Torture is Back!
Torture is back! Press reports of secret memos in the Gonzalez Justice Department have rekindled the debate, which, as usual, continues to miss the point. That point being that in the end, it will be the Central Intelligence Agency that will be hung out to dry for torture allegations, both real or manufactured. Everybody else in the government will walk, or so they think.
Much has been written about the Bush administration and torture, to the point of stultifying repetitiveness. Torture doesn't work, most who know about these things, including myself, say -- and they're right, it doesn't. Torture demeans and irreparably damages the prestige and soft power of the world's oldest democracy, the editorial pages declare -- yep, they're right, it does. The Justice Department's secret memos allegedly supporting the use of tactics the civilized world calls torture are probably illegal, or at least immoral, congressional Democrats whine -- they probably are, but who listens to them? The administration continues to stonewall -- "this government does not torture people" is the message, and everybody stays on message.
The public yawns and the Democrats cower.
But below the noise level of the politics of torture and attacks on a discredited Justice Department, a new and important reality is working its way through the legal communities of the "civilized" world. It is this: the Bush administration, in its effort to immunize itself against future prosecution by changing the definition of war crimes for which U.S. government defendants may be prosecuted, has opened the door for such prosecutions outside the United States. Like a hacker at golf who blasts from fairway sand traps to knee-high rough, the administration is getting farther and farther "out of bounds."
The Military Commissions Act of 2006, railroaded through a rubber stamp Congress in September, 2006, and signed into law by the president in October, in effect, establishes that several categories of what were war crimes in the past, under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, can no longer be punished under U.S. law. This may have given some comfort to those who felt exposed to prosecution under existing U.S. law, but they should be wary of getting too complacent, particularly if they ever travel beyond the 12-mile limit of America's continental shelf.
The politicians may be marginally protected, as usual. But the men and women of the C.I.A. will be dangerously exposed and will have once again been left holding the bag.
The Defense Department has properly opted out of the torture business -- the military has declared it will operate under the Geneva Conventions, and the discussion ended there. But the CIA, according to press reports, has been exempted from such "quaint" rulings as Common Article 3 by a series of secret memos and judgments promulgated by the Department of Justice under Alberto Gonzales.
Under the current rules, according to press reports, the CIA may use "enhanced interrogation techniques" against detainees in the War on Terror. (This is a term, itself obviously tortured, that sounds only marginally better in the original 1940s German, "Verschärfte Vernehmung".) Reportedly, enhanced interrogation techniques include many measures forbidden under the War Crimes Act of 1996 and Common Article 3.
The administration denies this, but will not say what the enhanced techniques are. Against that opaque backdrop, it does not really matter whether CIA is torturing detainees at this point (or even if it has at any point); most of the member governments of such bodies as the International Court of Justice believe CIA engages in torture and there will be no lack of former detainees of the CIA making claims fueling those suspicions. Whether such claims are real or embellished will not matter.
Here is the crunch for the CIA: as eminent British lawyer Philippe Sands writes in his coming book, The Torture Team, "the simple fact of establishing immunity under the 2006 (Military Commissions) Act opens the door to investigations and possible prosecutions abroad. So long as the U.S. is able to investigate and prosecute grave breaches of Geneva (Conventions, Common Article 3), the courts of other countries would be likely to decline to exercise jurisdiction. With that possibility gone, the prospects for foreign investigation increase considerably, as Senator Pinochet found to his cost in 1999."
There are already more than two dozen CIA officers under indictment by an Italian court for the extraordinary rendition of Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr (known as Abu Omar). Though the trial has been stayed, pending a ruling on Italian secrecy issues, this is still a very big deal. Just imagine the historical irony of the en masse indictment of 26 U.S. Government employees by a NATO ally!
Regardless of how the Italian court case plays out, it is only the beginning. One can expect a torrent of cases to be filed against the men and women of the CIA in the coming months and years. They'll have to get used to either staying pretty close to home, or taking their ski holidays in North Korea. Stepping off a plane anywhere in Europe will become a little dicey.
The CIA's men and women are putting themselves at enough risk already. They deserve better and we owe them more than this. The sway of feckless leadership at CIA has gone on long enough. It's time that the CIA takes the Defense Department lead and play by the rules again.
Milt Bearden retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 1994, after thirty years in the CIA's clandestine services.
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All, I have worked with this man and you should listen to what he has to say. Torture as defined by international law is not useful, even in the "ticking time bomb" scenario because under duress a man will say whatever he believes he must say to make it stop. This is why people who are not even be tortured, but merely pressured, will admit to crimes they did not commit.
The simple fact is that intelligence collection requires a great deal of varification before one can take action. And, while a "ticking bomb" may allow one to take action even if the intel ends up being wrong, you now have the problem of finite resources being used against a non-threat thereby limiting your ability to deal with the real threat when it becomes known. This can happen at a local level or national..
In essence, if intel you get from torture sends you on a wild goose chase, you are FUBAR.
Now, Bush says they got intel that was corraborat
When a TRUE professional like Milt tells you it doesn't work in the long run, you should ALL listen and disgard your political talking points designed to save the face of this administration and NOT protect Americans.
The American people are going to have to somehow shake-off these blinders and face what is happening in their own country, to the same extent that the rest of the world community is already doing. You just can't keep your head in the sand, and therefore your ass in the air, forever.
In the usual fashion of crowd psychology, the loudest and most insistent message is that "this is just the way it is now." "Some things never change." "Maybe someday we'll do something, after the next election or maybe the next one after that, or maybe not." "Waste your time voting if you want to, but the only choices you have to choose from are our hand-picked millionair
The game has been set-up in all three branches of the government at the same time, and in both houses of Congress. There is no meaningful distinction between the political parties.
"Sic semper tyrannis..
The necessary solution is... public pressure. Insistent, relentless, always peaceful, resistance. Giving elected officials no peace; not a single day that their phone does not stop ringing from sunup to sundown and beyond. It works.
The country that our forefathers won for us is still a precious thing; as is the world. They resisted tyrants to create it; we must resist tyrants, now within our most hallowed marble halls, to keep it.
"The public yawns and the Democrats cower." There you have it. The responsibility for this absolute insanity goes well beyond its authors.
How current climate of torture began - we know what sending a terrorist to Egypt meant:
GORE & Extroadinary Renditions
[from Richard Clarke's book]
CLARKE - Snatches,or more properly "extraordinary renditions," were operations to apprehend terrorists abroad, usually without the knowledge of and almost always without public acknowledgement of the host government. . The first time I proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Clinton had seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, "That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass."
JANE MAYER, N.YORKER - In '95, American agents proposed the rendition program to Egypt, making clear that it had the resources to track, capture, and transport terrorist suspects globally - including access to a small fleet of aircraft. Egypt embraced the idea. "What was clever was that some of the senior people in Al Qaeda were Egyptian," [CIA veteran Michael Scheuer] said. "It served American purposes to get these people arrested, and Egyptian purposes to get these people back, where they could be interrogat
WIKIPEDIA - Thereafter, with the approval of President Clinton and PDD 39, CIA instead elected to send suspects to Egypt, where they were turned over to the Egyptian Mukhabarat. This arrangement suited the Egyptians, who were trying to crack down on domestic Islamic extremists, and a number of the senior members of Al Qaeda were Egyptian. The arrangement also suited the US by enabling the interrogation of suspects without the intercession of the domestic legal process, using Egyptian methods.
Source:Progressvie Review
The key difference in the Clinton-Gore renditions vs. the Bush-Cheney renditions is simple.
These Egyptian cases and others were handled by the Egyptian criminal justice system since these suspects were Egyptian. The international illegality arised in the 'snatching' these suspects and sending them to their home country without advising the host country. Also, the CIA had to lay out the case and sign off on each individual 'snatching' that took place.
Rendition under Bush-Cheney means 'snatching' hundreds of suspects at a time regardless of nationality (even Americans), labeling them enemy combatants thus removing any rights whatsoever, and sending them to a law free zone which is Guantanamo Bay.
Atleast the original rendition processed these suspects through their home countries justice system.
mystrijuce -
I think I quoted from Richard Clark's work:
Gore laughed and said, "That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass."
Gore was OK - with that. Clinton was OK with that.
Of course they are doing more of it now - they are going after them.
I have my own views - just adding to the background. WE SHOULD ALL KNOW - First.
Personally, I offer -- perhaps we should have lalbeled the captured terrorists POW's. Then, one can hold them - until the end of the war.
Torture never left, the Bushies just said it doesn't torture to appease Johnnie McCain.
You know, when you talk to those defending Bush, inc., they say the following: "If it was your wife or child being held and the only means of getting them back was torture, I think you'd have a different point of view."
I reply, "Correct, that's why we don't base laws off of human emotion while throwing away all logic. And of the hundreds that were completely innocent that you tortured, how do you justify that? We aren't back to the old, The Ends Justify The Means, are we?"
I don't have many friends here at work now. :) And good, I don't really want those folks in my life anyhow.
the Bushies have always chosen their words very carefully when discussing their numerous crimes... yes, technically, "we do not torture" (as long as "we" is GW Bush or whatever administration official is slinging this line of bullsh*t today), BUT the CIA and US soldiers have and do (torture).
Bill Clinton recieved and deserved all kinds of grief for his dancing around words (remember "it depends on what your definition of 'is'...is"
I have a problem with REAL torture; waterboarding, chemicals, electrodes on one's junk....yo
But I have ZERO problem with the kinda stuff that went down @ Abu Grahab; Humiliation, naked Twister, having white-trash, hick-chicks mock them while naked, descecrating the Koran (and/or threatening to do so).
Why did that infuriate everyone? My god...if that kinda stuff works at all, it eliminates/prevents the interrogation from moving up to level of'real' torture.
Not just w/Muslims.
That kinda shit is NOT torture!!!!
Your ignorance is appalling. Psychological torture is more damaging the physical torture. Ask John McCain, he knows from it first hand. He said if given the choice, he'd rather be physically tortured then psychologically. You are unworthy of calling yourself an American.
What I would like to know is when are the American people going to stand up and take responsibility for their government. 3 years ago you kidnapped a Canadian citizen and sent him to Syria to be tortured for over a year. His name was Maher Arar and the facts of his case have changed the way I look at our neighbours to the south permanently. You pride yourselves on being "The World Greatest Democracy" and yet how quickly you all seem to disassociate yourselves from the actions of the govenment you elected...
We must exterminate islamofascism around the world. We do not torture anybody, but captured islamofascists must speak out voluntarily.
Alberto Gonzalez, John Yoo, Patrick E. Philbin, William J. Haynes, Timothy Flanigan, Jay S. Bybee are among the coterie of right-wing lawyers in the government who signed off on the "torture memos," represented to be an "inherent constitutional Presidential power to conduct a military campaign."
"There are two ways to govern - with consent or fear"
- Naomi Klein
"We will care a lot more about the ends - winning the war - than we will about the means. We will debate whether it is necessary to torture prisoners who have information about future biological attacks. We will destroy innocent villages by accident, shrug our shoulders, and continue fighting. In an age of conflict, bourgeois values like compassion, tolerance are valued less than the classical virtues of courage, steadfastness, and a ruthless desire for victory."
- David Brooks (right wing pundit for Rupert Murdock's "Weekly Standard" and a columnist for the New York Times)
The ends now justify the means disregarding and, in fact, nullifying the balance-of-power doctrines in effect since the inception of this nation. Where do you stand? Where will you take a stand. May it be sooner, rather than later that you decide and take that stand, or, what happened in Germany will surely happen here.
When you change the definition of torture to include things like loud music, temperature fluxuations, standing and other techniques, you do a disservice to our men and women fighting abroad.
Our enemies use true torture and then claim that we do it also due to your change in the definition. We do not torture. You then claim that it will not matter if the detainees claims of torture are ebellished or not. You will believe them regardless. That is what is really sad.
It's not about THEM or what they do or what they believe or stand for; it's about US and what we do and what we believe and stand for.
Following moral, ethical and legal guidelines made us the most respected country in the world. Ignoring them has made us one of the most hated. That's what is sad.
It is about them and what they believe or stand for. They are trying to kill us, do we not have a right to defend ourselves and prevent them from their goal?
You are naive if you think this is the cruelest we have ever been in warfare. War is not pretty or politically correct. Thank God we have adults in charge.
I think when you put someone in a cell with metal walls, chain them to the floor so they can only squat, and then crank up rap music to ear-splitting volumes, accompanied by strobe flashes, you've gone a little bit beyond "loud music," especially if it goes on for 24 hours at a stretch and then is regularly repeated. The detainees weren't going to a disco. Also, waterboarding, or simulated drowning. Apparently the CIA trainees who were subjected to it couldn't take it for more than about 12 seconds. Then too we've never been given the full story on the true atrocities at Abu Ghraib, including sodomization of men and women and deaths by beating. All this will come out. It is true that other nations, particularly in the 3rd World, use more barbaric tortures. How close do we want to come to their "standards?"
If we are waterboarding our own CIA trainees, is it really torture? Ask Brian Ross and Khalid Sheik Mohamed wether it works. Ross stated, from CIA sources, that we saved lives waterboarding Khalid. Is that worth it? Is that sad? If we've never gotten the full story on Abu Ghraib, how do you know about those atrocities happening? Let me guess, you just know because Bush and Cheney are so evil.
Apparently torture was never gone - just hidden behind the curtain.
Bush, Cheney and Rice should be tried for war crimes.
We don't torture--we step right up to that line by using methods that fall short of causing "organ failure" or "death."
It's torture lite...whi
Intelligence Agency...w
"The Bush administration, in its effort to immunize itself against future prosecution by changing the definition of war crimes for which U.S. government defendants may be prosecuted, has opened the door for such prosecutions outside the United States."
What about the military personnell that cooperated/took orders from the CIA, such as in the case of Abu Ghraib?
I wouldn't expect the CIA to get hung out on the line, maybe a few token functionaries. The CIA knows how to take care of itself. (Some people think they took care of JFK, too - but I am personally not a conspiracy theorist.)
when I was a young man, I visited the infamous Nazi death camp Mauthausen in Austria.It was there that I saw documentation of the many cruel tortures the Nazi criminals visited upon their mostly Russian prisoners.
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