May 09, 2009
Why Holder might not prosecute
Ring of fire reports:
http://ringoffireradio.com/blogengine/post/The-Raw-Roundup-Joe-The-Plumber-Quits-the-GOP.aspx
On the one hand:
"According to a new report released this week by Human Rights First, US interrogators killed nearly four dozen detainees during or after their interrogations. In all, 98 detainees have died while in US hands. Thirty-four homicides have been identified, with at least eight detainees — and as many as 12 — having been tortured to death. Most of those taken captive were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and at least one was wrongfully arrested and detained. The CIA claims that it had medical personnel on hand during all of the torture sessions, which they referred to as interrogations. "
On the other hand:
"In a related story, Attorney General Eric Holder announced this week that he authorized rendition during his time with the Clinton Administration. Cautioning Holder that any potential investigation into the Bush administration’s torture program could result in Democrats being roped in, Republicans Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Richard Shelby of Alabama pressed Holder on the CIA’s ‘rendition’ program that moved terrorism suspects from one country to another in the cover of darkness. Despite frequent condemnation of the practice around the world, rendition — the secret capture, transportation and detention of suspected terrorists to foreign prisons in countries that cooperate with the U.S. — remains in the CIA’s playbook, thanks to a Jan. 22 executive order issued by President Obama. "
Why didn't this come out during his confirmation hearings?
Now, what the Clinton Administration did was deceptive and wrong. Here is how extraordinary rendition worked under Clinton. Apparently the top brass of the administration would decide that a high value prisoner might have useful information. They would get together, draft up a letter of rendition. The letter would offer to deliver a prisoner to a country, usually someone who was a national of that country, for interrogation. The letter would include empty promises that the prisoner would be well treated. Bill Clinton later confessed that these "extraordinary renditions were wrong" when pressed by his wife, who was running for President and criticizing extraordinary rendition. They were wrong. And Holder was part of that effort.
But what happened with the Bush Administration was different. They used the same structures, but they decided to employ "torture lite" themselves and "enhanced interrogatiions" directly. The difference was qualitative but on an order of magnitude. This is the distinction between hypocritically looking the other way while an enemy is tortured and ordering murder and torture. The Clinton Administration was sleazy, but the Bush administration was criminal.
Prisoners were still renditioned, but now questioning was in the hands of the CIA. The memo from Bibey, is a letter from him to an unnamed psychologist/psychiatrist/SME, who wanted to use a variety of torture methods on Abu Zubaya, which directly contradicts the self-serving, and violent denials of the far right crowd who claim that we didn't practice Torture. After Zubaya, we tortured regularly. And starting around 2003 with Miller's "Gitmoization" of interrogations there, we tortured in Iraq too.
He wanted to use the "Insect treatment"; Because Zubayah was afraid of insects, they would tell him that they were going to place Zubayah in a box with a stinging insect. "You would however, place a harmless insect in the box." Ann and company deny that, making abusive comments about fat caterpillars. But the fact is that stress positions, walling, and other excruciating tortures were regularly practiced at Guantanamo and in Iraq, in circumvention of our own treaty standards, the Military Code of Justice, and our own handbooks and instructions.
Ann Coulter also lies by saying that Japanese were not prosecuted for war crimes that included waterboarding. People like Bibey, Robin or Ann Coulter can deny that Waterboarding is torture. They try to claim that the form of waterboarding is not torture because the method is slightly different from that used by the Japanese. This isn't a matter of listening comprehension, this is deliberate dishonesty. The difference between the two forms of waterboarding is so miniscule it only exists in their propaganda. Therefore, when they do so it is they who are practicing the big lie:
“Yuki placed some cloth on my face. And then with water from the faucet, they poured on me until I became unconscious. He repeated that four or five times.”
Exactly the same method. And note, each session is no more than 20-30 seconds.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2007/dec/18/john-mccain/history-supports-mccains-stance-on-waterboarding/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
http://www.pegc.us/archive/Journals/Wallach_CWR_nexus.pdf
After watching the right wing march in goose-step on this subject I now can understand how our more conventional, naive and trusting fellows could be taken in by this material. These people act like they'd go to jail if the people who ordered these things went to jail. But it would destroy the Republican party if ordinary Republicans understood just how much the Bush administration betrayed them. On the other hand, there is a core of people who think that waterboarding isn't torture, rape isn't rape, white is black, and its okay to hate if you are Anglo/American, go to church, and say it is okay.
Really sick. In Rwanda, the massacres there were fueled by hate-rhetoric of fired up and sick talk show hosts who labelled "Tutsis" cockroaches and advocated killing them. Once one starts down the path of demonization, torture, and condoning it, the slip cann be awfully fast. When a Liddy or Michael Savage starts using violent rhetoric I start worrying about who's going to die. Mussolini started his career inciting violence through the Socialist Newspaper Avanti!, eventually it wasn't enough for him. We can't just dismiss violent and angry people as moonbats. They can be very dangerous.
It also should and might humble Democrats to realize that Bill Clinton started the extraordinary renditions program which the Bush Administration took as their starting point in entering a twilight zone of horror. It should be humbling to remember just how angry we all got after 9/11, including me. I never went so far as advocating torture however and there never was a need for extraordinary renditions.
Holder has to prosecute. Jessee Ventura gives the best argument anyone can muster as to why:
http://www.theweek.com/article/index/96440/Video_Jesse_Ventura_offers_to_waterboard_Dick_Cheney_Larry_King_Live
The idea that anyone should be able to justify such high crimes on the basis of "I was just following orders" is disgusting. If anybody had ordered me to do such a repulsive thing -- I'd resign on the spot. Heck, when I was asked to cover up some inventory shennanigans at a company I'd hoped to make a career of, I resigned -- and shared what was going on with senior management. Sometimes it is more important to be able to look at oneself in a mirror. I don't know how Cheney and his allies can handle looking at their own faces.
Further reading:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15886834
http://www.rothkochapel.org/billgoodman.pdf (need PdF)
2005 Memo reaffirming use of Stress Positions, "walling", waterboarding on selected prisoners. (http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/olc_05102005_bradbury46pg.pdf)
The list is here:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/olc_memos.html
Posted by cholte at May 9, 2009 10:29 PM
What initially bothered me about this issue is that it goes to the core of what we are as a nation, as human beings. But what gets to me is when people read about this form of torture and claim its not torture, make excuses about it 'working' and make no bones about it. The Spanish invented it (or reinvented it). They called it tormenta de toca. Tormenta means torture.
From:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15886834
The methods described by Bibey's memo are identical to the methods described as tormenta de toca, and indeed the escuses, rationalizations and lies are the same as you see in Bibey's memo and Cheney's BS:
"Its use was first documented in the 14th century, according to Ed Peters, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania. It was known variously as "water torture," the "water cure" or tormenta de toca — a phrase that refers to the thin piece of cloth placed over the victim's mouth."
"At the time, using water to induce confessions was "a normal incident of law," Peters says, and people viewed it more or less as we view a cross-examination today. If anything, Peters says, the Inquisitors "were more careful about it" than others of their time."
"They were professionals," Peters says, noting that a doctor's presence was required during interrogations. Not that it made the experience any more pleasant for the victim, of course."
"Leaves No Marks"
"The patient strangled and gasped and suffocated and, at intervals, the toca was withdrawn and he was adjured to tell the truth. The severity of the infliction was measured by the number of jars [of water] consumed, sometimes reaching to six or eight," writes Henry Charles Lea in A History of the Inquisition of Spain."
Now compare that to Bibey's memo that I posted; almost word for word the same, even down to having a doctor present. As the article goes on to say:
"The Japanese, for instance, used teapots to hold the water, and cellophane is sometimes used instead of a cloth. But waterboarding has changed very little in the past 500 years. It still relies on the innate fear of drowning and suffocating to coerce confessions."
Waterboarding is torture. It's not torture 'lite' it is just plain and simple torture. Anyone who claims differently has a moral comprehension problem.
I pray that Cheney and company get their day in court. This is morally and ethically repugnant.
Robin writes:
Japan:
"The so-called 'water treatment' was commonly used. The victim was bound or otherwise secured in a prone position; and water was forced through his mouth and nostrils into his lungs and stomach until he lost consciousness. Pressure was then applied, sometimes by jumping upon his abdomen to force the water out. The usual practice was to revive the victim and successively repeat the
process."
"A towel was fixed under the chin and down over the face. Then many buckets of water were poured into the towel so that the water gradually reached the mouth and rising further eventually also the nostrils, which resulted in his becoming
unconscious and collapsing like a person drowned. This procedure was sometimes repeated 5-6 times in succession."
Spain: "Before pouring the water, torturers often inserted an iron prong (known as the bostezo) into a victim's mouth to keep it open, as well as a strip of linen(known as the toca) on which the victim would choke and suffocate while
swallowing the water."
Gitmo:
In this procedure, the individual is bound securely to an inclined bench, which is approximately four feet by seven feet. The individual's feet are generally elevated. A cloth is placed over the forehead and eyes. Water is then applied to the cloth in a controlled manner. As this is done, the cloth is lowered until it
covers both the nose and mouth. Once the cloth is saturated and completely covers the mouth and nose, air flow is slightly restricted for 20 to 40 seconds due to the presence of the cloth
Thanks Robin for this post, which shows why there is no material difference between the methods used at GITMO and the methods used by the Spanish Inquisition, and by Japanese interrogators prosecuted by the Americans. Reason? These three methods are virtually identical. Especially if one looks at the instructions behind them.
If you are claiming that somehow this makes your case that waterboarding as practiced by GITMO isn't torture, this fails because it describes on the one hand waterboarding as described by Bibey compared with actual practices and deviations from the rulebook as actually done by some inquisitors and Japanese. The inquisitor rule book prescribed the Toca as a cloth to be put over the face in exactly the same way as Bibey's memo. Bibey's memo doesn't say over just the eyes, it was supposed to be so that the prisoner would not breath the water.
Like with Bibey's memo the inquisition prescribed doctors be stationed Doctors on hand to ensure that the prisoner didn't die. On the whole you are describing the same procedure recommend by the Inquisitors handbook a century before 1492.
If you think that there is any difference then you are lying to yourself because you sure aren't fooling anyone else.
If you think there is no material difference, then you are either inept or intellectually dishonest. You also deleted my post, excerpted from it, and reposted it.
-- Actually I added my own comments to one of the two you put there and deleted the other because it threatened me. And secondly you have no right to come here and tell me I'm inept or intellectually dishonest. There is nothing intellectually dishonest about calling torture torture, but there is something extremely repugnant about defending it online and going after people's right to respond to criticism. You and Andy have no problem with personally insulting me where I can't reply to you.
How many times have you two directed expletives at me or called me an idiot? You even come here and think you have the impunity to do so on my own blog.
--- So mind your own business.
Come to think of it I'll probably just delete this comment too.
"I would rather you just kept my name out of this blog. Whatever I write, you are going to twist and spin. I have other things I want to do instead of spending day and night correcting you after you misquote me. Surely, you can spin your web without mentioning me?"
--- Well I might do that, but you keep making public statements that are lies and I'd be remiss not to challenge them.
-- you are projecting Robin. And if you don't want me mentioning you by name, stop posting garbage.
"Again, you deleted my comments and edited them. That shows you were a hypocrite when you whined that I censored you."
--- Actually I deleted a post where you threatened me. This isn't a debate forum and you aren't an honest debater anyway. I added comments to the other. I get to do that. I probably couldn't run BDG. My buttons are about truthfulness.
"BTW, the Japanese and Inquisitors were not following Bibey's memo. They were long before Bibey. What they were doing was not the same at all. Go do some real research."
-- What I said, were you willing to read for content instead of looking for something to hang a criticism on is that the Bibey Memo is very similar to the Inquisition manual published 100 years before 1492. (Don't recall exact date). If I get some time I'll post on the Inquisition. The Catholic Church has released some of its archives, but still minimizes the damage they did. I was trying to sleep last night and ended up watching a PBS program on the Inquisition. Imagine being tortured for taking the Bible too literally. That was the inquisition. They at least admitted it was torture.
I didn't delete your post. This is my blog, I went in and added comments to your post. No deletions there. I deleted another post where you threatened me. You have no right to threaten me, and since your threat was rediculous I deleted it rather than let my blood pressure surge.
I didn't misquote you once. If there is any misquote come to me with specifics and I'll make corrections. So far you're hanging yourself with your own words all fine and dandy by yourself. I'm not trying to defend the indefensible so I have nothing to be ashamed of. You have no self control when it comes to calling me a liar, deleting my posts, threatening me, or misquoting me, so don't come over to my blog and tell me how to run it.
I'm probably going to delete these later posts too. As I said you have no right to tell me what to do.
Well it turns out that Cheney didn't even torture these people to get legitimate information. He wanted to force detainees to tell the world that Saddam Hussein was involved with Al Qaeda:
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2009/05/the_truth_about/
http://snipurl.com/i203r
"Quoting people out of context is your standard of ethic Holte."
To make that charge you have to have at least one example, which you don't have. Everytime I quote you it is in context. Later you sometimes realize you were wrong and try to deny you said what you said but I can't help that. Guantanamo is case in point. Now you are suddenly back tracking from blanket defense.
Moreover to say that this is somehow my standard requires you to have a large number of examples, that they be a majority of my uses of quotes, in order to demonstrate that my intentionality is different from what I profess, which is to quote people in context.
You don't establish that proof, but because you raise that offensive charge every time I quote you in context and point out the facts, I guess you've convinced yourself that this allegation is true enough to justify continual and repeated attacks on my character. Just look at the thread titles (if you haven't deleted them) from your and Andy's posts on BDG. "Idiot" "moron" etc. No those aren't defamations.
And you can't even offer an original rebuttal. I said this earlier:
"All you are doing is discrediting yourself."
I'm sorry Robin. I wish you weren't defending torture and first claiming that we didn't waterboard people, and then later that waterboarding wasn't torture. I wish I hadn't seen those recently leaked photos that Obama doesn't want to Show to Americans but that the rest of the world has already seen enough of to form a really nasty opinion of us.
"I shall refrain from calling you a liar, because I think you believe your raving paranoid delusions."
If you refrain from calling me a liar it is because you know deep in your heart that I'm right. You just won't admit it out of misplaced loyalty to the prior administration.
If I have raving paranoid delusions, then close to half of Americans, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, former Reagan Officials, Jesse Ventura, and others all share those delusions.
"Maybe you can censor and edit this too. I have no problem with that part."
It is either add comments or I'd have to delete it. I'm not editing it because it speaks for itself. I used to edit your comments for spelling and fat finger errors, but it would be unseemly to change their context.
"It is just you whined and cried and claimed that I censored you."
You did, and you degraded BDG to the point where it is no longer anything but a sounding board for your denial.
"You are also constantly calling others hypocrites.
Remember Esho Funi?"
Actually I didn't see the word hypocritical in any of my posts. I think the words have been consistantly "lying and spinning." Oh the fact that you talk about emmanating "mettawaves" while coming here and demonstrating so much hate and support of officiall repression and brutality could be called hypocritical but I don't think I used the term. Maybe I did. Does it hurt?
Robin as long as you stick to presenting things you are studying you do fine. When you try to do a Rush Limbaugh lite it just doesn't become you.
Finally, this is one reason that Obama needs to release those photos and prosecute people. As long as folks go untried and unpunished, naive and trusting (or cynical and dishonest) people can go on denying the truth and maintaining that our country didn't do some truly horrible things between 2002-2005. The rest of the world already knows this. Obama isn't protecting anybody from the truth except we Americans.
I understand you. Prior to certain revelations and my study of the dirty wars in South America, SE Asia, and other places I naively assumed that our Country had clean hands.
Well it turns out that before Iraq was Gitmoized, and Gitmo was "El Salvadorized", we'd been part of a covert series of farmed out dirty wars since World War II that took up from our behavior in the Phillipines prior to World War I. The difference was that this time our top brass decided to cut out the middlemen.
In those wars our CIA appears to have directed and collected, but worked through proxies. I would have argued that this was a lie up until about 2000, but since then I've seen the evidence. We weren't alone, the French, Belgians, British, Spanish and I don't recall who else, were all involved.
Having studied the truth and met some of the "Madres de los Desaparecidos" changed my attitude towards those dirty wars. It turns out some of the same people involved in those wars were involved in Iraq. And it also turns out that the whole story will probably be swept under the rug, so you'll be able to claim until you go to your grave that our country "doesn't torture."
I just hope it becomes true.