I've Got A Secret...Government

I guess we should have known that when the Bush Administration told us they disowned the 2002 torture memo in 2004, they really didn't mean it. And, in fact, they didn't.

The entire article in the New York Times about the secret torture memo created in February 2005 ("Torture Memo 2.0" as Jack Balkin calls it) is appalling, but this particular section really struck a nerve:

With virtually no experience in interrogations, the C.I.A. had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture. The agency officers questioning prisoners constantly sought advice from lawyers thousands of miles away.

"We were getting asked about combinations -- 'Can we do this and this at the same time?'" recalled Paul C. Kelbaugh, a veteran intelligence lawyer who was deputy legal counsel at the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorist Center from 2001 to 2003.

Interrogators were worried that even approved techniques had such a painful, multiplying effect when combined that they might cross the legal line, Mr. Kelbaugh said. He recalled agency officers asking: "These approved techniques, say, withholding food, and 50-degree temperature -- can they be combined?" Or "Do I have to do the less extreme before the more extreme?"

The questions came more frequently, Mr. Kelbaugh said, as word spread about a C.I.A. inspector general inquiry unrelated to the war on terrorism. Some veteran C.I.A. officers came under scrutiny because they were advisers to Peruvian officers who in early 2001 shot down a missionary flight they had mistaken for a drug-running aircraft. The Americans were not charged with crimes, but they endured three years of investigation, saw their careers derailed and ran up big legal bills.

That experience shook the Qaeda interrogation team, Mr. Kelbaugh said. "You think you're making a difference and maybe saving 3,000 American lives from the next attack. And someone tells you, 'Well, that guidance was a little vague, and the inspector general wants to talk to you,'" he recalled. "We couldn't tell them, 'Do the best you can,' because the people who did the best they could in Peru were looking at a grand jury."

Now I don't know that I'm buying that the CIA has "virtually no experience in interrogations" -- many, including Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine, have documented the research into torture, brainwashing and interrogation techniques that the CIA has been refining and exporting since the 50s. But beyond that, the statement by Kelbaugh highlights how enabling the whole "war on terror" framework has become. These individuals have put their consciences in check, comfortable in the notion that what they do "maybe saving 3,000 American lives." Really, what they're worried about is having their "careers derailed" and running up "big legal bills."

That we have become a nation of sanctioned torturers doesn't even seem to graze them.

Glenn Greenwald correctly notes that as Americans, we've known that torture is being conducted in our name for a while. There's nothing new about that. But outrage with which these revelations should be greeted is, again, blunted by an acquiescence toward anything that is offered up in the name of the endless war on terror, and our "leaders" appear content to negotiate away their own power and avoid anything that smacks of a political battle.

Says Glenn:

One does not expect an administration to imprison U.S. citizens with no process, or to proclaim explicitly the right to break the law, or to systematically adopt policies of torture. For that reason, it is not surprising that it would take some time for the reaction to catch up to the full extent of the wrongdoing.

But we are now way past the point where that excuse is plausible. Anyone paying even minimal attention is well aware of exactly how radical and corrupt and lawless this administration is. We all know what has happened to our standing in the world, to our national character and our core political values, as a result of the previously unthinkable policies the Bush administration has relentlessly pursued. Ignorance or incredulity can no longer explain our acquiescence. Accommodating and protecting the lawbreaking of high Bush officials is widely seen by our Beltway elite as a duty of bipartisanship, a hallmark of Seriousness.

It's ironic, as many have noted, that today is the same day Patrick Leahy indicated he was going to cave on his request for documents from the Bush Administration before approving Mukasey as Attorney General. That's great. First Leahy wanted documents regarding the USA scandal and warrantless wiretapping. Then he backed down and said he would "settle for material about interrogation of suspected terrorists and warrantless wiretapping." Now he's willing to chuck the whole bucket. Because George Bush what, won't give them to him? This is headline news? Why ask for them in the first place? Is kabuki all the rage in capitol hill bars these days?

These people are, through their passivity and their unwillingness to uphold the principles they were elected to enforce, complicit in the recklessness and lawlessness of Bush Administration. They should be demanding all of these documents as well as any other "secret memos" that may be floating around. It isn't their choice, it's their obligation. It's what America thought it was voting for when it gave the Democrats a majority in the House and the Senate. And until these representatives start using their power to force some answers and stop these horrible abuses, they have blood on their hands and the suffering these victims on their consciences.

In order to sleep at night perhaps they, too, tell themselves that they're "saving 3,000 American lives"" with their "comity" and their "bipartisanship."

Dream on.

Jane Hamsher blogs at firedoglake.com.

Comments

[fran]

Thank you Jane,
Reading the Times this AM is not pleasant.
In fact I'm heartsick about what these people
are doing in our names.It's gotten so bad
I don't even recognize my country anymore
It seems that we have just lost our soul
along the way.It's long past the time
for us to demand accountability.It's time to impeach.

[Plowboy]

I woke up one morning and realized several things.
(1) We are the enemy. (The enemy lies, murders, robs, and pretends to be a good fellow. And that is how we behave.)
(2) Bush is bad, but he isn't the only one.
(3) Our leaders have a (not entirely) secret love.
(4) The Republican party is evil, has sold its soul to a some who don't care a rat's ass for the American people. But it is not the only one; otherwise the secret love wouldn't be secret any more.

[drblack]

Keep up the good work Jane. The loss of Freedom that Americans have faced since Reagan and accelerated by Bush is appalling and Un-American.
Both parties have mostly sold out to Big Business and will take ALL our freedom and institute a government along the lines of Communist China....you will be free to spend and make money but nothing else.

[horseface]

Here's a bumper sticker for you: CAESAR 2008
Think things are bad now? Our next "president" will be an Emperor, so we'd better back someone who can handle Imperial power. (WHO?) While we're all squabbling over "who dunnit" the Empire has materialized, enabled by the Internet and other pan-global technologies. Go back? Ridiculous! We are an Empire, let's be a great Empire.

[TitaniumAvatar]

Et tu horseface?

[anney]

Perhaps we should all keep in mind that the Supreme Court ruled in June 2006 that all US prisoners were subject to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, which include a prohibition against torture.

Yet, in July 2006, after a monthlong debate inside the administration, President Bush signed a new executive order authorizing the use of what the administration calls "enhanced" interrogation techniques"the details remain secret"and officials say the CIA again is holding prisoners in "black sites" overseas. The executive order was reviewed and approved by Mr. Bradbury and the Office of Legal Counsel." (NY Times)

So Bush not only thumbs his nose at American citizens, he gives the finger to Congress and the Supreme Court, too.

He and his minions should be driven directly to the Hague from the WH at gunpoint. He has totally destroyed the premises of Democracy, violated American and international law, and has set himself up as the dictator he openly admitted he wanted to be.

[pgobrien]

Torture, disappearing people, rendition, holding people without benefit of legal representation for indeterminate periods. This is to "save lives."

Tell me how I'm safe now? I stop worrying about dying in a terrorist attack and start second-guessing every word I say because the government might disappear me and no one would even know about it for weeks or months. How does that make life better?

[LittleBrother]

Once upon a time, loyal Democratic moderates insisted that the poor well-meaning Dems were still a couple of bricks short of a load that could bury the criminals in power, i.e. the Republics.

BUT, they assured the doubtful, once the committee chairmen got rolling, it was No More Mister Nice Guy time. Heavy hitters like Waxman, Conyers, et al would hold Republic feet to the fire-- all the way up to the groin!

But now we see that power pitchers like Leahy aren't exactly smokin' them inside-- they're loading the bases with intentional walks. Gee, how did THAT happen?

[drblack]

based on what we have heard about the Bush administration the stuff we have not heard about(and that is most of it I am sure)is far worse and as anti-American as can be.

[akhmatova]

TonalCrow may be on to something.

WH is against the legistlation that would put contractors in Iraq subject to US law...on national security grounds.

The "3000 lives they may be saving" is WH doublespeak...the instruments in place are saving and protecting the 3000-odd complicit players/implementers/enablers in all these machinations from any and all accountability and prosecutions.

[RumiSouth]

Here's a news flash: torture doesn't work. When you apply pain and stress, the subject will say whatever s/he has to say in order to stop the pain and stress. S/he will "confess" to anything, even asking for cues as to what the torturer wants to hear.

We can prove this by simple experiment. Let's subject Dick Cheney to waterboarding, and ask him if he's ever been in a bathroom with Larry Craig...

http://www.osborneink.com/fiction.htm

[The Impartial]

Why not make it a trio: Big Dick, Larry, and Gonzo.

[TitaniumAvatar]

Torture does work.

It makes the cowardly armchair tough guys feel manly. Just like attacking weak countries that have not attacked the US.

[JNo]

Brilliant & crystal-clear, Jane. I'm going to use some of this in letters to my congressman. I hope Pelosi & Reid take note of this. Love your work-keep it comin'

[jlxn]

I wonder if this is the "Strong" American Government Mitt Romney keeps talking about?

[texanna]

Germans living close enough to one of the death camps to smell the stench swore they didn't know what was going on there when it would've been impossible not to. Americans know that we're torturing people because there is enough information available that confirms that we do so, yet we're willing to believe the Liar in Chief and we're shocked to find out that the rest of the world has disdain for us. We are as complicit in all of this as were the Germans, who we've held accountable in all of our history books since the end of WWII. How will we rouse ourselves from this long, dark sleep of indifference? When will break free of the bondage of fear that we've allowed this bunch of criminals to shackle us with? Yes, it was awful watching those buildings come down. But, is the correct response to cower? Maybe we should all be required to watch Burns' The War until we recover our national spirit.

[zjr909]

In November of 2002 I read something on the ABC website that made my blood run cold. A poll had asked how many Americans approved of torture. I don't remember what percent said they would approve. It didn't matter what the percent was; all that mattered was that the subject (that should have been more taboo than incest, child-molestation, rape or murder) had been breached. Let me repeat: this was November of 2002. I knew then and there that it was all over for us. That anyone could present such an abhorrent question to the American public meant that torture was right around the corner, if not already at hand. My take then is the same as my take now: if torturing someone could save the entire population of this earth, I wouldn't do it. Period. Why would you? In torturing, you've as good as sentenced humanity to extinction anyway - so where's the gain? Good does not come from evil. That's just the way it is.

[Purple Girl]

Here's just another reason for the world to hate US. is this the damn paln ? 'Cause Bushco is doing a great job then.
WE CAN'T AFFORD TO WAIT TO THE '08 ELECTIONS- THSI ADMIN MUST GO NOW!!! Demand Impeachment be put back on our Constitutional table - Pelosi & Reid- or we need to get those two out now for treason. Impeachment is ALWAYS an option ~!!!!When they said they wouldn't push it- that gave Bushco the go ahead with plan, we'll just pretend to be against it an djust powerless- BullSh*t!!!!!