An American Being Tortured...By Americans

This makes me sick. I don't understand why Americans aren't more upset about this.

To follow-up on yesterday's observations about the prolonged forced nudity to which Bradley Manning has been subjected the last two days: brig officials now confirm to The New York Times that Manning will be forced to be nude every night from now on for the indefinite future -- not only when he sleeps, but also when he stands outside his cell for morning inspection along with the other brig detainees. They claim that it is being done "as a 'precautionary measure' to prevent him from injuring himself."

Has anyone before successfully committed suicide using a pair of briefs -- especially when under constant video and in-person monitoring? There's no underwear that can be issued that is useless for killing oneself? And if this is truly such a threat, why isn't he on "suicide watch" (the NYT article confirms he's not)? And why is this restriction confined to the night; can't he also off himself using his briefs during the day?

This is America. Fucking America! We are torturing a soldier, an American, who has been convicted of no crimes. Whatever you think of what he did, how can you think this is the proper course of action? We prosecuted Germans who tortured people in World War II. We convicted Japanese of the same thing. Charles Taylor Jr. was convicted in a federal court for torture committed in Liberia. This, of course, is just the start of it. We have charged many people in criminal courts for torturing people.

So, why do we seem to be okay with letting Bradley Manning be tortured by the military?

People should be marching in the streets for this sort of thing. Unfortunately, in this day and age people don't seem to get fired up about a problem until it affects them directly. Bush and Cheney opened up a Pandora's Box when they started permitting torture and we are seeing now the fruits of their labor. I will be sending strongly worded emails to both of my Senators. I wish there was more I could do, but I feel rather helpless. I hope other people speak up, too.

The Current Republican Party

Courtesy of the Boston Globe

NPR and the T-Word

Glenn Greenwald, a new addition to my blogroll, has been one of the best voices online in regards to the torture issue. Here he is, slamming NPR hard for its decision to not call "torture" torture.

Here’s the nub of the matter – the crux of journalistic decay in America. Who cares if NPR is "seen" as siding with the White House or its critics? How it is perceived -- and who it angers -- should have nothing to do with how it reports. Its reporting should be guided by the truth, by verifiable facts, and by the objective meaning of words [notably, NPR's excuse -- "the Right will get angry at us if we call it 'torture'" -- is identical to The Washington Post's excuse for why they stopped calling Dan Froomkin a reporter (it angers the Right); it's amazing how much The Liberal Media makes editorial decisions based on a desire to please the Right].

Also, note that Shepard explicitly admits that, with its language choice, NPR has opted to be "seen siding with the White House and the language that some U.S. officials, particularly in the Bush administration, prefer." That, too, is an odd choice for a supposedly Liberal Media outlet. And note her snide and revealing assumption -- conventional wisdom among the establishment media -- that the only people who want these tactics to be called "torture" are those "who are particularly and visibly still angry at the previous administration" (or, as David Ignatius put it, "liberal score-settlers"). It doesn’t seem to occur to her that something other than base vindictiveness – such as a desire to maintain the universal taboo against torture, or allegiance to accuracy in language – might motivate those who want NPR to call torture "torture," rather than prettify it with banality-of-evil euphemisms invented by the very people who perpetrated it.

This is one of the things that has really baffled me over the past few years. Why are media outlets so afraid of what the message machine on the Right says? I think one of the reasons people so dislike the mainstream news media is that they always seem to be pandering. They don't want to lose access to politicians, so they don't want to ask tough questions. They don't want to make people on the Right mad, so they change what they write.

It's the media's job to investigate and report facts. That might make people mad. That's all right, though, 'cause it means the media is doing its job. The inability to call a spade a spade is positively Orwellian.

Torture Suspect Dead

The man who "confessed" to a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein while being tortured is now dead. Impeccable timing and how convenient.

Shep Smith on Torture

I've been wanting to post on the recent torture debate because I am passionate about the subject. Until then, though, enjoy this fine piece of television (from Fox no less).



This is America indeed.

Colin Powell: Coward

I was really disappointed watching Colin Powell on Rachel Maddow.

I understand that Powell is trying to protect his image here, but it's disappointing nonetheless. I really want to respect Powell. I think he has more integrity than anyone else from Bush's cabinet. But his refusal to come clean on torture makes it difficult for me to maintain a high opinion of him. What the Bush administration orchestrated is one of the greatest moral blights on America in our history. For Colin Powell to not stand up and accept some responsibility, to not come clean, is cowardice pure and simple. And if he doesn't want to fess up, then he shouldn't be doing interviews at all. He should just stay home and shut up and think about what went on and why he didn't do more to stop it.

Torture Pardons

A bill has been introduced in the House to prevent the expected preemptive pardons by Bush for crimes his administration has committed. There has been talk that the Obama team is worried about pushing this issue themselves feeling that they would burn political capital and fuel partisan bickering. I understand that, but find it incredibly sad and pathetic, too. What kind of message does it send to people that we won't investigate wrong doings, especially things as grotesque as torture, if it might make some people mad?

If you care about this issue, go here and sign this petition supporting this resolution and send an email or letter to your Congressional representatives asking them to support it, as well. If we the people don't take a stand on this, we have no right to complain in the future when elected officials break the law.

Bush Administration Has Never Tortured

Yes, that's the new line from the White House. Dana Perino said, "This president has said that we did interrogate terrorists, and we did so to protect the country from possible imminent terrorist attack. We did not torture."

When did the White House change its name to the Ministry of Truth? Oh, I forgot, waterboarding isn't torture anymore. I'll have to make a note of that.

Honesty About Torture

In the comments of a recent post, I said:

Andrew Sullivan has been pushing on his blog for someone to ask Bush if what happened to McCain was torture. I would love to see the President try to dance around with that one.

to which commenter Kyle replied:

his reply would be painfully easy and would yield far to many head-nods.
"9-11 changed everything"
i would actually fear someone posing that question to the president as im sure it would only solidify the need for me to swear off (after swearing at) politics and take up stamp collecting.

I would welcome that answer however repugnant I may find it. If the Bush Administration and its supporters truly believe that 9/11 changed everything, then they should be up front about it. Tell the American people, "We believe that in order to protect you and keep you safe, we must resort to such things as torture." At least then we could have an honest debate about that instead of dancing around the issue. Of course I also understand that Bush and his cronies believe that 9/11 has also given the Executive Branch carte blanche to do whatever it feels like without having to tell anyone and that they have no interest in debating anything. The point is, though, that most of the supporters of Bush policies have not been intellectually honest enough to truly state where they stand. Instead we hear about things like enhanced interrogation techniques.

I'm tired of cowards who try to take a stand on an issue while trying not to look like that's where they really stand. Call a spade a spade. If you support torture, then, damn it, come out and say it.

California Sends a Message

The California State Legislature passed a resolution allowing health professionals to be prosecuted if they participate in interrogations that violate "international standards."

Senate Joint Resolution 19 instructs the state’s licensing boards to inform California doctors, psychologists and other health professionals of their obligations under national and international law relating to torture. The boards will warn the licensees that they may one day be subject to prosecution if they participate in interrogations that do not conform to international standards of treatment of prisoners.

“The resolution calls attention to the intolerable dilemma that torture presents when those who are supposed to be the healers in our society are involved in the abuse of prisoners,” said Eisha Mason, associate regional director for the American Friends Service Committee, one of the organizations that sponsored the resolution.

State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) introduced the resolution in response to evidence that – despite the medical oath to “first, do no harm” – some physicians, psychologists and other health personnel have been complicit in abusive interrogations of detainees by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency.

This part was rather alarming.

A survey of medical students conducted by the Harvard Medical School, published in the October, 2007 issue of the International Journal of Health Services, found that one-third of the respondents did not know that under the Geneva Conventions, they should refrain from participating in coercive interrogations.

Thank you, California. Now, who else is going to get on the bandwagon? It's going to take more than one state to stop these practices. Don't just sit there. Write your representatives. Talk to your neighbors, co-workers, family, and friends. If we want this to stop, we need to stand up and make our voices heard.

Senator Baucus, Tear Down That Base

I am meeting with Senator Baucus tomorrow as part of Amnesty International effort to close the base at Guantanamo Bay. I'm very excited about this and nervous, too. I've never done anything like this before so it should prove to be very interesting. And, with any luck, some good will come out of it and Gitmo will be shut down.

John Ashcroft Down With Torture

John Ashcroft told a House panel today yesterday that waterboarding serves a "valuable purpose" and does not constitute torture. This is, of course, in contrast to the opinion of most other people (aka the sane ones). I still find myself baffled that we are having this debate here in America. Where did our moral compass go? When did we start thinking it was okay to be just as sinister as the bad guys? How do people sleep at night knowing that they authorized/condoned/participated in torture?

I suppose it comes back to 9/11 as it so often does these days. Yes, the events of that day were horrific beyond imagining. That does not give us the green light to ditch our morals, though. Indeed, it is in times such as those that we need to staunchly reaffirm what we stand for, what we believe. Unfortunately we have let fear overrule our reason which has led to our leaders saying that it is okay to torture, but it's not really torture 'cause we're the good guys and we're doing it to protect America.

Well, I don't want to live in that America. I would rather see it fall than become a nation so corrupted morally. Thankfully, we can still undo this. We can elect politicians who do not support torture and will prosecute those who practice it. I'm not sure where they are, but they have to be out there, right? Right?

The Dark Side

A new book out, The Dark Side, shines a bright light on how torture became instituted under the Bush Administration. It makes it clear the Cheney was the major architect of the plan. Andrew Sullivan and Matt Yglesias both comment. The worst part is the fact that it seems no one is going to pay a price for having committed these heinous crimes.

Genghis Khan vs. George W. Bush

Matt Yglesias has the blistering takedown.

On the advice of some readers I picked up Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World where I learned that Genghis Khan banned torture in his empire.

So, yes, under George W. Bush the United States of America is regressing to an understanding of humane treatment of people that doesn't reflect the enlightened views of Genghis Khan. That's your feel-good thought of the day.

Now, yes, you can say that Genghis had pragmatic reasons for this and not moral reasons. You can also say that Genghis perpetrated many atrocities in his time. Still, it's pretty sad when the President of the United States of America heartily embraces a practice banned by Genghis Khan.

Bush is a War Criminal

While it has been known for awhile that torture has been practiced by our soldiers and intelligence officers and that it has been authorized and condoned all the way up the chain of command, we continue to gather evidence of how deep it was. This was not the practice of a few rogue elements. Torture was signed off on by all of the major player's in this administration.

Pete concedes that the administration originally seized far, far more detainees than it could prove guilty (or ever tried to prove guilty) and has released thousands falsely imprisoned. Of the thousands seized, Pete concedes many were abused and tortured, with over a hundred deaths occurring during interrogation, two score of whom the administration has itself conceded were murder-by-interrogation. All this occurred after the president decided his actions as commander-in-chief could not be constrained by the law, after he had waived the baseline Geneva Convention protections for prisoners in wartime - in violation of the policy of every previous president of the United States from Washington on - and after critical memos were signed allowing American interrogators to do anything to prisoners short of death or loss of a major organ. Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff explains what this means in terms any morally responsible person would understand:

Andrew continues.

And all this was done not in the chaos of a battlefield or even by rogue units or POW camps. It was not done in a war with anything like as many soldiers and battles as World War II. It was done in a closely managed war by a professional military and intelligence service in every theater of combat as a concerted policy to get more intelligence about Jihadist terror and the Iraq insurgency. It was authorized directly in the chain of command by the president, who knowingly broke the law and hired lawyers to tell him he hadn't. No clever argumentation that "only" 270 prisoners remain at Gitmo can gainsay that. And it is not, by the way, evidence against the fact that this administration seized countless innocents and tortured them to say that they eventually released most of them. It is no consolation to the torture victims at Abu Ghraib that they were eventually set free and their innocence confirmed. Those are the standards of benign dictatorships, not democracies.

Now, you could argue that the administration, after initial understandable over-reach, has tried to set things right. But you would be wrong.

They still refuse to take responsibility for torture and abuse and murder on their watch; and the CSRTs they eventually came up with have been revealed as kangaroo courts in which acquittals are deemed out of bounds and in which countless military lawyers have cried foul. It would be great if we had had a chance to set up clear guidelines in advance, with Congressional support, to give prisoners Geneva protections and non-habeas but robust military trials in what is, as everyone concedes, a very challenging conflict. But this president decided against that, to ignore the advice from the professionals and from the military lawyers, and to do it his own way, with appalling results. Once this record has been compiled and the indecency of Bush's "new kind of war" revealed, it seems to me that no Supreme Court that gives a damn about the Constitution or the ancient traditions of Anglo-American justice or humane warfare would give the benefit of the doubt to a president like this one. Not if the word "court" and "justice" are to be deemed within the same universe.

Sometimes I wonder if I still live in America or if I have somehow been transported to Bizzaro World where this is actually the norm.

Our President authorized torturing people.

Our President locked up innocent people and did not allow them the means to prove their innocence or free them immediately upon knowing their innocence.

Our President's decisions have led to the death of dozens of people - not on the battlefield, but in shadowy torture chambers.

Our President has lied about all of this and seems completely nonplussed by the results of his orders.

Our President, George W. Bush, is a war criminal and should be held accountable along with all of the other knowing architects of this unbelievably morally bankrupt scheme. This is not the kind of America we want.

The Supporters of Torture Aren't Supporters of Truth Either

Glenn Greenwald excoriates John Yoo for his appalling WSJ op-ed supporting Bush's policies of endless detention.

Yoo, for instance, claims that the Supreme Court in Boumediene allows "an alien who was captured fighting against the U.S. to use our courts to challenge his detention." But huge numbers of detainees in U.S. custody weren't "captured fighting against the U.S." at all. Many were taken from their homes. Others were just snatched off the street while engaged in the most mundane activities. Still others were abducted while in airports or at work.
...
The other deeply misleading claim in Yoo's Op-Ed is even more transparent. He characterizes the Court's decision as "grant[ing] captured al Qaeda terrorists the exact same rights as American citizens to a day in civilian court." What minimally self-respecting law professor would be willing to make this claim with a straight face?

The whole point of the habeas corpus right is that without a meaningful hearing, we don't know if the individuals our Government is imprisoning are really "al Qaeda terrorists" or something else. That ought to be too basic even to require pointing out. As this recent superb McClatchy article documents, scores of individuals detained at Guantanamo for years weren't "Al Qaeda terrorists" -- or any other kind of terrorists -- at all.

While disgusting, I cannot say I find this surprising. Once you start compromising basic moral principles, the slope becomes quite slippery and you find yourself compromising more and more in order to justify your actions. Yoo, Feith, Rumsfeld, Cheney and the other architects of the current administration's policies will continue to spout garbage like this until long after they are gone from the national stage. I hope that our next President can work to restore some of moral integrity.

Catholics, Abortion, & Torture

Andrew Sullivan takes to task those Catholics who stand against abortion on all grounds, but turn a blind eye to torture.

There is no way that someone can say that a politician allowing abortion in a free society is on the same moral plane as directly authorizing, monitoring and covering up the torture of prisoners. No way. And any Catholic who voted for Bush in 2004, after the full evidence of his complicity in the torture of prisoners was well known should examine his or her conscience before examining anyone else's.

I semi-agree with this and also believe that supporting the death penalty while being against abortion is another double standard.