Nick Langewis and David Edwards
Raw Story- Published: Tuesday July 15, 2008
The Bush administration’s laxity towards torture of prisoners could expose its top officials to war crimes charges, said investigative journalist and New Yorker writer Jane Mayer to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
“I think that’s more a political question than a legal question, really,” Mayer said. “It’s a question of whether there’s a political appetite for this. There are Democrats on the Hill who are calling for these kinds of hearings and trials.”
As Mayer wrote in her new book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, officials that may find themselves under arrest should they visit certain European countries include President Bush, Vice President Cheney, his aide David Addington, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, for violations of the Geneva Conventions and American law.
“What the book makes clear, really, is that this wasn’t the action of some kind of ‘bad, rotten apples on the bottom of the barrel,’ as people were saying [about] Abu Ghraib. This is a program that was put into place by the top of our government to use the [toughest terms possible] to get information.”
“As part of that process,” the book reads, “for the first time in history, the United States sanctioned government officials to physically and psychologically torment U.S.-held captives, making torture the official law of the land in all but name.”
“[The] interrogation methods used to question detainees have been lawful, safe, and effective,” CIA spokesman George Little countered in a Friday statement responding to claims made in the book. “The program has yielded valuable information that has helped the United States and other countries save lives and disrupt terrorist operations.”
Whether or not the much-discussed practice of waterboarding is torture, for example, is a “semantic game,” but one that seems cut-and-dried from Mayer’s perspective. She cites former Deputy Secretary of State and Vietnam combat veteran Richard Armitage, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge among Bush administration officials who have equated the practice to torture.
While Mayer is “sympathetic” to the national frenzy that followed the shock of the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, we’ve had ample time to reassess our methods and procedures.
“The question is: Seven years later, do we need to keep doing the same thing? And, can we, take, maybe, a rational look and see–is this what we want our country to become, or are we better than this?”
The interview is available to view below. It was broadcast on CNN’s The Situation Room on July 15, 2008.
Omar Khadr, the only western prisoner still held in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, broke down and wept when questioned by Canadian interrogators, video footage released on Tuesday shows.
MEMO TO THE PRESIDENT / DICK CHENEY To: George W Bush From: Richard Cheney
The Ducks are in order
Everything is proceeding according to plan. With General Patraeus now in place we can do our bidding in the Middle East.
Iran’s recent missile show and tell was a bluff ~ we have them where we want them. Elizabeth tells me everything is in place within Iran and they await our action. ( It doesn’t get much better than this ~ chuckle )
We’ll have Israel take the lead in a preemptive bombing action and we will retaliate strongly if Iran retaliates against Israel and /or ourselves.
I’ve got it all worked out in the War Room ~ ( I love playing with those model ships and missiles ~ it reminds me of when I was a kid ~ like when you used to blow up frogs ~ but I digress )
Your new “Terrorist tribunal” Bill working itself through Congress this week, redefining the treatment of detainees, was a sure win until CNN’s Cafferty got a hold of it and read the fine print ~ where yourself and all of us are pardoned for potential war crimes starting from 9/11. Here’s the video, in case you missed it ~ two minute video
“President Bush PARDONS HIMSELF From POTENTIAL WARCRIMES”
Cafferty reported that deep within the “Terrorist Tribunal” Act is a provision retroactively pardoning the President, Vice President, and their subordinates for violations of the War Crimes Act committed since September 11, 2001. ( He’s right of course, and we’ll deny it, of course ~ a misunderstanding and we’ll rewrite it as a signing statement ~ if we have to)
I wouldn’t worry about it, chief ~ the spineless Democrats passed FISA and they don’t want to rock the boat ( or risk the wrath of FOX News ~ chuckle ) before November.
If they don’t pass it and start really putting together the dots on 9/11 and the Iraq build up ~ we always have our 98,840 acre ranch in Paraguay protected by a semi-secret U.S. military base manned by our own American troops.
Doug Feith was on the Hill today to testify about the interrogation techniques in Guantanamo. Joining him before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties was his nemesis, Philippe Sands, who goes back a ways with Feith.
After going back and forth with Feith–in which Feith conceded there were indeed abuses in Defense Dept. detention and interrogation operations– Rep. Bobby Scott (D.-Va) asked why the abusers might think they could torture detainees. “I don’t believe they necessarily did think they did” had authority to torture, Feith said. “Some people do bad things.”
[Late Update]: According to Ackerman, Feith also spent a fair amount of time, detailing the “great care” given to the interpretation of the 2002 memo written by Jim Haynes:
“I imagine one could apply these things in an inhumane fashion,” Feith replied. “‘Removal of clothing’ is different from ‘naked.’ … It could be done in a humane way. . . They could be used in a way that could violate the [Geneva] Convention,” he explained, “they could be used in a way consistent with the Convention.”
for the few folks still here around on the internets 🙂 has it occurred to anyone else besides me and like 2 other people (who can safely remain anonymous 🙂 that we are being corralled here in america? it’s kind of looking that way to me. the only ways out are being effectively closed- and most folks don’t even grasp that situation.
In spite of reassurances from the Washington talking heads and policy wonks that the U.S. is not about to launch an attack on Iran, or countenance an Israeli strike, the Sunday Times has the real scoop:
“President George W. Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official.
“Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread skepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political, and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an ‘amber light’ to an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times.
“‘Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack, and tell us when you’re ready,’ the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use U.S. military bases in Iraq for logistical support.”
It seems, however, that the Israelis have already been using U.S. bases in Iraq to train for the coming attack. There have been denials all around – from the Iraqis, the Americans, and the Israelis – but both the Iraqi media and the Israeli media have reported, as the New York Postput it, that “Israeli warplanes have been flying over Iraq and landing at U.S. bases there in preparation for an attack on Iran.” The Iraqi Web site Nahrainet reported Israeli fighter jets have been in rehearsals, so to speak, for their much-anticipated strike at Iran, flying at night over Jordanian airspace and arriving at U.S. air bases in Nasiriyah in southern Iraq and near Haditha in western Anbar province.
The Israelis, in concert with their amen corner in the U.S., have been engaged in a propaganda blitz targeting Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, the whole point of which is not to pressure the Iranians into backing down, but to force the U.S. to take action in lieu of the Israelis going it alone. Why fight if your big brother is willing to wage the battle? To that end, the Israelis are taking aim at Washington, rather than Tehran, in a full-scale political assault that shows every sign of succeeding where it counts – in the Oval Office. The Times cites a top Pentagon official:
15- year old Omar Khadr in Canada prior to his ordeal
Recently we are learning more and more about the Bush administration’s vulnerability to war crimes charges. Back in mid June McClatchy reported that:
The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.
The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.
“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
You’d think that would have Bush and his evil minions squirming a little, and canceling any plans for travel outside of the US after their terms end. Then just days ago it was revealed:
(From Raw Story:)
In a secret report last year, the Red Cross found evidence of the CIA using torture on prisoners that would make the Bush administration guilty of war crimes, The New York Times reported Friday.
The Red Cross determined the culpability of the Bush administration after interviewing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, according to the article.
Prisoner Abu Zubaydahwho said he had been waterboarded, “slammed against the walls” and confined in boxes “so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position.”
[…]
Mayer cited “sources familiar with the report” to explain the confidential document as a warning “that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted.
The report was submitted to CIA last year and concluded that American interrogation methods are “categorically” torture that violates both domestic and international law, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported Friday.
Great reaction from Jonathan Turley in the video accompanying that Raw Story, by the way. The information about this Red cross report was revealed in Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. (See the book review in Salon)
Omar Khadr wounded and captured in Afghanistan
On the heels of these two damning stories came the fruits of a Canadian Supreme Court decision last May that granted Omar Khadr access to materials held by the Canadian Government concerning his treatment in America’s Gulag, Guantanamo Bay prison.
Included in those materials is a tape of Khadr being interviewed in 2003 by an unidentified agent of CSIS – The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. Watching the video, he certainly doesn’t seem to be very sympathetic.
You can see the tape and a report on CTV.ca, from Raw Story, or on CNN.com. (Sorry, no embeds available yet.) It’s very interesting to compare and contrast the way this story is being handled in Canada, the UK and elsewhere with the way the US Lamestream Media treats it. More on that later in a separate post.
UPDATE: We now have embedded video, courtesy of the fine folk at TPM:
Compared to actual tapes of CIA-conducted interrogations, which we are never likely to see, these are pretty tame, I’m sure. Nevertheless, one finds it hard to believe that Khadr represents “the worst of the worst” as we have been told ALL Gitmo detainees are. What we see here is not a hardened terrorist, but a frightened kid who has been abused and manipulated by every authority figure he’s ever had the misfortune to know.
Make no mistake, there will be considerable fallout from the release of these previously secret materials on both sides of the border. Just read this report from last week (thanks again CTV.ca)
Canada knew Khadr was abused at Gitmo: report
…newly released documents show Canada was aware that he was deprived of sleep for weeks to soften him up for interrogation.
The U.S. Air Force and Department of Foreign Affairs documents say Canadian official Jim Gould visited Omar Khadr in 2004 in Guantanamo Bay and was told that measures were taken to make the then-17-year-old more pliable.
[…]
“In an effort to make him for amenable and willing to talk, (name omitted) has placed Umar (Omar) on the `frequent flyer program,”’ the reports read.
[…]
Last month a Canadian Federal Court judge ruled that the U.S. military’s treatment of Khadr violated international laws against torture, but did not disclose details.
Judge Richard Mosley said the way the military prepared Khadr for interrogation with visiting Canadian government officials broke human rights laws, including the Geneva Conventions.
[…]
Mosley also chastised the interrogator from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, saying Canada “became implicated’ when the agent proceeded to meet Khadr despite learning of the efforts to prime the prisoner.
(Underlines mine) – In Canada, the mere fact that officials knew this was happening and did nothing about it is at the very least an embarrassment, and possibly grounds for criminal charges. It certainly leaves the government open to lawsuits from Khadr (Maher Arar was awarded $10 Million by Canadian courts for the role Canada played in his abduction by FBI thugs and subsequent rendition and torture .) What does that say about the complete inability of the US justice system to even stop this program, let alone charge the criminals in charge of it?
It may be a little late in the game for a massive new White House scandal — Bush leaves office in 188 days — but selling access to leading administration officials in exchange for foreign contributions to Bush’s library may prove to be a very awkward controversy for the president.
We covered this on Sunday, but to briefly review, a British paper caught Stephen Payne, a Bush pioneer and a political appointee to the Homeland Security Advisory Council, on tape, “offering access to key members of the Bush administration inner circle in exchange for ’six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush’s presidency.’”
A House committee Monday launched an investigation of Houston businessman Stephen Payne, probing whether he violated federal law by suggesting he could arrange access to top White House aides in return for a large donation to the Bush presidential library being planned in Dallas.
The development came a day after Payne was enmeshed in a sting operation set up by The Sunday Times of London, which surreptitiously filmed him discussing library contributions during a meeting with a Central Asian politician and a reporter posing as an associate.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, informed Payne late Monday that his panel would look into the report.
“If true, this raises serious concerns about the ways in which foreign interests might be secretly influencing large donations to the library,” Waxman wrote in the letter to Payne.
Payne told CNN yesterday that he understands that his on-tape comments could be “perceived” as “bribery,” but insisted that his efforts were legal, and accused the UK’s Sunday Times of “gotcha” journalism.
The reporters were on the right track here. If Payne is offering to sell access, what kind of access has he received at the White House? Perino’s response was rather amusing: “[O]bviously we’ve been down this road before with visitor logs and there’s lawsuits and things.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has initiated his own investigation. “If true, this raises serious concerns about the ways in which foreign interests might be secretly influencing large donations to the library,” Waxman wrote in a letter to Payne.
Federal law prohibits public officials from directly or indirectly demanding, seeking, receiving, accepting, or agreeing to receive or accept anything of value in return for being influenced in the performance of an official act. If Mr. Payne was authorized by any member of the Bush administration to trade meetings with top level officials in return for financial contributions to the Bush library, those officials may have violated the bribery statute. Similarly, by offering to serve as a conduit to deliver contributions to the Bush library in exchange for meetings with administration officials, Mr. Payne may have violated federal law.
While Payne has admitted that his actions could be “perceived to be bribery,” he insists they are legal. Both Payne and the Bush administration deny that he had “top-level access” to the White House. Noting the six-figure sums Payne solicited, CREW executive director, Melanie Sloan said, “He wouldn’t get paid that way if he couldn’t deliver.”
The public record demonstrates clearly that Payne did, in fact, have “top-level access,” as he has been photographed on several occasions working and relaxing with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and foreign leaders, and has served Bush in a numberofcapacities on campaigns and in the executivebranch. As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, any “perceptions” of impropriety on the part of Payne and Bush administration officials could be up by giving the public access to the White House visitor logs.
once in awhile, i get an email from one of my buddies that has been forwarded to them from who knows where. i inevitably delete them because they usually tend to be religious pap or right wing propaganda- neither of which appeals to me. they are sent to me in the spirit of love and sisterhood generally, so i don’t respond harshly- but i sometimes do send them a note back. it isn’t meant to offend- but i feel it’s important sometimes to refute the outright lies and/or overt propaganda and nationalism usually at the heart of the original email. anyhoo, that’s my intro- and i did alert my sweet friend that i was going to make a post out of the email- and that this person could remain anonymous 🙂 without further ado:
catching wild pigs
There was a chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Prof. noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist government. In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, “do you know how to catch wild pigs?” The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line.
The young man said this was no joke. “You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.”
The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America.
The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of ‘programs’ such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc while we continually lose our freedoms – just a little at a time. One should always remember: There is no such thing as a free lunch! Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. Also, if you see that all of this wonderful government ‘help’ is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America, you might want to tell this to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to our way of life then you will probably delete this, but God help you when the gate slams shut!! In this ‘very important’ election year, listen closely to what the candidates are promising you – just maybe you will be able to tell who is about to slam the gate on America. Think about this very carefully because:
‘A government that is big enough to give you everything you want, is also big enough to take away everything you have.’ – Thomas Jefferson
yep. there are people here in america who actually see things this way. they actually cannot see that this country is in real danger- because our government has already been dismantled and is horribly broken. a country this size needs a government to regulate things. hell, the original 13 colonies saw the need- and now we are up to 52 states and a few territories. gutting the government has seen our basic necessities of life unregulated- food, water, energy, economy- with disastrous results. i don’t need to rehash the stories here- even the msm has carried them. the ‘free rides’ that the right likes to harp about? welfare, medicaid, social security, head start, etc…. well, don’t the republicans bitch when the services aren’t there for their need?
it does no good to try to talk to people who actually see the country and the world in this way. they are in denial and prefer their reality to everyone else’s. luckily, my friend has a good heart- and does not see the world in this way. sending me this email was food for my blog 🙂
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan exposes the culture of deception that sold an unnecessary war to the public
Scott McClellan is having a “Matrix” moment — the moment when you wake up, with a jolt, from the reassuring fictions of the media dreamworld to the face-slapping reality of unspun fact. Remember that scene in “The Matrix” where Laurence Fishburne parts the veil of illusion — the computer-generated simulation humanity experiences as everyday reality — to reveal the movie’s post-apocalyptic world for the irradiated slag heap it really is? Like that. “Welcome to the Desert of the Real,” he tells Keanu Reeves, a riff on the postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s pronouncement, in his book Simulations, that we live in a “desert of the real” — an ever-more-virtual reality where firsthand experience and empirical truth are being displaced by media fictions. He offers an example tailor-made for the Bush presidency: “Propaganda and advertising fuse in the same marketing and merchandising of objects and ideologies.”
This, in a word, is life inside the Bush administration’s Ministry of Truth, as described by McClellan in What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception. In his frag ‘em-and-run memoir, the former White House press secretary — whose Secret Service code name, I kid you not, was “Matrix” — recounts how he and the rest of Team Dubya got caught up in the “permanent campaign,” a nonstop propaganda war whose tactical weapons were “the manipulation of shades of truth, partial truths, twisting of the truth, and spin,” and whose goal was to stage-manage the media narrative and thus public opinion.
Now that McClellan has broken free from what he calls the “Washington bubble,” he can see the “massive marketing campaign” (his words, my italics) to sell the war in Iraq for the steaming heap of dookie it was: a PR operation characterized by a, er, “lack of candor and honesty,” as the author so masterfully understates it, having just told us that the administration dropped the trap on chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey for telling the Wall Street Journal that Bush’s war would likely cost between $100 billion and $200 billion — a fatal misspeak at a moment when “talking about the projected cost of a potential war wasn’t part of the script.” Neither was talking about “possible unpleasant consequences” (the choice of adjective is sheer virtuosity, like a grace note in a Paganini caprice); “casualties, economic effects, geopolitical risks, diplomatic repercussions,” and other buzz-killers might jeopardize what advertisers call the “supportive atmosphere” that puts consumers in that impulse-buying mood — in this instance, buying the dubious case for war from a president who famously prefers faith to facts, a president who listens to his gut. Unfortunately, the trustworthy gurglings of the Bush gut were indistinguishable, in this case, from the offstage urgings of the neocons Colin Powell derided as “fucking crazies.”
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