in my name.

Condi’s Really Bad Day

Seth Anderson0 comment

Scott Horton of Harper’s Magazine catches Condoleezza Rice speaking lazily, as if she were still bantering with the complacent White House press corp and not being questioned by young folks not yet part of the corporate system.

For eight years, Condoleezza Rice dealt with the Beltway punditry and the access-craving White House press corps. The reception she got, with a handful of exceptions, was fawning. Which leaves her totally unprepared for a return to an academy populated with the Daily Show generation: bright young minds with a very critical attitude towards the last eight years. In a meeting with Stanford students at a dormitory reception on April 27, the school’s former provost got off to a shaky start and ended in a train wreck. She may in fact have her last words in the exchange quoted back to her some day in a law court.

…

Rice insists that waterboarding is not torture. Why? Rice pulls a Nixon. It was not torture because the president authorized it. In Condiworld, apparently, “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” What lawyer was advising Rice through this process? That’s a pressing question–the Senate Intelligence Committee suggests that legal counsel at the National Security Council was guiding her at every step–and evidently giving her some very peculiar ideas about the law.

(6) Whereas the Senate Intelligence Committee’s summary shows Rice giving authorization for waterboarding, Rice has a different recollection. “I didn’t authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency.” This is dicing things very finely. But I think I know how Judge Garzón will understand this: Rice just confessed to a focal role in a joint criminal enterprise. Nixon White House counsel John Dean, who has a lot of first-hand experience with the legal issues in play, had the same take: Rice just admitted to her role in a conspiracy to torture, a felony under 18 U.S.C. sec 2340A.

[Click to continue reading Condi’s Really Bad Day—By Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine)]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijEED_iviTA

Ms. Rice should go to prison for her crimes against humanity, but doubt seriously if justice will ever be served on any of the Bush Administration criminals.

Reading Around on April 26th through April 28th

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected April 26th through April 28th:

  • The GOP’s base problem – Back in 2002, the Democratic Party was a disaster. It was beset by an establishment convinced that this was a center-right nation, and that the only path to victory was to be Republican-lite. It was outgunned by a conservative movement that had a well-established idea factory and message machine, with a traditional media more eager to pick up Fox News themes than to hold the administration accountable. And it was plagued by a consultant class that still thought the calendar read 1968, and that their campaigns couldn’t associate with dirty fucking hippies or innovate with new tools like the “internets”.Lucky for them, a new generation of activists arose to challenge the status quo…, in addition to a core group of big-money donors willing to invest in a new party infrastructure. … Anyone remember how conservatives gloated when we got Howard Dean elected chairman of our party? Anyone remember how our party’s DC establishment reacted, in genuine horror and fear for the party’s future?


  • image from an unknown source

  • The real reason for torture | Steve Chapman – “Its advocates make it obvious that this cruelty is not an unfortunate byproduct but a positive attribute.

    That’s why so many people endorse inhumane methods while disregarding any evidence that suggests it is ineffective. Their hatred of our enemies has made them indifferent to civilized norms. They want to see our enemies suffer hideously regardless of whether that enhances or degrades our security.

    The point of torture is torture. It is not a means to an end. It is the end itself. ”

  • BARTANNICA » B.L.U.E.S. | Chicago, IL – I’ve got the quit-making-out-in-front-of-me-and-rubbing-each-others’-legs-and-standing-up-from-your-stools-and-bumping-into-me-you-gross-old-people-from-the-suburbs-that-have-had-too-much-to-drink-and-should-just-get-a-room-and-I-know-that’s-what-you’re-thinking-because-I-just-saw-you-pop-a-Viagra blues. Deh dah-dah dum dah-dum dah-dum …


Rembrandt

Torture planning began in 2001

Seth Anderson0 comment

and then, there is this factoid, as noted by Mark Benjamin

No Masturbation Jokes

The Senate Armed Services Committee has just released an exhaustive review of torture under the Bush administration that, among other revelations, torpedoes the notion that the administration only chose torture as a last resort. Bush officials have long argued that they turned to coercive interrogations in 2002 only after captured al-Qaida suspects wouldn’t talk, but the report shows the administration set the wheels in motion soon after 9/11. The Bush White House began planning for torture in December 2001, set up a program to develop the interrogation techniques by the next month, and the military and the CIA began training interrogators in coercive practices in early 2002, before they had any high-value al-Qaida suspects or any trouble eliciting information from detainees.

As the report puts it, “The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.” The report undercuts the Obama administration’s case for leniency against the CIA, since the agency was pursuing abusive techniques even before Department of Justice lawyers had issued their supposed legal justification for the techniques in August 2002. The report also shows that the administration appears to have attempted to use the abusive techniques to shore up its case for war in Iraq. Interrogators employed the techniques, which are notorious for producing bad intelligence, to get detainees to make statements linking Iraq and al-Qaida.

[From Torture planning began in 2001, Senate report reveals | Salon News]

(my emphasis)

Torture first, then torture the law until it allows you to justify torture. Fucking sadists.