The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib

While the proverbial road to hell is paved with good intentions, the internal government memos collected in this publication demonstrate that the path to the purgatory that is Guantanamo Bay, or Abu Ghraib, has been paved with decidedly bad intentions. The policies that resulted in rampant abuse of detainees first in Afghanistan, then at Guantanamo Bay, and later in Iraq, were product of three pernicious purposes designed to facilitate the unilateral and unfettered detention, interrogation, abuse, judgment, and punishment of prisoners: (1) the desire to place the detainees beyond the reach of any court or law; (2) the desire to abrogate the Geneva Convention with respect to the treatment of persons seized in the context of armed hostilities; and (3) the desire to absolve those implementing the policies of any liability for war crimes under U.S. and international law.

Edited by Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel ( more. . .)

February 20th, 2005 || PermaLink

Our Friends, the Torturers

In extraordinary rendition there are no rules. The person seized, presumably a terror suspect, is thrust into a highly secret zone of utter lawlessness, with no rights whatever. The entire point of this atrocious exercise is to transfer the suspect to a regime skilled in the art of torture. It’s as if a cop picked up a suspect on the street and handed him over to the Mafia to extract a confession. One’s guilt or innocence is not relevant. No legal defense is permitted. If a mistake is made, too bad.

U.S. officials knew what they were doing when they gave the signal to ship Mr. Arar to Syria. As far back as 1996, the State Department had this to say in a report about human rights in Syria:

“Former prisoners and detainees have reported that torture methods include electrical shocks; pulling out fingernails; the forced insertion of objects into the rectum; beatings, sometimes while the victim is suspended from the ceiling; hyperextension of the spine; and the use of a chair that bends backwards to asphyxiate the victim or fracture the spine.”

According to the State Department, torture was most likely to occur at one of the many detention centers run by the Syrian security forces, “particularly while the authorities are trying to extract a confession or information about an alleged crime or alleged accomplices.”

Extraordinary rendition is antithetical to everything Americans are supposed to believe in. It violates American law. It violates international law. And it is a profound violation of our own most fundamental moral imperative - that there are limits to the way we treat other human beings, even in a time of war and great fear.

Bob Herbert, NYTimes ( more. . .)

February 18th, 2005 || PermaLink

News about Iraq Goes Through Filters

How is it that more than 40 percent of Americans still believe Iraq has weapons of mass destruction even though President Bush personally has admitted there are none?

How is it possible that millions of Americans believe the recent election in Iraq showed that Iraqis are in favor of the ongoing occupation of their country? In reality, the determination displayed by the roughly 59 percent of registered voters who participated in the election did so because they felt it would bring about an end to the U.S. occupation.

How do so many Americans wonder why more Iraqis each day are supporting both violent and non-violent movements of resistance to the occupation when after the U.S. government promised to help rebuild Iraq, a mere 2 percent of reconstruction contracts were awarded to Iraqi concerns and the infrastructure lies in shambles?

It’s because overall, mainstream media reportage in the United States about the occupation in Iraq is being censured, distorted, threatened by the military and controlled by corporations that own the outlets.

Dahr Jamail, Seattle Post-Intelligencer ( more. . .)

February 18th, 2005 || PermaLink

We Need The Oil, Right? So What’s the Problem?

Canadian writer Linda McQuaig, author of It’s the Crude, Dude, has noted that decades from now it will all seem a no-brainer. Historians will calmly discuss the war in Iraq and identify oil as one of the key factors in the decision to launch it. They will point to growing US dependence on foreign oil, the competition with China, India, and others for a world oil supply with terminal illness, and the fact that (as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has put it) Iraq “swims on a sea of oil.” It will all seem so obvious as to provoke little more than a yawn.

But that will be then. Now is now. How best to explain the abrupt transition from early-nineties prudence to the present day recklessness of this administration? How to fathom the continued cynicism that trades throwaway soldiers for the chimera of controlling Middle East oil?”

Ray McGovern, CommonDreams ( more. . .)

February 17th, 2005 || PermaLink

Pharisee Nation

Last September, I spoke to some 2,000 students during their annual lecture at a Baptist college in Pennsylvania. After a short prayer service for peace centered on the Beatitudes, I took the stage and got right to the point. “Now let me get this straight,” I said. “Jesus says, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ which means he does not say, ‘Blessed are the warmakers,’ which means, the warmakers are not blessed, which means warmakers are cursed, which means, if you want to follow the nonviolent Jesus you have to work for peace, which means, we all have to resist this horrific, evil war on the people of Iraq.”

With that, the place exploded, and 500 students stormed out. The rest of them then started chanting, “Bush! Bush! Bush!”

So much for my speech. Not to mention the Beatitudes.

John Dear, CommonDreams ( more. . .)

February 16th, 2005 || PermaLink

Self-Inflicted Wounds

New evidence about the torture of prisoners by American soldiers and intelligence agents - and by foreign governments working secretly for the United States - is appalling for all the obvious reasons. This kind of brutality violates both American law and international treaties. It endangers American soldiers who may in the future find themselves captives of a hostile nation. It debases the nation at home and abroad.

Now it is also becoming increasingly clear that this extensive, random prisoner abuse is a wretched failure that does nothing to aid the war on terror.

Report after report shows that a vast majority of those swept up in American anti-terrorism campaigns were innocent. Those who may have been guilty produced little if any useful information - and now cannot be put on trial and punished because they were illegally detained and tortured. Others simply lied under duress, providing an ample supply of disinformation purchased at the cost of American self-respect. Military doctrine says that interrogation becomes pointless after a few days, while torture produces false confessions.

New York Times Editorial ( more. . .)

February 15th, 2005 || PermaLink

What We Don’t Know About 9/11 Hurts Us

Would George W. Bush have been reelected president if the public understood how much responsibility his administration bears for allowing the 9/11 attacks to succeed?

The answer is unknowable and, at this date, moot. Yet it was appalling to learn last week that the White House suppressed until after the election a damning report that exposes the administration as woefully incompetent if not criminally negligent. Belatedly declassified excerpts from still-secret sections of the 9/11 commission report, which focus on the failure of the Federal Aviation Administration to heed multiple warnings that Al Qaeda terrorists were planning to hijack planes as suicide weapons, make clear that this tragedy could have been avoided.

For the last three years, administration apologists have tried to make the FAA the scapegoat for the 9/11 attacks. But it is the president who ultimately is responsible for national security, not a defanged agency that is beholden to the industry it allegedly monitors.

The terrible fact is that the administration took none of the steps that would have put the protection of human life ahead of a diverse set of economic and political interests, which included not offending our friends the Saudis and not hurting the share prices of airline corporations.

Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times ( more. . .)

February 15th, 2005 || PermaLink

The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib

While the proverbial road to hell is paved with good intentions, the internal government memos collected in this publication demonstrate that the path to the purgatory that is Guantanamo Bay, or Abu Ghraib, has been paved with decidedly bad intentions. The policies that resulted in rampant abuse of detainees first in Afghanistan, then at Guantanamo Bay, and later in Iraq, were product of three pernicious purposes designed to facilitate the unilateral and unfettered detention, interrogation, abuse, judgment, and punishment of prisoners: (1) the desire to place the detainees beyond the reach of any court or law; (2) the desire to abrogate the Geneva Convention with respect to the treatment of persons seized in the context of armed hostilities; and (3) the desire to absolve those implementing the policies of any liability for war crimes under U.S. and international law.

Edited by Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel ( more. . .)

February 20th, 2005 || PermaLink

Our Friends, the Torturers

In extraordinary rendition there are no rules. The person seized, presumably a terror suspect, is thrust into a highly secret zone of utter lawlessness, with no rights whatever. The entire point of this atrocious exercise is to transfer the suspect to a regime skilled in the art of torture. It’s as if a cop picked up a suspect on the street and handed him over to the Mafia to extract a confession. One’s guilt or innocence is not relevant. No legal defense is permitted. If a mistake is made, too bad.

U.S. officials knew what they were doing when they gave the signal to ship Mr. Arar to Syria. As far back as 1996, the State Department had this to say in a report about human rights in Syria:

“Former prisoners and detainees have reported that torture methods include electrical shocks; pulling out fingernails; the forced insertion of objects into the rectum; beatings, sometimes while the victim is suspended from the ceiling; hyperextension of the spine; and the use of a chair that bends backwards to asphyxiate the victim or fracture the spine.”

According to the State Department, torture was most likely to occur at one of the many detention centers run by the Syrian security forces, “particularly while the authorities are trying to extract a confession or information about an alleged crime or alleged accomplices.”

Extraordinary rendition is antithetical to everything Americans are supposed to believe in. It violates American law. It violates international law. And it is a profound violation of our own most fundamental moral imperative - that there are limits to the way we treat other human beings, even in a time of war and great fear.

Bob Herbert, NYTimes ( more. . .)

February 18th, 2005 || PermaLink

News about Iraq Goes Through Filters

How is it that more than 40 percent of Americans still believe Iraq has weapons of mass destruction even though President Bush personally has admitted there are none?

How is it possible that millions of Americans believe the recent election in Iraq showed that Iraqis are in favor of the ongoing occupation of their country? In reality, the determination displayed by the roughly 59 percent of registered voters who participated in the election did so because they felt it would bring about an end to the U.S. occupation.

How do so many Americans wonder why more Iraqis each day are supporting both violent and non-violent movements of resistance to the occupation when after the U.S. government promised to help rebuild Iraq, a mere 2 percent of reconstruction contracts were awarded to Iraqi concerns and the infrastructure lies in shambles?

It’s because overall, mainstream media reportage in the United States about the occupation in Iraq is being censured, distorted, threatened by the military and controlled by corporations that own the outlets.

Dahr Jamail, Seattle Post-Intelligencer ( more. . .)

February 18th, 2005 || PermaLink

We Need The Oil, Right? So What’s the Problem?

Canadian writer Linda McQuaig, author of It’s the Crude, Dude, has noted that decades from now it will all seem a no-brainer. Historians will calmly discuss the war in Iraq and identify oil as one of the key factors in the decision to launch it. They will point to growing US dependence on foreign oil, the competition with China, India, and others for a world oil supply with terminal illness, and the fact that (as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has put it) Iraq “swims on a sea of oil.” It will all seem so obvious as to provoke little more than a yawn.

But that will be then. Now is now. How best to explain the abrupt transition from early-nineties prudence to the present day recklessness of this administration? How to fathom the continued cynicism that trades throwaway soldiers for the chimera of controlling Middle East oil?”

Ray McGovern, CommonDreams ( more. . .)

February 17th, 2005 || PermaLink

Pharisee Nation

Last September, I spoke to some 2,000 students during their annual lecture at a Baptist college in Pennsylvania. After a short prayer service for peace centered on the Beatitudes, I took the stage and got right to the point. “Now let me get this straight,” I said. “Jesus says, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ which means he does not say, ‘Blessed are the warmakers,’ which means, the warmakers are not blessed, which means warmakers are cursed, which means, if you want to follow the nonviolent Jesus you have to work for peace, which means, we all have to resist this horrific, evil war on the people of Iraq.”

With that, the place exploded, and 500 students stormed out. The rest of them then started chanting, “Bush! Bush! Bush!”

So much for my speech. Not to mention the Beatitudes.

John Dear, CommonDreams ( more. . .)

February 16th, 2005 || PermaLink

Self-Inflicted Wounds

New evidence about the torture of prisoners by American soldiers and intelligence agents - and by foreign governments working secretly for the United States - is appalling for all the obvious reasons. This kind of brutality violates both American law and international treaties. It endangers American soldiers who may in the future find themselves captives of a hostile nation. It debases the nation at home and abroad.

Now it is also becoming increasingly clear that this extensive, random prisoner abuse is a wretched failure that does nothing to aid the war on terror.

Report after report shows that a vast majority of those swept up in American anti-terrorism campaigns were innocent. Those who may have been guilty produced little if any useful information - and now cannot be put on trial and punished because they were illegally detained and tortured. Others simply lied under duress, providing an ample supply of disinformation purchased at the cost of American self-respect. Military doctrine says that interrogation becomes pointless after a few days, while torture produces false confessions.

New York Times Editorial ( more. . .)

February 15th, 2005 || PermaLink

What We Don’t Know About 9/11 Hurts Us

Would George W. Bush have been reelected president if the public understood how much responsibility his administration bears for allowing the 9/11 attacks to succeed?

The answer is unknowable and, at this date, moot. Yet it was appalling to learn last week that the White House suppressed until after the election a damning report that exposes the administration as woefully incompetent if not criminally negligent. Belatedly declassified excerpts from still-secret sections of the 9/11 commission report, which focus on the failure of the Federal Aviation Administration to heed multiple warnings that Al Qaeda terrorists were planning to hijack planes as suicide weapons, make clear that this tragedy could have been avoided.

For the last three years, administration apologists have tried to make the FAA the scapegoat for the 9/11 attacks. But it is the president who ultimately is responsible for national security, not a defanged agency that is beholden to the industry it allegedly monitors.

The terrible fact is that the administration took none of the steps that would have put the protection of human life ahead of a diverse set of economic and political interests, which included not offending our friends the Saudis and not hurting the share prices of airline corporations.

Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times ( more. . .)

February 15th, 2005 || PermaLink