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by Juan Cole
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By Gay Talese
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news.bbc.co.uk
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A Yemeni man has told Amnesty International that he was abducted and tortured and spent nearly three years in secret prisons at the hands of the CIA. Khaled al-Maqtari says that without charge, legal representation or even a word to his family he was shuttled from one prison to another and ultimately dumped into Yemeni custody, once the U.S. had finished with him.
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AP photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta
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The reputation of the U.S. on the world stage might be further colored by President Bush’s veto of a bill that would have limited the CIA’s (and other intelligence agencies’) array of interrogation techniques to those in the Army field manual. In defending Saturday’s veto, Bush once again invoked 9/11.
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Former FBI interrogator Jack Cloonan spills the beans to Foreign Policy Magazine about the techniques he used on top al-Qaida operatives. Cloonan explains that the ticking-time-bomb scenario often used to rationalize torture is a myth and that waterboarding only motivates the enemy to get revenge—even if it takes a generation.
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Truthdig
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Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer interviews documentarian Alex Gibney about his 2008 Academy Award-winning documentary, “Taxi to the Dark Side,” a compelling examination of the circumstances that led Americans to commit torture.
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The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating memos and opinions rendered by the department that endorsed the practice of waterboarding, which many consider to be torture. The inquiry is unrelated to the FBI’s criminal investigation of the CIA, which destroyed video recordings of the waterboarding of suspects.
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It’s unfortunately not unusual anymore to hear about the politicization of American legal and intelligence institutions under the Bush administration, but, even so, this report by The Nation’s Ross Tuttle about how the trials of six key prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have allegedly been rigged from the get-go is disturbing. Updated
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The House of Representatives and Senate have now both signaled their disapproval of the CIA’s use of waterboarding by voting for a ban on any techniques but the 19 officially approved by the Army, but President Bush has already, in turn, signaled his intent to veto any legislation that would rule out harsh interrogation methods.
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By Eugene Robinson — The campaign for the White House is great fun, but it can also be a distraction. While the leading contenders to replace Bush continue to duke it out, the president and his lieutenants are still trying to justify torture in the name of protecting this once great democracy.
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Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., responding to closed testimony from the CIA’s acting general counsel, John Rizzo, said it appeared that the officer who destroyed evidence of “enhanced” interrogations was acting against orders. Jose Rodriguez, the official in question, is asking for immunity before he tells his side of the story to Congress.
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AP photo / Evan Vucci
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The Justice Department is (finally) treating the CIA’s decision to destroy videotapes of agents using severe interrogation methods on terrorism suspects as cause for a criminal investigation. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey (above) acknowledged that the probe was a go on Wednesday and named John Durham as the outside prosecutor for the case.
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AP photo / Haraz N. Ganbari
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Tapes? Oh, those tapes! CIA officials are justifying their failure to hand over videotapes of “severe interrogation” methods by saying they were not specifically asked for them. The officials were reacting to criticism by former 9/11 Commission members.
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By Amy Goodman — The kidnap and torture program of the Bush administration, with its secret CIA “black site” prisons and “torture taxi” flights on private jets, saw a little light of day this week.
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CIA Director General Michael Hayden has been summoned by Congress and will appear Tuesday and Wednesday before the Senate and House Intelligence committees to answer questions about the destruction of secret CIA videotapes that documented the abuse of detainees. The White House counsel, meanwhile, has ordered press secretary Dana Perino to keep quiet on the matter.
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The Justice Department and the CIA inspector general have launched a joint inquiry into the agency’s destruction of video recordings of so-called harsh interrogation techniques. Color us skeptical, since Attorney General Michael Mukasey couldn’t be bothered to take a position on torture—or harsh interrogation techniques, if that’s the term you want to use—during his confirmation.
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abcnews.com
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A bipartisan group of top lawmakers, including current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was briefed on the details of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques as early as 2002. According to several U.S. officials, over the course of roughly 30 private briefings only one objection to the practice was raised.
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washingtonpost.com
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A day after The New York Times released its explosive report that at least two videotapes showing CIA agents using severe interrogation tactics (that most nefarious of euphemisms) on terror suspects, congressional Democrats are registering their extreme displeasure and calling for an official investigation into what Sen. Edward Kennedy slammed as a “cover-up.”
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AP photo / J. Scott Applewhite
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The New York Times has discovered that the CIA destroyed “at least two videotapes” showing agents using severe interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects. Those interrogations were part of the evidence in the official 9/11 investigation, yet the CIA never told the 9/11 Commission of the existence of the tapes or transcripts. The agency cited a “serious security risk” for destroying the evidence.
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By Marie Cocco — Sheldon Whitehouse, new to the Senate, was searching for what he called a “moment of moral clarity.” Seated alongside the other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in its crowded hearing room, the Rhode Island Democrat was looking in precisely the wrong place.
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It looks as though Michael Mukasey is one step closer to becoming attorney general, having secured the support of Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Charles Schumer. Judiciary Committee Chairman (and former Truthdigger of the Week) Pat Leahy, on the other hand, plans to vote no, because “No American should need a classified briefing to determine whether waterboarding is torture.”
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By Marie Cocco — The nominee for attorney general doesn’t know “what is involved” in waterboarding, and he appears to back Bush’s usurpation of power. Isn’t it time for the Democrats to grow some spine?
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By Joe Conason — The senator rarely surrenders a juicy quote without a struggle. Yet her familiar preference for caution over candor is gradually changing with each step that she takes toward her party’s presidential nomination.
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AP photo / Haraz N. Ghanbari, file
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A new book by two ACLU lawyers, “Administration of Torture,” includes documents in which one Gen. Michael Dunlavey claims that President Bush gave him “marching orders” to get the Pentagon’s approval of more severe interrogation methods at Guantanamo. Also, it alleges that then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was “personally involved” in the interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani.
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guardian.co.uk
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The British government’s Foreign Affairs Committee will look into charges by a number of sources, including human rights groups and a retired U.S. general, that sovereign British land has been used as a CIA “black site” prison. The island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, has been leased to the United States and is the site of an American military base but remains British territory.
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By Marie Cocco — By simply deciding that something is a “state secret,” the Bush government has avoided answering for its brutal treatment of innocent victims in the war on terror. This is a perversion of the principle of American justice.
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In 2005, the Justice Department issued two secret opinions on torture that endorsed and protected the administration’s desire to use physically and psychologically traumatizing interrogation techniques. Then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey reportedly warned his colleagues that they would be “ashamed” when their work became public.
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inthesetimes.com
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Despite fleeting promises by the administration to shut the place down, the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba is still up and running, complete with many of the terrible conditions we’ve all come to know and be ashamed of, according to transcripts recently obtained by the Associated Press.
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By Amy Goodman — Last weekend, the American Psychological Association rejected a moratorium that would have prevented its member psychologists from participating in interrogations at U.S. detention centers at places like Guantanamo Bay and secret CIA “black sites” around the world.
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Were the CIA to potentially, maybe, have a detention and interrogation program it would now have to adhere to President Bush’s new executive order prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees. It’s still unclear whether water-boarding remains on the menu.
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Sometimes the best way to tell what other nations think of the U.S. is to see how Americans are depicted in entertainment products. Judging by this translated excerpt from the Iranian television drama “Guantanamo” (granted, subject matter must also weigh heavily in the equation), our international PR leaves a lot to be desired.
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By Amy Goodman — First, do no harm. This tenet of medicine applies equally to psychologists, yet they are increasingly implicated in abusive interrogations, dare we say torture, at U.S. military detention facilities like Guantanamo.
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AP Photo / Brennan Linsley
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By Robert Scheer — The Supreme Court may not be interested in applying American values to Guantanamo Bay, but at least one soldier has taken a principled stand against the prison’s tortured justice system.
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By Marie Cocco — Like a terminally ill animal, the Guantanamo prison is soon to be put to death. It will be an ugly execution, played out against the sophomoric non sequiturs that are the unofficial soundtrack of the war on terror.
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usip.org
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Robert Gates urged Congress on Thursday to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, acknowledging that the international community was likely to doubt the credibility of tribunals held there: “My own view is that because of things that happened earlier at Guantanamo there is a taint about it.”
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Jose Padilla has been ruled competent to stand trial, a rebuke to his lawyers. The defense had sought to have him treated for PTSD before the trial began. Padilla has been held in isolation for three and a half years, during which time he was subjected to varying kinds of interrogation and, very likely, torture.
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The U.S. military insists that Abu Ghraib was an isolated abuse, but at least one soldier suggests a wider system of torture is at work: “I watched as detainees were forced to stand naked all night, shivering in their cold cells and pleading with their captors for help. Others were subjected to long periods of isolation in pitch-black rooms. Food and sleep deprivation were common, along with a variety of physical abuse, including punching and kicking.”
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The CIA has argued that allowing detainees to publicly describe interrogation techniques used against them would endanger national security.
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The International Committee of the Red Cross will contact the White House to address concerns over U.S. torture policy’s compliance with the Geneva Conventions.
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From Matt Groller / Rolling Stone
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Rolling Stone presents one of the most harrowing stories we’ve read all year: a blow-by-blow description of the experience of a teenage jihadist who has been tortured by Americans in Gitmo for the past four years.
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Lawyers for 25 men being held in Afghanistan filed a habeas corpus petition in advance of Bush’s plan to outlaw that exact motion.
If Congress isn’t going to stand up to Bush on this travesty of a law, it’s good to see that some parties are.
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While we wait for the Supreme Court to invalidate Bush’s torture law, we offer up a little satire on the issue. In this piece, a Nation writer hilariously re-imagines our new Military Commissions Act. (Or let Jon Stewart take it away.)
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As expected, the Senate sent the despicable detainee interrogation bill to the president’s desk last night. See its horrifying provisions here.
As long as this law stands, we too shall stand in forfeit of the moral high ground in this struggle. It’s a sad day for our once-proud republic.
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The interrogation bill headed for Bush’s desk would allow him to detain anyone indefinitely and decide (privately) what constitutes torture; it eliminates habeas corpus and judicial review, and it permits coerced evidence. The N.Y. Times calls it “our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.”
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Stephen Colbert put McCain and friends to shame on Monday by exposing the Republican senator’s torture protest as pseudo-opposition and their compromise with the Bush administration as an abject cave-in.
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Join Truthdig’s Robert Scheer, along with Arianna Huffington, Tony Blankley and Matt Miller, for a lively discussion on the week in politics, policy and culture. This week: the Bush-Republican detainee-interrogation deal, U.N. rants, midterm elections, corporate spying, upheaval at the Los Angeles Times and the furor surrounding the pope’s recent comments on Islam.
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The editorial boards of the N.Y. Times and the Washington Post, along with First Amendment lawyer Glen Greenwald, condemned the interrogation bill agreed upon by the president and a group of GOP senators.
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NPR/Patrick Kovarik
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In an interview with NPR’s “Morning Edition,” former President Bill Clinton vigorously argued against Bush’s torture plans, citing both moral and practical reasons: “We have a system of laws here where nobody should be above the law, and you don’t need blanket advanced approval for blanket torture.”
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