Tag: Army Field Manual

Beyond Yoo: Army Field Manual Allows Torture with Drugs

Adapted from original post at Firedoglake

Sometimes people can be too smart for their own good.

According to recent news stories (see Spencer Ackerman’s article in the Washington Independent), the Obama administration task force on interrogations is likely to recommend “small, mixed-agency teams for interviewing the most important terrorist targets.” Moreover, according to former Deputy Attorney General  and Intelligence Science Board member Philip Heymann:

… interrogators from across the military, CIA, and FBI, would be charged with creating a “syllabus” of best interrogation practices that fall within the boundaries of the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogations, which complies with the Geneva Conventions.

No Prosecutions, No Accountability: Another Day in Torture USA

Sometimes I am truly overwhelmed with both gratitude and awe at the amount of important work being done on the ongoing torture scandal by journalists, bloggers, attorneys, psychologists, doctors, and just plain decent people.

I wanted to highlight a few that seem specially extraordinary, or of current interest. At the close, we’ll look more closely at where the fight for prosecutions stands today. In this diary, we’ll look at a number of articles, including one that highlights the role of psychologists in planning torture, and one that compares the role of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons with the practice at Guanatanamo.

Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse is a Daily Kos regular blogger, who just finished a second installment of the DK Sunday Torture News Roundup (first installment is here). PDNC highlighted the ongoing case of Aafia Siddiqui. Siddiqui was likely a U.S. “ghost prisoner” of the CIA, and is now being held in a Texas prison, where her sanity and competency to stand trial is being determined. You must read the entire piece, for its cumulative impact, which is powerful.

Democracy Now Debate: Horton vs Ratner on Renditions, Appendix M

A fascinating debate took place at Democracy Now! yesterday. With Amy Goodman as host, Harpers Magazine’s Scott Horton, and President of Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner, went at it on the subject of Obama’s renditions and interrogation policies, including the existence of coercive interrogation instructions in the Army Field Manual. These policies have been a matter of some debate ever since Obama issued his executive orders regarding the issues a few weeks ago.

(An excellent companion piece to this debate would be the interviews Goodman did with former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman and Michael Ratner last November, when it was announced that Obama was staffing his transition team with John Brennan and Jami Miscik. The former was a supporter of wireless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition, while the latter was involved in the scandals around “faulty” intelligence in the run-up to the war in Iraq.)

More Confusion on Renditions: The Role of Ostensibly Liberal Bloggers

This diary explores the serious problems with the justifications for a limited, legal, and supposedly humane system of renditions to be run by the CIA (or other governmental agency). Such justifications would thus inform the review ordered by President Obama on interrogations and rendition in general.

In contradistinction to the views of Scott Horton, Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Sullivan, and TalkLeft’s Scribe, among others, I maintain that any program of extraordinary rendition, i.e., any extrajudicial abduction of a foreign citizen from foreign soil, violates international law. Furthermore, the liberal bloggers mentioned above have either ignored or downplayed or misrepresented that fact.

The issue seems to bring out a lot of passion, as it should. For one thing, it raises some criticisms of Obama and the left at a time when we are fighting the right-wing on the economy, torture, military policy, etc. But the torture/renditions issue goes to the heart of civilized international relations, and must not get lost in the shuffle. Please read on and certainly feel free to voice your comments. Substantive and respectful comments, even criticisms, are always appreciated.

New Attorney General Addresses “Secret Law” & “State Secrecy”

The new Attorney General, confirmed just the other day, Eric Holder, gave some written answers to Senator Russ Feingold concerning the latter’s questions regarding review of Bush administration policies concerning promulgation of “secret laws” and claims of “state privilege” in legal cases. I’m reproducing the exchange by Holder and Feingold, as it bears upon significant pending issues, not least the Jeppesen and al-Haramain cases.

Obama Backpedals on Torture, Renditions, State Secrecy (Updated)

The Los Angeles Times had an article over the weekend by Greg Miller, describing the decision by the Obama administration to maintain, in some form, the secret rendition program of the CIA. The program began under the Clinton administration, and was accelerated President Bush. Full details of the program are classified.

In legal terms, extraordinary rendition is the “extrajudicial transfer of a person from one State to another.” But for most of us, rendition remains a fancy term for kidnapping, and involves snatching suspected “terrorists” off the streets, or from airports, as in the case of innocent Canadian citizen Maher Arar, snatched out of JFK airport, and secretly flown to Syria. Maher spent over ten months in a “grave-like” cell, and was beaten and tortured into making a false confession.

CCR: Close Torture Loopholes in Army Field Manual

A huge step in the fight against torture took place today. Center for Constitutional Rights has joined Physicians for Human Rights, The Constitution Project — and myself — and come out publicly against the abusive interrogation techniques contained in the Army Field Manual.

This is significant because the Army Field Manual is being put forward by President Obama and top Democratic Senators as the proposed “single standard” for all interrogations by the military and the CIA. Meanwhile, old recalcitrant Bushites, and the CIA, are for their part trying to paint the current AFM as “too soft” for use with “terrorist” suspects.

Their “action alert”, reprinted below, includes an automated letter that you can send to President Obama asking him to say NO to interrogation practices that include isolation, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, and humiliation. It also asks for investigations of those officials ” for those officials who broke the law to create an official program of torture and abuse.”

The Foreign Press, Salon.com, & the Army Field Manual

On September 7, 2006, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Cully Stimson and Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (G-2) Lt. Gen. John Kimmons showed up at a State Department foreign press briefing on the then-new DoD Directive 2310.10E (on its detainee program) and the also then brand-new Army Field Manual on interrogations (see note at end of post re links). Only the day before, Kimmons and Stimson had held a news briefing for U.S. reporters at the Department of Defense on the same subjects, which I covered in a recent article at AlterNet.

While few bloggers paid attention to the September 6 DoD briefing (except one noted reporter, as I’ll note later), most likely that was because President Bush had one of his infrequent news conferences the same day, and this one was a blockbuster. Bush acknowledged the existence of a secret CIA prison network. He also announced he was ordering the transfer of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 13 other “high-value detainees” to Guantánamo Bay to be put on trial.

How the Press, the Pentagon, and Even Human Rights Groups Sold Us Army Field Manual that Tortures

Originally published at AlterNet — If you wish to repost this essay you can download a .txt file of the html here (right click and save). Permission granted.

A January 17 New York Times editorial noted that Attorney General designate Eric Holder testified at his nomination hearings that when it came to overhauling the nation’s interrogation rules for both the military and the CIA, the Army Field Manual represented “a good start.” The editorial noted the vagueness of Holder’s statement. Left unsaid was the question, if the AFM is only a “good start,” what comes next?

The Times editorial writer never bothered to mention the fact that three years earlier, a different New York Times article (12/14/2005) introduced a new controversy regarding the rewrite of the Army Field Manual. The rewrite was inspired by a proposal by Senator John McCain to limit U.S. military and CIA interrogation methods to those in the Army Field Manual. (McCain would later allow an exception for the CIA.)

According to the Times article, a new set of classified procedures proposed for the manual was “was pushing the limits on legal interrogation.” Anonymous military sources called the procedures “a back-door effort” to undermine McCain’s efforts at the time to change U.S. abusive interrogation techniques, and stop the torture.

Obscurity Blankets Certain Anti-Torture Moves

Josh Gerstein at Politico has ably described the important shortcomings one finds in President Obama’s Executive Orders issued yesterday to close Guantanamo and end torture. While the CIA is disallowed from using waterboarding and other “enhanced” torture techniques, and forced to adhere to the standards (flawed as they are) of the Army Field Manual; and while the CIA is forced now to close their secret black site prisons; and while Guantanamo itself is to be close “promptly… within a year”, there are some troublesome problems remaining.

Not least is the problem with the Army Field Manual itself. Some former Bush administration figures and CIA types see the AFM as insufficient to guide their interrogation actions in the field. They want the ability to improvise their techniques to the given interrogation or situation.  Many of these same people are implying that Obama’s moves to close Guantanamo raises the spectre of the release of horrible terrorists in the homeland itself, who will attack American communities. In a column today, Glenn Greenwald dissects this fear-mongering campaign by the right.

Confusion in the Press on Torture Plans (w/update)

An Associated Press story by Lara Jakes and Pamela Hess, released today, reports on President Obama’s intention to limit the CIA to interrogation techniques listed in the Army Field Manual. The pending Executive Orders on interrogation would also end the practice of detention by the CIA in secret prisons. But, in a potential sop to the Agency:

[Obama’s] advisers are considering adding a classified loophole to the rules that could allow the CIA to use some interrogation methods not specifically authorized by the Pentagon…

Such a “loophole” would be included as a classified annex to the Army Field Manual, which the article assures us doesn’t allow threats or coercion, while also banning physical abuse and outrageous torture techniques like waterboarding. The article does single out, without explanation, that there is a special AFM technique allowed “in some cases” — isolation.

Obama’s Executive Orders on Guantanamo & the Question of Prosecutions

+++ Update: Here’s a link to the draft executive order’s text +++

Like attacking a hydra with many heads, the new administration is planning to take its first whacks at the torture regime set up by the Bush Administration. It’s most infamous manifestation lies 90 miles off the U.S. coast at Guantanamo Naval Base, Cuba.

Today, the government ordered a 120-day suspension of the military tribunal hearings of the Guantanamo detainees, as well as lesser delays in habeas hearings filed by attorneys on behalf of some of the prisoners.

Now, breaking news reported at ABC News, reports that tomorrow we will see three executive orders issued by President Obama aimed at the closure of Guantanamo “within a year”, and promising immediate changes in the procedures and policies surrounding interrogation of detainees, and the conditions of their detention.

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