Tag: War Crime

After much wrangling with the White House and the CIA, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) released the 525 page executive summary of its full 6000 page report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation better known as the Torture Report. After five years and $40 million, the bulk of the report remains classified. If the executive report is any sample of what the CIA did, the rest of the report is must be really damning.

In a laughable move today, the Senate today passed an amendment to the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act that would forbid the use of torture by any agent of the U.S. government and standardize certain noncoercive interrogation methods across the government’s military and intelligence arms. This is “laughable” because torture is already against the law in this country, President Obama chose not the enforce the laws.

Instead the Obama administration has kept hidden much of the evidence under the guise of “national security,” in clear violation of US and International laws. Even more laughable is President Obama’s statement after the release of the SSCI’s executive report when he said, “one of the strengths that makes America exceptional is our willingness to openly confront our past, face our imperfections, make changes and do better.”  It was nauseating to hear that statement praised. Without holding anyone accountable, by promoting and appointing to office those who authorized and ordered torture, Pres. Obama is complicit in their crimes.

Yesterday another CIA atrocity has been exposed:

CIA torture appears to have broken spy agency rule on human experimentation

By Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian

The Central Intelligence Agency had explicit guidelines for “human experimentation” – before, during and after its post-9/11 torture of terrorism detainees – that raise new questions about the limits on the agency’s in-house and contracted medical research.

Sections of a previously classified CIA document, made public by the Guardian on Monday, empower the agency’s director to “approve, modify, or disapprove all proposals pertaining to human subject research”. The leeway provides the director, who has never in the agency’s history been a medical doctor, with significant influence over limitations the US government sets to preserve safe, humane and ethical procedures on people.

CIA director George Tenet approved abusive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, designed by CIA contractor psychologists. He further instructed the agency’s health personnel to oversee the brutal interrogations – the beginning of years of controversy, still ongoing, about US torture as a violation of medical ethics.

But the revelation of the guidelines has prompted critics of CIA torture to question how the agency could have ever implemented what it calls “enhanced interrogation techniques” – despite apparently having rules against “research on human subjects” without their informed consent.

Indeed, despite the lurid name, doctors, human-rights workers and intelligence experts consulted by the Guardian said the agency’s human-experimentation rules were consistent with responsible medical practices. The CIA, however, redacted one of the four subsections on human experimentation.

“The more words you have, the more you can twist them, but it’s not a bad definition,” said Scott Allen, an internist and medical adviser to Physicians for Human Rights.

The agency confirmed to the Guardian that the document was still in effect during the lifespan of the controversial rendition, detention and interrogation program.

After reviewing the document, one watchdog said the timeline suggested the CIA manipulated basic definitions of human experimentation to ensure the torture program proceeded.

“Crime one was torture. The second crime was research without consent in order to say it wasn’t torture,” said Nathaniel Raymond, a former war-crimes investigator with Physicians for Human Rights and now a researcher with Harvard University’s Humanitarian Initiative.

In one more of his memorable segments, John Oliver, host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” enlisted Dame Helen Mirren to read parts of the executive report.

We don’t need another law, we need the torturers brought to justice.

If you haven’t watched the PBS Frontline segment on “Secrets, Politics and Lies,” you should but be prepared to get really angry. It is a painful indictment of the war crimes committed by the CIA since September 11, 2001, under the guise of legality, that will leave you wondering if we truly have a democracy left in the country. Not only are the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama responsible for the crimes that were committed, they were, and are, responsible for the cover up. And so is the media.

The program opens with the critique of the CIA propaganda film “Zero Dark Thirty” that the agency used as a means to sell the lie that tortured worked and was crucial in finding Osama bin Laden. We know now, it wasn’t and didn’t. Watching men like former CIA lawyer John Rizzo and the agency’s former Deputy Director John McLaughlin coldly rationalize their crimes will make you wonder why they aren’t in prison. That’s easily answered. President Barack Obama wanted it swept under the rug and his Attorney General Eric Holder’s justice department put little to no effort in making the case for war crimes.

This is the first five minutes of the show. Warning, some of it is graphic.

America on evil: Stunning PBS Frontline doc reveals the depths of CIA propaganda

By Heather Digby Parton, Salon

“Secrets, Politics and Torture” tells the deeply disturbing story of an intelligence community’s craven lies

according to the Frontline documentary “Secrets, Politics and Torture,” the official story the film depicted was a lie, so perhaps the classified information Panetta and company shared with the “Zero Dark Thirty” production was false as well. It’s not a crime to spread government propaganda. If it were, the entire leadership of the U.S. intelligence services and a fair number of top White House officials would be legally exposed.

The Frontline film, takes a detailed look at the torture program and the saga of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Torture Report, the summary of which was finally released last December. (The 6,000 page report remains classified.) We know about the waterboarding and confining of prisoners in a tiny box for days, the sleep deprivation, the beatings and the grotesque depravities like “rectal feeding” from the Senate report.  It reads like a bureaucratic version of the Marquis de Sade’s “20 days of Sodom.” Seeing all that put in context with the lies and the coverup lends it a new layer of horror.

Of particular interest in this film are the interviews with top CIA officials John Rizzo, the agency’s legal counsel, and John McLaughlin, the deputy CIA director at the time, both of whom excuse any alleged shortcomings in the torture regime as a result of the agency being tasked with something it wasn’t trained to do. The film does make it clear that the members of the interrogation team, in the beginning at least, were sickened by what they were doing, but were told to continue by the people in Washington who insisted they keep doing it.

Rizzo is a complicated character who explains that he didn’t see his duty as one requiring him to question the morality of the program, but simply to find ways to protect the agency from legal exposure. And he cleverly did that by getting buy-in from the Department of Justice, members of Congress and the White House. He is a creature of the CIA, and is loyal to the agency. But he admits to being shaken when he went to John McCain, after the program had been revealed, to try to convince him that it was highly controlled and effective – and Mccain simply said, “it all sounds like torture to me.” Rizzo was also obviously upset that CIA Director of Operations Jose Rodriguez took it upon himself to destroy tapes of the first horrific interrogation, the revelation of which served as the catalyst for the Senate Torture Investigation.

But if Rizzo comes off as at least somewhat ambiguous about the whole thing, John McLaughlin reveals himself as one of the most chilling characters in recent American history. You wouldn’t assume that this rather bland looking fellow would look menacingly into the camera and hiss, “We were at war. Bad things happen in war,” as if he were in a Clint Eastwood movie. But he does just that.

He also specializes in fatuous nonsense like this:

   The CIA faced a real dilemma here: On the one hand, we knew this program would be contentious. On the other hand, we asked ourselves: Wouldn’t it be equally immoral if we failed to get this information and thousands of Americans died? If there was another 9/11? How immoral would that be? That’s the dilemma we were up against. And we felt a moral commitment to protect the United States.

That’s very stirringly heroic, but it ignores the fact that despite his insistence otherwise, there’s simply no evidence that their program was effective at all, much less any more effective than other means that didn’t require the United States of America to twist itself into a pretzel to try to justify its immoral behavior. And you have to wonder: With that kind of logic are there any limits to what we can do? It doesn’t sound like there are. [..]

This is reminiscent of one of those congressional investigations that came out of Seymour Hersh’s exposé of CIA activity mentioned earlier. The 1975 Pike Committee Investigation report into abuses by the agency (along with the FBI and the NSA) was never published because the Republicans opposed it. But it was leaked to Daniel Schorr, who finally managed to get some excerpts published in the Village Voice; and it was later published in its entirety in England.  Maybe somebody will leak the full Torture Report as well.

But the damage is already done, unfortunately. Torture was once a taboo, illegal and unthinkable, but it is now officially on the menu. John Brennan, the current CIA chief, would not rule out using it again in the future, saying it would be policy decision by our leaders. Bad things happen in wars, you know.

Esquire‘s Charles Pierce makes note of a recent article in the New York Times by investigative reporter Charles Savage who asks the only question worth asking:

But the open debate and vote was also striking because national security programs have so often been created in secret over the past 14 years – from the C.I.A.’s now-defunct torture program to sweeping surveillance activities to the use of drones to kill terrorism suspects away from combat zones. Secrecy has always been traditional and accepted in wartime, but traditional wars have an end. Under two administrations now, as the United States has remained on a permanent war footing against Al Qaeda and its splintering, morphing progeny, tensions over fighting battles in the shadows have steadily escalated. If this is a forever war, can a democracy wage it in secret?

And what Charlie said:

Secrecy is addictive. It deforms and mutates political institutions the way that alcohol and heroin deforms and mutates individual lives. It forces those institutions to take secrecy itself as their primary constituency. It forces the imperatives of secrets onto institutions designed to be free and open and democratically accountable. This is really what you’re being asked to debate when Chris Christie bellows about your not having civil liberties when you’re dead, or when Marco Rubio talks tough about what has to be done to maintain our values. The answer to Savage’s question is a definitive “no,” but that doesn’t really mean much any more.

Some of us will not give up the fight to bring these crimes to light and seek justice for the victims of these war criminals. There is no statute of limitation on war crimes, just ask Germany.

DeJa-Vu all over again, and again, and again……………………..that’s what hell on earth, War, especially those of choice because eventually everyone knows that truth and reality even the deniers, Is!

Word is Michael is suffering from severe PTSD after his many years of reporting In-Theaters, both, that had finally caught up to him with all he’s seen, reported on and as this report says especially didn’t report, or couldn’t.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

     For those who will automatically balk at the Obama = Bush charge, I submit to you the fact that by Geneva Law, if Bush/Cheney is not held accountable for the War Crimes they have committed, than the Obama Administration is complicit in those crimes and guilty of covering them up.

   

The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration’s expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush’s cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama’s cover-up.

NYTimes.com

Bold text added by diarist

From democraticunderground.com via msnbc.msn.com

    The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at former President George W. Bush said Tuesday that he would do it all again.

~snip~

     “I wouldn’t hesitate to do what I’ve done, even if it means [somebody] killing me,” he said.

~snip~

    At a news conference Tuesday, he said that he was abused immediately after his arrest and the following day. He said he was beaten with iron bars, whipped with cords and was shocked in the backyard of the building in the Green Zone where the news conference was held.

~snip~

    An unrepentant al-Zeidi explained that his actions were motivated by the U.S. occupation: “I want to ask the American people if an Iraqi occupies America and kills one million Americans, displaced 5 million people and demolished and destroyed America, then what would be the reaction of the American people?”

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Memo: Attach Bush to torture = make them defend both.

    Though Morning Joe doesn’t say Bush’s name, I think we should, and Democrats will use this to pursue justice and Destroy the GOP. I consider it a great instance of killing two birds with one stone.

    Republicans will say this will damage the President’s popularity in polls, they will justify and lie and say anything to avoid owning this issue, but the fact is that the law was broken, and I believe this is the beginning of a well timed plan to get the ball rolling now, and then use it against the GOP for maximum effect.

More below the fold, and a call to action . . .  

     Which President was really palling around with terrorists?

Via Kos himself, from back in May 17, 2004

RIGGS BANK FINED FOR LAX OVERSIGHT OF SAUDI MONEY, WHICH MIGHT HAVE GONE TO TERRORISTS

According to the 5/14/04 New York Times, Federal regulators fined the Riggs National Corporation, the parent company of Riggs Bank, $25 million yesterday for “failing to report suspicious activity, the largest penalty ever assessed against a domestic bank in connection with money laundering. The fine stems from Riggs’s failure over at least the last two years to actively monitor suspect financial transfers through Saudi Arabian accounts held by the bank.” The 5/14/04 Wall Street Journal reported that of particular concern, Riggs failed to monitor “tens of millions of dollars in cash withdrawals from accounts related to the Saudi Arabian embassy,” including “suspicious incidents involving dozens of sequentially numbered cashier’s checks and international drafts written by Saudi officials, including Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan.” According to the 4/18/04 Washington Post, Saudi Prince Bandar’s wife, Princess Haifa al-Faisal, “may have used a Riggs account to donate money to a charity that then gave some of it to the Sept. 11 terrorists.” According to the Washington Post, federal regulators “called Riggs actions a “‘willful, systemic’ violation of anti-money-laundering law.” Riggs officials have “acknowledged years of deficiencies in reporting to law enforcement hundreds of millions of dollars in suspicious financial transactions by foreign customers, particularly those connected with the embassies of Saudi Arabia.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

When last we met, Gentle Reader, it was to work through a series of legal precedents and statute law; the goal of the exercise being to determine if we could or could not define waterboarding as torture.

We have the kind assistance of Professor Jeffrey Addicott, who has provided us with his written testimony from his recent appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee and a personal interview, where he walked me through some of his thinking on the matter.

Today we’re going to take a look at the precedent that he has used to reach the conclusion that waterboarding is not torture.

It’s also possible that the analysis may result in the discovery of a bit of common ground…but as I noted in Part One, it’s common ground that neither one of us might have seen coming.

I can’t tell you the number of times I began a story with a plan for where it would go, only to discover that the plan isn’t going to work.

The stories sometimes seem to write themselves…but other times, the research seems to do the writing instead; this being one of those times.

When the production of this story began it was with the intention of trying to explain what should be the “controlling authority” in terms of defining torture, a precedent set by the European Court of Human Rights, or Title 18 of the United States Code.

Having reviewed both statute law and numerous judgments in law courts worldwide as well as the recent Senate Judiciary Committee testimony of Professor Jeffrey Addicott, and having conducted an interview with Dr. Addicott personally, I’ve come to two rather surprising conclusions:

It may not really matter whether waterboarding is torture…and although neither I nor Dr. Addicott might have seen it coming, it’s starting to appear that he and I might agree on one thing:

Waterboarding, whether it’s torture or not, is a war crime.