News of Note

Torture is not torture, according to former Vice President Dick Cheney, and to refer it to as such should be considered libelous. Even if it doesn’t actually qualify as libel.

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“In the speech, Mr. Cheney charged that President Obama has ‘filled the air with vague and useless platitude’ when talking about torture and by calling enhanced interrogation techniques ‘torture” he has committed ‘libel’ against CIA interrogators whom Mr. Cheney described as ‘dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well, in our country’s name and in our country’s cause,'” Carpenter adds.

Cheney’s full comments Wednesday:

 

In short, to call enhanced interrogation a program of torture is not only to disregard the program’s legal underpinnings and safeguards. Such accusations are a libel against dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well, in our country’s name and in our country’s cause. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future, in favor of half-measures, is unwise in the extreme. In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed.

U.S. Can Censor Gitmo Testimony, Judge Rules

    (CN) – A federal judge in Washington, D.C., upheld the government’s decision to censor Guantanamo Bay prisoner testimony, saying the unredacted transcripts would “seriously damage” national security.

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  The documents outline top-secret CIA interrogation methods contained in the Army Field Manual that are still in use, the opinion states. Releasing them would “seriously damage” national security, the court ruled.

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    “The President never authorized full disclosure of defendants’ interrogation program; he merely ended it,” Lamberth wrote.

Musicians Want to Know What Music Was Used to Torture Detainees

….So a group of 17 different bands and musicians, with the help of the National Security Archive, today filed a series of Freedom of Information Act requestsseeking complete declassification of secret U.S. documents revealing the strategy of using blaring rock and rap music as an “enhanced” interrogation tool.

Press conference by United Nations Rapporteur on Torture

The time had come to adopt a United Nations convention on rights of detainees, Manfred Nowak, Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, told correspondents at Headquarters today. “In so many countries”, he said, “States are not living up to their obligations to respect the basic dignity of human beings in detention.”

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This time, however, he focused on abusive conditions of detention in general, on the “forgotten prisoners”, whether they were accused persons in pre-trial detention, convicted prisoners, aliens awaiting deportation or minors locked up for various reasons.

Unacceptable detention conditions occurred not only in developing countries, but also in the industrialized ones, in the cases, for example, of illegal immigrants awaiting hearings. The same walls that kept prisoners inside could also keep societal scrutiny out, he noted.