Tag: Torture

This is how republican politicians make nice to their torture loving base.  The New York Times reports:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said President Bush should veto a measure that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects.

McCain voted against the bill, which would restrict the CIA to using only the 19 interrogation techniques listed in the Army field manual.

His vote was controversial because the manual prohibits waterboarding — a simulated drowning technique that McCain also opposes — yet McCain doesn’t want the CIA bound by the manual and its prohibitions.

Hmmm.  McCain voted against a measure– an inadequate measure imo because among the 19 permitted “techniques” are some that amount to torture– that would forbid any “innovations” not in the 19 listed techniques.  These “innovations” include waterboarding.  And how does McTorture explain the brilliant logic of that?

‘I knew I would be criticized for it,” McCain told reporters Wednesday in Ohio. ”I think I can show my record is clear. I said there should be additional techniques allowed to other agencies of government as long as they were not” torture.

”I was on the record as saying that they could use additional techniques as long as they were not cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment,” McCain said. ”So the vote was in keeping with my clear record of saying that they could have additional techniques, but those techniques could not violate international rules against torture.”

What, pray tell, are the magical, non-torture “additional techniques” beyond the 19 in the manual and waterboarding?  F*ck if I know.  Do you know?  Does anybody?  Are there such things?  You know what?  It doesn’t matter because this vote isn’t about the content of the bill.  No, it’s about rallying the Torquemadas around this candidate’s willingness to torture.

McTorture wants all of the little torture happy rethuglicans in the base to know that he’s the true successor to Flyboy McCodpiece and that he, too, will use “other techniques” (we cannot tell you what they are because that would give it away).  And just as W says that waterboarding isn’t torture, so too the undisclosed additional techniques aren’t torture, also. And how do we know that?  Because the US doesn’t torture.  Did he tell us that already?  

What slime.

Steven Reisner is running for president of the American Psychological Association. He has been a central figure in the fight to break APA from their position that psychologists assist with national security interrogations, such as their work with the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams or BSCTs at Guantanamo and elsewhere. This collaboration by psychologists has not led to a lessening of brutality and psychological torture of detainees, but in fact has been implicated in its design and implementation.

Dr. Reisner’s campaign, as his election statement emphasizes, calls for “a clear departure from the complicity of psychologists in state-sponsored abuses of human rights, whether these take place at Guantánamo, CIA black sites, or domestic supermax prisons.”

I resigned from APA myself last month, in protest of the tight relationship that has grown between the APA ruling apparatus and the various governmental entities that define the national security state. The use of torture is only one of the ways psychologists have been utilized to promote the effectiveness of the U.S. war machine. While I came to the conclusion that APA cannot be reformed at this point, there is the possibility, of course, that I’m wrong. And if it turns out I am mistaken, it will be because the membership of APA will have chosen leaders like Dr. Reisner for their elected offices. If I were still in APA, I definitely would have cast my vote for Steven, and I recommend that any APA members reading this do the same.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Torture At Abu Ghraib

It depends on what you mean by “outsourcing.”  If, like me, you’ve been assuming that “interrogations” of detainees prisoners at Guantanamo and the “black sites” were all being conducted only by CIA employees or uniformed armed forces personnel or at the very least US government employees, you’re probably making a mistake.  The facts seem to be that “interrogations” have frequently been conducted by “contractors” and not by government employees.  That’s right.  Arguments about what the CIA’s employees can and cannot do don’t directly address what contractors can do any more than US law determines how prisoners are to be interrogated after they are extraordinarily renditioned illegally extradited to other countries.

Follow me behind the facade.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

This Is What Torture Looks Like

How gullible are we?  How much nonsense will we consider truthful?  How many lies and contradictions and just plain nonsense about torture do we need to be told before we say, “Basta ya!  Enough already!”  The photo clearly depicts the torture of detainees prisoners at Guantanamo: stress positions and sensory deprivation.  But today the WaPo reports that Bushco says its activities don’t really cross the line and aren’t quite torture.

Join me behind the razor wire.

Cross-posted on kos

Nicholas Kristof may be the most maddening of all the New York Times columnists.  His last two columns illustrate this perfectly. Last Thursday, he wrote a great column on the torture and incarceration of Sami al-Hajj  It was a rare traditional media expose and attack on this underreported story.  I wrote a comment to the piece suggesting that he do a follow-up column noting that Congress had just passed an anti-torture bill, but candidate McCain had voted no.

Today, his column is an inexplicable Valentine to McCain that excuses all of his pandering on numerous issues, and mentions merely in passing that he just voted for torture!

OK, so this is what pisses me off.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey (thanks for that one, Schumer and Feinstein) says that waterboarding would be torture if it were done to him.  And Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell says that waterboarding (you remember, something that the Attorney General would say is torture if done to him) would require the president’s consent and legal approval from the attorney general.  Oh yeah, CIA Director Michael Hayden said that waterboarding (again, something that the Attorney General not only would say is torture if done to him, but also something that both he and the president would have to personally sign off on in order for the CIA to engage in such acts) was actually done to three detainees while in US captivity.

By the way, all of those statements were made before a Senate committee and presumably none of the three individuals were lying when they made those statements.  

But wait, there’s still more here.  

cross posted from The Dream Antilles



Still Guantanamo

Every day it just gets worse.  Today (h/t to Smintheus at dKos), Prof Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall University Law School (with assistance from many others) released a report (pdf format) on interrogations at Gitmo.  It’s a shocker.  Among other things it says that there have been 24,000 “interrogations” at Gitmo and that all of them have been videotaped.

Join me inside the wire.  

The decision to pursue the death penalty against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a number of other suspects creates a situation that no doubt was thought through by the Bush administration more than whether to actually use torture against these people in the first place.  I haven’t seen this angle discussed too much in depth but if it has, please forgive me.

Regardless of whether anyone thinks that the death penalty is a just punishment, is “cruel and inhuman”, or just plain doesn’t agree with it, I want to at least (for now) leave that out of this post.  If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (“KSM” to make it easier for me) is guilty of masterminding the 9/11 attacks, or if he is guilty of any other crimes that can be proven, then he should receive the justice that he deserves.  This is not about whether he should or should not pay for his crimes.

I don’t think there are many people who would say that he does not deserve punishment (whatever the maximum punishment that can be meted out would be) for planning these attacks.  But, and here is the rub – the fact that his trial will be largely based on evidence that is obtained by torture will forever cloud his trial – if not in the eyes of Americans then most certainly in the eyes of the world .

Up until this month, the Bush administration refused to talk about waterboarding. The talking points were always the same. ‘We cannot talk about specific techniques‘ and ‘Whatever techniques we did use were within the law.’ The Senate was told they were being unfair to Michael Mukasey for asking about the technique because he had not been briefed on its use.

Now the Bushies cannot stop talking about waterboarding.  

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

The Original Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy

This is really fascinating.  And short.  Whoever is playing Edgar Bergen has apparently temporarily lost control of his sockpuppet Charlie McCarthy.  The story is that the voices of Bushco apparently don’t agree today on the legality of waterboarding torture.

Join me on stage.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Guantanamo Detainee

Yesterday the US announced that 6 Gitmo detainees prisoners would face the death penalty after bogus  “trials” with unfair and untested procedures.  I wrote an essay explaining why this was an outrage and a disgrace.  Today, to my shock and surprise, I discovered an even greater outrage: that the US plans to conduct executions of these detainees prisoners at Gitmo so that the detainees prisoners will be denied any judicial review in the US Courts.  If yesterday’s news was dreadful, today’s is even more cynical and and even greater disgrace.

Join me behind the wire.