Category Archives: torture
“I never compromised my humanity.”
You must read this Washington Post article about a group of World War II veterans who were interrogators of Nazi prisoners. Petula Dvorak writes,
When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.
Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners’ cells with listening devices. They felt bad about censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften them up. They played games with them.
“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess.
Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. Across the river, President Bush defended his administration’s methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects during an Oval Office appearance.
Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept honors from the Army’s Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
“I feel like the military is using us to say, ‘We did spooky stuff then, so it’s okay to do it now,’ ” said Arno Mayer, 81, a professor of European history at Princeton University.
When Peter Weiss, 82, went up to receive his award, he commandeered the microphone and gave his piece.
“I am deeply honored to be here, but I want to make it clear that my presence here is not in support of the current war,” said Weiss, chairman of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy and a human rights and trademark lawyer in New York City. …
…”We did it with a certain amount of respect and justice,” said John Gunther Dean, 81, who became a career Foreign Service officer and ambassador to Denmark.
“During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone,” said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. “We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”
If you’re a history buff, you’ll want to read the whole thing. Fascinating stuff. And you’d think any supporter of Bush’s interrogation “methods” would feel ashamed, wouldn’t you?
Well, forget that. Apparently the World War II guys didn’t have to rely on torture because they were dealing with a better class of people than interrogators must handle today.
That’s right. Nazis were nicer. Captain Ed explains,
It must be said, however, that they faced a different enemy in a different war. The Germans fought to expand territory through traditional warfare, at least as arrayed against the US and the West. While they conducted sabotage missions in the US through espionage, they did not use terrorist infiltrators to attempt to kill thousands of American civilians. They also did not face religious extremists who believed that death brought them to Allah and 72 waiting virgins for taking out women and children. One can make a case that the civilized techniques of PO Box 1142 worked because their detainees also believed themselves civilized and members of the Western culture.
More civilized? Um, the Holocaust? Ring any bells?
The eternally dim Sister Toldjah asked,
Does the Post believe interrogators would have gotten the same information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed by taking him out to a steak dinner and/or playing games with him instead of waterboarding him (an aggressive interrogation tactic which, btw, saved lives)?
Of course, it’s possible interrogators would have gotten different information had KSM not been tortured. They might have, for example, gotten accurate information.
Yesterday on Countdown, Keith Olbermann interviewed former CIA Case Officer Robert Baer about this New York Times article on secret “interrogation” methods. I can’t figure out how to link to the MSNBC video directly, but you can find it on the Countdown page; click on “Bush’s Torture Woes.” Here’s a transcript I made from the video:
BAER: Keith, I’ve spent 21 years in the Middle East working for the CIA, I’ve seen the results of torture, in countries from Egypt to Syria to Saudi Arabia, and the intelligence is dribble. It leads to false leads. People will say anything if the pain is bad enough. It is useless, and I reiterate it is useless. I’ve spent three years now visiting Israeli jails talking to Hamas prisoners, talking to Shin Bet, their intelligence service, and they agree it’s useless. They use traditional police techniques, interrogations, legal interrogations, and they get more out of an investigation than torture.
OLBERMANN: As a professional and an experienced researcher now, I imagine something in the Times story yesterday might have been the most disturbing thing here, just on a professional, what in the world are they doing level, to you, the case of Mohammed, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was severely interrogated over a period of about two weeks, but the problem was as the Times put it, the initial interrogators were not experts on Mr. Mohammed’s background or al Qaeda. Instead of beating him up, does it shock you that the agency could have been much more easily served by having some guy who knew what the hell he was talking about and ask him questions? Because, obviously, a lot of these statements proved to be wildly false, and as you said produced extraordinarily misleading lines of inquiry and perhaps, who knows what else, besides inquiry.
BAER: We know that he lied about his participation in the murder of Danny Pearl, the Wall Street Journal journalist who was killed in Pakistan, his head cut off. He just made that up, that he wielded the knife. He did that under torture. The problem I have is that if he’s our main source of information on what happened on 9/11, and it was extracted by torture, which everyone will tell you is unreliable, I’m not quite sure what happened on 9/11. We’re just adding conspiracy theories when we get information like this, and that’s not to mention that we’re trying to win the hearts and minds of people in the Middle East, but that’s a moral question that someone should answer.
Once the Bushies are pried out of the White House it may take us years to unravel what’s real and what isn’t.
Finally, that wart on the buttocks of humanity known as Jules Crittendon doesn’t even bother making excuses. He just goes right into ridicule mode. But adds —
[T]he apparently genteel program at Fort Hood doesn’t represent the totality of Allied practices re captured enemies in World War II, which though famously a “good war†also included summary executions of Japanese prisoners. After they and/or their comrades were found to have tortured Americans to death.
— which exemplifies the problem, I think. Righties cannot separate vengeance from interrogation. They defend torture not because it’s useful, but because it’s gratifying.
Update: This is sortakinda related — “I Survived Blackwater.”
They Are Us
KGB “interrogation” techniques were used to “break” Jose Padilla. Warren Richey writes for the Christian Science Monitor:
According to defense motions on file in the case, Padilla’s cell measured nine feet by seven feet. The windows were covered over. There was a toilet and sink. The steel bunk was missing its mattress.
He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla’s lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years.
For significant periods of time the Muslim convert was denied any reading material, including the Koran. The mirror on the wall was confiscated. Meals were slid through a slot in the door. The light in his cell was always on.
He lived like this for three years and seven months.
Those who haven’t experienced solitary confinement can imagine that life locked in a small space would be inconvenient and boring. But according to a broad range of experts who have studied the issue, isolation can be psychologically devastating. Extreme isolation, in concert with other coercive techniques, can literally drive a person insane, these experts say. And that makes it a potential instrument of torture, they add.
Then, later, we find (emphasis added):
So-called coercive interrogation methods – including isolation – have been specially authorized for certain units in the military and the Central Intelligence Agency.
The technique is not new. The Soviets used isolation and sensory deprivation to identify and discredit political dissidents. US prisoners of war confessed to nonexistent war crimes in the Korean War after similar treatment.
Be sure to see the last page, “How a Cold War program inspired terror war interrogations.”
It appears the Padilla detention exceeded even the fuzzy field manual guidelines. Also, members of the American Psychological Association want the APA to issue a ban on detention and interrogation work by its members.
Oh, and what did their three years and seven months of being “tough” on Padilla get us? Curt Anderson writes for the Associated Press:
But there is little other hard evidence linking Padilla, a Muslim convert, to al-Qaida or to the alleged North American terror support cell prosecutors say was operated by Hassoun, Jayyousi and others. Thousands of hours of FBI wiretap intercepts from 1993 to 2001 include numerous conversations of Hassoun and Jayyousi, but Padilla’s voice is heard on only seven.
Judge to Bush: Stop Pissing on the Constitution
Adam Liptak just posted this on the New York Times web site:
In a stinging rejection of one of the Bush administration’s central assertions about the scope of executive authority to combat terrorism, a federal appeals court ordered the Pentagon to release a man being held as an enemy combatant.
“To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote, “even if the President calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and the country.”
“We refuse to recognize a claim to power,” Judge Motz added, “that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic.”
Wonder which rightie blogger will be the first to say that Judge Motz supports terrorists?
The ruling was handed down by a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., in the case of Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar and the only person on the American mainland known to be held as an enemy combatant.
Mr. Marri, whom the government calls a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda, was arrested on Dec. 12, 2001, in Peoria, Ill., where he was living with his family and studying computer science at Bradley University.
He has been held for the last four years at the Navy Brig in Charleston, S.C.
Get this:
Mr. Marri was charged with credit-card fraud and lying to federal agents after his arrest in 2001, and he was on the verge of a trial on those charges when he was moved into military detention in 2003.
I can’t help but think that if people like Marri had any certifiable ties to al Qaeda, the Bushies would have shoved it in all our faces now.
Writing for the majority, Judge Motz ordered the trial judge in the case to issue a writ of habeas corpus directing the Pentagon “within a reasonable period of time” to do one of several things with Mr. Marri. He may be charged in the civilian court system; he may be deported; or he may be held as a material witness; or he may be released.
“But military detention of al-Marri,” Judge Motz wrote, “must cease.”
Prediction: Whatever is done with al-Marri, the public will never get a close look at him.
Update: More details from Balkinization.
A Note of Optimism
The Talking Dog interviews David Rose, author of Guantanamo: The War on Human Rights and a contributing editor of The Guardian and Vanity Fair. Here’s the note of optimism:
Eventually there will be a pendulum change– the values that made the United States unique– the power of its Constitution– will reassert themselves. Enough people will regard Guantanamo with the same shame as the detention of Japanese in World War II… or the Red Scares… We’ll just have to see if and when this happens.
Let’s hope.
Update
There’s more about the amicus brief filed by Janet Reno and others at The Talking Dog.
Why We Vote
Roxana Tiron of The Hill reports that Senate Dems plan to revise the Military Commissions Act in the next term.
Sen. Chris Dodd introduced a bill today that
… seeks to give habeas corpus protections to military detainees; bar information that was gained through coercion from being used in trials and empower military judges to exclude hearsay evidence they deem to be unreliable.
Dodd’s bill also narrows the definition of “unlawful enemy combatant” to individuals who directly participate in hostilities against the United States who are not lawful combatants. The legislation would also authorize the U.S. Court of Appeals for the armed forces to review decisions made by the military commissions.
In the next term Dodd will be the second ranking Democrat on the International Relations Committee. Sen. Patrick Leahy, the incoming Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, is also drafting changes to the Act that would reinstate habeas corpus. Incoming Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin and incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, say they plan to look into “extraordinary rendition.”
“I’m not comfortable with the system,” Levin said earlier this week. “I think that there’s been some significant abuses which have not made us more secure, but have made us less secure and have also perhaps cost us some real allies, as well as not producing particularly useful information. So I think the system needs a thorough review, and as the military would say, a thorough scrubbing.”
I’d like to point out that these guys are the Big Guns, so to speak. We don’t have a veto-proof majority, but thanks to the midterms we’re in better shape to put up a fight.
See also: “GTMO Report: Only 10 out of 440 Charged“; “Guantanamo prisoners routinely denied witnesses, evidence“; “Judge: Detainee Can’t Speak to Attorney“; “Presbyterians to witness against torture“; “The Road to Guantanamo.”
The Buck Stops You-Know-Where
See this excellent Kos diary — “NYT: Bush personally guided CIA on torture, foreign detention.”
Alyssa Peterson
Roxanne emailed this story yesterday, and now I see Greg Mitchell at Editor & Publisher is commenting:
Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation techniques used on prisoners.
She was Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Az., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a “non-hostile weapons discharge.â€
She was only the third American woman killed in Iraq so her death drew wide press attention. A “non-hostile weapons discharge†leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials “said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson’s own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian.â€
Then Kevin Elston of Flagstaff public radio KNAU filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out more. This is from Elston’s story:
“Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed….â€
Peterson was reassigned to a base gate and sent to suicide prevention training, but in September 2003 she killed herself with her service rifle. Greg Mitchell:
The Army talked to some of Peterson’s colleagues. Asked to summarize their comments, Elston told E&P: “The reactions to the suicide were that she was having a difficult time separating her personal feelings from her professional duties. That was the consistent point in the testimonies, that she objected to the interrogation techniques, without describing what those techniques were.”
Elston said that the documents also refer to a suicide note found on her body, revealing that she found it ironic that suicide prevention training had taught her how to commit suicide. He has now filed another FOIA request for a copy of the actual note.
Peterson was a devout Mormon who had volunteered to go to Iraq.
Via Daou Report, see also Classically Liberal.
Cowards
The fundamental question is this: Why would any American citizen support the “2006 Military Commission Act” that President Bush signed into law today?
Let’s review:
The Act empowers President Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, “unlawful enemy combatants.” An American citizen who speaks out against Bush’s policies could be designated an “unlawful enemy combatant” by Bush. The Act empowers the President to round up and incarcerate anyone, citizen or non-citizen, who he determines has given “material support” to terrorists. The Act strips habeas corpus rights from detained aliens who have been declared enemy combatants. The U.S. will continue to round up innocent and guilty alike and hold them indefinitely without giving them a way to prove their innocence. For more on how the Act strips American citizens and others of basic rights, see Marjorie Cohn, “American Prison Camps Are on the Way.”
Regarding torture: Reasonable people might disagree over the distinction between “cruelty” and “torture.” For example, Stephen Rickard argues in today’s WaPo that the Act authorizes cruelty but not torture. I assume he refers to definitions of torture and cruelty in international law; personally, I don’t see a difference. But he also says,
[The CIA] reportedly was using waterboarding (a terrifying mock execution in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and convinced he is being drowned), dousing naked prisoners with water in 50-degree cold and forcing shackled prisoners to stand for 40 straight hours. …
…The United States has prosecuted every one of these techniques as a war crime. So when Congress passed the McCain amendment last fall banning cruel treatment, CIA interrogators reportedly stopped working. Vice President Cheney had sought an exemption for the CIA — but didn’t get one. The administration apparently pushed the interrogators hard to resume their tactics, saying these techniques were still legal, but the CIA refused.
It seems the agency had learned an important lesson from the infamous Justice Department “torture memo,” which claimed that to be deemed “torture” a procedure had to be capable of causing major organ failure or death. The administration repudiated the memo when it became public. The lesson? Secret, contorted legal opinions don’t provide any real protection to CIA officers.
So the CIA demanded “clarity” — from Congress. No wonder President Bush practically sprinted to the cameras to begin spinning his “compromise” with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on the Military Commissions Act. He needs to convince CIA interrogators that they now have congressional carte blanche.
So did the Act signed today do the trick? Rickard says it doesn’t, and that if the interrogators give in to White House pressure and resume brutal interrogations, they’ll be at greater legal risk than before.
The administration is trying to convince CIA officers that they won’t be indicted — or at least convicted. But the CIA demanded clarity, not more ambiguity and “plausible deniability.”
At the end of the day all the president can honestly tell CIA interrogators is this: “The law has some loose language. We’ll give you another memo. Don’t worry.”
Sure.
And torture doesn’t work, anyway. Bush wants us to believe that the “tough” techniques that may or may not be torture has yielded vital information that has saved American lives, but there is plenty of indication that’s not so.
The new law vaguely bans torture — but makes the administration the arbiter of what is torture and what isn’t. It allows the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant. It suspends the Great Writ of habeas corpus for detainees. It allows coerced testimony at trial. It immunizes retroactively interrogators who may have engaged in torture.
Here’s what Bush had to say at his signing ceremony in the East Room: “The bill I sign today helps secure this country, and it sends a clear message: This nation is patient and decent and fair, and we will never back down from the threats to our freedom.”
But that may not be the “clear message” the new law sends most people.
Here’s the clear message the law sends to the world: America makes its own rules. The law would apparently subject terror suspects to some of the same sorts of brutal interrogation tactics that have historically been prosecuted as war crimes when committed against Americans.
Here’s the clear message to the voters: This Congress is willing to rubberstamp pretty much any White House initiative it sees as being in its short-term political interests. (And I don’t just mean the Republicans; 12 Senate Democrats and 32 House Democrats voted for the bill as well.)
Here’s the clear message to the Supreme Court: Review me.
I ask again: why would anyone support Bush’s position? Today righties are snarling and snapping like cornered animals at anyone who criticizes the torture bill. We nay-sayers are “whiny hippies” throwing a “moonbat hissy fit.”
A more temperate rightie declared “This is undeniably a victory for those of us that believe we need to aggressively wage the war against jihadism.” This and other rightie commenters continue to follow the White House in blind faith that the Bush Administration knows what it is doing and will use the unprecedented power it has gained wisely. Given the Bush Administration’s record — that’s insane.
Righties like to talk tough, but peel enough layers off ’em and you’ll find a sniveling little coward crouching and whimpering at their core. Deep down, they want Dear Leader to have dictatorial power so that he can protect them. Like any mob in the grip of hysteria, they have lost reason and inhibition, and they attack anyone who gets in their way.
They’re cowards, they’re out of control, and they must be stopped.