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Edited by Joshua Rubenstein and Ilya Altman
$ 23.07
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By Robert Scheer, Christopher Scheer and Lakshmi Chaudhry
$23
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Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com (CC BY 2.0)
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By Nick Turse, TomDispatch —
Try to remain calm—even as you begin to feel your chest tighten and your heart race. Try not to panic as water starts flowing into your nose and mouth, while you attempt to constrict your throat and slow your breathing and keep some air in your lungs and fight that growing feeling of suffocation.
Posted on Feb 26, 2013
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Flickr/Truthout.org
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By Thomas Hedges, Center for Study of Responsive Law —
John Kiriakou was charged with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, allegedly disclosing classified information to members of the news media after speaking out against waterboarding in 2007. He pleaded guilty in October as part of an agreement that would sentence him to 30 months in prison.
Posted on Jan 23, 2013
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AP/Jacquelyn Martin
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The former CIA officer who blew the whistle on waterboarding is preparing to serve a 30-month prison sentence for disclosing to a reporter the name of a covert agent previously involved in the government’s torture program.
Posted on Jan 5, 2013
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Sony Pictures
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“Zero Dark Thirty” is piling up rave reviews despite perpetuating the myth that torture helps combat terrorism. Glenn Greenwald objects to praise for a film that propagandizes war crimes as a necessary evil.
Posted on Dec 10, 2012
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Harshil.Shah (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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The United Nations will establish an investigative team next year to probe the legality of America’s generalized drone war abroad. The inquiry could find U.S. leaders guilty of war crimes in Pakistan and elsewhere.
Posted on Oct 26, 2012
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Illustration from an AP photo by Chad Rachman
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By Robert Scheer — What zeal this man had to eviscerate the conceits of the powerful, whether their authority derived from wealth, the state or a claim to the ear of the divine.
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Wikimedia Commons / Carlos Latuff (CC-BY)
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Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain, you’re on notice. John McCain took to Twitter on Monday, being a cyber-savvy senator and all, to disapprove of the two GOP candidates’ pro-waterboarding stance, as stated at Saturday’s Republican presidential debate.
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Flickr / Marion Doss
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A U.S.-based human rights group published a report Tuesday calling on foreign governments to prosecute George W. Bush and some of his chief officials in light of a growing body of evidence of war crimes. (more)
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Flickr / Protest Photos1
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Dan Kennedy of Media Nation used The Guardian to attack The New York Times for its squeamishness about calling “enhanced interrogation” what it is—torture. (more)
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Flickr / Gage Skidmore
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Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has thrown cold water on the argument that extreme interrogation methods are necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, telling NewsMax that waterboarding was not used to identify Osama bin Laden’s courier.
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White House / Paul Morse
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In his new memoir, George W. Bush claims that information obtained by waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammad 183 times helped foil plots to attack targets in the United Kingdom. British intelligence and Cabinet officials—Labor and Conservative alike—beg to differ.
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Flickr / zimpenfish (CC-BY-SA)
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After a three-year investigation, the government has decided not to charge the CIA officers who destroyed 92 videotapes of waterboarding after the White House and the agency had ordered that the recordings be preserved.
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By Joe Conason — The years of detainee abuse and constitutional violations cannot be dismissed so easily, because the past is still with us—and so are the dangers that drew America’s leaders toward the dark side.
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Flickr / AndYaDontStop
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Police have charged an American soldier with assaulting his young daughter. Specifically, Joshua Tabor of Tacoma, Wash., is reported to have waterboarded his 4-year-old three or four times because she was afraid of water and had trouble with her ABCs.
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rebelreports.com
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Many intelligence professionals have categorically disapproved of torture, claiming it both ineffective and counterproductive. Former FBI agent Ali H. Soufan writes of the mountains of good information uncovered with traditional interrogation procedures in contrast to the erroneous and unproductive intelligence gleaned from torture.
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White House / David Bohrer / Archive
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In a move that might spur some anti-Bushie types to nervously consult the Mayan calendar, The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto has offered up none other than Dick Cheney as his pick for president in 2012—under the condition that the former veep is right about how to deal with the threat of terrorism.
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Wikimedia Commons
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By Eugene Robinson — History’s demands can seem inconvenient, unfair or unreasonable. But they can’t be ignored. Especially when it comes to torture.
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Wikimedia Commons / U.S. Navy
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Another account describing the CIA’s alleged use of harsh interrogation techniques has come to light, according to a Newsweek magazine report about the intelligence agency’s treatment of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a suspect in the 2000 bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen.
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AP / Ron Edmonds
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Former Vice President Dick Cheney maintained an elusive stance, to say the least, during his years in the White House, but since leaving office he’s made himself more visible and vocal on the public stage. For his next act, he’s working on a memoir—but somehow the term tell-all doesn’t quite seem to fit the bill in this particular case.
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USAF / Tech. Sgt. Eric T. Sheler
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John Brennan has known controversy for his defense of torture and rendition, but the president’s top counterterrorism adviser has just condemned the Bush administration’s approach by declaring: “We cannot shoot ourselves out of this challenge.”
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Flickr/art makes me smile
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A Justice Department official told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday that only voluntary statements made by terrorism suspects detained in Guantanamo Bay should be used as evidence during their military trials. This means whatever they said under harsh interrogation should not be regarded as fact. The hearing concerned legislation about the use of statements obtained through harsh interrogation.
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New declassified information reveals that the CIA’s torture programs produced false information. September 11th mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed admitted he made up stories under torture, refuting a long-standing and still-used Bush administration argument that harsh interrogation yields highly valuable information. Rachel Maddow provides the details.
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What was behind The Philadelphia Inquirer’s decision to give torture memo draftsman John Yoo a platform to air his views as a columnist? The paper’s publisher, Brian Tierney, endorses Yoo to WHYY’s “Radio Times” host Marty Moss-Coane, while fellow guest and Philadelphia Daily News journalist Will Bunch offers a different take on George W. Bush’s erstwhile legal adviser.
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Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham says the CIA didn’t brief him about the use of waterboarding on suspected terrorists, and he has the records in his personal notebooks to prove it, as he points out during a timely book tour stopover on Wednesday’s “Colbert Report.”
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AP photo / Lynne Sladky
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By Marie Cocco — The partisan firefight over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s incendiary allegation that the CIA lied to Congress about its use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”—torture—is a blessing. It turns the compelling case for a public inquiry into the Bush administration’s policies toward terrorism detainees into an urgent necessity.
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AP photo / Alex Brandon
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Three new developments in the Nancy Pelosi drama this week: The Democrats are said to stand “solidly behind” the House speaker, who is under fire from Republicans for talking smack about the CIA that “misled” her on waterboarding. Meanwhile, President Obama gives a vote of confidence to Pelosi, while CIA Director Leon Panetta urges Congress to focus on actual national security threats, stating “We are a nation at war.”
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Wikimedia Commons / digitaljournal.com
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It’s been a rough week for Our Lady Speaker of the House. In Act I, she claimed ignorance about the full extent of the CIA’s torture repertoire. However, thanks to the magic of technology and documentation, her version of the story clashed with that of a pissed-off Leon Panetta. (See Robert Scheer’s latest column for an editorial critique.)
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AP photo / Lauren Victoria Burke
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On Friday, CIA Director Leon Panetta fired back at Nancy Pelosi’s claims that she had been misled by the agency on its use of harsh interrogation techniques, declaring that congressional leaders had been “briefed truthfully” on the methods in September 2002. The controversy surrounding Pelosi has led some to call for a probe of Bush administration abuses while others, such as Rush Limbaugh, are demanding her resignation.
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As new information leaks out on the Bush administration’s torture program and as Dick Cheney pumps up his role as the poster child for waterboarding, we can slowly start connecting the dots on the previous administration’s criminal practices. Rachel Maddow and guest author Jane Mayer break down the shaky legal justifications behind the invasion of Iraq and the use of waterboarding—a method now known to produce false confessions—to try to force detainees to reveal a link between al-Qaida and Iraq.
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President Obama this week blocked the release of controversial photos of detainees in order to not “further enflame anti-American opinion.” But without the pictures, whatever are we to do with all these frames? Meanwhile, Lt. Dan Choi an Arabic interpreter (for those who give in to harsh interrogation techniques) has been discharged because he is gay. Once again, torture is rendered less intelligible.
Posted on May 15, 2009
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bioguide.congress.gov
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Nancy Pelosi has made herself vulnerable to attacks after appearing to venture into Equivocation Land this week in her public tussle with the CIA over when she knew the U.S. was employing what we call “torture” on suspected terrorists. Enter Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, stage right, to do his part to bring Pelosi down from her vaunted position.
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rebelreports.com
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Gang-beatings, breaking bones, gouging eyes, squeezing testicles and dousing detainees with chemicals. Those Bush-era actions are still going on under Obama’s regime at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo, as the narrowing of the “torture debate” has occluded attention from such grotesque practices.
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flickr.com / army.mil
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Top Democrat Nancy Pelosi stammered her way through a statement at a tense news conference on Thursday, acknowledging she had learned as early as February 2003 of the CIA’s waterboarding practices. She defended her position on the grounds of being “misled” by the CIA and she accused Republicans of scapegoating her to divert attention away from those actually responsible for the acts.
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White House / David Bohrer
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By Robert Scheer — If the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and later House Democratic leader, lacked the authority to publicly question a policy of torture, then how can we condemn, indeed imprison, ordinary soldiers who thought it their duty to follow orders?
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White House / Eric Draper
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Despite evidence, helpfully provided by the CIA, to the contrary, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi still insists she wasn’t aware that waterboarding would be on the menu of the Bush administration’s interrogation techniques when she was briefed in secret in 2002.
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AP photo / Alex Brandon
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The official paper trail about torture has apparently caught up with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has claimed that she wasn’t aware of the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on suspected al-Qaida operatives—but it now seems that she may well have been among the first to know.
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Tuesday on “The Colbert Report”: Condi Rice and Dick Cheney should have to justify their support for the use of torture to a jury of children. Perhaps the Bushies’ flip-floppy justifications might actually make some sense in Kidsville.
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theatlantic.com
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A Justice Department report suggests that the possibility of legal consequence for those who broke the law is steadily waning, as Bush administration lawyers who approved the torture-interrogation technique of waterboarding will likely escape prosecution.
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Wikimedia Commons / Prolineserver
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Clearly, Paul Krugman, pictured above, is no fan of federal Judge Jay Bybee, legislative enabler of the “enhanced interrogation technique” that’s become one shameful symbol of the past eight years: waterboarding. You know it’s not good when Newt Gingrich is held up as a paragon of a bygone, and preferable, brand of Republicanism.
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So, Sean Hannity told Charles Grodin on Wednesday night that he would agree to be waterboarded “for charity”—and you’d better believe that that sort of talk wasn’t lost on Keith Olbermann. On Thursday’s “Countdown,” Olbermann upped the ante for Hannity’s date with “enhanced interrogation techniques” by offering to open his own pocketbook for the cause.
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smh.com.au
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After a series of denials by the Bush administration, the Obama administration has decided it will give in to demands by human rights groups and release up to 2,000 pictures of “prisoner abuse” (torture) to the public by May 28.
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By Marjorie Cohn — In order to justify George W. Bush’s illegal and unnecessary invasion of Iraq, Bush administration officials put heavy pressure on Pentagon interrogators to get Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah to say there was a link between Iraq and the 9/11 hijackers. That link was never established.
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What has emboldened Dick Cheney and Karl Rove to so brazenly criticize the new administration? Has Cheney lost his trademark sneer since he left the White House? All this and more in this clip from Wednesday’s “Daily Show” episode.
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By Amy Goodman — The door to bringing torturers to justice is open only a crack. Whether it is kicked open or slammed shut is not up to the president. Though he may occupy the most powerful office on Earth, there is a force more powerful: committed people demanding change.
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By Marie Cocco — It is astonishing that someone who has proved in his memos to be so lacking in judgment and so ideologically twisted in his reasoning that he laid a blanket of legal immunity over those who wanted to torture now holds one of the most powerful and prestigious seats a lawyer can attain.
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Wikimedia Commons
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Was it for information or revenge that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who claimed to be the mastermind behind 9/11, was waterboarded 183 times by the CIA? That figure, sussed out of a Justice Department memo by some enterprising bloggers and repeated in the pages of The New York Times, makes the president’s determination not to prosecute such torture all the more curious.
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Now that the Department of Justice has released the latest stunning Bush-era torture memos, this Al-Jazeera English interview with former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, in which he admits that the Bush administration flouted the Geneva Conventions and that he probably should have resigned, is even more alarming.
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salon.com
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After President Obama announced that the CIA operatives who employed harsh interrogation methods (read: torture) on suspected terrorists during the Bush administration won’t be subject to legal repercussions, the Department of Justice made four “torture memos” publicly available on Thursday.
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U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Jon Soucy
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President Bush repeatedly claimed that the United States, under his leadership, did not torture, but a confidential report prepared by the International Committee of the Red Cross found otherwise. The ICRC has a unique global role in monitoring the treatment of prisoners.
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Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel’s Neoliberal Savagery
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