Labels: American Empire, Citizen-led politics, endless war, national debt, personal debt, Scott Horton
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posted by profmarcus at
6/07/2011
Department of Defense spokesmen have insisted that Manning is “being treated just like every other detainee in the brig.” They have responded to questions about the enforced nudity regime by stating that “the circumstances required that his clothing be removed as a precaution to ensure that he didn’t harm himself.” But Manning’s treatment bears no comparison with that of other prisoners at Quantico, and the idea that enforced nudity is appropriate as a special suicide regime for a prisoner classified by the camp psychiatrist as non-suicidal is equally suspect.Manning’s special regime raises concerns that abusive techniques adopted by the Bush Administration for use on alleged terrorists are being applied to a U.S. citizen and soldier. Classified Defense Department documents furnish an alternative explanation for the use of enforced nudity: “In addition to degradation of the detainee, stripping can be used to demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor or to debilitate the detainee.” Other documents detail how enforced nudity and the isolation techniques being applied to Manning can be used to prepare the prisoner to be more submissive to interrogators in connection with questioning.
Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson, speaking to the New York City Bar Association last week, acknowledged the concerns raised about Manning’s detention and stated that he had personally traveled to Quantico to conduct an investigation. However, Johnson was remarkably unforthcoming about what he discovered and what conclusions he drew from his visit. Hopefully Johnson is giving careful thought to the gravity of the deviation from accepted U.S. practices that the Manning case presents. Under established rules of international humanitarian law, the detention practices that a state adopts for its own soldiers are acceptable standards for use by a foreign power detaining that state’s soldiers in wartime. So by creating a “special regime” for Bradley Manning, the Department of Defense is also authorizing all the bizarre practices to which he is being subject to be applied to American soldiers, sailors, and airmen taken prisoner in future conflicts. This casual disregard for the rights of American service personnel could have terrible ramifications in the future. The recent dismissal and replacement of the Quantico brig commander may well reflect a critical attitude within the Pentagon towards the special regime for Manning, but more recent developments, including the regime of enforced nudity, offset that.
Labels: Bradley Manning, cognitive dissonance, Defense Department, Harper's, Information Clearing House, international humanitarian law, Quantico, Scott Horton, torture, whistleblowers
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
3/09/2011
Spain has been in a furor for three days over the revelations.
The revelations have "created deep concern about the independence of judges in Spain and the manipulation of the entire criminal justice system by a foreign power."
Labels: accountability, Obama administration, Raw Story, Scott Horton, Spain, torture, war crimes
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
12/02/2010
President Barack Obama decided long ago that he would “turn the page” on prisoner abuse and other illegality connected to the Bush Administration’s war on terror. What he didn’t seem to understand, what he still seems not to appreciate, is that what was on that page would bleed through onto the next page and the page after that. There’s no getting past torture. There is only getting comfortable with it. The U.S. flirtation with torture is not locked in the past or in the black sites or prisons at which it occurred. Now more than ever, it’s feted on network television and held in reserve for the next president who persuades himself that it’s not illegal after all.
Since Barack Obama became president, the debate over torture in America has taken a morally corrupt turn. Defenders of the old regime continue to defend the use of torture as essential to the nation’s defense. Their claims are contradicted by the facts: torture was used to extract false confessions that fueled, among other things, the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses. The fact that America tortured is still a principal recruiting tool for radical Islamists. But Obama has kept silent in the face of all of this, not wishing to engage torture apologists in debate. More significantly, he has apparently encouraged his Justice Department to squelch any meaningful investigation of torture, in violation of the clear requirements of law. A policy that says “don’t look back” means the triumph of torture: while we may not be captives of our past, we are the captives of our perception of the past. When one side offers an airbrushed version of the past and the other is silent, then, in the binary world of Washington, victory goes to the falsifiers.
Labels: accountability, Barack Obama, Dahlia Lithwick, enhanced interrogation techniques, George Bush, Harper's, Scott Horton, Slate, torture
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
11/18/2010
The Bush Six to Be Indicted
Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national-security affairs for Harper's magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.
Spanish prosecutors have decided to press forward with a criminal investigation targeting former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five top associates over their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens held at Guantánamo, several reliable sources close to the investigation have told The Daily Beast. Their decision is expected to be announced on Tuesday before the Spanish central criminal court, the Audencia Nacional, in Madrid. But the decision is likely to raise concerns with the human-rights community on other points: They will seek to have the case referred to a different judge.
Both Washington and Madrid appear determined not to allow the pending criminal investigation to get in the way of improved relations.
The six defendants - in addition to Gonzales, Federal Appeals Court Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, University of California law professor and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Defense Department general counsel and current Chevron lawyer William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff David Addington, and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith - are accused of having given the green light to the torture and mistreatment of prisoners held in U.S. detention in "the war on terror." The case arises in the context of a pending proceeding before the court involving terrorism charges against five Spaniards formerly held at Guantánamo. A group of human-rights lawyers originally filed a criminal complaint asking the court to look at the possibility of charges against the six American lawyers. Baltasar Garzón Real, the investigating judge, accepted the complaint and referred it to Spanish prosecutors for a view as to whether they would accept the case and press it forward. "The evidence provided was more than sufficient to justify a more comprehensive investigation," one of the lawyers associated with the prosecution stated.
But prosecutors will also ask that Judge Garzón, an internationally known figure due to his management of the case against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and other high-profile cases, step aside. The case originally came to Garzón because he presided over efforts to bring terrorism charges against the five Spaniards previously held at Guantánamo. Spanish prosecutors consider it "awkward" for the same judge to have both the case against former U.S. officials based on the possible torture of the five Spaniards at Guantánamo and the case against those very same Spaniards. A source close to the prosecution also noted that there was concern about the reaction to the case in some parts of the U.S. media, where it had been viewed, incorrectly, as a sort of personal frolic of Judge Garzón. Instead, the prosecutors will ask Garzón to transfer the case to Judge Ismail Moreno, who is currently handling an investigation into kidnapping charges surrounding the CIA's use of facilities as a safe harbor in connection with the seizure of Khalid el-Masri, a German greengrocer who was seized and held at various CIA blacksites for about half a year as a result of mistaken identity. The decision on the transfer will be up to Judge Garzón in the first instance, and he is expected to make a quick ruling. If he denies the request, it may be appealed.
Labels: Alberto Gonzales, black sites, CIA, David Addington, Douglas Feith, Guantánamo, Jay Bybee, John Yoo, Scott Horton, Spain, torture, William Haynes
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
4/17/2009
[T]he darkness continues to descend in Washington, the powers of the state continue to grow and the mechanisms of accountability rot away unused. Americans are focused on the selection of a new president. Many of them share the naïve assumption that on January 20, 2009, when a new leader takes the oath of office from the south steps of the Capitol Building, the Founders’ constitutional order will once more be set aright and the extra-constitutional excesses of the Bush years will be but a bad memory. But whoever is installed as the new guardian of presidential power will not likely part with many of the rights that Bush claimed and was allowed to use, unchallenged.
[...]
The curtain continues to fall over American democracy. Americans understandably are sickened by the tragi-comedy that spreads itself across this stage. But their faith in another presidential election and another leader is misplaced. They need to reserve their faith not for the new, but for the old: for the constitutional model that the Founders left. It needs to be forced to work. And all those who undermine it must be held to account. That includes the should-be watchdogs, who slobbering at the prospect of a few drug-drenched sirloins hurled their way, are failing in their duty to protect their true masters: the American people.
We live in the age of the Great Betrayal, in an age in which too few are willing to state the obvious. There is still time to check the progress of tyrannical power, but the hour grows late, and the sounds of alarm no longer seem to register with a somnolent populace.
Labels: 20 January 2009, 2008 candidates, 2008 Election, Bush Administration, constitutional crisis, Harper's, plenary presidential power, Scott Horton, U.S. Constitution
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
3/12/2008
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