But in what I’ve reviewed so far, the new documents reveal one important new detail. Page 44 of this PDF provides a mostly redacted record of the briefing CIA gave Porter Goss and Nancy Pelosi on Abu Zubaydah’s torture on September 4, 2002. We know–because both Goss and Pelosi have described this detail the same way–that CIA did not tell the House Intelligence leadership that it had already tortured Abu Zubaydah. CIA told Goss and Pelosi about waterboarding, but spoke of it as a technique that might hypothetically be used in the future, not something that had been used 83 times on one detainee the prior month.
...
Assuming CIA’s own documentation is accurate (always a big assumption, given the CIA), then Jose Rodriguez–listed as D/CTC–is the one who gave Goss and Pelosi that deceptive briefing.
Jose Rodriguez went on to participate in destroying evidence of torture that should have been briefed to Congress. And these documents prove (again, presuming CIA’s documents are accurate) that Jose Rodriguez was deceiving Congress about torture right from the start.
Imagine my surprise.
Those who claimed loudly that Congress was briefed may now kindly go away and STFU.
54% of Americans believe that torture is either often (19%) or sometimes (35%) justified to gain information from terrorism suspects, compared to 41% who say it's rarely (16%) or never (25%) justified.
Do we need to, as Cheney said, "work on the dark side"?
A person of power, with a very sharp spear point slightly piercing the skin between his shoulder blades, is ordered to go there.
By now sweat sheeted off B’s head, running down his face and dripping off his nose. He closed his eyes, trying to recall what his uncle had once said after drinking too much. It was actually his mother’s uncle and the old sorcerer terrified little B. with his bloodshot eyes and wild expression. The old man laced his talk with warnings and dark threats. Such things were legend and not to be tried, dangerous to the one who worked them. If you went too far....
The emotional power of scenes like this engages me but I recoil at them. Intellectually I am trying to make them awful enough to tie the reader up in knots, but what am I trying to accomplish? Certainly part of it is forcing us to confront our own dark side, the evil of which we are capable and which we actually perpetrate. If we are not horrified then we have lost something: our compassion, our decency, our humanity.
My descriptions of evil are meant to be cautionary, to remind us what me must avoid, shun, oppose, refuse to do.
The dark and terrible portions of my stories are necessary because the world is not all sunshine. Not the world we know nor the world I imagine.
It is rather like facing what we as a nation have done, what has been done in our names. Glenn Greenwald wants all Americans to read the IG Torture Report that was released today. You may read excerpts at his post (click the link on his name).
My fictional world is shot through with grace. There are horrors and wickedness and suffering but one also finds compassion, honor, reconciliation, healing, and beauty. Not unlike the world we know.
At Doxy's wedding Bishop Curry told us all we are called to be witnesses. Witnesses to love in a world that needs that witness. I believe we are also witnesses of evil and must bear witness to that also. But the final word, always and ever, is Love, and is Yes.
Even after this breather, I don't think I'm ready to finish the scene I am writing. Not tonight.
Mcjoan, one of my all-time heroines, informs us of the following:
Now viewed as obstructionists at best and bald-faced liars on healthcare reform at worst, the Republican leadership seems to have decided it cannot take the additional hit of Bush regime horrors coming out at this moment, and have taken the highly unusual step of writing to Attorney General Eric Holder warning him to call off his dogs. The nine Republican senators, Kit Bond (Mo.), Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), Orrin Hatch (Utah) and Richard Burr (N.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.) Jeff Sessions (Ala.), John Cornyn (Texas) and Chuck Grassley (Iowa), are worried that however the scope of the prosecution is limited, all roads lead to Cheney.
Well now, isn't that just too damn bad?
If pursuit of lawbreakers in the interest of justice leads to Dick the Dick, so the fuck what? If he's innocent he gets a fair trial to prove it. If he's guilty, why in the name of all that is holy should he get off?
So, Kit, Saxby, Tom, Orrin, Richard, Jon, Jeff, John, and Chuck - justice obstructionists every one of you - why don't you just STFU?
If any gentle readers would like to sign a petition for Attorney General Holder to appoint a special prosecutor, you may do so here. I signed.
Mcjoan offers this headline today: New Report: Generals Knew About Guantanamo Torture, Lied to Congress
Imagine my surprise. Mcjoan then shares the following from the press release by the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research:
Newark, NJ - Today Seton Hall Law delivered a report establishing that military officials at the highest levels were aware of the abusive interrogation techniques employed at the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay (GTMO), and misled Congress during testimony. In addition, FBI personnel reported that the information obtained from inhumane interrogations was unreliable.
Professor Mark Denbeaux, Director of the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research, commented on the findings: "Who knew about the torture at GTMO? Turns out they all did. It's not news that the interrogators were torturing and abusing detainees. We've got FBI reports attesting to this. But now we've discovered that the highest levels knew about the torture and abuse, and covered it up.
"Abu Ghraib was the flashpoint and provoked the FBI to formally hand its reports to the DOD, which in turn forced the DOD to respond with what became known as the Schmidt Report. Schmidt's investigation was essentially a whitewash, but, ironically, the abuse was so pervasive that his team turned up still more incidents. To conceal the problems documented by both the FBI and the military, the DOD published an incomplete, sanitized report, culminating in Schmidt testifying before Congress that there was no torture or abuse at GTMO.
"Five generals were either complicit in the abusive interrogation techniques or were central figures in their cover-up. They concealed these practices from Congress, to which they are ultimately accountable. They undermined our democracy, and undercut America's claim to the moral high ground in the fight against terror."
We have an obligation to pursue this, expose this, and hold people accountable. Law students are doing the work Congress and the Department of Justice should be doing.
Oh, and just a reminded: Lying to Congress is a felony. --the BB
Marcy Wheeler directed my attention today to a lengthy article by Mark Danner in The New York Review of Books. He discusses the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA Custody.
I highly recommend it but you will not be comfortable reading it.
Abu Zubaydah was evidently a guinea pig for methods:
After the beating I was then placed in the small box. They placed a cloth or cover over the box to cut out all light and restrict my air supply. As it was not high enough even to sit upright, I had to crouch down. It was very difficult because of my wounds. The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in the leg and stomach became very painful. I think this occurred about 3 months after my last operation. It was always cold in the room, but when the cover was placed over the box it made it hot and sweaty inside. The wound on my leg began to open and started to bleed. I don't know how long I remained in the small box, I think I may have slept or maybe fainted.
I was then dragged from the small box, unable to walk properly and put on what looked like a hospital bed, and strapped down very tightly with belts. A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the straps on my wounds was very painful. I vomited. The bed was then again lowered to horizontal position and the same torture carried out again with the black cloth over my face and water poured on from a bottle. On this occasion my head was in a more backward, downwards position and the water was poured on for a longer time. I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless. I thought I was going to die. I lost control of my urine. Since then I still lose control of my urine when under stress.
I was then placed again in the tall box. While I was inside the box loud music was played again and somebody kept banging repeatedly on the box from the outside. I tried to sit down on the floor, but because of the small space the bucket with urine tipped over and spilt over me.... I was then taken out and again a towel was wrapped around my neck and I was smashed into the wall with the plywood covering and repeatedly slapped in the face by the same two interrogators as before.
I was then made to sit on the floor with a black hood over my head until the next session of torture began. The room was always kept very cold.
This went on for approximately one week. During this time the whole procedure was repeated five times. On each occasion, apart from one, I was suffocated once or twice and was put in the vertical position on the bed in between. On one occasion the suffocation was repeated three times. I vomited each time I was put in the vertical position between the suffocation.
During that week I was not given any solid food. I was only given Ensure to drink. My head and beard were shaved everyday.
I collapsed and lost consciousness on several occasions. Eventually the torture was stopped by the intervention of the doctor.
I was told during this period that I was one of the first to receive these interrogation techniques, so no rules applied. It felt like they were experimenting and trying out techniques to be used later on other people.
Let no one think this was an innocent.
Abu Zubaydah, Walid Bin Attash, Khaled Shaik Mohammed—these men almost certainly have blood on their hands, a great deal of blood. There is strong reason to believe that they had critical parts in planning and organizing terrorist operations that caused the deaths of thousands of people. So in all likelihood did the other twelve "high-value detainees" whose treatment while secretly confined by agents of the US government is described with such gruesome particularity in the report of the International Committee of the Red Cross. From everything we know, many or all of these men deserve to be tried and punished—to be "brought to justice," as President Bush, in his speech to the American people on September 6, 2006, vowed they would be.
However, in a nation of laws those who commit grave crimes are tried and punished according to law and in accordance with both international treaties (that are part of the supreme law of our land) and civilized morality.
We have flouted laws, morality, and practical common sense. Information obtained by torture is notoriously unreliable. During and after WWII the interrogators were able to get much better information without resorting to torture. The question poses itself: How did we fall from the integrity of that era to the uncivilized brutality and lawlessness of recent years?
We must continue to push for the truth, for the rule of law, and for the restoration of our national integrity. --the BB
Glenn Greenwald really lays it out in Salon. We are bound by treaty to pursue prosecution for torture.
The U.S. really has bound itself to a treaty called the Convention Against Torture, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994. When there are credible allegations that government officials have participated or been complicit in torture, that Convention really does compel all signatories -- in language as clear as can be devised -- to "submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution" (Art. 7(1)). And the treaty explicitly bars the standard excuses that America's political class is currently offering for refusing to investigate and prosecute: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture" and "an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture" (Art. 2 (2-3)). By definition, then, the far less compelling excuses cited by Conason (a criminal probe would undermine bipartisanship and distract us from more important matters) are plainly barred as grounds for evading the Convention's obligations.
There is reasonable dispute about the scope of prosecutorial discretion permitted by the Convention, and there is also some lack of clarity about how many of these provisions were incorporated into domestic law when the Senate ratified the Convention with reservations. But what is absolutely clear beyond any doubt is that -- just as is true for any advance promises by the Obama DOJ not to investigate or prosecute -- issuing preemptive pardons to government torturers would be an unambiguous and blatant violation of our obligations under the Convention. There can't be any doubt about that. It just goes without saying that if the U.S. issued pardons or other forms of immunity to accused torturers (as the Military Commissions Act purported to do), that would be a clear violation of our obligation to "submit the [torture] case to [our] competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution." Those two acts -- the granting of immunity and submission for prosecution -- are opposites.
And yet those who advocate that we refrain from criminal investigations rarely even mention our obligations under the Convention. There isn't even a pretense of an effort to reconcile what they're advocating with the treaty obligations to which Ronald Reagan bound the U.S. in 1988. Do we now just explicitly consider ourselves immune from the treaties we signed? Does our political class now officially (rather than through its actions) consider treaties to be mere suggestions that we can violate at will without even pretending to have any justifications for doing so? Most of the time, our binding treaty obligations under the Convention -- as valid and binding as every other treaty -- don't even make it into the discussion about criminal investigations of Bush officials, let alone impose any limits on what we believe we can do.
From Article VI of the United States Constitution:
Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
So let's drop all bullshit about preemptive passes or pardons. We are obligated to pursue this and excuses are simply not acceptable.
Something you would never hear uttered by any Bushie:
"Waterboarding is torture."
Those words were uttered by Eric Holder in his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
We've known it all along. It has always been considered torture. We tried and executed Japanese for doing it.
And we know it has been done in our name, sanctioned at the highest levels (i.e., by George Walker Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney).
Every time Dubya or Condi has said "the United States does not torture" I have wanted to scream to the high heavens, "The fuck we don't, you criminals!"
For contrast with nominee Holder, consider the confirmation hearings of Mealymouth Michael Mukasey, the current pathetic excuse for an Attorney General who could not bring himself to acknowledge that waterboarding is torture. As summarized at the NYT on All Saints' Day 2007:
Mr. Mukasey has adamantly refused to declare waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning, illegal. In doing so, he has been steering clear of a potential legal quagmire for the Bush administration: criminal prosecution or lawsuits against Central Intelligence Agency officers who used the harsh interrogation practice and those who authorized it, legal experts say.
I hasten to underscore "those who authorized it."
Back on 21 December 2004 The New Standard had an article noting this:
Dec. 21, 2004 – Repeated references in an internal FBI email suggest that the president issued a special order to permit some of the more objectionable torture techniques used at Abu Ghraib and other US-run prison facilities around Iraq. The email was among a new batch of FBI documents revealed by civil rights advocates on Monday. Other documents describe the initiation of investigations into alleged incidents of torture and rape at detention facilities in Iraq.
The email, which was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, represents the first hard evidence directly connecting the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and the White House. The author of the email, whose name is blanked out but whose title is described as "On Scene Commander -- Baghdad," contains ten explicit mentions of an "Executive Order" that the author said mandated US military personnel to engage in extraordinary interrogation tactics.
...
The specific methods mentioned in the email as having been approved by the unnamed Executive Order and witnessed by FBI agents include sleep deprivation, placing hoods over prisoners? heads, the use of loud music for sensory overload, stripping detainees naked, forcing captives to stand in so-called "stress positions," and the employment of work dogs. One of the more horrifying tools of intimidation, Army canines were used at the prison to terrorize inmates, as depicted in photos taken inside Abu Ghraib.
All that is bad enough, but waterboarding? Let's go to the horse's ... mouth:
"I asked, 'What tools are available for us to gain information from him?'"
So the Decider Guy all but says, "I authorized torture." It's really not very subtle and it sounds as though he is daring the world to do anything about it. After all, he got "legal opinions."
[There is an especially nasty ring of the Inferno reserved for Yoo and Bybee and their ilk.]
As for the results from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, David Rose reported in Vanity Fair (16 December 2008 web edition):
As for K.S.M. himself, who (as Jane Mayer writes) was waterboarded, reportedly hung for hours on end from his wrists, beaten, and subjected to other agonies for weeks, Bush said he provided “many details of other plots to kill innocent Americans.” K.S.M. was certainly knowledgeable. It would be surprising if he gave up nothing of value. But according to a former senior C.I.A. official, who read all the interrogation reports on K.S.M., “90 percent of it was total fucking bullshit.” A former Pentagon analyst adds: “K.S.M. produced no actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how stupid we were.”
Jonathan S. Landay wrote this for a McClatchy Newspapers article that appeared in The Olympian on 4 January 2009:
WASHINGTON—Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called "water-boarding," which creates a sensation of drowning.
Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney said at one point in an interview.
"Good programs." "Sound decisions."
An angel of light.
By contrast, let's return to the confirmation hearing of Eric Holder:
"No one is above the law," Holder said, "and we will follow the evidence, the facts, the law, and let that take us where we should."
Mcjoan, my ever reliable source on torture updates, comments at Daily Kos:
And while that sounds promising, Holder also said he didn't want to "criminalize policy differences," which would run contrary to the pledge to follow the law, wherever it leads. After all, if waterboarding is torture and the Bush administration admits that they used waterboarding, we clearly aren't talking about mere policy differences. Time will tell.
You knew I was not going to let this topic go, no matter how infrequently I post these days.
Yes, given the opportunity I would gleefully dance on Bush's grave. Not that you doubted it. And I don't think a 2x4 upside the head is uncalled for in the case of those who have enabled this narcissistic sociopath in his reign of destruction. If you voted for him in either election and see me walking down the street with a big piece of wood, avoid me. Some are feeling charitable as he leaves office and I am not among them.
Frankly, I did not think we would get this far without attacking Iran. There are a few days left but it is highly unlikely at this point. I am very relieved to admit I was wrong.
THE official in charge of the military commission process at Guantanamo Bay has become the first senior Bush Administration figure to publicly admit that a detainee was tortured.
Judge Susan Crawford, who was in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees — beginning with Australian David Hicks — to trial, has concluded that the US military tortured a Saudi Arabian who allegedly planned to take part in the September 11, 2001, attacks. --The Age cited in article by SilentPatriot at Crooks and Liars
This came out in an interview Bob Woodward had with Judge Crawford. It is good to see such revelations / confirmations coming out just as Bush leaves office, lest some folks forget the great evils he has perpetrated.
Mcjoan, who has followed the torture issue for a long time and often been a main source of information for me, notes that "a former military prosecutor filed a declaration in federal court yesterday in support of a petition on behalf of one of the Gitmo detainees who was just a teenager when first captured and held."
The whole sorry history of torture by the United States is incredibly tragic. It has tainted all testimony and consequent trials, trashed our international reputation, and pretty much done sod-all for security - Richard Bruce Cheney's allegations to the contrary notwithstanding. It is a grave moral failure.
Senator Whitehouse (D-RI) has indicated that although Obama may not be in a position to prosecute the crimes of the Bush regime, "...I think we in Congress have an independent responsibility, and I fully intend to discharge that responsibility." (Think Progress, cited by markthshark at Daily Kos)
We shall see what eventuates. In the meantime, if you can support Congress to hold Bush accountable, please do so.
One last time, because the thought, however vain, never ceased to delight me:
Reporting from Washington -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods used by the CIA, and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely.
That's the short version in the lede. The headline and subhead read: Cheney was key in clearing CIA interrogation tactics The vice president says that the use of waterboarding was appropriate and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should stay open until 'the end of the war on terror.'
They might have screamed: Cheney: unrepentant torturer
I rather like the theological response of the Rude Pundit:
Yes, indeed, the gastropodic, nearly amorphous globularity that occasionally forces itself into a frightening figure we haltingly refer to as "man," known as "Dick Cheney," has heaved its mass up to the surface of the earth, pustules popping, leaving behind a trail of a cement-melting slime. Ah, Christ, the people of the nation think, is it feeding time again? Will he never be satisfied? Have we not sacrificed enough virgin children for him to engorge? The very existence of Dick Cheney has turned more people into atheists than all the storms and wars in history, for if something that degraded and hideous is allowed to not only live, but thrive, then there can be nothing we might call "God" in the universe.
You have to admit, Dick Cheney does make theodicy difficult.
I don't like the devastation of tsunamis, inflicting, as they do, vast suffering. But they make sense in terms of geophysics behaving as geophysics must - following laws and devoid of moral content.
What laws does Cheney follow? He seems to embody the sort of evil - a will to power combined with indifference to the plight of others - that we usually associate with a whiff of sulfur. Just saying.
We're back to the issue of war crimes, lack of justice, and lack of notice discussed by Glenn Greenwald in the article noted in the previous post.
Every time Saruman Cheney makes an appearance I forget the world's beauty. I suppose that is what happens when one travels through Mordor. --the BB
How anyone could trust any word from the mouth of GWB is beyond me. Anyway....
Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake pointed me to the news that "The Human Rights Annual Report 2007 [text, PDF] released Sunday by the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee [committee website] recommended that the UK not rely on any assurances made by the US that it does not use torture." (source)
This means the UK would be reluctant to extradite prisoners to the United States. In other words, we have joined the torture nations where one would not want to send even a terrorist.
Looseheadprop has been doing a great series on torture and the law at Firedoglake. The 17th post is up today, discussing jus cogens. You will find a discussion of "eight categories of rights that ALL people regardless of nationality, rank or other status are born with." Check it out.
A peremptory norm (also called jus cogens or ius cogens, Latin for "compelling law") is a fundamental principle of international law which is accepted by the international community of states as a norm from which no derogation is ever permitted.
There is no clear agreement regarding precisely which norms are jus cogens — or indeed how a norm reaches the status of jus cogens — but it is generally accepted that jus cogens includes the prohibition of genocide, piracy, slaving in general (to include slavery as well as the slave trade), torture, and wars of aggression and territorial aggrandizement.
The scope of DOJ's IG report on torture says as much as the rest of the conclusion: when DOJ appealed to the National Security Council to resolve the problems created by CIA's and DOD's use of torture, those appeals went nowhere.
As it turns out, yes, the sudden (partial) responsiveness had started two weeks earlier, on March 28. That means DOD first sent its declassification comments to DOJ just three days before Daniel Dell'Orto declassified John Yoo's torture memo.
While there are surely other reasons why the CIA destroyed the torture tape, one thing the destruction of the tapes did was to eliminate one key piece of evidence that led the CIA's own IG to conclude that the CIA's interrogation methods were cruel and inhumane.
Well, over the course of the DOJ's IG investigation into interrogation techniques, the CIA once again prevented investigators from accessing information--this time in the form of an interview of Abu Zubaydah--that would contribute to a conclusion that interrogation treatment was cruel and inhumane. In a footnote, DOJ's IG report reveals that it interviewed High-Value Detainees at Gitmo, but that CIA refused to let DOJ's IG to interview Abu Zubaydah.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House Judiciary Committee voted Tuesday to compel a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney to testify to the committee about the Bush administration's interrogation practices.
David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, refused to testify without a subpoena. No date has been set for his appearance before Congress. ...
John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who wrote a now-repudiated memo allowing the harsh interrogations of military prisoners agreed late Monday to testify to Congress about those practices, averting a subpoena. Yoo is now a law professor at University of California-Berkeley.
Now I know this does mean that things will proceed smoothly, or even proceed at all. Nonetheless, just to read of a subpoena being issued gives me the all-overs, don't you know?
And check out this paragraph:
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and former Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin have also agreed to give testimony at a future hearing. Former CIA Director George Tenet is still in negotiations with the committee, according to House Judiciary Committee spokeswoman Melanie Roussell.
Photo of Knox College protest from Elsinora's diary at Daily Kos
I read a great post yesterday evening by a student who stood up where former AG John Ashcroft was speaking and asked some uncomfortable questions. Ashcroft played some rather transparent and stupid games, weaseled, and went on to the next question. Elsinora has since updated the post with photos of the event showing that the students were not going to listen passively to someone involved in torture. [Check it out by clicking above.]
Today dday follows up on that exchange with a bit of research and some uncomfortable facts (for Ashcroft and the other principals in the White House torture deliberations) to go with the uncomfortable questions posed by students. I love the title of dday's post, a great honor to the students at Knox: "The First Salvo In The Next Nuremberg."
Ashcroft attempted to take refuge in the "reservations and qualifiers" of the US Senate in ratifying the UN Convention Against Torture. Dday demonstrates that a simple reading of those reservations and qualifiers offers no such refuge. Waterboarding clearly falls within any understanding of torture, including those the Unites States has already defined. What may be a "no brainer" for Dick Cheney is torture in the eyes of US law, international law, and the world community.
Dday's conclusion:
Well, if Ashcroft thinks he can bully an international criminal court the way he tried to bully a few college students last night, he's going to come off looking just as foolish. Because Ashcroft had the foresight to say "History will not judge us kindly" during the Principals meetings on torture, some have made the effort to rehabilitate him to a degree. I think we can end that now. He's guilty and he knows it, that's why his arguments were so very shallow. A court of law would convict in a matter of minutes.
There is a movement afoot to call on Congress to defund Blackwater (whose contract was renewed by the State Department in spite of all the problems therewith).
It is not just that too many of Blackwater's employees in Iraq conduct themselves in ways that are counterproductive and deeply immoral. It is not just that there is no accountability for the company or its employees either in Iraq or here. And it is not just that the Iraqis have clearly and unambiguously called for Blackwater to leave.
Blackwater is a threat to the core underpinnings of our democracy. Who is this private army loyal to? Because they aren't ours. They don't wear our flags on their clothing -- they wear the symbol of Blackwater.
In October 2007, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that the work of these contractors in Iraq was `at cross-purposes to our larger mission in Iraq', and that `right now those missions are in conflict ...'.
If ever there was a core government function that should not be contracted out, it is the right to use deadly force in our names.
Private contractors are, from what we currently know, still involved in the secret world in which rendition and torture took place. Without full investigations, that are beyond unlikely at this point, we cannot really know. But there is this:
There's a bill in the House (that was identified in the Responsible Plan) which would phase out the use of military security contractors. H.R. 4102, the Stop Outsourcing Security Act, currently has 27 sponsors. The Senate equivalent, S. 2398, currently has 2 sponsors. I've listed them below. If your representative or senators aren't on these lists, it's probably time you asked them to be.
Current House sponsors: Rep Schakowsky, Jan (Sponsor) Rep Allen, Thomas H. [ME-1] Rep Baldwin, Tammy [WI-2] Rep Blumenauer, Earl [OR-3] Rep Brady, Robert A. [PA-1] Rep Cohen, Steve [TN-9] Rep Ellison, Keith [MN-5] Rep Filner, Bob [CA-51] Rep Frank, Barney [MA-4] Rep Gonzalez, Charles A. [TX-20] Rep Grijalva, Raul M. [AZ-7] Rep Hinchey, Maurice D. [NY-22] Rep Hirono, Mazie K. [HI-2] Rep Holt, Rush D. [NJ-12] Rep Kucinich, Dennis J. [OH-10] Rep Lofgren, Zoe [CA-16] Rep McDermott, Jim [WA-7] Rep McGovern, James P. [MA-3] Rep Miller, George [CA-7] Rep Oberstar, James L. [MN-8] Rep Pastor, Ed [AZ-4] Rep Payne, Donald M. [NJ-10] Rep Rahall, Nick J., II [WV-3] Rep Rangel, Charles B. [NY-15] Rep Stark, Fortney Pete [CA-13] Rep Woolsey, Lynn C. [CA-6] Rep Wu, David [OR-1]
Current Senate sponsors: Bernie Sanders (Sponsor) Hillary Rodham Clinton
Civilians working for private military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan are alleged to have committed serious incidents of abuse including assault, torture and sexual abuse, some of which occurred at Abu Ghraib prison. While reports of alleged incidents of abuse by civilians have been forwarded to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Eastern Virginia, there have been no convictions and only one indictment, though at least 20 cases were forwarded by the Department of Defense and the CIA to the Department of Justice since the beginning of the conflict in Afghanistan.
and
Blackwater and subsidiaries handled many of the rendition planes.
Can a democracy afford hired armies exempt from domestic and international laws? --the BB
The photo in this graphic has shown up at several sites and I could resist sharing it no longer. It brings together two story lines:
One is that we have learned that when torture methodologies and what and would not be allowed at Guantánamo, the woman facilitating the meeting noticed that some of the younger men present got aroused over the mere thought of torture.
The other, of course, is that prominent war criminal and fashionista (I should trademark this phrase) Condi has now been shown to be in the center of the torture deliberation in the White House and told the CIA: "It's This is your baby, go do it."
The header above is the title of a post up today by tristero at Hullabaloo.
You folks already know this. Tristero writes, in part, for youngsters who have no memory of when Americans instinctively knew that this was something that could never be part of American policy. In other words, before GWB.
One gem of a paragraph:
Don’t get me wrong. Torture is not immoral because it doesn’t work very well. Torture does not become moral if it works. No. Torture is immoral AND it doesn’t work.
Anyway, just providing a link to the article. --the BB
The views expressed on this blog are solely those of the blogger and do not represent the positions of any group or organization with which he may be affiliated. As one who spent decades stuffing down his opinions and emotions, I am inclined to cut loose here, which I believe is healthy, honest, and part of the process of sanctification in the long run. Politics and spirituality mingle freely here, along with theatre reviews, photography, and passionate talk about food, literature, and the human journey. If anything written here offends you, please find other blogs to read. I am here to share, not to do battle.
