I would say, “what took you so long,”, but I’m pretty sure that Bush will ignore this with a signing statement.
They want to apply the 2006 Army Field Manual to the CIA.
Category: Torture
Scott Horton Nails it Again
Resurrecting the Star Chamber by Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine), just go read it.
There Still Might be a Filibuster on Mukasey
It appears that there may be a filibuster on Mukasey. FWIW, I’m hoping that there is one.
I don’t expect it to stick, but this should be a defining issue for any Democrat: Do you support, or oppose torture? If you do, I, and you, should work towards defeating these people in the primaries, and yes, that means you Schumer and Feinstein.*
*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers.
Reflections of Guy Fawkes Day
Scott Horton has the definitive word:
But today Britons have a take on Guy Fawkes that is much at odds with the historical one. Once Fawkes was a symbol of the traitor within. The people were called to be on guard against his like. No longer. Today Guy Fawkes is increasingly viewed as the heroic figure prepared to stand against an unjust and oppressive state, as a martyr and a victim of torture. What are the lessons of Guy Fawkes Day for 2007? I propose three:
1. Torture Never Works and is Always Wrong
………
2. Beware the Government that Rules By Fear
……
3. A Government That Stereotypes Is Unjust
…
It should be noted that the brutality, fear-mongering, xenophobia, and paranoia of the Stuart Kings, those who tortured Guy Fawkes, led inexorably to the revolution in England that placed Oliver Cromwell in control of England as a dictator.
Specter Still Giving Rim Job to Bush and His Evil Minions&trade
Remember when I said that Arlen Specter would make noises, but when push came to shove, he would do whatever Bush told him to?
Specter has now confirmed that he is Bush’s Bitch will vote for Mukasey.
No surprise here. He never fails to fold like overcooked broccoli.
What Hilzoy Said: Torture Edition
I would also add as an addendum, that he likely expects to authorize such behavior, and an admission that it is torture would be an admission of guilt.
Waterboard Schumer and Feinstein* for Supporting Mukasey
Normally, I’d go with something “earthier” but, I’m trying not to be crude.
They are voting to support Mukasey’s Nomination.
With Shcumer, I think that it’s just that he doesn’t want to admit that he’s wrong. As to Feinstein, she always seems to do this. I think that it may come from the fact that when she first (or 2nd, I can’t recall) she ran against some Republican Rich pig, and had to mortgage her house to have enough money to compete.
Her ostensible argument, that this is the best we could possibly expect, while likely true, is also not her real motivation. She’s gone this route way too many times for me to believe.
*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers.
UN Special Rapporteur on torture Accuses US of Torture
I think that you are a bit late to the game, dude. It’s been clear for years that not only are these guys supportive of torture when necessary, but that they see it as an independent good. They support torture for its own sake.
Mukasey Update
First, it appears that Dodd may have an outsized effect on the other senators running for president. Since Dodd’s promise of a filibuster on telco immunity, which as I’ve detailed earlier, I believe to be be sincere, principled, and deeply held, his campaign, and his campaign donations have taken a major leap.
Because of this, I think that there are a number of candidates out there who have felt compelled to take stands both on the warrantless wiretapping and on Mukasey as Attorney General. Hillary is now opposing Mukasey over his obfuscation over waterboarding, so has Obama, and Biden is in opposition too.
Among the non-senators, Edwards is calling for him not to be approved, using references to the Spanish Inquisition*.
Meanwhile, Mukasey is saying that waterboarding is “repugnant”, but still, as he has clearly been instructed (more detail further down) refuses to call it unconstitutional torture.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT ) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) have both said that their votes depend on Mukasey’s answer to this question, and Republicans Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) have expressed concerns. Truth be told, Graham is more significant than Specter. He always “expresses concern”, and then he votes with Bush and His Evil Minions™.
Time Magazine has an interesting account of the backstage negotiations:
Some Democrats on the committee have tried to help Mukasey get out of the box he’s in. Harold Kim, a former Specter staffer who works in the White House Counsel’s office, has been negotiating with Judiciary Committee Democrats, trying to find language they can live with. But attempts to compromise with Congress have met resistance from Cheney’s office, and when it comes to interrogation techniques, the Vice President and his chief of staff, David Addington, have notoriously pushed for presidential authority to go unchecked by the legislative branch.
So it looks like they are trying to split rhetorical hairs, but there is also the question as to why is this the Vice President’s business? The AG serves the President, not him.
*I didn’t expect a bloody Spanish Inquisition!†
†NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and fear…fear and surprise…. Our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency…. Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency…and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope…. Our *four*…no… *Amongst* our weapons…. Amongst our weaponry…are such elements as fear, surprise…. I’ll come in again.‡
‡Yes, this did make my day.
Mukasey’s Nomination May Be Waterboarded
It appears that Mukasey’s non answer to whether waterboarding is torture may derail his nomination as attorney general.
It appears that Senators Leahy, Reid, Durbin, and Whitehouse will not support his nomination unless and until he clarifies his position.
Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has yet to schedule a vote because of this issue.
The original troubling exchange, coming after Mukasey said that torture was never constitutional on the first day of his testimony is the his response to Senator Whatehouse’s question as to whether waterboarding is torture:
“That’s a massive hedge,” Whitehouse responded incredulously. “It either is or it isn’t.”
“If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional,” Mukasey answered.
“I’m very disappointed in that answer,” Whitehouse said. “I think it is purely semantic.”
What is clear is that following his comdemnation of tortrue on the first day of testimony, someone representing Bush and His Evil Minions&trade got to him and told him that he needed to weasel.
John McCain, Victim of Torture, Gets it Right on Torture
McCain cuts Giuliani a new one on waterboarding.
“All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today,” Mr. McCain, who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, said in a telephone interview.
Of presidential candidates like Mr. Giuliani, who say that they are unsure whether waterboarding is torture, Mr. McCain said: “They should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.”
Of course, it would have more force if McCain had not spent the past eight years with his tongue up George W. Bush’s anus because he wanted to be president.
Rampant Torture Makes Cases Against Real Terrorists Impossible
It now turns out that the CIA was so torture happy that the FBI is finding it difficult to make cases against major Al Queida operatives, and they are scrambling to find alternate evidence.
The FBI is quietly reconstructing the cases against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and 14 other accused Al Qaeda leaders being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, spurred in part by U.S. concerns that years of CIA interrogation have yielded evidence that is inadmissible or too controversial to present at their upcoming war crimes tribunals, government officials familiar with the probes said.
The process is an embarrassment for the Bush administration, which for years held the men incommunicado overseas and allowed the CIA to use coercive means to extract information from them that would not be admissible in a U.S. court of law — and might not be allowed in their military commissions, some former officials and legal experts said. Even if the information from the CIA interrogations is allowed, they said, it would probably risk focusing the trials on the actions of the agency and not the accused.
We are talking about folks like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is so guilty that it boggles the mind, but Bush and His Evil Minions™ are so enamored with torture that they tainted the evidence.
I thought that it would be impossible for Bush to screw up a prosecution worse than that of Saddam Hussein, but they are now on a path to do so with KSM.
Mukasey Calls Torture Unconstitutional, Then Refused to Define It.
You just have to love the newspeak.
I think that someone on the Bush administration got to him between day 1 and day 2 of the testimony.
The Greatest Generation Condemns the Torture Generation
Keep in mind that these are the guys who interrogated, and actually got useful information out of, captured senior Axis figures.
“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.
They to a man condemned the tactics espoused by Bush and His Evil Minions™
Democrats Demanding Interrogation Memos from Bush DoJ
While this is a generally positive development, I have come to believe that the Demleadership is too risk averse, and won’t allow a contempt of congress motion to go forward.
Congress Demands Torture Memos
Congress seeks justice dept. documents on interrogation.
What is clear here is that Bush and His Evil Minions™ are objectively pro torture, and that they find torture a good thing in and of itself, and so they are using any means necessary to continue to torture.
They have to know that it does not work. They have to know that it damages the US’s reputation and ability to gather competent intelligence. They don’t care.
Ordering torture makes them feel like real men. It makes them feel virile and effective to cause needless harmful pain.
What Jesse Wendel Said.
Jesse Wendle of The Group News blog has this post on the Amry’s new “Pain Ray”. I read about it a while back, and filed it under, “Mildly interesting”, wait for a slow news day.
Boy, was I wrong. Jesse makes it clear what this is all about, and I, in my tech geekiness, missed the big picture:
This will be used to torture.
It isn’t up for debate. It isn’t open for question. No matter how many safeguards we put on their sale.This will be used to torture. As the article goes on to say, quoting a goddamn Ph.D. biologist who specializes in how the brain perceives pain, “They are so obviously useful as torture instruments.“
….
There are worse things than dying. Being burned alive is one of them. Being burned alive over and over again and never being able to escape… Don’t talk to me about humane weapons which burn people without burning them till you’ve gone on a run with me and seen what teenager sisters look, feel, sound and smell like who’ve been burned to death but are still talking to each other because they just don’t fucking know they’re already dead.
This box is a torture device. It’s morally wrong and an abomination upon the face of the earth.
All emphasis is mine.
This is Where Our Sabre Rattling With Regard to Iran Leads Us
Iran’s parliament votes to label CIA, U.S. Army ‘terrorist’ groups.
Considering the fact that the US Senate has done the same with units of the Iranian military, this is unsurprising.
Of course, this means that Iran does not feel bound by the requirements of POW status, and they could set up their own little Gitmo for our troops, which is, of course, the implicit threat here.
The worst kept secret in the Middle East is that US special forces, and possibly CIA operatives are operating in Iran, and by our actions, we have given the Iranians license to abuse them.
It Should Surprise No one that We Have a Claim of Torture Here
Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged “20th Hijacker” claims that his admissions were coerced.
He has recanted his confession, and claimed beatings and other torture.
You know the normal stuff for people detained by US forces:
….included being beaten, restrained for long periods in uncomfortable positions, threatened with dogs, exposed to loud music and freezing temperatures and stripped nude in front of female personnel…..
When did the US become a nation of sadistic torturers anyway?
BTW, this treatment is largely confirmed:
The investigation led by Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt confirmed, among other things, that al-Qahtani was forced to wear women’s underwear, was threatened with dogs, and kept in solitary confinement for 160 days. At one point, he was interrogated for 18-20 hours per day on 48 of 54 days.
Schmidt concluded, however, that while the treatment was abusive it was within policy and not torture because he was not denied food, water or medical care, and interrogators did not inflict physical pain on him.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt should spend the next 5-10 years under the confinement of the UN court in the Hague. Those who actually authorized this should be placed in a hole so deep that they never Ever see sunlight again.
“We don’t torture”, my ass. Osama bin Laden has defeated us, and these pukes running Guantanamo and other US Gulags don’t even know that they are his most effective operatives.
Cover Up, Part Deux
Well it looks like the cover up masquerading as a court martial is finished.
So they acquitted Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan of everything but talking about the investigation, for which he will receive a reprimand.
So, no regular army officers, Jordan is a reservist, were convicted of anything, and the only thing an officer got was a slap on the wrist.
My someone with a star had to know, and explicitly approve of it, and someone at a higher level had to give tacit approval.
Based on reports, we already know that Rumsfeld viewed the Geneva conventions with contempt, and as the saying goes sh&% flows down hill.