Trauma Wednesday, June 18, 2008

The BBC reports that "Medical examinations of former terror suspects held by US troops showed proof of physical and psychological torture".

Torturing the Twentieth Hijacker Friday, May 16, 2008

Mohammad al-Qahtani, the so-called "twentieth hijacker" is one of six key suspects that have been held and tortured at Guantanamo Bay since 9/11.

The reason for this, says the Bush Administration, is that we need to use every means at our disposal in order to gain information to safeguard our country from another attack like 9/11. After all, nothing says we're serious about the War on Abstractions like abandoning a thousand years of legal precedent and dunking terrorists like they're Salem witches.

Earlier this week, as reported by the Associated Press, the charges against al-Qahtani have been dropped. And while the government has not offered up a reason for this, it is widely suspected that they cannot move forward with their show trials because their evidence has been tainted by the use of torture.

But that's not the whole story, is it? There are still five other suspects being held and the government has already admitted to torturing them. So why drop the charges against this prisoner? The disqualification of Brigadier General Thomas W. Hartmann from participating in the case due to a lack of objectivity has now thrown the whole military tribunal system into doubt and lends force to its critics. Blogger emptywheel relates a communique with the Center for Constitutional Rights, who represent al-Qahtani:

The government is finally admitting what we have been saying all along, that the government's claims against our client were based on unreliable evidence obtained through torture at Guantanamo. Using torture to string together a web of so-called evidence is illegal, immoral and cannot be the basis for a fair trial.

Mr. al Qahtani never made a single statement that was not extracted through torture or the threat of torture. The unconscionable techniques used on him are well-documented and were authorized directly by the White House. His torture log is a shameful window onto the depravity of this administration and the depths to which they have been willing to sink.

Mr. al Qahtani should be returned to the custody of the Saudi government, where they have a system in place to maintain custody of any former Guantanamo detainee who presents a danger, as well as a strong rehabilitation program supervising those that are released.

The Military Commissions are sham political show trials designed to do nothing but obtain convictions for the government. Col. Moe Davis testified to that effect in the Hamdan proceedings, and the presiding judge removed the legal advisor to the Commissions, Col. Hartmann, just this week for undue political influence. The Military Commissions allow secret evidence, hearsay evidence, and evidence obtained through torture, which violates every international and domestic legal principle of due process and fair trials. They are designed to hide the criminal conduct of U.S. personnel and to obtain nothing but convictions. [emphasis original]

This is the latest in a series of challenges to the authority of the administration that has been holding its breath and stamping its feet all year. We may not be able to evict these criminals, but it looks like we can at least limit the amount of additional damage they can do. Torture is no way to "win hearts and minds".

Hiding Behind John Yoo Monday, April 14, 2008

It's official: according to The Miami Herald, Bush has admitted to approving torture:

Bush [said] in an interview with ABC News that he approved of the meetings, which were held as the CIA began to prepare for a secret interrogation program that included waterboarding, or simulated drowning, and other coercive techniques.

"Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people" by learning what various detainees knew, Bush said in the interview at his Texas ranch. "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

The remarks underscore the extent to which the top officials were directly involved in setting the controversial interrogation policies. Bush suggested in the interview that no one should be surprised that his senior advisors, including Vice President Dick Cheney, would discuss details of the interrogation program. "I told the country we did that," Bush said. "And I also told them it was legal. We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it."

Of course, those legal opinions were furnished by then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo. The so-called "torture memo", ascribes basically unlimited power to the president when he is "protecting the country". In a nutshell, it says that the president has the power to override any treaty at any time, as he sees fit, and this is what grants him the ability to authorize torture: "Any presidential decision to order interrogations methods that are inconsistent with CAT [the Convention Against Torture] would amount to a suspension or termination of those treaty provisions." (source)

But it's important to remember that even though John Yoo wrote the memo, it's America itself that now will bear the stigma of this unconscionable shift in political stance. Glenn Greenwald writes at Salon.com:

As a country, we have repeatedly endorsed what John Yoo enabled. In addition to abolishing habeas corpus, the 2006 Military Commissions Act (.pdf) "insulated government officials from liability for many of the violations of the War Crimes Act they might have committed during the period prior to 2006," as Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin put it. It also vested vast discretion with the President to determine what constitutes "torture." Nonetheless, it was passed by an overwhelming Congressional majority, with substantial bipartisan support, without even a filibuster being attempted, and with the blessing of alleged "torture opponent" John McCain. It still has not been even partially repealed.

That's right. Thanks to the Oil Cabal, all American citizens are now implicated in the torture regime. But of course almost no one will know about the Yoo memos and what they imply. And of the few who know, most won't care. And of the few who care, most won't say a thing. And of those who say anything, most will point the finger at Yoo himself, painting him as an extremist.

Yoo was merely providing legal camouflage for the criminals running our government. It's sad that we will probably never be able to bring them to justice. We'll fire Donald Rumsfeld and Mike Brown, we'll point the finger at Lynndie England and "Scooter" Libby, but Rove gets his spot on Fox and Halliburton walks away with billions of dollars stolen from the the taxpayers.

Torturous Election Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Dilbert creator Scott Adams took the words right out of my mouth when he said: "I predict Obama will win the Democratic nomination. In the general election he will lead in the polls but lose to John McCain because the Republicans will do a better job of rigging the election."

I made almost the same prediction 3 months ago. Of course, it's not exactly what I said; when I made my prediction I thought Hillary would win the primary. My reasoning went that the Clinton Democratic Party Machine would ensure that she won the primary, but nobody was going to actually vote for Hillary for president because – I don't care what you say – nobody likes Hillary Clinton.

But now it looks like Barack Obama is gaining traction, and it's a good thing. As far as I'm concerned, Clinton is a member of the Democrat wing of the Corporate Party, the same party nearly every other major candidate ultimately works for. That's the party we need to keep out of office in November, my friends. I don't know enough about Barack Obama to know if he's a member of the Corporate Party, but he was able to raise a lot of money, so that makes me very suspicious. Look at what happened to John Edwards, the man who would not take money from corporate lobbyists, who was unabashedly pro-union and ran a campaign focused on real domestic issues. He was crushed. Obama may just be that rare individual who can successfully operate in the cutthroat world of politics and remain untainted. I certainly hope he is.

If the 2000 and 2004 elections taught us anything it's that the elections are not fair. I'm with Scott Adams on this one: the Republicans play this game much better than the Democrats. They're going to win this election if they want it. I'm actually more frightened by the idea that they don't want to be in office when the reverberations of Bush's policies start disrupting America's economy.

One thing has made me very happy at the turn of events away from Hillary/Giuliani (man, that makes me shudder) and towards Obama/McCain. Both vehemently oppose the pro-torture policies of the Bush administration. As a matter of fact, Senator Obama's statement on the Military Commissions Act of 2006 should be read by everyone:

In the five years that the President's system of military tribunals has existed, not one terrorist has been tried. Not one has been convicted. And in the end, the Supreme Court of the United found the whole thing unconstitutional, which is why we're here today.

We could have fixed all of this in a way that allows us to detain and interrogate and try suspected terrorists while still protecting the accidentally accused from spending their lives locked away in Guantanamo Bay. Easily. This was not an either-or question.

Instead of allowing this President - or any President - to decide what does and does not constitute torture, we could have left the definition up to our own laws and to the Geneva Conventions, as we would have if we passed the bill that the Armed Services committee originally offered.

Instead of detainees arriving at Guantanamo and facing a Combatant Status Review Tribunal that allows them no real chance to prove their innocence with evidence or a lawyer, we could have developed a real military system of justice that would sort out the suspected terrorists from the accidentally accused.

And instead of not just suspending, but eliminating, the right of habeas corpus - the seven century-old right of individuals to challenge the terms of their own detention, we could have given the accused one chance - one single chance - to ask the government why they are being held and what they are being charged with.

But politics won today. Politics won. The Administration got its vote, and now it will have its victory lap, and now they will be able to go out on the campaign trail and tell the American people that they were the ones who were tough on the terrorists.

And yet, we have a bill that gives the terrorist mastermind of 9/11 his day in court, but not the innocent people we may have accidentally rounded up and mistaken for terrorists - people who may stay in prison for the rest of their lives.

And yet, we have a report authored by sixteen of our own government's intelligence agencies, a previous draft of which described, and I quote, "...actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay..."

And yet, we have Al Qaeda and the Taliban regrouping in Afghanistan while we look the other way. We have a war in Iraq that our own government's intelligence says is serving as Al Qaeda's best recruitment tool. And we have recommendations from the bipartisan 9/11 commission that we still refuse to implement five years after the fact.

—Sen. Barack Obama Reacts to US Bill Approving Torture

As everyone who has read my blog in the past several years knows, I think this is the most egregious of all the crimes of this administration. And it looks like we will finally have a chance of fixing it.

Torture-as-Usual Monday, March 26, 2007

New York Times op-ed contributor Slavoj Zizek wrote a piece on the methods used to extract confessions from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. As I am sure you know, this man has admitted to planning a laundry list of terrorist acts including (this list taken from FOX News' "Fast Facts" on the story):

• The 9/11 attacks
• The "Shoe bomber" operation to bring down two American airplanes.
• An assassination attempt against President Clinton during his 1994 visit to the Philippines
• An assassination attempt againt Pope John Paul II (also in the Philippines)
• An assassination attempt against former President Jimmy Carter
• The bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia in 2002
• The destruction of U.S. embassies in Indonesia, Australia and Japan
• The bombing of hotel in Mombassa, Kenya that is frequented by Jewish travelers

Of course, not all of these plans were executed, but Mohammed admitted to planning all of them. But can we trust these grand admissions of guilt? After all, wouldn't he want to be remembered as a terrorist mastermind, even if he wasn't? Plus, while the information we gained from this man is shocking enough, even more shocking is the way in which we gained it: Americans tortured him for the information.

Let me pause so you can reflect on this a moment: the American government is admitting that it is torturing people for information in the name of national security. Of course he admitted to planning every major terrorist attack in the past ten years. He would have admitted to being the Gingerbread Man if you had asked.

But, based on the lack of popular outcry, the American people seem to be okay with that, because somehow, American society at large now accepts the idea that torture is an acceptable way of treating prisoners. Zizek writes

Yes, most of us can imagine a singular situation in which we might resort to torture – to save a loved one from immediate, unspeakable harm perhaps. I can. In such a case, however, it is crucial that I do not elevate this desperate choice into a universal principle. In the unavoidable brutal urgency of the moment, I should simply do it. But it cannot become an acceptable standard; I must retain the proper sense of the horror of what I did. And when torture becomes just another in the list of counterterrorism techniques, all sense of horror is lost.
—The New York Times, "Knight of the Living Dead"

This is the most horrifying aspect of the whole affair: not just that people are being tortured, but that people are okay with the idea of torture as an "interrogation technique".

Zizek goes on to compare the situation to Fox's show "24," saying that "Reality has now surpassed TV. What '24' still had the decency to present as Jack Bauer's disturbing and desperate choice is now rendered business as usual." Here, I think Zizek is missing the larger point: what happens on "24" and what happened at Gitmo are both the direct result of a corrupt leadership that is undermining the rule of law in favor of what can only be described as medieval standards for justice. As I wrote a few weeks ago, "24" has effectively desensitized the American people to the idea of torture. On "24" torture is business as usual, and is helping a very unpopular administration to get away with doing some very nasty things.

On the TV show, you can understand why Jack might resort to torture: he's always running out of time, knows who has the information he needs, and he's sure that if he does the distasteful act that he will be able to save thousands, maybe millions of lives. But the real world doesn't work that way: there is no ticking time bomb in this case, and there is no indication that these admissions will save any lives at all. This isn't an informant with a vital piece of information to avert an imminent terrorist attack. This isn't even Osama Bin Laden. This is some terrorist who is going to say anything you want him to say because you're dunking him like a witch at Salem. And ultimately, we are all going to suffer for it, because it is not only destroying our credibility, it is undermining the moral fabric of our nation.

... in the end, the greatest victims of torture-as-usual are the rest of us, the informed public. A precious part of our collective identity has been irretrievably lost. We are in the middle of a process of moral corruption: those in power are literally trying to break a part of our ethical backbone, to dampen and undo what is arguably our civilization’s greatest achievement, the growth of our spontaneous moral sensitivity.

—ibid.

With the help of a gagged media, the American people have chosen to look the other way as literally a thousand years of progress are being turned back. For what? A scapegoat named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

Why "24" Scares Me Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Have you been watching "24"? I'm not sure I can anymore. It's not just because it's written like a soap opera (I originally wrote "bad soap opera," but of course, that's redundant). It's not just because it's a one-trick pony (drink every time someone says "We're running out of time!"). And it's not even because it has a political agenda (after all, many stories do). It's because "24" is impacting real-world politics in a way that is unconscionable. I submit that "24"'s incessant reiteration of the "ticking time bomb" scenario is affecting the way America views the practice of torture by presenting it in a way that is eerily congruent with the Bush administration's position. It's presenting a practice that has been outlawed by both United States and international law.

How many torture scenes have there been in just the first few episodes of this season? Now consider the fact that one of the most brutal of them features the "hero" torturing his own brother. I'm not normally squeamish about violence in media, because I believe that violence in its myriad forms is a fact of life, even in our supposedly civilized modern society. But torture isn't just violence; it's "the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering" (source). I think that any human being with feelings would agree that torture is virtually impossible to morally justify in any realistic circumstance. "24"'s producers serve up a steady stream of ludicrously contrived scenarios that make it seem that torture is not only useful but somehow patriotic. Jack would do anything for his country; even inject near-lethal doses of a torture chemical into a member of his own family. Is this the sort of psychopath we are supposed to be cheering for?

According to a study cited in The New Yorker, the show has set a disturbing precedent.

Before the [September 11th] attacks, fewer than four acts of torture appeared on prime-time television each year, according to Human Rights First, a nonprofit organization. Now there are more than a hundred, and, as David Danzig, a project director at Human Rights First, noted, "the torturers have changed. It used to be almost exclusively the villains who tortured. Today, torture is often perpetrated by the heroes." The Parents' Television Council, a nonpartisan watchdog group, has counted what it says are sixty-seven torture scenes during the first five seasons of "24"—more than one every other show. Melissa Caldwell, the council’s senior director of programs, said, "'24' is the worst offender on television: the most frequent, most graphic, and the leader in the trend of showing the protagonists using torture.”
—"Whatever It Takes: The politics of the man behind '24.'", The New Yorker, 2/12/2007

I'm not arguing that people cannot discern fantasy from reality. We all know that "24" is a television show, and I'm sure that the people responsible for interrogating bad guys aren't watching Kiefer Sutherland and getting new ideas. But some segments of the public have tacitly accepted the "ticking time bomb" argument as compelling, at least in part due to seeing such implausible situations play out in the show. Charles Petzold summarizes this problem and well:

It's becoming increasing obvious that "24" doesn't reflect reality about the nature of terrorism – but is molding reality about the response. The very popularity of the show sends a shameful message to the rest of the world that Americans believe torture to be a valid national policy.

I am the first to defend artistic expression. I'm also the sort of person who says that it's the viewer's responsibility to change the channel when there's something he doesn't want to see. But is it responsible to condone a calculated attempt to justify something so fundamentallty wrong?

Bush's Detainee Legislation Monday, July 31, 2006

The neocon/corporatist machine presses on, painstakingly unraveling our moral authority and our Constitutional protections, one bill at a time. Bush's new propsal to legitimize his unconstitutional torture and detention of "terror suspects" is frightening in scope. According to The Boston Globe:

According to the draft [proposal], the military would be allowed to detain all "enemy combatants" until hostilities cease. The bill defines enemy combatants as anyone "engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners who has committed an act that violates the law of war and this statute."

Legal experts said Friday that such language is dangerously broad and could authorize the military to detain indefinitely U.S. citizens who had only tenuous ties to terror networks like al Qaeda.

"That's the big question ... the definition of who can be detained," said Martin Lederman, a law professor at Georgetown University who posted a copy of the bill to a Web blog.

Scott L. Silliman, a retired Air Force Judge Advocate, said the broad definition of enemy combatants is alarming because a U.S. citizen loosely suspected of terror ties would lose access to a civilian court -- and all the rights that come with it. Administration officials have said they want to establish a secret court to try enemy combatants that factor in realities of the battlefield and would protect classified information.

The administration's proposal, as considered at one point during discussions, would toss out several legal rights common in civilian and military courts, including barring hearsay evidence, guaranteeing "speedy trials" and granting a defendant access to evidence. The proposal also would allow defendants to be barred from their own trial and likely allow the submission of coerced testimony.

That's right. In Bush's America the government would be allowed to:

1. Throw you in jail indefinitely without any actual evidence
2. Torture you in order to make you confess and then convict you based on that confession
3. Deny you the right to legal counsel

I am appalled that this cabal which has usurped control of our government has the audacity to even try to pass legislation like this. This could never actually pass in congress... could it? They couldn't possibly try to undermine the very fabric of our legal system, could they? I guess that's the most terrifying thing: I beleieve they might try to do just that.

This administration has me frightened for my very safety. The "War on Terror" is a witch hunt on a scale so bloody and sinister that it makes McCarthyism seem tame. This is police state legislation.

Man Sues CIA Tuesday, December 06, 2005

As reported by the BBC, Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen, claims that he was kidnapped by the CIA, then taken to Afghanistan, where US government agents subjected him to torture and humiliation.

The landmark lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in a district court in Alexandria, Virginia.

It claims that Mr Tenet and other CIA officials violated US and universal human rights laws when they authorised agents to kidnap Mr Masri.

This stuff is sickening, and the policy that is allowing it to go on comes from the top. Whoever is responsible for this flagrant barbarism must be made to pay. America has expended all of its moral capital in this so-called "war". The damage that has been done to our reputation, our economy, and our credibility as responsible world leaders has been staggering due to the selfishness and arrogance of a self-serving cabal of the power-mad.