America’s Concentration Camps category archive

From the Forces of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

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Dear ACLU Supporter,

The truth is finally starting to come out — and it’s happening because of the sheer persistence of you and the ACLU.

Yesterday, in response to an ACLU lawsuit seeking government torture documents, the CIA acknowledged that it destroyed 92 tapes of detainee interrogations.

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CIA destroyed 92 tapes of its interrogations of prisoners. The tapes were subject to a discovery proceeding:

The ACLU immediately called for the judge to issue a “prompt finding of contempt” against the CIA.

Amrit Singh, an attorney with the ACLU and counsel on the case said to Raw Story, “The large number of video tapes destroyed confirms that this was a systemic attempt to evade court orders.”

Singh added, “It’s about time, now that the court knows 92 tapes have been destroyed, that it hold the CIA accountable for the destruction of the tapes.”

In other news, Attorney General Holder again rules out Bushie torture:

US Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday ruled out the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique for “war on terror” suspects, saying it amounted to torture.

“Waterboarding is torture. My justice department will not justify it, will not rationalize it and will not condone it,” Holder said in a speech to the Jewish Council of Public Affairs.

Emphasis added. Nothing else needs added:

But in October, the Pentagon dropped all charges against Mohamed, despite earlier statements that he had confessed to helping plan attacks on American cities. Mohamed says those supposed confessions were extracted from him by security agents who beat him, deprived him of sleep and slashed his genitals with a scalpel.

“He is a victim who has suffered more than any human being should ever suffer,” said Clive Stafford Smith, one of Mohamed’s lawyers. “He just wants to go somewhere very quiet and try to recover.”

Mohamed Farag Bashmilah tells his story at the Huffington Post. He was never told why he was picked up and detained for almost three years:

During my detention, I agonized constantly about my family back in Yemen, knowing they had no idea where I was. They never once received information about who had taken me, why I was taken, or even whether I was alive. They were never contacted by the U.S. government or the International Committee of the Red Cross. My mother and wife were in such anguish that they had to be hospitalized for illness, stress, and anxiety. My father passed away while I was disappeared and I am still distraught thinking that he died without knowing whether I was dead or alive. I continue to suffer from bouts of illness that medical doctors attribute to the treatment I experienced in the “black sites.” My physical symptoms are made worse by the anxiety caused by never knowing where I was held, and not having any form of acknowledgment that I was disappeared and tortured by the U.S. government.

Torture is not some academic thing discussed on talk shows, with hairsplitting over how many buckets of water are needed to turn a moonlight swim into body surfing. Those who participate in such discussions deny truth, to themselves and to others.

Torture is the brutal destruction of humanity and a violation of all that is holy, if, indeed, anything is holy.

For the folks who made this–and similar things–happen (and you know they did–the evidence is beyond a reasonable doubt), torture is not an instrument of anything; torture is their pornography.

They are shameless. We should be shame-full, for they bring shame on us all.

See Andrew Sullivan. A nugget:

The point of this can therefore never be to get truly reliable information. The purpose is to get answers the victim imagines the torturers want to hear. This might be the truth; or it might be a desperate untruth. The point is that the tortured is brought to the point when such distinctions are less meaningful than simply ending the ordeal.

(snip)

The torture of Winston Smith (in Orwell’s 1984–ed.) is designed specifically to force him to say that two and two equals five, just as the point of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” once used on John McCain was to get him to say things that were untrue. And it worked. If it really works, torture will force someone actually to believe that two and two equals five.

But torturing was never about the truth. Torturing is their pornography.

David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey in today’s Washington Post:

For his part, President Obama has reacted coolly to calls to investigate Bush officials. Obama is right to be skeptical; this is a profoundly bad idea — for policy and, depending on how such a commission were organized and operated, for legal and constitutional reasons.

(snip)

Attempting to prosecute political opponents at home or facilitating their prosecution abroad, however much one disagrees with their policy choices while in office, is like pouring acid into our democratic machinery.

(There’s more at the link.)

Not that I think that prosecutions are a good idea, but, I’m sorry, suborning torture is not a “policy difference.”

Addendum, after Drinking Liberally:

The Booman:

How about this? Instead of pretending that the Bush administration obeyed the law and respected the Constitution, why don’t we face facts and have a full accounting. And how about the Obama administration just respects the law and the Constitution so we don’t have to worry about prosecuting them when they leave office? Is that really so hard?

George W. Bush said

The United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example.

George W. Bush had others do this.

Commentary here.

Via Atrios.

In yesterday’s local rag:

Keeping Saigon safe required human intelligence, most often from captured prisoners. I had a running debate about how North Vietnamese prisoners should be treated with the South Vietnamese colonel who conducted interrogations. This colonel routinely tortured prisoners, producing a flood of information, much of it totally false. I argued for better treatment and pressed for key prisoners to be turned over to the CIA, where humane interrogation methods were the rule – and more accurate intelligence was the result.

The colonel finally relented and turned over a battered prisoner to me, saying, “This man knows a lot, but he will not talk to me.”

We treated the prisoner’s wounds, reunited him with his family, and allowed him to make his first visit to Saigon. Surprised by the city’s affluence, he said he would tell us anything we asked. The result was a flood of actionable intelligence that allowed us to disrupt planned operations, including rocket attacks against Saigon.

Torture is not an “interrogation technique.”

It is pornography for sadists.

See the Booman for why.

The title of John Cole’s DougJ’s post says it all.

A thought on Gitmo.

Let the healing begin.

By ordering shut the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, closing any remaining CIA secret prisons overseas and banning harsh interrogation practices, Obama said he was signaling that the U.S. would confront global violence without sacrificing “our values and our ideals.”

“First, I can say without exception or equivocation that the United States will not torture,” he said. “Second, we will close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and determine how to deal with those who have been held there.”

From the Guardian:

Jack Bauer’s antics notwithstanding, it’s pretty clear our dalliance with the dark side is ending – or at least growing a bit less dark. While some prominent Democrats say we must investigate the entire Bush record for abuses of the constitution, many Americans would just as soon file away this ugly period, at least for now, and let the historians deal with it. Count Barack Obama among them. A high-level investigation of his predecessor would inevitably suck up a lot of political oxygen during a time when he is trying to tackle other, more urgent problems.

But now, these circumstances are changing. The torture issue may turn out to be too big to ignore.

(snip)

The Bush White House is about to disappear. It can no longer wield the political or institutional clout necessary to enforce a strict code of silence. Meanwhile, there are certain advantages to coming clean, and as time goes by they will grow more compelling. Some lower-level officials in the Bush-era Pentagon, justice department and intelligence agencies will want to clear their consciences and be on the right side of history. Some will want to go on the record to secure legal protections from prosecution.

Prosecutions are not needed. Truth is.

Torque-gharib:

Meanwhile, in the newsroom, my editors, fellow reporters and I gingerly debated when, exactly, it was appropriate to use the explosive word “torture” in print. The prisoners were making a lot of sensational-sounding claims in court, through their lawyers’ filings. How could we get to the truth? And how much credit should we give to men we couldn’t talk to, who were alleged by our government to be radical jihadists who had been arrested near al-Qaeda strongholds just before the Sept. 11 attacks?

(snippage)

When the T-word first arose in court, I remember the convincing Clint Eastwood voice of Justice Department lawyer Terry Henry dismissing torture as an outlandish allegation. But by the time of a March 2006 hearing, not even the bench was giving him the typical respectful benefit of the doubt.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler was hearing detainee lawyers’ claims that a new feeding chair for prisoners on hunger strike was Guantanamo’s latest torture tactic. A prisoner who refused to eat would be strapped into the chair for up to two hours while nutrients were pumped into his nose through a tube as thick as a small broom handle. Kessler paused after Henry assured her that, according to Guantanamo’s medical director and the base commander, the feeding inflicted no significant pain.

Kessler said that she had read many sealed records about the evidence against detainees and about their treatment, and that she now had much less trust in the government.

“I know it’s a sad day when a federal judge has to ask a DOJ attorney this, but I’m asking you,” Kessler said. “Why should I believe them?”

Noz explains the recently-revealed FISA decision and the law. It’s not what it’s been reported to be (emphasis added):

but let me try to put this in terms that even the dimmest bulb on the right might be able to understand:

let’s say that there was a law outlawing the stealing of jelly beans. a guy named george doesn’t pay attention to that law and steals jelly beans continuously for at least three years. then the new york times publishes a story revealing george’s thefts. hubbub ensues, but george is defiant. he thinks he should be allowed to steal and says he’s going to continue doing it because he thinks he should be allowed to. people still grumble that george is committed repeated felonies so after another year and a half later, george gets congress to pass a law that amends the orginal jelly bean act. the amendment makes it legal for george to steal jelly beans for a six month period (beginning with the passage of the amendment), provided that he only steals red jelly beans.

a critic of the amendment sues, claiming that the amendment is unconstitutional because it discriminates against jelly beans on the basis of their color. the court disagrees and upholds the jelly bean amendment, ruling that the constitution doesn’t prohibit that kind of discrimination.

the court’s decision would not have any relevance to the question of whether george broke the law when he stole jelly beans those first three years. first, the issue in that first three year period is not the constitutional issue addressed by the court, but rather the question whether he violated the original jelly bean statute.

Last week, a professional military interrogator who has served in Iraq appeared on Radio Times to discuss his new book, How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogator Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq.

The host actually asked him, to her credit, “What about the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario?”

He answered, “In Iraq, we lived with the ‘ticking time bomb’ every day.”

From the website:

MATTHEW ALEXANDER, author of “How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogator Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq.” He served for 14 years in the United States Air Force and has conducted more than 300 interrogations and supervised more than 1,000. He was awarded a Bronze Star for his achievements in Iraq.

Listen to his full answer here (mp3) or follow the link to the website and search for January 8, 2009.

Then come back and answer this question:

So, why do the Bushies love torture so?

Answer below the Fold

How the Bush administration betrayed the blood and ideals of the founders and two and a half centuries of American law and practice. From the Fresh Air website:

Although the Bush administration has stated that the interrogations techniques used at Guantanamo Bay came from the bottom up, British lawyer Philippe Sands disagrees.

In his 2008 book, Torture Team, Sands argues that the harsh interrogation policy that emerged after Sept. 11 came from high-ranking government officials and top military figures.

Sands warned in a June 2008 Fresh Air interview that the impact of the Bush administration’s conduct would be felt internationally: “The terrible tragedy of these memos and that dark period is that they have migrated into the hands of people who now say, ‘Well, Americans do it. We’re going to do it also.'”

But Sands believes that President-elect Barack Obama can begin to restore the U.S.’s global reputation. In a Dec. 4 article in The Guardian, he recommended that the next administration conduct a comprehensive, independent investigation of alleged abuses committed against detainees since Sept. 11, 2001.

Sands is a professor of law at University College London, where he directs the Centre for International Courts and Tribunals.

Follow the link to listen to the interview.

Below the fold.

Warning: It’s pretty rough. But it’s your tax dollars at work.

Via the Booman Tribune.

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The Booman explains why truth matters.

Brad Friedman, writing in the Guardian, indicts U. S. media for avoiding the issues.

And with good reason.

I’m not going to try to excerpt or summarize this.

Read it.

In the column, he asks, “Where’s the outrage.”

I will answer that: “It’s right here.”

The Current Federal Administration has betrayed the American Dream and the blood, sacrifices, and ideals of the Founders.

For what? For a war based on a lie and for Wall Street bonuses?

It is to laugh.

For the alternative is to throw up.

The nation has been led by fools and criminals for the last eight years.

[EDITORIAL MODE ON]

Aside: An old AOL friend of mine recently resurfaced and asked me where the politicization came from, because I was not vocally political back in the Olden Days on alt.aol.tricks and the predecessor AOL newsgroups, where I used to help post the FAQs every week.

I told her that it was always there, but that I started the blog simply because I like to make computers do things. I didn’t have a goal other than making the computer do something I had never made it do before and didn’t have a clear idea what I would blog about, other than stuff that caught my eye.

Then I realized that the government was in the hands of fools and criminals.

The gradual drift to politicized blogging began from two separate, coincident, but related events (separate because they occurred in different locations from different causes; related because they both sprang from ignorance, venality, and deception): The Dover, Pa., creationism trial and the Bushie concentration camps.

Read the 2005 archives. It’s all there.

It is time to reclaim the United States of America for reason, lawfulness, and moral behavior.

[EDITORIAL MODE OFF]

Inquiry on justice from Will Bunch.

Mithras comments on the verdict.