Tag: CIA

copyright © 2009 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

Never for a moment in my life have I been “in love.”  I do not believe in the notion.  Fireworks have not filled my heart.  Flames of a fiery passion do not burn within me.  Indeed, my soul has not been ablaze.  Thoughts of a hot-blooded devotion seem illogical to me.  Such sentiments always have.  Fondness too fertile is but torture for me.  I admire many, and adore none.  For me, the affection I feel for another is born out of sincere and profound appreciation.  To like another means more to me than to love or be loved.  Excitement, an emotional reaction to another, rises up within me when I experience an empathetic exchange with someone who has glorious gray matter.

Today, it happened.  I felt an a twinge that startled me.  I stood still as he entered the room.  I expected nothing out of the ordinary, or at least nothing other than what has become his recently adopted, more avoidant, routine.  Although long ago, I had become accustomed to his face, his voice, and his demeanor, for I have known the man for more than a few years.  In the last few weeks, while essentially he is who he always was, some of his stances have changed.  Possibly, Barry has felt a need to compromise his positions, but I wonder; what of his principles.

 

Over the past 16 months, what members of Congress knew and when did they know it has slowly emerged in newspaper accounts. Four select members of Congress were notified in September 2002 when the CIA gave a secret high level briefing regarding the use of “harsh interrogation” and “overseas detention sites”.

U.S. law requires Congress be informed of covert activities, but allows for limited access to briefings in sensitive matters. In this meeting, four members of Congress were informed. They were Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Porter Goss, and Senators Bob Graham and Richard Shelby. The ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees sometimes described as the “Gang of Four”.

According to the Washington Post in December 2007, the four Congress members raised no objections to the “interrogation” techniques described, including waterboarding.

Crossposted from Antemedius

The release of some of the Bush administration torture memos now presents the Obama administration with a crucial dilemma. President Obama at first exonerated CIA officials responsible for the euphemistic “enhanced interrogation” techniques. The White House has even expunged the word “torture” from its vocabulary. The bulk of corporate media favors a whitewash.

Pepe Escobar argues the question is not that the memos should have been kept secret – as the CIA and former Vice-President Dick Cheney wanted. The question is that those who broke the rule of law must be held accountable. Responding to growing public outrage, the White House shifted gears and is now leaving the door open for the work of a Special Prosecutor.

Real News – April 22, 2009

American torture

There can be no “exceptionalism” when the rule of law is broken

copyright © 2009 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

I am a discontent and distressed taxpayer!  “Disgruntled” is a word that might describe my deep dissatisfaction with how my tax dollars are spent.  Yet, on April 15, 2009, typically thought of as “Tax Day,” I felt no need to join my fellow citizens in protest.  I did not attend a “Tea Party”.  I too believe, in this country, “taxation without representation” is a problem.  One only need ponder the profits of lobbyists to understand the premise.  Corporate supplicants amass a 22,000 percent rate of return on their investments.  The average American is happy to realize a two-digit increase.  Nonetheless, as much as I too may argue the point, assessments are paid without accountability, what concerns me more is my duty dollars did not support what I think ethical projects.  

The Nuremberg Retributions were one of the lowest points in 20th century history.  The aftermath of the Second World War should have been a time for looking ahead, not for laying blame for the past. Unfortunately, too many people failed to understand that well-intentioned Germans accused of war crimes were just following orders and acting in good faith.  Those dedicated patriots in the Whermacht and hard working public servants in the SS were men of integrity, they didn’t shirk their responsibility to keep the German homeland safe from Jewish, Polish, Russian, Rumanian, Yugoslavian, French, British, Danish, Bulgarian, Hungarian, American, Greek, Dutch, Norwegian, Canadian and Belgian fanatics, extremists, and non-combatants.

Unlike 50 million human beings, this Dedicated Defender of the Homeland Paradigm survived the Second World War.  With a vengeance.  It was alive and well in Bush and Cheney’s White House, and it’s alive and well in Obama’s White House.  Take notes everyone, that patriotic act in the photo wasn’t a war crime, it was just defending the homeland . . .

I’ve learned recently that the aftermath of the Second World War should have been a time for reflection, not retribution.  Everyone should have respected the strong views and emotions of Germans who defended their country through a war crime or two, just as much as they respected the strong views and emotions of the people whose loved ones were executed and dumped in a ditch, bombed, tortured, gassed, burned in ovens, and condemned as subhuman parasites unfit to exist.

But vengeance prevailed over common sense.  Retribution was insisted upon by persecutors waving the “rule of law” in everyone’s face, they rambled on and on and on about “justice” but all they were really after was payback and revenge.  So many German children who loved their dedicated fathers had to watch with tears in their eyes while their fathers were slandered in the newspapers and demonized by finger pointing trial lawyers parading around for the newsreel cameras.        

cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

Yesterday, while I was driving to court, I heard on NPR that the “torture memos” had been redacted and released, and to my amazement, that Barack Obama had announced that the actual torturers would not be prosecuted.  I thought I misunderstood the radio.

This morning I have confirmed that I didn’t misunderstand anything.  The New York Times reports:

The Justice Department on Thursday made public detailed memos describing brutal interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency, as President Obama sought to reassure the agency that the C.I.A. operatives involved would not be prosecuted.

In dozens of pages of dispassionate legal prose, the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior operatives of Al Qaeda are spelled out in careful detail – like keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or putting insects into the box to exploit their fears.

A dark, dark day for America.

“They were only following orders.” This is the opinion of Eric Holder, as offered in his statement today, describing the decision to release four Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel memos. (The memos have just been posted, and link is here.)

And so the United States government, 64 years after the end of World War II, adopts the infamous slogan of “Befehl ist Befehl” (literally “orders are orders”), otherwise known as the Nuremberg Defense.

Furthermore, Holder pledges the U.S. government will defend any CIA torturers before any tribunal, domestic or international, pay any fines,  and make every effort to assert “any available immunities and other defenses”.

“It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department,” Holder said.

My ex-wife has been representing a Guantanamo detainee for a few years now.  She took a case she couldn’t afford and has devoted a significant portion of her resources the last few years to seeking justice for a foreign stranger accused of committing terrorist acts.  The struggle has been difficult, because her opponent has been the richest, most powerful country in the world–the government of the United States of America.  Her inability to sleep well while someone tortured in her name is the reason I fell in love with her forty years ago.  We scarcely communicate, now that our wonderful children are grown, but we did exchange emails today.  The impersonal letter she forwarded to me, the subject of this diary, brought me to tears.  This diary is to share one small development in a long, difficult struggle being carried forward by a few Americans who stand up for human rights.

The Sunday editorial in the New York Times was highly critical of the recent decision of the Obama administration to appeal the D.C. Federal Appeals Court ruling allowing habeas rights to some prisoners at Bagram.

The government furthermore asked for a stay in the proceedings of any cases under this ruling:

In sum, the extensive harms to the Government and the public interest involved in further proceedings envisioned by the Court in these cases, and the likelihood of respondents’ success on the merits of appeal, strongly warrant a stay pending appeal.

The NYT editorial, “The Next Guantánamo,” put it this way: