Tag: Torture

Kenneth S. Pope, Ph.D., a distinguished psychological researcher, and former Ethics chair for the American Psychological Association, as well as a recipient of the APA Distinguished Contribution to Psychology Award, has resigned from APA. He argues that in the post-9/11 environment, APA has changed its ethical stance in a way that distorts the principles of ethical psychological practice. In particular, he singles out APA’s stance toward the treatment of detainees in Bush’s “war on terror” prisons.

The letter is published at Counterpunch and at his own website, and is reproduced below, followed by another letter, from APA’s President and Chief Executive Officer to Attorney General Mukasey. Both are printed in juxtaposition here, as they offer an interesting contrast in emphases. First, Dr. Pope: Why I Resigned from the American Psychological Association.

cross posted at The Dream Antilles

Waterboarding (read: torture) is nothing new.  It’s been around since the 15th century, and has a long, well documented history.  That history was briefly summed up by Ted Kennedy for Democracy Now:

It’s an ancient technique of tyrants. In the fifteenth and sixteenth century, it was used by interrogators in the Spanish Inquisition. In the nineteenth century, it was used against slaves in this country. In World War II, it was used against us by Japan. In the 1970s, it was used against political opponents by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the military dictatorships of Chile and Argentina. Today, it’s being used against pro-democracy activists by the rulers of Burma. When we fail to reject waterboarding, this is the company that we keep. /snip

   Make no mistake about it: waterboarding is already illegal under United States law. It’s illegal under the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit outrages upon personal dignity, including cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment. It’s illegal under the Torture Act, which prohibits acts specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering. It’s illegal under the Detainee Treatment Act, which prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. And it violates the Constitution. The nation’s top military lawyers and legal experts across the political spectrum have condemned waterboarding as torture. And after World War II, the United States prosecuted- prosecuted- Japanese officers for engaging in waterboarding. What more does this nominee need to enforce existing laws?

This essay isn’t about rehashing the many legal arguments about how waterboarding is torture and in violation of US and international law.  Instead, this essay recalls two recent, prominent instances in which the US itself prosecuted the use of waterboarding as a crime, as torture.  It raises this simple question: how can anyone who acknowledges this relatively recent history argue that waterboarding isn’t a crime and isn’t torture.  And how is it that our learned congresspersons haven’t forcefully confronted Bushco’s minions with this history?

Please join me below.

There are some things one never forgets. I’ll never forget my first, and only, encounter with torture some 40 years ago. Our daylight patrol, some 4 or 5 Marines and probably the same number of Vietnamese Province level militia troops engaged some unseen VC hidden in a tree-line and a firefight ensued. The tree-line held a small hamlet and predictably the village people carrying with them their most valued possessions fled in our direction. The fled because they knew their village would most likely be shelled, strafed or bombed. As it turned out the village was strafed by a couple of passes of a fighter jet spraying the area with 40 mm cannon fire.

Our Vietnamese counterparts detained a young lady they said was a VC, a nurse they claimed. We brought her back to our ragged compound where they bound her, stripped off her shirt and attached wires to her nipples and used a crank operated electrical device to shock her. Needless to say it was thoroughly disgusting. Through it all she refused to talk. I admired her courage. They took her off to the District Hq and we never heard any more about her.

In April 2004, the American public was stunned by televised photographs from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison showing hooded Iraqis stripped naked, posed in contorted positions, and visibly suffering humiliating abuse while U.S. soldiers stood by smiling. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld quickly assured Congress that the abuses were “perpetrated by a small number of U.S. military,” whom New York Times columnist William Safire soon branded “creeps.”

Most Americans became aware of torture when Seymour Hersh broke the story about Abu Ghraib. Where did it all begin? I witnessed torture 40 years ago and have come to wonder why, where and when it all started.

After French soldiers used the technique on Henri Alleg during the Battle for Algiers in 1957, this journalist wrote a moving description that turned the French people against both torture and the Algerian War. “I tried,”

Alleg wrote, “by contracting my throat, to take in as little water as possible and to resist suffocation by keeping air in my lungs for as long as I could. But I couldn’t hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression of drowning, and a terrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me.”

Let us think about the deeper meaning of Alleg’s sparse words–“a terrible agony, that of death itself.” As the water blocks air to the lungs, the human organism’s powerful mammalian diving reflex kicks in, and the brain is wracked by horrifically painful panic signals–death, death, death. After a few endless minutes, the victim vomits out the water, the lungs suck air, and panic subsides. And then it happens again, and again, and again–each

time inscribing the searing trauma of near death in human memory.

from: http://www.zmag.org/content/sh…

Today, Attorney General Michael Mukasey is appearing before the House Judiciary Committee chaired by John Conyers. In his testimony today, the Washington Post reports Mukasey rejects a criminal probe into waterboarding.

“Waterboarding, because it was authorized to be part of a program … cannot possibly be the subject of a Justice Department investigation,” Mukasey said…

“That would mean that the same department that authorized the program would now prosecute someone for taking part” in it, he said.

On the White House lawn, actually.

But, hey – don’t worry; I’m not gonna get all up in a lather about it.

I mean, I don’t want to hurt our chances in November. We don’t want to give the right wing any ammunition that they might use against us, like that we’re “vengeful,” or that our releasing a video of dead-baby eating is “politically motivated,” or that congressional investigations into dead-baby eating are just more “political theater.”

Sure – “Ooooh, dead-baby eating! Oooh, the boogeyman!” I know you’re all, “Oooh, that’s un-American! How can they do that?” Well, I’d love to tell you, but if I did, I’d be revealing sources and methods that could compromise our ability to fight the terrorists. But let’s just say it involves a casserole dish, a little basil, and a 375-degree oven, and leave it at that, m’kay?

And anyway, who says dead-baby eating is a crime?  I mean, I wouldn’t want to have it done to my baby, but the Attorney General tells me he has a written opinion from the White House counsel that says that, short of being slowly roasted on a spit with an apple in their mouth, dead-baby eating does not constitute criminal behavior, and violates no international treaties that we observe.  So I’m good with that.

And like I said, it’s not like they were eating my baby. In fact, I’ve been given assurances by those in the administration that only babies with links to known terrorists were consumed.    

The front page of the LA Times:

Waterboarding is legal, White House says

Mark down the date.  February 6, 2008.  The White House goes from dancing around the waterboarding issue, to claiming it is legal after it was disclosed that George W. Bush authorized its use.  W stands for war criminal.

The first paragraph says it all.

The White House said Wednesday that the widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding is legal and that President Bush could authorize the CIA to resume using the simulated-drowning method under extraordinary circumstances.

Old School Waterboarding

On Tuesday, Bushco acknowledged publicly for the first time that waterboarding was used by the U.S. government on three “terror suspects.” Testifying before Congress, CIA Director Michael Hayden claimed the three were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003.  But, he said, nobody else had been waterboarded since.  To be frank, I don’t believe that for a second, but I have no evidence to the contrary.

Join me in Gitmo.  

Crossposted at Daily Kos and Invictus

I know there is another diary on Mukasey and waterboarding up, by BarbinMD. I recommend it. But this is not a duplicate diary. It covers today’s hearing (still in process as I write), and calls for Mukasey’s impeachment, giving the reasons why. It also goes into some detail on the legal points involved.

Actually, what Michael B. Mukasey said today at his Senate oversight hearing was that waterboarding, under non-specific certain circumstances, is not torture. Of course, he couldn’t say that outright; he said in legalese. In the obscurity of U.S. law, torture is defined as something that “shocks the conscience.” And Mukasey, squirming before Sen. Dick Durbin’s questioning, feels that after extensive review, piles of documents and opinions, the question of waterboarding is — sometimes — “unresolved.”

Here’s some of the testimony between Durbin and Mukasey (thanks to Firedoglake):

Is life so dear

Patrick Henry’s speech

http://www.historyplace.com/sp…

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

torture

sam harris’s tortured logic: if you’re willing to accept collateral damage (i.e., civilian casualties), you ought to accept torture

Are we willing to accept the certainty of the sacrifice of our most fundamental and defining civil liberties, in exchange for the mere possibility – and a very dubious one it is, at that – that our physical safety might be enhanced just a wee bit?

martin luther king

http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu…

…though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus and extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like am ever-flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . . .”

So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvery’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime — the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth, and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

cia oldies

http://www.washingtonindepende…

tsa and facecrimes

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

Torture

You made me look like an asshole. I promised all those people I called on the phone that the new Democratic Congress would change things. All you’ve succeeded in doing, is continuing to do what they Republics were doing – only not quite as well as them.

Do Democrats in Washington think the people of this country are still cowering in fear in their basements, quaking in dread about the next terrorist attack? Do they believe that most Americans think it’s OK to wiretap their phones, track their Internet usage and torture them – because that is what we are coming to, and if you do not believe that, I do not know what to say to you – because those Americans think it will keep them safer?

Do Democrats in Washington believe that most people in this country believe that our continued occupation of Iraq is keeping us safer from terrorist attacks? Do they think that we believe that our interests are served by Blackwater and KBR receiving hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to continue doing what they’ re doing?

Never faced an enemy like this before? What – an enemy that beheads its prisoners? An enemy that tortures its prisoners? An enemy that targets innocent women and children? [HERE RUN OKLAHOMA CITY PHOTO] Wrong. [LINK THAT TO TORTURE DIARY]

The so-called “ticking time bomb” scenario can also be blown out of the water [USE MARINE INTERROGATOR ON GUADALCANAL] During a time of war. And if anybody can actually point to a single example of the ticking time bomb scenario actually happening, I’d like to hear about it.

Nytimes article on zubaydah from sept 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09…

http://www.progressive.org/mag…

Advocates of the ticking bomb often cite the brutal torture of Abdul Hakim Murad in Manila in 1995, which they say stopped a plot to blow up a dozen trans-Pacific aircraft and kill 4,000 innocent passengers. Except, of course, for the simple fact that Murad’s torture did nothing of the sort. As The Washington Post has reported, Manila police got all their important information from Murad in the first few minutes when they seized his laptop with the entire bomb plot. All the supposed details gained from the sixty-seven days of incessant beatings, spiced by techniques like cigarettes to the genitals, were, as one Filipino officer testified in a New York court, fabrications fed to Murad by Philippine police.

More on bojinka wapo 2001

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

ticking time bomb

http://www.progressive.org/mag…

outstanding essay on crooked timber

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/…

and on fafblog

http://fafblog.blogspot.com/20…

va law review (PDF)

http://www.virginialawreview.o…

(Even the logic of the ticking time bomb scenario falls apart under any reflection. To wit: We are dealing with people who are willing to die – indeed, who look forward to dying – in the pursuit of their terrorist aims. If one of them is captured, for what possible reason on earth would they not be willing to die under interrogation? And – make no mistake – waterboarding is not “simulated” drowning; it is actual drowning, the pace of which is administered at the discretion of the interrogator.)

zubaydah bullshit

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

iraqi torutre complex found

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

Paragraph from RadioShack get a headset.  The palest cellular get the new phones.

If torturing were necessary as a result of the terrorist bombings of September 11, why wasn’t it necessary as a result of the terrorist bombings of the Oklahoma City federal building?

Look up the Marine Corps General who advocated on or about December 20 for the mass release of Iraqi detainees.  Also, on the same day in the LA Times, look for the story of the Iranian who was released.

The destruction of the CIA torture tapes will reveal that Ilya carry out in this story, or whatever the agents suppose that name was, completely bogus.  No information of value was obtained, and torture definitely to place.  Where are the suppose of plots that were stopped as a result of this interrogation?  Who are the suppose that it terrorist operatives who were intercepted as a result of this interrogation?  Administration is never fail to trumpet its “successes” in this so-called war on terror; even though most of them have turned out to be dismal failures.  And here referenced the many court cases that have fallen apart for ridiculous so-called terrorist groups in the United States.

Mail the reimbursement check to the credit union.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

nosenko story

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20…

Your government is torturing people. And spying on you. Right now.  

How much worse does it need to get? Maybe only when 99.9% of Americans are without health insurance, in debt to their eyeballs and – here’s the clincher – so bereft that their electricity has been cut off, depriving them  thereby of their American Idol, PS3 and FaceBook – will they say, ENOUGH!

neighborhood surveillance

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

mass arrests under truman, hoover

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

1934 plot to overthrow america

http://www.harpers.org/archive…