America’s Concentration Camps category archive
Catch 22 0
What’s it like to attempt to defend prisoners imprisoned with no charges, granted no rights?
Here from the lawyers who have taken pro bono cases for the wretches swept up in the Bushie dragnet:
After David McColgin took on a client in 2004, he spent a year and a half just trying to meet the man.
“We couldn’t see him without a signature,” the veteran federal defender said, “but we couldn’t get his signature without seeing him.”
Then again, his colleague Christi Charpentier noted, it’s hard to get a client to trust you if he thinks you’re either a secret agent or a powerless pawn.
“He wanted us to bring him cigarettes,” she said of one wary detainee. “And we couldn’t.”
Even good news from Gitmo is maddeningly surreal, as federal defender Shawn Nolan experienced.
“I got an e-mail last February from the government saying, ‘Your clients are eligible for release.’ ”
“I e-mailed right back asking, ‘What does this mean?’ ”
Despite all his efforts, he’s still waiting for a response.
But wait! There’s more!
Follow the link to read the whole damned sad story of the perfidy of the Current Federal Administration.
Torture is Their Pornography 0
Dan Froomkin:
The bill would require U.S. intelligence agencies to follow interrogation rules adopted by the armed forces last year.
What does that mean? As Pamela Hess writes for the Associated Press, those rules explicitly prohibit “forcing detainees to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner; placing hoods or sacks over detainees’ heads or duct tape over their eyes; beating, shocking, or burning detainees; threatening them with military dogs; exposing them to extreme heat or cold; conducting mock executions; depriving them of food, water, or medical care; and waterboarding.”
Administration officials have consistently refused to confirm or deny whether any of those methods have been sanctioned by the White House and are in use. But really all you need to know is this: According to yesterday’s formal statement of administration policy, limiting intelligence agencies to the army rules “would prevent the United States from conducting lawful interrogations of senior al Qaeda terrorists to obtain intelligence needed to protect Americans from attack.”
In other news, pot, kettle, black.
Torture through the Years 0
Read about it here.
Keep the Evidence 1
Via Talking Points Memo, Dana Perino states that the Current Federal Administration has been advised not to destroy documents related to the CIA torture tapes.
The documents will probably be stored with those White House emails.
Bush to the American People: “What You Don’t Know Can’t Hurt Me” 0
“What a tangled web you weave,
When first you practice to deceive.”
And, damn, have they practiced to deceive!
Swampwater 0
The latest over at ASZ.
Waterboarding’s Glorious Past 0
I’ve done a lot of research on the water cure.
Despite the fulminations of the Wingnuttysphere to somehow claim that it is not torture, it is, quite clearly, torture.
The issue to be discussed is not whether or not waterboarding is torture.
The issue to be discussed is whether Americans should torture or whether torturing persons violates the ideals upon which the United States of America was founded.
Those who argue that waterboarding is not torture are just trying to weasel out of facing the moral decision.
And those who would say that waterboarding is the “American way,” have good company.
Swampwater 0
And this surprises us how?
The shooting deaths of three other civilians in the same incident may have been within guidelines for the use of deadly force, officials said.
FBI investigators who spent two weeks in Baghdad last month have briefed prosecutors on their findings, but a formal “prosecutive memo” laying out the key elements of the case has not been sent to the Justice Department yet. Justice will make the final decision on whether to go forward with legal proceedings against the Blackwater personnel.
The investigators found no evidence to support Blackwater’s public insistence that the guards shot only in response to gunfire directed at them.
The Result of Torture Is Lies 0
(Because persons who will say anything, anything just to make it stop will lie.)
And the result of lies is evil.
ASZ has more.
The Path to Barbarity 0
John McLaughland in the Guardian:
Torture and “humanitarian war” are similar in many ways. Both involve the inflicting of violence in order to force a change of behaviour. Both are predicated on the assumption of guilt: torture is justified because the victim is said to be a terrorist, or an “illegal combatant” who has committed or is about to commit a terrible crime, while pre-emptive war is justified because a state is said to be “a rogue state” violating international law (Iraq) or committing crimes against humanity (Yugoslavia). It is therefore no coincidence that the US administration that justifies its wars in the name of claims about humanity and its right to liberty also advocates the use of torture to protect these.
Think about it:
Your tax dollars at work.
Water, Water, Everywhere 0
And all the boards did shrink.
Dana Milbank reports:
“Our nation,” agreed psychiatrist Stephen Xenakis, a retired Army general, “has regarded waterboarding as torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment since the late 19th century.”
Nor did Vann Nath, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge’s Tuol Sleng torture chambers, agree with Cheney’s view that the technique is a “no-brainer.” With a translator, he described it by teleconference from Cambodia: “They would pour the water to the level of the prisoner’s head. The prisoner would have been choked, could not breathe.”
Alternatively, Nath explained: “The prisoner was tied up both hand and leg and laid on his back on a slanted table. His face was covered by a cloth. . . . The interrogator poured water on the face and the prisoner could not have the chance to breath. They started to get convulsions.”
And finally, Nath described: “He would hang upside down into the water tank. When the water was filled up to the nose of the prisoner the prisoner wasn’t able to breathe. . . . After the interrogation finished, they were taken away and shot.”
Another water-torture survivor, Henri Alleg, called in from France. Alleg has written a book about being tortured by the French in Algeria describing how a wooden wedge was put in his mouth and water poured in. He lost consciousness and one of his interrogators “was hitting my stomach with his fist to make me throw out the water I had swallowed.”
“They went on with electricity, burning with torches of paper, and so on,” Alleg explained yesterday. But the waterboarding was bad enough. “For people who have undergone this treatment, the question is how was it possible for it to be used by people who put themselves as a civilized people?” he said.
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
Swampwater: Coverup (Updated) 0
The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.
The immunity deal has delayed a criminal inquiry into the Sept. 16 killings and could undermine any effort to prosecute security contractors for their role in the incident that has infuriated the Iraqi government.
“Once you give immunity, you can’t take it away,” said a senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.
I was listening to Friday’s Diane Rehm Show today via podcast.
According to one of the guests, one of the recommendations was that State Department investigators made was that mercenaries “contractors” actually take aim before firing!
WHAT THE HELL HAVE THE BUSHIES DONE TO WHAT OUR FOUNDERS SO QUAINTLY CALLED, “OUR SACRED HONOR”?
AND WHY THE HELL ARE YOU PUTTING UP WITH IT?
Addendum, Later That Same Evening:
Dan Froomkin:
Rice agreed that “there is a hole” in U.S. law that has prevented prosecution of contractors.
But did we really need an apparent massacre to point out this giant loophole and its perils?
As it happens, President Bush has been aware of the hole for some time — and deserves some of the blame for not fixing it earlier. Confronted about it in public more than a year ago, Bush literally laughed off the question — and then, tellingly, described his response as a case study in how he does his job.
The setting was a question-and-answer session after Bush spoke at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in April of 2006. (Here’s a video clip.)
One student, a first-year in South Asia studies, told the president: “My question is in regards to private military contractors. Uniform Code of Military Justice does not apply to these contractors in Iraq. I asked your Secretary of Defense a couple months ago what law governs their actions.
Bush: “I was going to ask him. Go ahead. (Laughter.) Help. (Laughter.)”
Student: “I was hoping your answer might be a little more specific. (Laughter.) Mr. Rumsfeld answered that Iraq has its own domestic laws which he assumed applied to those private military contractors. However, Iraq is clearly not currently capable of enforcing its laws, much less against — over our American military contractors. I would submit to you that in this case, this is one case that privatization is not a solution. And, Mr. President, how do you propose to bring private military contractors under a system of law?”
Bush: “I appreciate that very much. I wasn’t kidding — (laughter.) I was going to — I pick up the phone and say, Mr. Secretary, I’ve got an interesting question. (Laughter.) This is what delegation — I don’t mean to be dodging the question, although it’s kind of convenient in this case, but never — (laughter.) I really will — I’m going to call the Secretary and say you brought up a very valid question, and what are we doing about it? That’s how I work. I’m — thanks. (Laughter.)”
Never To Be Seen Again 0
Extraordinary rendition.
Involved being rendered.
Like a horse into glue.
Follow the link for the facts.
1. Rendition is something the Bush administration cooked up.
Nope. George W. Bush was still struggling to coax oil out of the ground when the United States “rendered to justice” its first suspect from abroad. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan authorized an operation that lured Lebanese hijacker Fawaz Younis to a boat off the coast of Cyprus . . . .
Beginning in 1995, the Clinton administration turned up the speed with a full-fledged program to use rendition to disrupt terrorist plotting abroad. According to former director of central intelligence George J. Tenet, about 70 renditions were carried out before Sept. 11, 2001, most of them during the Clinton years.
2. People who are “rendered” inevitably end up in a foreign slammer — or worse.
Actually, that’s not a foregone conclusion.
(snip)
3. Step one of a rendition involves kidnapping the suspect.
The individual may feel as though he’s being kidnapped, but that’s not usually what’s going on.
(snip)
4. Rendition is just a euphemism for outsourcing torture.
Well, not historically.
(snip)
Now, though, the Bush team seems to have dramatically eroded such safeguards (torture is their pornography–ed.).
(snip)
5. Pretty much anyone — including U.S. citizens and green card holders — can be rendered these days.
Not so, . . . .
(snip)
In fairness, though, the ghastly case of Maher Arar — a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who convincingly says he was detained at New York’s JFK Airport, handed off to Syria and tortured — is way too close for comfort.
Proud of your government now?
Torture in the News–Not 0
This week’s On the Media explores the (lack of) coverage of the torture memos on the big three TV network news shows.
Go to the website or listen here:
Jon Swift Brings Conservative Clarity to the Torture Race 0
Check it out:
If we do win this war and Western Civilization survives, no doubt future generations will look back on this debate and wonder what all the fuss was about. “That’s not so bad at all,” they’ll say, “compared with what we do today.”
“We Don’t Torture,” Says He 0
Dan Froomkin searches for the truth (emphasis added, because it echoes what I’ve been saying). Follow the link, read the whole thing, and wonder what have we allowed to happen in our names.
How the United States became associated with torture is not just a matter of historical interest. And that’s all the more clear today, with the publication of a major New York Times story describing the Bush administration’s ongoing circumvention of national and international prohibitions against barbaric interrogation practices.
In other words: It continues.
Finding out what our government has been doing in our name, and openly debating our interrogation policies, should have been high on the national agenda since the disclosure of the shockingly inhumane treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Few other issues speak so clearly to how we see ourselves as a people — and how others see us.
But the White House’s non-denial denials, disingenuous euphemisms and oppressive secrecy have repeatedly stifled any genuine discourse. Bush shuts down discussion by declaring that “we don’t torture” — yet he won’t even say how he defines the term.
Shame on us all for tolerating this, this, this vile gaming.
Dishonor (Updated) 1
I could probably improve on the essay below, but it’s not worth the effort.
I’m so disgusted I could spit.
But I’m not surprised.
On second thought, I don’t feel disgusted.
I feel soiled.
Soiled by what these thugs have done in your name, in my name, in our name.
The New York Times stops just short of using the “T word,” preferring to call it “severe interrogations.” But let’s not beat around the bush: Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department secretly approved torture — even as it told the rest of the world it didn’t, and as Congress was passing laws to ban torture
In a long investigative piece, the Times digs up two classified opinions issued by the department under Gonzales’ reign to prove it.
The first, issued soon after Gonzales’ arrival as attorney general in 2005, for the first time provided “explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including headslapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.”
(That “simulated drowning,” by the way, is the technique known as waterboarding: “pouring water over a bound prisoner’s cloth-covered face to induce fear of suffocation.”)
Meanwhile, the department’s official stand to the public was the one it issued in 2004, calling torture “abhorrent.”
Later in 2005, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion declaring that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.
If they didn’t violate that standard, they at least produced some of the tainted results torture often yields: confessions to crimes the confessor probably didn’t commit.
When the C.I.A. caught Khaid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, interrogators were “haunted by uncertainty.” They used a variety of “tough interrogation tactics” about 100 times over two weeks on the man known as K.S.M., and got all kinds of confessions. The problem is, intelligence officers say that “many of Mr. Mohammed’s statements proved exaggerated or false.”
Reacting to the Times story, a White House spokeswoman said: “Our intelligence agencies legally obtain information. This country does not torture.”
The only way they can say “This country does not torture” is that they call it something else. Like Ralph or Fred or Betty.
That’s it. “Let’s take them to the Ralph room.”
Addendum, Later That Same Evening:
ASZ.