Anyone who thinks they have all the Answers before they've even heard the Question - is Dangerously Deluded! Real Truth Requires Vigilance, Perseverance and Courage, regardless of Party and who wields Power. Left, Right, Center, Corporations, Government, Unions, Criminals or the Indifferent.
One of the almost completely unreported negative consequences of the American misadventure in Iraq, and current handover of control to Iraqi Forces, is exactly how that nation's sadly dysfunctional government has been handling the tens of thousands of suspected insurgents, al Qeada wannabes and political dissidents that we've delivered on their doorstep as the U.S. gradually slide out through the side door.
And the prognosis is not pleasant as detailed in a new Amnesty International Report - "New Iraq, Same Old Abuses".
MALCOLM SMART (Amnesty International) : Well, I think part of the problem is really a problem of impunity. This has been going on for all too long, and there’s a culture of abuse that has taken root. It was certainly there during the days of Saddam Hussein, but what we wanted to see from 2003 was a turning of the page, and that hasn’t happened. So we see secret prisons, people being tortured and ill-treated, being forced to make confessions. And the courts, although routinely detainees claim that they were made to sign false confessions, the courts are really not investigating those and coming to grips with them. And the perpetrators are not being held to account. They’re not being identified. On a number of occasions, the government has reacted by saying it will appoint inquiries after secret prisons have been disclosed and their locations have been found and prisoners in them have been found to be in a very severely ill-treated position. But the outcomes of those investigations have not been made known.
AMY GOODMAN: Deaths in custody?
MALCOLM SMART: Likewise with deaths in custody. We have in our report details of several cases where deaths are alleged to have occurred as a result of torture or ill treatment. Now, the standard practice of any authority in that situation, required by national law and required by international law, is to carry out an independent investigation. What were the causes, what was the circumstances, of the death? Now, this hasn’t happened. And again, we’re calling attention to the need for the government to show the political will to take measures against the torturers.
AMY GOODMAN: Malcolm, there were 10,000 prisoners, in your Amnesty report, transferred from US custody in Iraq to Iraqi custody—US basically transferring prisoners to a system that tortures them, unclear what happened to them in US custody.
MALCOLM SMART: Well, part of the problem with the situation has been that the US forces have been detaining people. And, of course, we know from the days of Abu Ghraib and so on, their record has not been a good one. It’s been improved in recent times, but at least—so there was some control over the prisons exercised by the US.
Since the beginning of 2009, under what’s called the Status of Forces Agreement, the two governments agreed to transfer custody of the prisons and prisoners to the Iraqi forces. Now, many of those detainees held by the US forces had been held without charge or trial for years without any means to challenge their detention. We’ve not made the claim that all those people are innocent of crimes. If they are accused of crimes, they should be held to account in accordance with international fair trial standards. But many detainees say they’ve been arrested for reasons that they don’t know, on the basis of information from secret informants who themselves may have been tortured or brutalized and named names of people. So, there’s not been an independent process. And here, we saw this Status of Forces Agreement at the end of 2008 making the way for the transfer, with no human rights safeguards written into that, although, quite clearly, US forces know that the record of Iraqi forces is a very grim one.
Now, President Bush started this mess when he tossed the Army Field Manual in the trash heap and pried open pandora's box for military and consultant abuses to begin, but now as more and more prisoners have been leaving U.S. custody and movin into Iraqi custody exactly what rules and management is being maintained to protect the rights of the accused in this country remains unclear, and not likely to improve in the near future, just like the lack of consistent electricity or sewage handling through many of the cities.
As of now the U.S. has only about 200 in it's custody.
Here's video an interview with the wife and mother of two Iraqi victims who describes the torture her husband has endured, including suffocation, electro-shock and a threat to sign a confession of his "crimes" or else be forced to rape his 13 year-old own grandson.
This is an ongoing human rights catastrophe of our own making, and again - as we continue to give up power and place responsibility for this in the hands of an Iraqi Government that has been completely unable to function or form some type of governing coalition - the odds of correcting this remain slim.
Why was it that we deposed and executed Saddam again exactly?
Decades after torture allegations were first leveled against former Chicago police commander Jon Burge, a federal jury has found him guilty of lying about torturing prisoners into making confessions. Burge has long been accused of overseeing the systematic torture of more than 100 African American men. Two years ago federal prosecutors finally brought charges against Burge—not for torture, but for lying about it. On Monday afternoon, after a five-week trial, Jon Burge was found guilty on all counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about the abuse. He could face up to forty-five years in prison.
Never mind what has happened in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, as of Tuesday a Torture is headed for Jail in America and a 20 Year Campaign vicious of violence against innocent men.
This quote from one of the torture victims, where he nearly broke down with emotion was frankly hard to watch...
MARK CLEMENTS: These people stole my [bleep] life! I hate to tell you the truth. I sat in a prison cell, and I prayed for this day! Today is a victory for every poor person. I was sixteen years old! This is America! Sixteen years old! What are we going to do about other people who are sitting in those prisons? And I’m sorry if I’m offending anyone, but it’s out!
AMY GOODMAN: This was Mark Clements’s response when reporters asked him how he felt.
MARK CLEMENTS: Relieved that finally at least one of these people are now going to finally feel the pain. My daughter is twenty-nine years old. I missed all those years with my daughter, sitting in them prison cells for a crime I did not commit. I do not feel sorry for Jon Burge. That’s all I have to say.
Yes, what are we going to do about all the other people sitting in our prisons based on falsified evidence and falsified coerced confessions?
According to the Innocence Project at least 25% of the people who've been exonerated from U.S. Prisons as a result of DNA evidence had provided false confessions.
Regardless of the age, capacity or state of the confessor, what they often have in common is a decision – at some point during the interrogation process – that confessing will be more beneficial to them than continuing to maintain their innocence.
From threats to torture
Sometimes law enforcement use harsh interrogation tactics with uncooperative suspects. But some police officers, convinced of a suspect’s guilt, occasionally use tactics so persuasive that an innocent person feels compelled to confess. Some suspects have confessed to avoid physical harm or discomfort. Others are told they will be convicted with or without a confession, and that their sentence will be more lenient if they confess. Some are told a confession is the only way to avoid the death penalty.
Oh, and by the way, most of the people - as many as 72% - who we've been holding in Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and Bagram AFB are largely innocent too.
Salon - The Miami Herald’s Carol Rosenberg reports that, this week, yet another federal judge has ordered the Obama administration to release yet another Guantanamo detainee on the ground that there is no persuasive evidence to justify his detention. The latest detainee to win his habeas hearing, Mohammed Hassen, is a 27-year old Yemeni imprisoned by the U.S. without charges for 8 years, since he was 19 years old. He has “long claimed he was captured in Pakistan studying the Quran and had no ties to al Qaida,” and that “he had been unjustly rounded up in a March 2002 dragnet by Pakistani security forces in the city of Faisalabad that targeted Arabs.” Hassen is now the third consecutive detainee ordered freed who was rounded up in that same raid. The Obama DOJ opposed his petition even though the Bush administration had cleared him for release in 2007. He has now spent roughly 30% of his life in a cage at Guantanamo.
Will it take another 20 years for people such as Mohammed Hassen to finally have the justice that Mark Clements just received?
It's been three days since former President George W. Bush casually admitted that he had authorized the water-boarding of Khallid Sheihk Mohammad, and although Huffpo claims there's been outrage - from my perspective America's collective response has been - "Ho Hum, what else is new? - Daddy, you plug that hole yet?
Bush: We Water-boarded Khallid Sheik Mohammad, I'd do it again to save lives.
Sad to say Mr. Ex-President, according to all the available evidence - Water-Boarding KSM didn't save anyone.
Not one.
In 2004, just two years after Bush's Controversial "Harsh Interrogation Program" the CIA's Own Inspector General found that it was both ineffective and illegal.
WASHINGTON — The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.
That undercuts assertions by former vice president Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials that the use of harsh interrogation tactics including waterboarding, which is widely considered torture, was justified because it headed off terrorist attacks.
Bush himself actually shut his program down in 2004 after this report was issued, so why's he blathering now about "He'd do it again - to save lives"?
It didn't save any then, it wouldn't save any now - quite the opposite.
Bush's FBI Director, who ought to know if any lives were saved by the use of harsh techniques, says - that didn't happen.
Mueller: I don't believe it has been the case (that Harsh Tactics have saved lives)
So where are the saved lives George?
As Keith correctly points out, Water-boarding has been a War Crime for over half a century going back as far as the Spanish American War. General Washington banned tortured during the Revolutionary War. The U.S. Prosecuted and executed Japanese Soldiers who Water-Boarded our troops in WWII. The U.S. Court Martialed this soldier for participating in the Water-Boarding of a suspected VietCong member during the Vietnam Conflict.
During the 80's, under President Reagan a Texas Sherrif was prosecuted for water-boarding a suspect. Even recently there is a trial - sadly only a civil case - over a Police Lt. who tortured and gained false confessions from over a 100 Suspects over the course of 2 decades.
Water-boarding has always been a crime, going all the way back to beginning of this nation - IT. IS. UNAMERICAN! When the HELL did that change?
Keith with Air Force Interrogator "Matthew Alexander"
Here's a excerpt from Matthew Alexanders Wapo Op-ed on torture.
as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters, saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, then volunteered to go to Iraq to work as a senior interrogator. What I saw in Iraq still rattles me -- both because it betrays our traditions and because it just doesn't work.
Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there's the pragmatic side: Torture and. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse.
KSM's sworn testimony during his Military Commission was that he lied to us while undergoing harsh tactics - "I Make Up Stories".
As for K.S.M. himself, who (as Jane Mayer writes) was waterboarded, reportedly hung for hours on end from his wrists, beaten, and subjected to other agonies for weeks, Bush said he provided "many details of other plots to kill innocent Americans." K.S.M. was certainly knowledgeable. It would be surprising if he gave up nothing of value. But according to a former senior C.I.A. official, who read all the interrogation reports on K.S.M., "90 percent of it was total fucking bullshit." A former Pentagon analyst adds: "K.S.M. produced no actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how stupid we were."
Yeah, and apparently you guys were pretty fucking stupid.
KSM gave us Bupkis. Not only had the Library Tower plot already been foiled long before KSM was even captured - I think i've notice we still haven't caught Bin Laden! Weren't he and KSM like BFF's?
It's interesting that Bush's justifies the torture of KSM, but not that of Abu Zubaydah particularly since his mistreatment took place months before the OIC memos providing quasi-legal justification for it. And the fact is that according to FBI Agent Ali Soufan, Zubaydah had given us plenty of information, including confirming KSM's identity withou being mistreated, he just wasn't saying what the Bush Administration wanted to hear - "How was Saddam connected to 9-11?"
Officials who analyzed Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation reports say that the reports were afforded the highest value within the Bush administration not because of the many American lives they were going to save but because they could be cited repeatedly against those who doubted the wisdom of ousting Saddam by force.
"We didn’t know he’d been waterboarded and tortured when we did that analysis, and the reports were marked as credible as they could be," the former Pentagon analyst tells me. "The White House knew he’d been tortured. I didn’t, though I was supposed to be evaluating that intelligence." To draw conclusions about the importance of what Abu Zubaydah said without knowing this crucial piece of the background nullified the value of his work. "It seems to me they were using torture to achieve a political objective. I cannot believe that the president and vice president did not know who was being waterboarded, and what was being given up."
This is where the true outrage should stem, the fact that techniques authorized by Bush and Cheney very directly led to the unwarranted death of thousands of U.S. Troops by Emboldening and Enraging the Enemy with images like those from Abu Ghraib.
If fact, you can blame All U.S. Casualties in Iraq on Torture, since at least 1/3rd of the information the Bush Administration used to justify this War - and put on display in front of the United Nations, were produced by either Torture or outright lies.
Specifically I mean the Torture of Ibn Sheik al-Libi, something else that Bush clearly doesn't take pride and credit for in "saving lives" because It Didn't. After he was buried alive by Egyptian forces, al-Libi told us that Saddam's forces had trained members of Al-Qeada on use of Chemical Weapons.
THAT WAS A LIE. (Remember "I make up stories...")
According to the ABC News report, one other detainee who was waterboarded was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the director of the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan, who was captured in November 2001. His current whereabouts are unknown, although there are suspicions that he was finally delivered to the Libyan government. Having slipped off the radar, the government clearly does not want his case revived, not only because it may have to explain what has happened to him, but also because, as a result of the application of "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," al-Libi claimed that Saddam Hussein had offered to train two al-Qaeda operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons.
Al-Libi's "confession" led to President Bush declaring, in October 2002, "Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases," and his claims were, notoriously, included in Colin Powell's speech to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003. The claims were of course, groundless, and were recanted by al-Libi in January 2004, but it took Dan Cloonan, a veteran FBI interrogator, who was resolutely opposed to the use of torture, to explain why they should never have been believed in the first place.
How many lives did that Save, George?
The other two primary sources for the Iraq invasion were a known liar, code-named "Curveball" who gave us information about mobile labs which didn't exist, and a forgery of a receipt from Niger which claimed Iraq had recently purchased (not just attempted but actually possessed) tons of yellowcake uranium ore.
Yet, again - Both were LiES.
When Ambassador Joe Wilson attempted to expose the Yellowcake Lie, we all saw what length's the Bush Administration, with Cheney in the lead, went to to discredit him - including revealing the identity of an active covert CIA operative - Valerie Plame-Wilson.
It's been little reported, but there is currently no doubt the Bush was Directly informed by Saddam's own Head of intelligence that Iraq's WMD's had been destroyed in 1991, yet rather than take heed of this information the Bush Administration had this Iraqi Officer produce a forged letter claiming that Saddam's forces had Trained some of the 9-11 Hijackers.
Again - THAT WAS A LIE.
Suskind says he spoke on the record with U.S. intelligence officials who stated that Bush was informed unequivocally in January 2003 that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. Nonetheless, his book relates, Bush decided to invade Iraq three months later — with the forged letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam bolstering the U.S. rationale to go into war.
,,,
Suskind writes: "The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq — thus showing, finally, that there was an operation link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, something the Vice President's office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade."
He continues: "A handwritten letter, with Habbush's name on it, would be fashioned by CIA and then hand-carried by a CIA agent to Baghdad for dissemination."
Lastly, to yet again justify their baseless invasion and attack on Iraq, Dick Cheney suggested that an Iraqi captive be Water-boarded - even though he was already co-operating - and was VERY CLEARLY PROTECTED BY GENEVA as an enemy solder, not a "Unlaawful Combatant" - he still hadn't told us How Saddam Pulled off 9-11!.
Pardon the poor audio.
There were no WMD's in Iraq - not anymore. Bush was told this two months before he decided to invade - and invaded anyway.
There were NO ACTIVE LINKS, between Saddam and al Qeada - all suggests that there were were either lies generated by torture or forgeries.
Here we have a clear pattern using the techniques created by the Red Chinese to create false confessions for propaganda purposes being used over and over and over again - with and without legal wrangling - to justify the Bush Administrations blood lust again Saddam and misdirected guilt for not paying attention to Osama Bin Laden when everyone - Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger, Richard Clarke and even George Tenet - said that al Qaeda would be the Bush Administration's Number one Priority.
A priority in which they failed, utterly, completely.
More Blood On Bush's hands.
Maybe it's the constant insane sadistic prattling of Liz Cheney and Marc Thieesen, maybe it's acute Jack Bauer poisoning - but after all these lives have been literally thrown away over lies, it's simply amazing that Bush smugly retorts "He'd do it all again...to save lives"
And America shrugs...
8,000 Dead on YOUR Watch Mr. President, ON YOUR WATCH!
Whose life did you save George, besides your own political life?
"He'd do it again.. " and America yawns....
War Crimes have no Statute of Limitations.
Is America's indifference a greater indictment of Bush and his campaign to sanitize evil, or of us?
Vyan
Update: It should be noted that Eric Holder has indeed selected Special Prosecutor John Durham to look into this issue. Exactly how far up or down the chain of command he will take this issue remains in question, but it is being addressed legally.
Starting in January of 2002 Bush began to preemptively immunize himself from prosecution under 18 USC 2441 (the War Crimes Act) by issuing executive orders which excepted so-called "enemy Combatants" from Geneva protections (and hence War Crimes protection) on the advice of Alberto Gonzales. I personally don't think that action was legal since the President doesn't make law, congress does - but it did begin a clear pattern of conspiracy to Torture even before the first high-value detainee Zubaydah was even captured in March of that year. These were followed by the Yoo Memos in August after complaints by the FBI and DOJ attorneys about Zubaydah's handling using SERE techniques by contractors. One problem with the Bush defense here is that Yoo didn't have the authority to issue those memos, Jay Bybee did - and another is that the separate Torture Statute (18 USC 2340) with it's own conspiracy section wasn't papered over until Jay Bybee determined that it required "near organ failure or death" for any treatment to be torture when he finally did issue a memo of his own.
This leaves a window from March to August - while Zubaydah was being treated using SERE-like tactics where the Torture Statue (2340) could apply even if Bush's memos had blocked Geneva. This is also why Bush talks about KSM's treatment openly, which didn't occur until later after all this legal cover was established, but not Zubaydah. It may also be why the tapes of Zubaydaah's interrogation were illegally destroyed. Bush also doesn't talk about Jose Padilla who was a U.S. Citizen and clearly protected by U.S. Law, not just Geneva. But a third problem arises, these weren't the only people subjected to this treatment and several of them even went beyond the "Bybee Standard" of protection - They died under Torture
So read several of the 44 US military autopsy reports on the ACLU website -evidence of extensive abuse of US detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan 2002 through 2004. Anthony Romero, Executive Director of ACLU stated, "There is no question that US interrogations have resulted in deaths." ACLU attorney Amrit Sing adds, "These documents present irrefutable evidence that US operatives tortured detainees to death during interrogations."
Conspiracy under both 2441 and 2340 when the subject dies, can lead to the Death Penalty. These cases are the ones most likely to be looked at by Durham, where interrogators went far outside even the framework provided by Gonzales, Yoo and Bybee - but the problem stems from the framework itself, not the act of a "few individuals".
The program was essentially shutdown after criticism from the CIA Inspector Generals Report in 2005, the Yoo/Bybee memos were later rescinded by Bradbury. Then the rest of Bush's erector set of memo's were ruled invalid by Hamdan v Rumfeld in 2006 which re-established Geneva even for Enemy Combatants. Bush then attempted to paper this over with the Military Commissions Act, which stripped Habeus protection from detainees, continued to allow coerced confessions as admissible. The torture program was Official over, but Bush still wanted access to the ill-gained "fruits" without having to admit they were illegal methods in the first place.
In 2007, despite Hamdan and the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act - after fierce urging by Cheney, Bush re-instituted parts of the program (w/o water-boarding), in clear violation of the law. Not only would he do it again - He DID it again.
It's been a long time waiting for someone to held accountable for the torture and human rights violations we all know have been going on for some time. And today an actual torture trial is beginning, but it's happeneing nowhere near where most of us would expect...
You wouldn't think such a thing could've happened in America, such a thing shouldn't happen in America - but it did. Repeatedly.
Over 100 African-American men have raised allegations that they were tortured - using a hanging technique, mock executions with a shotgun barrel in their mouth and electro-shock of their testicles with a cattle prod - by a Chicago police unit led by Lt. Jon Burge.
Unfortunately today's trial isn't for those offenses as the statute of limitations has already run out on them, but instead this is an obstruction of justice and perjury case being handed by a prosecutor many of us are highly familiary with.
Fitzgerald also acknowledged that, at least in some respects, Burge was being charged with what was available to authorities now. The statute of limitations has expired on the torture itself, but prosecutors at least could hold him accountable for lying about it decades later.
A special prosecutors' report paid for by Cook County and released in 2006 concluded that dozens of suspects had been tortured by Chicago police but that no one could be prosecuted because the statute of limitations had run out.
Today's indictment gets around that legal problem by charging Burge with perjury, not with any instances of actual torture. Burge denied any torture took place while answering written questions in 2003 as part of the lawsuit filed by Hobley, one of the alleged victims. According to the indictment, the Hobley lawsuit included a specific allegation that police officers placed a plastic bag over Hobley's head until he lost consciousness. The indictment cites the questions and answers during the civil questioning, noting that Burge was asked whether he ever used torture methods--including beatings, the use of restraints or machines to deliver electric shocks--or whether other officers were involved.
Burge objected to the question as overly broad, and then answered: "I have never used any techniques set forth above as a means of improper coercion of suspects while in detention or during interrogation."
After returning from Vietnam where he was held as a P.O.W. and himself subjected to extreme "Harsh Interrogation" - Burge became a Chicago Police officer and began using some of the techniques he'd be shown on suspects in the South Side of Chicago in the early 70's.
This went on for decades, involving multiple officers and even prosecutors in the District Attorney's office who all aided in the coverup. To date only one police whistle-blower has been willing to come forward, although he remains a reluctant and unwilling witness even today.
As Flint Taylor attorney for many of the falsely accused and convicted men stated on Democracy Now.
FLINT TAYLOR: Well, all these years, the first time that anyone who worked with Burge came forward in any form was in 1989. And they—a detective anonymously wrote me and my partners, while we were on trial in a civil torture case, and told us about other victims of torture and told us that other men, including those who tortured Darrell, were participants in this ring of torture. That started our investigation, and it started us to unpeel the 110 victims of torture that we know about today. But no one—that man or woman didn’t come forward publicly. It was an anonymous contact. It was anonymous letters. And we never knew who that person was.
It wasn’t until 2004, after the men were pardoned and we had lawsuits for them, that we were able to go out and talk to retired detectives who were black, and they told us, now that they had retired, that they knew certain things. They had seen the torture box. They knew it was an open secret. They heard screaming. But Burge kept them out of the loop, because he knew—because they were African American, he didn’t trust them with the secret of the torture.
However, when the government investigated the case recently, with the power of immunity, the grant of immunity, they were able to get this white detective, who had been involved in several cases of where torture was alleged, including one that—of a victim who was going to testify for the government, and they gave him immunity, and apparently, although we haven’t seen the transcript, he reluctantly told what he knew about this incident of torture and perhaps others. Now, he is not a voluntary witness. He is not a happy witness. He is very scared. But we’re have hopeful that his testimony will be significant in terms of finally revealing at least one instance of torture from the inside and breaking the code of silence in that way. And if it is, and that’s what his testimony is, then it’s going to be obviously a significant crack in the conspiracy or code of silence.
This is an American Tragedy, dozens of innocent men wrongly convicted - some sent to Death Row, dozens of cases mishandled to the extent that Justice may never be properly served and very likely that the genuine guilty parties remained free and able to commit even more crimes as we saw when Richard Jewel was falsely accused of the Olympic Park Bombing and Robert Rudolph was left to kill again.. and again.
So far this has only been a local Chicago Story, but maybe it needs to be addressed nationally - if only we had a President who had some stake or familiarity with the issue having lived in an area like this one, one who could champion the cause of Justice, Fairness and the Rule of Law to Remove the Statute of Limitations on TORTURE so that credible cases could be prosecuted at anytime... anywhere....
I actually used to like the show "24" during it's first season, but when you have an essentially ridiculous premise - continuing to ratchet it up more and more eventually led the show to a very dark place.
But what's actually infuriating is how much the show's own creators have been in deep denial about what the show actually became...
"To say that we've been some ... mouthpiece for some political point of view — it's not only specious — but I promise you, it is insane.
Insane? Really, you don't want to go there Howard.
Let's start with Laura Ingraham...
Ingraham: The Average American, Loves "24". In my mind that's as much of a national referendum on the use of harsh tactics on al Qeada as we're likely to get.
"Insane" eh? Maybe in that case. How about the political view of show creator Joel Surnow who is an open and devout Conservative.
For all its fictional liberties, “24” depicts the fight against Islamist extremism much as the Bush Administration has defined it: as an all-consuming struggle for America’s survival that demands the toughest of tactics. Not long after September 11th, Vice-President Dick Cheney alluded vaguely to the fact that America must begin working through the “dark side” in countering terrorism. On “24,” the dark side is on full view. Surnow, who has jokingly called himself a “right-wing nut job,” shares his show’s hard-line perspective. Speaking of torture, he said, “Isn’t it obvious that if there was a nuke in New York City that was about to blow—or any other city in this country—that, even if you were going to go to jail, it would be the right thing to do?”
Surnow, for his part, revels in his minority status inside the left-leaning entertainment industry. “Conservatives are the new oppressed class,” he joked in his office. “Isn’t it bizarre that in Hollywood it’s easier to come out as gay than as conservative?” His success with “24,” he said, has protected him from the more righteous elements of the Hollywood establishment. “Right now, they have to be nice to me,” he said. “But if the show tanks I’m sure they’ll kill me.” He spoke of his new conservative comedy show as an even bigger risk than “24.” “I’ll be front and center on the new show,” he said, then joked, “I’m ruining my chances of ever working again in Hollywood.”
That show actually did tank, I haven't seen Surnow since.
Surnow’s rightward turn was encouraged by one of his best friends, Cyrus Nowrasteh, a hard-core conservative who, in 2006, wrote and produced “The Path to 9/11,” a controversial ABC miniseries that presented President Clinton as having largely ignored the threat posed by Al Qaeda. (The show was denounced as defamatory by Democrats and by members of the 9/11 Commission; their complaints led ABC to call the program a “dramatization,” not a “documentary.”) Surnow and Nowrasteh met in 1985, when they worked together on “The Equalizer.” Nowrasteh, the son of a deposed adviser to the Shah of Iran, grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, where, like Surnow, he was alienated by the radicalism around him. He told me that he and Surnow, in addition to sharing an admiration for Reagan, found “L.A. a stultifying, stifling place because everyone thinks alike.” Nowrasteh said that he and Surnow regard “24” as a kind of wish fulfillment for America. “Every American wishes we had someone out there quietly taking care of business,” he said. “It’s a deep, dark ugly world out there. Maybe this is what Ollie North was trying to do. It would be nice to have a secret government that can get the answers and take care of business—even kill people. Jack Bauer fulfills that fantasy.”
And that's not a "Political" viewpoint? Seriously. Because of Nowreateh hit piece on the Clinton Administration which Lied in order to blame him for 9/11, which was presented without commercials on ABC - I've been boycotting that Network for years. So I've never seen an episode of Lost, untll the final one. I have been watching "V", but mostly to see if ABC is using it as a way to blast the Obama Administration over Healthcare - which so far they really haven't been.
Back to Gordon.
Any fly on the wall and anyone who's been there would tell you the same. So unfortunately, look — the show is a show for one thing. It's a thriller in the vein of Bourne Identity or Rambo or Dirty Harry. And the hero finds the bad guy and shakes out of him where the bomb is.
Hey, um, Howard - THAT is a political point of view. It's a short cut, it's simple-minded, and frankly most actual interrogators say it doesn't work.
"24" shows more torture than any other program on tv. Over and over again the heroes of the program are shown using torture to "break" detainees.
Now certainly Hollywood deserves a certain amount of artistic license and leeway - they're telling a story, and the primary criteria should be "Is it a Good Story?" - but unfortunately for "24" some of what is "Good" has rarely included anything even remotely like reality.
But not according to Gordon.
Frankly, for the first five years, I don't think you could find a single article or op-ed piece that used the word 'torture' or described that this was somehow morally repugnant or corrosive or anything. I think what happened was, when Abu Ghraib happened and Guantanamo happened — the show certainly benefited from some kind of post-9/11 wish fulfillment; you had a guy who cut to the chase, who did whatever was necessary, and again there was some wish fulfillment involved — I do think the show experienced some of the blowback. We did understand that the climate had changed, because of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, it had changed. ... [A]nd it put us into a conundrum. Honestly, at the end of Season 6 — where Jack had been acting a certain way — we had a choice: Either we renounce the series and admit we're a bunch of torture-mongering, morally corrosive torture pornographers or we find a way of confronting this issue and this changed world that we're in. And, in a strange way, it gave us fodder for the seventh season."
Here's the thing that Howard really doesn't get... some of the events at Guantanamo and abu Ghraib happened because of 24!. That's not me saying that... that's what some of the people on the ground have said.
In his NPR interview Gordon admits that they did meet with actual interrogators and he laments that real interrogation takes time and involves building trust - not using pain management or fear. The inherent problem with "24" is that they don't have the TIME to accurately display that process.
So as a result, they've had to LIE TO US the entire time - and this has given a mistaken impression that you can "Shake it out of them" which has resonated even with our troops in the field.
For those who would argue that the ultimate fault for abu Ghraib belongs with military leadership, you would be correct. President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld threw out the rules, they literally tossed the Army Field Manual (which was written to be consistent with Geneva) Out The Window!. They then began experimenting with a series of "24-ish" techniques, and after experienced FBI interrogators in the field began to object - and threatened to Arrest the CIA Contractors who were mistreating detainees, they sought legal cover from handpicked DOJ lawyers - who didn't look at a single example of Case Law, or previous trials and even executions of people who has used Waterboarding in the past - to justify and rationalize these illegal and ineffective techniques.
The fact is that the soldiers in the field had NO GUIDANCE - almost nobody has ever done a dramatic telling of what a real interrogation actually takes, because it takes too long - so yes, they did look to the only examples they had available, and that was Jack Bauer.
Even after eight seasons and the intervention of the Commandant of West Point, in the end "24" still failed. They never once - NOT ONCE - depicted anyone being tortured who LIED JUST TO MAKE IT STOP, except for Jack himself (who just didn't say anything) or his brother (who didn't mention the involvement of Jack's Dad in that years plot). Nobody gave them bogus information and led them down a rabbit hole or into a trap, to the very end they maintained the delusion that torture is "Effective" when the fact is - it's not.
Air Force Interrogator Matthew Alexander: I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse.
Thanks Jack, nice job.
In the finale of the show, Jack goes on a violent rampage to uncover a conspiracy which is being protected by the President herself. He kidnaps and tortures a Russian assassin who had killed his girlfriend, ultimately disemboweling him - he shoots Secret Service agents, kidnaps former President Logan and beats him until he gets the information he wants. After he's shot by his friend Chloe and captured, he bites off the ear of Logan's Chief Aide.
The entire point of Jack's rampage is his desire to derail a Peace Agreement between the U.S., IRK (Iran) and the Russian Federation. This betrays a deeply wingnutty point of view, distrust in the U.N. and the efficacy of international agreements. Jack feels that the Russians committed crimes (which they did) in order to block the agreement and he objects to Logan essentially blackmailing them into the agreement - so he goes on to commit a shitload of Crimes to prevent it including multiple counts of cold-blooded murder, and when the show ends... we're supposed to feel sorry for poor little Jack, now exiled, alone and on the run?
Frack That.
He's a butcher. A sadistic mad dog psychopath. Making that man a "Hero" has been an unspeakable atrocity.
And now it's over... good riddance.
Vyan
Update There's one more thing I gotta address...
Gordon: I would hope that most people know the difference between fantasy and reality...
Dude, we just went through 8 years where most of the Bush Administration didn't know the difference between a "clear and credible threat of WMD" and a pack of bullshit, wrapped in lies (gained under tortore!!) and served on a forged Niger purchase order.
They didn't know that "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." was NOT a "Historical Document".
They didn't know that "The Levees might be Over-topped" might mean that New Orleans was about to become one big giant bowl of Toxic Gumbo!
Some of them still don't know the difference between and a Kenyan and a Hawaiian!.
Some of them still think Fascism and Marxism are the same damn thing as Socialism!
Some of them don't know the difference between a Civilian Court System that has successfully prosecuted hundreds of terrorist suspects since 9-11, and a Military Commission system that's only prosecuted TWO of them.
Some think "Miranda" is a dirty word and still don't realize that if you want to detain someone "indefinitely", they would have to be a P.O.W. in an ongoing conflict and that in a military interrogation the only thing they can legally ask under Geneva would be "Name, Rank and Serial Number".
Some of the still are still asking "Where's the Oil" - "The impact will be Mild" just as Louisiana is thinking that their new state bird is about to be become the Brown Oily Pelican.
I mean, there are probably some people who think Lost was just the Reality Show "Survivor X-Treme!" and are still wondering "Who got the $1 Million?"
Yet again the closer we get to Cheney's dreaded "Holy Grail" memos which allegedly prove the Effectiveness of Harsh Interrogation Torture, the more those memos look like nothing more than Pyrite since what they claim simply didn't happen.
For some time, former Vice President Dick Cheney has insisted that the declassification of various CIA memos will prove once and for all that the Bush administration's torture regime was successful at keeping America safe. But as Michael Isikoff reported over the weekend, the recently-released report from the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility contains disclosures that "could prove awkward for Cheney and his supporters."
OLBERMANN: Give me context for this because you were there; what Cheney meant to the whole concept of enhanced interrogation, as they phrased it, and what this erroneous memo meant to Cheney's role in that.
WILKERSON: I'm convinced that David Addington in Cheney's office was the brainchild of what John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Douglas Feith, Jim Haines over at Defense OSD, general counsel, all wound up producing. Here's what you discovered, what the memo I think corroborates-what I suspected all along was that they were doing this sort of thing, this enhanced interrogation, this torture, to people long before the legal opinion was ever asked for, and thus rendered Bybee and Yoo and by others at OCL and the Department of Justice.
So I think this corroborates that as early as May, possibly, in 2002, they were using these techniques, and then they went to Justice and said, we have cold feet; how about giving us legal justification. Which makes what Yoo and Bybee and others did even more heinous, in my view.
The key problem with the dates is the fact that the supposed key fact extracted from Abu Zubaydah was the identify of Jose Padilla - only Padilla was arrested in may, and the memos authorizing water-boarding and harsh techniques weren't even written. until August.
This Date problem is something that was first noted in 2008 by Scott Horton in the L.A. Times.
... Yoo's account of how and why the torture memos were crafted may not hold up. Congress is preparing hearings into the subject, and they have invited Yoo to testify. International law scholar Philippe Sands and other writers have punched holes in Yoo's claims about the facts. It increasingly appears that the Bush interrogation program was already being used before Yoo was asked to write an opinion. He may therefore have provided after-the-fact legal cover. That would help explain why Yoo strained to take so many implausible positions in the memos.
In March and April Zubaydah was being interrogated largely by FBI Agent Ali Soufan, and it's long been Soufan's contention that he gained information about Padilla without using harsh techniques, although there remains ssome despute and confusion on this because Soufan wasn't theonly person interrogating Zudaydah, he was also being talked to by CIA personnel and CiA Contractors.
It was the Contractors who mistreated Zubaydah, not regular CIA personnel - at one point it got so bad Soufan nearly Arrested them.
The agent, Ali Soufan, was known as one of the bureau's top experts on Al Qaeda. He also had a reputation as a shrewd interrogator who could work fluently in both English and Arabic. Soufan yelled at one CIA contractor and told him that what he was doing was wrong, ineffective and an affront to American values. At one point, Soufan discovered a dark wooden "confinement box" that the contractor had built for Abu Zubaydah. It looked, Soufan recalls, "like a coffin." The mercurial agent erupted in anger, got on a secure phone line and called Pasquale D'Amuro, then the FBI assistant director for counterterrorism. "I swear to God," he shouted, "I'm going to arrest these guys!"
D'Amuro and other officials were alarmed at what they heard from Soufan. They fretted about the political consequences of abusive interrogations and the Washington blowback they thought was inevitable, say two high-ranking FBI sources who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. According to a later Justice Department inspector general's report, D'Amuro warned FBI Director Bob Mueller that such activities would eventually be investigated. "Someday, people are going to be sitting in front of green felt tables having to testify about all of this," D'Amuro said, according to one of the sources.
Mueller ordered Soufan and a second FBI agent home. He then directed that bureau personnel no longer participate in CIA interrogations. In the corridors of the White House, Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies, heated debates ensued. Three months later, on Aug. 1, 2002, Justice lawyers issued a chilling memo blessing everything the CIA contractors had proposed—including waterboarding, or simulated drowning, a ghoulish technique that was administered to Abu Zubaydah 83 times.
So the question is did Soufan get the information as he claims, or did the contractors he nearly arrested get it - without legal authorization?
The other question is that if Zubaydah had already given up both Padilla and KSM as Soufan contends, why did they need to start using Harsh Techniques at all - unless they weren't hearing what they wanted to hear, which at the time was How is Saddam Huessein connected to al Qaeda and 9-11?"
As Wilkerson correctly points out it was the false claim that Saddam had trained al Qaeda on using WMD's actually was generated using torture from Ibn Shayk al-Libi whose confession was used to convince Colin Powell into putting on his Iraq presentation to the UN.
Soufan's primary critic has been former Bush Speechwriter Marc Thiessen who just yesterday - after reports that Padilla was arrested months before the Yoo/Bybee memos were written - appeared live at the Heritage Foundation to continue hawking his book "Courting Disaster":
I actually crashed the Live Facebook Event and posted some of the following comments/critiques as Thiessen was spouting his rhetoric: (Links and additional text added)
- OPR report confirms that information from Zubaydah about Padilla was gained *before* Water-boarding
- If we're in a "War on Terror" then yes, al Qaeda members are "Prisoners of War" and protected by Geneva - confirmed by Hamden v Rumsfeld
- Torture was banned by McCain's Detainee Treatment Act (Said in response to Thiessen claiming Obama didn't ban Torture, technically he didn't he just ordered the Army Field Manual be used by CIA in accord with the DTA)
- Waterboarding was prosecuted as a War Crime in WWII and Vietnam, this was before Reagan signed UN Convention Against Torture in 1988 & Congress passed War Crimes Act in 1993 (Thiessen contends Water-boarding isn't Torture)
- During WWII the English gained the best intelligence from Top Nazi Generals by treating them Humanely
- Thiessen Lies when he says "No one in bush Admin suggested Saddam was connected to 9-11" Bush had Habbush, head of Iraqi intelligence making that exact claim that Mohammod Atta had been trained by Saddams Intel forces (In a forged letter). Yes, I've read UNCAT & War Crimes Act. (In response to someone asking wear I earned my law degree and if I'd read the UN Convention Against Torture & War Crimes Act - I have, they're clear enough for a layman to understand, "No affronts to Personal Dignity" leaves zero wiggle room, No means "No".)
- War Crimes (Act 18 USC 2441) states "All Greavious (sic) violations of Geneva" are punishable by 5 years in prison or death (AG Gonzales was aware of this enough to argue that Bush should determine that Al Qeada and Taliban were not covered by Geneva in order to avoid being prosecuted for War Crimes. Bush signed order to this effect in Feb of 2002 - this is very likely the letter than the CIA Contractors waved in Soufan's face - "We gave the green light from Gonzales!" - they said. That Letter still didn't cover the Torture Statute (18 USC 2340) - an omission that was addressed by a Bybee memo that redefined any Torture short of Death literally out of existence - and was later overturned by Hamdan v Rumsfeld which re-guaranteed Geneva protections for All Detainees)
- Thiessen claims water-boarding KSM stopped Library Tower Plot - yet it was already stopped, whose a monster? (In response to Thiessen claiming those who oppose harsh techniques are "monstrous" because it will lead to Americans dying horribly)
- FBI Agent Ali Soufan claims he got Padillia ID from Zubaydah before Harsh Techniques, Thiessens book - which I've reviewed disputes this claiming Soufan wouldn't know since he was gone by June, but Padilla was arrested in May - how's that work?
- Kris, this isn't about the terrorist behavior, it's about our behavior under our laws and Constitution - ever heard of the 8th Amendment? (In response to commenter saying we should attack terrorists as hard as they attack us. What are we in kindergarden - "I know you are but what am I?")
- Kris, if we can just use "any available resource" why don't we just Nuke Afghanistan and Pakistan and be done with it? (Something that Yoo stated the President can do - without Congressional approval)
- The techniques Thiessen is endorsing were developed by the Communists to force compliance and gain False Political Confessions, we trained our Special Forces in S.E.R.E to resist - Bush used that training as basis for program
- Kris, Supreme Court has already established - as documented by 14th Amendment - that anyone under U.S. Jurisdictions has Equal Protection of Law, regardless of where they came from, even Terrorists see Hamdan v Rumsfeld
- What do we do? Lots of things that are all fully legal and for more effective. Look up Interrogator Matthew Alexander, who helped find and kill Zarqawi Head of Al Qaeda ni Iraq. It'll open your eyes to possibilities
It was lively debate, but it's sad to say most of them weren't up on the facts or the law. The only thing I didn't respond to during the chat was Thiessen's claim that after water-boarding KSM gave us a"Master's Class" on the inner workings of al Qaeda, yet he said during his Military commissions that after he was Tortured he just told us Stories, plus he clearly didn't lead us to Bin Laden.
Seems to me we more likely got a "Master's Class" in bullshit.
After slipping out from his undisclosed bunker, Richard B. Cheney appeared On This Week and yet again criticized President Obama for not following in his torture-monger foot steps.
"I think you ought to have all of those capabilities on the table," Cheney told ABC's Jonathan Karl Sunday.
Cheney also said he opposed the Obama administration's ban on waterboarding.
"He announced when he came in last year that they would never use anything other than the U.S. Army manual, which doesn't include those techniques," Cheney said. "I think that's a mistake."
Before I get into the meat of this let me first give Dick some credit for correctly pointing out that Sarah Palin is a War-mongering Super Wingnut for suggesting Obama should go to War with Iran to get re-elected, and for exposing John McCain as a liar and hypocrite for ignoring the Militaries own decision making process on "Don't Ask Don't Tell".
As I pointed out just yesterday there is no evidence - ZERO - that Cheney's Torture-Lite(tm) techniques would have given us better information that what we're already getting from Omar AbdulMutallab by gaining the cooperation and support of his family.
For the record, he's wasn't Mirandized until 9 Hours After his arrest. Richard Reid the "Show Bomber" whose still isn't an American Citizen was Mirandized in the first five minutes back in 2001.
And yes, what Cheney is suggesting is Torture - Cheney's own former Chief of Staff at the Pentagon Ruled that it was in Military Court with a detainee who wasn't even water-boarded.
These techniques were developed by Communist Countries in order to illicit false confessions for political purposes - the same way that Cheney tried to have the Iraqi Head of Security Water-boarded so that he would claim Saddam had something to do with 9-11.
Also the system that Cheney continues to champion that he and Bush "put in place" was smashed to bits by the Supreme Court as Unconstitutional as Hamdan v Rumsfeld in 2006.
(c) Because UCMJ Article 36 has not been complied with here, the rules specified for Hamdan's commission trial are illegal. The procedures governing such trials historically have been the same as those governing courts-martial. Although this uniformity principle is not inflexible and does not preclude all departures from courts-martial procedures, any such departure must be tailored to the exigency that necessitates it.
...
(d) The procedures adopted to try Hamdan also violate the Geneva Conventions. The D. C. Circuit dismissed Hamdan's challenge in this regard on the grounds, inter alia, that the Conventions are not judicially enforceable and that, in any event, Hamdan is not entitled to their protections. Neither of these grounds is persuasive.
Now Bush and Congress responded to this decision with the Military Commissions Act, but even the tribunals established under this act have had a Rocky Road with at least SEVEN Prosecutors who've resigned in protest because of the disorganization of the Commissions and slipshod handling of the evidence.
"I am highly concerned, to the point that I believe I can no longer serve as a prosecutor at the Commissions, about the slipshod, uncertain 'procedure' for affording defense counsel discovery."
Even before Hamdan in 2004 the CIA Inspector General had ruled that the program was deeply illegal and ineffective.
The real trouble began on May 7, 2004, the day the C.I.A. inspector general, John L. Helgerson, completed a devastating report. In thousands of pages, it challenged the legality of some interrogation methods, found that interrogators were exceeding the rules imposed by the Justice Department and questioned the effectiveness of the entire program.
Because of this Cheney's pet interrogation program was all but dead by 2005.
And even if AbdulMuttalab had been put into the Military System, he would have still be required to have a lawyer as per a decision from former Federal Judge (And Bush Attorney General) Michael Mukasey ruled in the Jose Padilla Case.
Via Glenn Greenwald
I want to highlight one extremely relevant consideration concerning Judge Mukasey -- the impressive role he played in presiding over the Jose Padilla case in its earliest stages. After Padilla was first detained in April 2002 and declared an "enemy combatant," he was held incommunicado, denied all access to the outside the world, including counsel, and the Bush administration refused to charge him with any crimes. A lawsuit was filed on Padilla's behalf by a New York criminal defense lawyer, Donna Newman, demanding that Padilla be accorded the right to petition for habeas corpus and that, first, he be allowed access to a lawyer. That lawsuit was assigned to Judge Mukasey, which almost certainly made the Bush DOJ happy.
But any such happiness proved to be unwarranted. Judge Mukasey repeatedly defied the demands of the Bush administration, ruled against them, excoriated them on multiple occasions for failing to comply with his legally issued orders, and ruled that Padilla was entitled to contest the factual claims of the government and to have access to lawyers. He issued these rulings in 2002 and 2003, when virtually nobody was defying the Bush administration on anything, let alone on assertions of executive power to combat the Terrorists. And he made these rulings in the face of what was became the standard Bush claim that unless there was complete acquiescence to all claimed powers by the President, a Terrorist attack would occur and the blood would be on the hands of those who impeded the President.
Both Jose Padilla and Ali Al-marri, the only two persons arrested for terrorism on U.S. Soil who actually were placed in Military Custody, were both ultimately tried and convicted in civilian courts.
So essentially what Cheney suggests shouldn've been "on the table" really isn't even legally viable. It's nowhere near the table, in fact it's not even in the same room as the law and the Constitution.
Speaking of "Granting Terrorist the Rights of Americans" - I thought Conservatives believed that the one thing that makes America unique and "Superior" to other countries was idea that Human Rights are granted By God rather than by government, isn't that what makes them "Inalienable"?
Dick Move Number 2 was Cheney's attempt to take Credit for the Iraq Withdrawal, which conventiently ignores how long Bush and Cheney both argued as recently as last June that the last thing we should do in Iraq - is set a date for Withdrawal or else chaos might erupt as the insurgent simply "Wait for us to leave".
Mr. Cheney told The Washington Times’ America’s Morning News radio show that he is a strong believer in Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and that the general is doing what needs to be done.
“But what he says concerns me: That there is still a continuing problem. One might speculate that insurgents are waiting as soon as they get an opportunity to launch more attacks.
Unlike the Bush Administration the Obama Presidency actually has a chance to "Win" the War on Al Qeada by aggressively pursuing them in Afghanistan (where a brand new massive offensive was just announced) and working closely with our allies in Pakistan as well as drying up their recruitment and re-enforcements by recommitting our country to the Rule of Law, our own Constitution, Ideals of Justice, Fairplay and the Geneva Conventions.
Y'know - everything that you FAILED to do - Dick.
Vyan
P.S. And Cheney et al. may not entirely be out of legal jeopardy on this, there's considerable evidence the Abu Zubaydah was abused long before the Yoo, Bybee memos were even written. The British inquiry into the Iraq War has found that Binyam Mohammed was brutally tortured also before the OLC Authorizing Memos.
In 1983 a Texas Sherrif was prosecuted and sentenced to 10 Years for water-boarding a suspect. All of that was before the President Reagan signed the U.N. Convention against Torture in 1988, and the War Crimes Act as passed in 1994. With Eric Holder's Special Prosecutor still out there investigating this issue, Cheney is a long way from being entirely "Safe".
Last Night was the Season Premier of "24" - Before the second commercial break Retired CTU Agent Jack Bauer had already put a gun to someone's throat, shouting "Tell Me Everything You Know!" into his face.
This he did when the person was voluntarily coming to give him information in the first place.
If the mendacity of such a scenario has become somewhat blase after 8 years of struggle with international terrorism, the following real life story as Reported by Harper's of the systematic cover-up of the death of three Gitmo Detainee's who may very well have been tortured to death in 2006 should send a chill down your spine.
Were these the murders that Jack Wrought?
Today is MLK Day. A single day dedicated to a man who helped raise the nations awareness to a system of brutality and injustice that had plagued this nation from it's inception. A system that may indeed continue today in new forms and new shapes.
In the many years since 9-11 we've been told repeatedly that we needed to "Re-Write" the old rules. To take the battle to the enemy and to work - sometimes - "On the Dark Side".
The question is "Re-Write them into what?" - and using who or what as a guidepost?
U.S. Soldiers have openly admitted that once the Army Field Manual and Geneva Conventions were official thrown out (by Bush and Rumsfeld in 2002), those in the field began to make up their own rules. And one of the places they did turn to- were television actions stars like Jack Bauer.
The television show 24 has become a foreign policy guide for the right wing. Numerous conservative pundits have cited 24 as a sanction for harsh interrogation practices. In September, Laura Ingraham stated, "The average American out there loves the show 24. ... In my mind that’s close to a national referendum that it’s OK to use tough tactics against high-level Al Qaeda operatives as we’re going to get."
Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan recently told the 24 producers that he was concerned that the show’s promotion of illegal torture "was having a damaging effect on young troops."
In an interview with Newsweek, former U.S. Army specialist Tony Lagouranis, who left the military with an honorable discharge in 2005, confirms Finnegans fears — that U.S. soldiers did take cues from 24 to torture prisoners:
Interrogators didn’t have guidance from the military on what to do because we were told that the Geneva Conventions didn’t apply any more. So our training was obsolete, and we were encouraged to be creative. We turned to television and movies to look for ways of interrogating. I can say that I saw that with myself, also. I would adopt the posture of the television or movie interrogator, thinking that establishing that simple power arrangement, establishing absolute power over the detainee, would force him to break. ...
[We adopted mock] executions and mock electrocution, stress positions, isolation, hypothermia. Threatening to execute family members or rape detainees’ wives and things like that.
I'm not normally one to look at Art as an explanation for the actions of people in the Real World. Far From it. But this may be one case where Tough Guy Revenge Fantasy of the Right-Wing Baeur-ites may have run smack face-first into Hard Reality resulting in a trio of War Crimes.
The Official Story is that 32-year-old Salah Ahmed Al-Salami from Yemen, 30-year-old Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi from Saudi Arabia and 22-year-old Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani also from Saudi Arabia, all committed suicide. Simultaneously, in three different, non-adjacent cells, using the exact same method - three men tied their own hands (one of whom had their feet tied), stuffed rags down their own throats, tied nooses made of bed sheets and t-shirts around their own necks, perched themselves on the sink in the cells and lept to their deaths.
Faculty and Students from SETON HALL in New Jersey analysed the Official NCIS Report, which was released two years after the incident, and their findings were that the a story told by the Report is frankly not possible to believe. Supposedly the detainees weren't found until at least two hours later, long enough for Rigor-mortis to set in, yet their cells are supposed to be checked by Guards every ten-minutes. They somehow managed to use sheets to block the view into their cells, and also bunch them up to make it appear as if they were in bed sleeping - how exactly they acquired this many extra sheets is not explained - yet, no guards were disciplined for failing to check on them or failing to notice they have managed to completely barricade themselves.
The Commander of the Camp at the time, then Rear Admiral Harry Harris claimed that the suicides were actually an attack on the Camp.
“I believe this was not an act of desperation,” he said, “but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”
But the Official Story has begun to break down as four former Army Intelligence non-commissioned Officers who were present during the events of June 9th, 2006 - yet NCIS Investigator never talked to them, and their commanding Officers order to remain silent - have now come forward to e interviewed by Harpers.
They describe a completely difference scenario, where the three prisoners in question had been removed from the primary base and taken to a second secret location - which they nicknamed "Camp No" - out the outskirts of the base.
"Camp No" isn't supposed to exist. It's a small bunker without a guard tower, protected by concertina wire - which is serviced by a White Van (Called the "Paddy Wagon") which moves one prisoner at a time in and out. All visitors and movement on the base is supposed to be documented and logged - all movement that is except for movements made by the "Paddy Wagon". On the Night in question Sgt. Joe Hickman of the Army Reserves, who in civilian life has worked as a private investigator, observed the Paddy Wagon moving between Alpha Block and Camp No making at least three trips - then returning once more and backing up to the medical facility, just before all hell broke lose.
Another thirty minutes passed. Then, as Hickman and [Army Specialist Christopher] Penvose both recall, Camp Delta suddenly “lit up”—stadium-style flood lights were turned on, and the camp became the scene of frenzied activity, filling with personnel in and out of uniform. Hickman headed to the clinic, which appeared to be the center of activity, to learn the reason for the commotion. He asked a distraught medical corpsman what had happened. She said three dead prisoners had been delivered to the clinic. Hickman recalled her saying that they had died because they had rags stuffed down their throats, and that one of them was severely bruised. {Specialist Tony] Davila told me he spoke to Navy guards who said the men had died as the result of having rags stuffed down their throats.
The story of having rags stuff down their throats is one that is highly similar to the story told by another detainee who went through similar treatment that same night - a 42-year-old Saudi Arab name Shaker Aamer in Federal Court filings supplied by his attorney.
On June 9th, 2006, [Aamer] was beaten for two and a half hours straight. Seven naval military police participated in his beating. Mr. Aamer stated he had refused to provide a retina scan and fingerprints. He reported to me that he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs. The MPs inflicted so much pain, Mr. Aamer said he thought he was going to die. The MPs pressed on pressure points all over his body: his temples, just under his jawline, in the hollow beneath his ears. They choked him. They bent his nose repeatedly so hard to the side he thought it would break. They pinched his thighs and feet constantly. They gouged his eyes. They held his eyes open and shined a mag-lite in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat. They bent his fingers until he screamed. When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out.
A Mask to cover their face, and also prevent removal of the rag down their throat wss found on two of the deceased detainees - but went unremarked on by NCIS.
Despite the fact that those on the base were initially told that detainees died as a result of "rags being stuff in their mouths" - they were told the following day by Colonel Bumgardner (a Subordinate of Adm. Harris) that reporters were being told they "died by hanging" and that they should not note the contradiction if asked, and that also - their communications to their wives and family were being monitored.
In addition to keeping the soldiers on the base quiet, the NCIS investigators were kept on a short leash as well.
The investigators conducted interviews with guards, medics, prisoners, and officers. As the Seton Hall researchers note, however, nothing in the NCIS report suggests that the investigators secured or reviewed the duty roster, the prisoner-transfer book, the pass-on book, the records of phone and radio communications, or footage from the camera that continuously monitored activity in the hallways, all of which could have helped them authoritatively re-construct the events of that evening.
Footage of the hallways would have confirmed - or refuted - the suggestion put forth by Sgt Hickman that these men were most likely not even in their cells at the time of their supposed suicides.
On top of all this there is also the strong likeyhood that Yassar, the youngest of the three was completely innocent.
When I asked Talal Al-Zahrani what he thought had happened to his son, he was direct. “They snatched my seventeen-year-old son for a bounty payment,” he said. “They took him to Guantánamo and held him prisoner for five years. They tortured him. Then they killed him and returned him to me in a box, cut up.”
Al-Zahrani was a brigadier general in the Saudi police. He dismissed the Pentagon’s claims, as well as the investigation that supported them. Yasser, he said, was a young man who loved to play soccer and didn’t care for politics. The Pentagon claimed that Yasser’s frontline battle experience came from his having been a cook in a Taliban camp. Al-Zahrani said that this was preposterous: “A cook? Yasser couldn’t even make a sandwich!”
In fact, Yasser had already been determined to be no threat and was scheduled to be released.
If Sgt. Hickman's story is to be believed, these men were tortured to death. Exactly what information was supposed to be gained by this treatment of these men continues to remain shrouded in mystery, other than just to intimidate them or compel false confessions. The Obama Justice Department appears to be closing this investigation on the matter leaving the Official NCIS Report as it stands, even after recently interviewing Sgt. Hickman and Specialists Davila and Penvose.
“the gist of Sergeant Hickman’s information could not be confirmed.”
So Justice for these three men, or at least a better accounting of the record, remains denied behind a wall of secrecy, lies, threats and high security - all in the name of the "War On Terror".
We've heard a whole lot of blather over the last few weeks about how the Fruit-of-the-Boom Attacker should've been dragged by Air Marshals off a U.S. Airplane in Detriot straight to Gitmo, Do not pass "Go" - do not collect your Miranda.
We've been told that we should do it the way Bush did it.
But the facts are that the Bush Administration had an 88% success rate prosecuting terrorists in civilian court while in military tribunals the FAILURE rate so far has been ... 85%.
The Bush administration -- in which Liz Cheney's papa held a fairly high position, you might recall -- prosecuted, after 9-11, 828 people on terrorism charges in civilian courts. At the time of publication of this excellent report from the Center on Law and Security, NYU School of Law last year, trials were still pending against 235 of those folks. That leaves 593 resolved indictments, of which 523 were convicted of some crime, for a conviction rate of 88%.
With regard to military tribunals, the Bush administration inaugurated 20 such cases. So far just three convictions have been won. The highest-profile is the conviction of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver. The Hamdan legal saga, rehearsed here, doesn't exactly suggest that military tribunals provide swifter and surer and tougher justice. In the end, he was convicted all right, but sentenced -- not by a bunch of New York City Democrats, but by a military jury! -- to five and half years.
Then, the tribunal judge, a US Navy captain, gave Hamdan credit for time served, which was five years. So he served six months after conviction. Today he's back in -- guess where? -- Yemen.
Typical Conservative Opposite World Logic - rather than do what works, reaches justice and protects the nation 88% of time, they'd rather do what hasn't worked in 85% of the attempted cases, and even when it has worked the suspect was ultimately released for time served after only SIX MONTHS.
But let's not dance around the sad ugly truth here - the real reason that Conservatives want to have the Military handle these cases is because they believe that Only The Military can "Sweat those Terrorist Secrets Out of Them" - like Jack Bauer in a badly thought out scene for "24".
Just listen to Giu-Liar-ani talk about how "We should still be interrogating" abdulMuttalab with the military even though from all indications he's already talking to us.
Guiliiani: They only talked to him for 30 Hours? My question is why would you ever stop it? In the Military they wouldn't have a time limit to talk to him.
Actually the fact is they don't have to stop it. Even with Miranda in place or a lawyer present they can ask him all kinds of things about al Qeada's functioning as long as it's not about his own case, or going to be used in court against him. (That's what the Fifth Amendment from that Pesky Constitution is all about)
His attorney's only requirement is to protect his client, not to protect al Qeada. In fact, it's because of what abdulMuttalab has told us - without the Military - that we even know that former Gitmo detainees were involved in his training in Yemen.
Guiliani is a former Assistant Attorney General and Federal Prosecutor - he should know better than this. He really should. But for the sake of Partisan Politics he pretends he doesn't know that law or how our Justice system works. It's pathetic.
Anyone who'se ever sat halfway though an episode of Mattlock should know this stuff.
Let also point out the kind of "extended interrogations" that Ghouliani is talking about - something which is far beyond what would be allowed for any P.O.W. under Geneva (ie Name, Rank, Serial Number)- are likely to be thrown out even in a Military Tribunal setting and not admissible, ending in a ruined case just as it did in the case one living accused 9-11 Hijacker Mohommad al-Qhatani.
"We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case" for prosecution. [...]
Oh, and one more thing -- according to FBI (Ali Soufan) and Military (Matthew Alexander) Interrogators who did get us actionable information after 9-11 and in Iraq Torture Doesn't Work at giving us accurate information, besides the fact it's inadmissible in ANY court.
WASHINGTON -- The testimony of a key witness at a Senate hearing Wednesday raised serious questions about the truthfulness of former President George W. Bush's own personal defense of the CIA's brutal interrogation program. Former FBI agent Ali Soufan also indicated that the harsh interrogation techniques may actually have hindered the collection of intelligence, causing a high-value prisoner to stop cooperating.
In the first congressional hearing on torture since the release of Bush administration memos that provided the legal justification for torture, Soufan told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the CIA's abusive techniques were "ineffective, slow and unreliable, and as a result harmful to our efforts to defeat al-Qaida." According to Soufan, his own nonviolent interrogation of an al-Qaida suspect was quickly yielding valuable, actionable intelligence -- until the CIA intervened.
This is NOT the road we need to be running blindly back down. As has been posted in another diary - Obama's Approval Rating on his handling of the attempted Detroit Plane Bombing is 57% favorable.
David Shuster discusses Obama and his response to the Christmas Bomber with Republican Congressman and Former FBI Agent Mike Rogers.
Rogers: Are you saying want to extend the Constitution to Foreigners?
Shuster: What about upholding the Constitution?
As it turns out the Supreme Court has already settled this question w/Hamdan v Rumsfeld - the 14th Amendment Requires Equal Protection all "Persons" not just "Citizens". They still have Habeaus Protection under the Courts (even though Bush and Congress attempted to strip if from them) and Bush's first set of Military Commissions were found completely illegal.
What's amazing about this is that this FBI Agent doesn't trust the FBI to be able to get the job done. Shuster points out that none of the suspects who have been tried via Civilian Courts have been able to "Get Away With it" (and he should hsve slso mentioned that the Military Commissions have FAILED many times, particular in the case where charges were dropped against one of the Cole Bombers because he had been Tortured).
“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution. [...]
The Military Commission Process is completely tainted, and should be avoided unless there literally is no other choice.
But let's be realistic here, people like Cheney, Rove and Rogers here are concerned with whether the susepct is brought to Justice - they're arguing for Jack Bauer Justice where this person could be interrogated for information with no-holds-barred. Particularly not Miranda or that peska annoying Constitution in the way.
It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.
We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives.
There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics.
Yet these Wingnuts are still in love with techniques that have Never been shown to generate accurate information.
The Supreme Court has already settled this w/Hamdan v Rumsfeld - the 14th Amendment Requires Equal Protection all "Persons" not just "Citizens"
Sad to say, this is how they think Terrorism Should be Handled:
