Obama's duplicitous foreign policy

yeah, no shit...

jeremy scahill via the nation...

On the campaign trail, Obama promised an end to torture, extraordinary rendition and secret prisons. But since taking office he has in fact doubled-down on some of the more insidious policies he inherited from the Bush administration. As Nation correspondent Jeremy Scahill explains, Obama has surrounded himself with war hawks, relied on targeted killing and acted unilaterally to defend US interests. Instead of drawing down the two major ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has shifted combat to special operations units, prolonging US engagement and fighting a "dirty" war.

and to think how much i railed against george bush...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Guantánamo detainees drugged and then interrogated

it's not like this is so damn surprising given what we already know about what's gone on in gitmo but what we only suspect vs. what is revealed as fact is a big difference...


jeffrey kaye and jason leopold posting at truthout...

Detainees in custody of the US military were interrogated while drugged with powerful antipsychotic and other medications that "could impair an individual's ability to provide accurate information," according to a declassified Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general's report that probed the alleged use of "mind altering drugs" during interrogations.

In addition, detainees were subjected to "chemical restraints," hydrated with intravenous (IV) fluids while they were being interrogated and, in what appears to be a form of psychological manipulation, the inspector general's probe confirmed at least one detainee - convicted "dirty bomb" plotter Jose Padilla - was the subject of a "deliberate ruse" in which his interrogator led him to believe he was given an injection of "truth serum."

Truthout obtained a copy of the report - "Investigation of Allegations of the Use of Mind-Altering Drugs to Facilitate Interrogations of Detainees" - prepared by the DoD's deputy inspector general for intelligence in September 2009, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we filed nearly two years ago.

[Leonard Rubenstein, a medical ethicist at Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health and Human Rights and the former president of Physicians for Human Rights] said the failure to inform prisoners what drugs they were given means "some basic principles of medical ethics were cast aside, especially those requiring a doctor to explain his or her recommendation and seek consent for it as an affirmation of the dignity and autonomy of the patient."

"Even where consent is not forthcoming and involuntary medication is allowed after voluntary medication is not accepted, it should never take place unless this process is followed," Rubenstein said.

The cumulative effects of indefinite detention, interrogations, use of drugs, and other conditions of confinement also appear to have taken a toll on the detainees' mental state and impacted the DoD watchdog's ability to conduct a thorough investigation.

Indeed, when the inspector general sought to interview the attorney representing one detainee who claimed he was given mind-altering drugs during interrogations, the attorney responded, "at this state of his incarceration, [redacted] memory is severely compromised and, unfortunately, we are skeptical that he can provide you with any further details ..."

The investigation also found instances where "chemical restraints" were used on detainees "that posed a threat to themselves or others," which Rubenstein said, "is contrary to US Bureau of Prison regulations, decisions of the US Supreme Court and to medical ethics principles that forbid subordinating the patient's medical interests to prison security."

[...]

The inspector general's yearlong probe was launched in June 2008, two months after the publication of a Washington Post report in which some detainees claimed they were forcibly drugged and coerced into making confessions.

One of the detainees at the center of The Washington Post report, Adel al-Nusairi, a former Saudi policeman who was imprisoned at Guantanamo from 2002 to 2005, is prominently featured in the inspector general's report and identified as "IG-02."

According to his attorney's notes cited in The Washington Post, al-Nusairi claimed he was injected with an unknown medication that made him extremely sleepy just before he was interrogated in 2002. When his captors awakened him, he fabricated a confession for US interrogators in hopes they would leave him alone so he could sleep.

"I was completely gone," al-Nusairi told his attorney, Anant Raut. "I said, 'Let me go. I want to go to sleep. If it takes saying I'm a member of al-Qaeda, I will.'"

and you can be sure, if it happened at guantánamo, it also took place at bagram and all the other black sites...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

This Memorial Day, let us reflect on the sober reality of the U.S. post-9/11

bill moyers and michael winship...

Facing the truth is hard to do, especially the truth about ourselves. So Americans have been sorely pressed to come to terms with the fact that after 9/11 our government began to torture people, and did so in defiance of domestic and international law. Most of us haven’t come to terms with what that meant, or means today, but we must reckon with torture, the torture done in our name, allegedly for our safety.

 
In this photo of a sketch by courtroom artist Janet Hamlin and reviewed 
by the U.S. Department of Defense, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reads a 
document during his military hearing at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval 
Base in Cuba, Saturday, May 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Janet Hamlin)

It’s no secret such cruelty occurred; it’s just the truth we’d rather not think about. But Memorial Day is a good time to make the effort. Because if we really want to honor the Americans in uniform who gave their lives fighting for their country, we’ll redouble our efforts to make sure we’re worthy of their sacrifice; we’ll renew our commitment to the rule of law, for the rule of law is essential to any civilization worth dying for.

[...]

So here we are, into our eleventh year after 9/11, still at war in Afghanistan, still at war with terrorists, still at war with our collective conscience as we grapple with how to protect our country from attack without violating the basic values of civilization — the rule of law, striving to achieve our aims without corrupting them, and restraint in the use of power over others, especially when exercised in secret.

In future days and years, how will we come to cope with the reality of what we have done in the name of security?

it is also good on this upcoming memorial day weekend to remember other parts of our history, or, i should say more accurately, MY history... i have made it a personal tradition each memorial day to post my vietnam experiences, partly to honor those who served and died there but also to honor a short but intense period in my own history, but i'll wait until monday to put that up...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Glenn: Not a single War on Terror victim and not a single government official has faced the courts - not one...!

rule of law...? accountability... ? the justice system...? blind lady justice...? fuhgedaboudit...

glenn...

[O]f all the American institutions that have so profoundly failed in the wake of 9/11 to protect the most basic liberties — Congress, both political parties, the establishment media, the Executive Branch, the DOJ specifically — none has been quite as disgraceful as the federal judiciary, whose life tenure is supposed to insulate them from base political pressures that produce cowardly and corrupted choices. And yet, just consider these two facts:

(1) not a single War on Terror victim — not one — has been permitted to sue for damages in an American court over what was done to them, even when everyone admits they were completely innocent, even when they were subjected to the most brutal torture, and even when the judiciary of other countries permitted their lawsuits to proceed; and,

(2) not a single government official — not one — has been held legally accountable, either criminally or even civilly, for any War on Terror crimes or abuses; perversely, the only government officials to pay any price were the ones who blew the whistle on those crimes.

[...]

Even worse, if you’re a Muslim accused of any Terror-related crime, your conviction in a federal court is virtually guaranteed, as federal judges will bend the law and issue pro-government rulings that they would never make with a non-Muslim defendant; conversely, if you’re a government official who abused or otherwise violated the rights of Muslims, your full-scale immunity is virtually guaranteed. Those are the indisputable rules of American justice. So slavish and subservient are federal judges when it comes to Muslim defendants that if you’re a Muslim accused of any Terror-related crime, you’re probably more likely at this point to get something approximating a fair trial before a Guantanamo military tribunal than in a federal court; that is how supine federal judges have been when the U.S. Government utters the word “terrorism” in the direction of a Muslim or any claims of “national security” relating to 9/11.

it's a pretty pass we've come to in the land of the free and the home of the brave...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Glenn on Jose Rodriguez' new book

in case you need a memory jog, rodriguez is the cia officer who destroyed videotapes documenting the interrogation of two al qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody during congressional and legal scrutiny about the secret detention program and suffered zero consequences...

the title of rodriguez' book: “Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives”...

glenn...

Rodriguez thus joins a long line of Bush officials — Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, et. al — who not only paid no price for the crimes they committed, but are free to run around boasting of those crimes for profit. That’s what happens when the most politically powerful officials are vested with immunity for their illegal acts. Both the criminals and their crimes become normalized. They feel free not only to admit their crimes openly but to justify and glorify them, because they know they will never be held accountable for them. Instead of having to explain himself as a criminal defendant, Rodriguez is instead permitted to wrap his conduct in the banner of heroism as a highly-paid Simon & Schuster author.

This will be one of the most enduring and consequential aspects of the Obama legacy: by working so hard, in so many ways, to shield Bush-era crimes from all forms of accountability, the Democratic President has ensured that they are not viewed as crimes at all, but at worst, run-of-the-mill political controversies. Given all this, why would any government officials tempted to commit these same crimes in the future possibly decide that they should not?

how pathetic... if you or i had done something similar, we would be locked away in a super-max facility for the rest of our lives...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

I’d be willing to testify, I’d be willing to take any punishment... This is a book written out of fear - that one day someone will "Pinochet" Cheney

col. wilkerson simply won't go away, god bless 'im...

from democracy now via alternet...

AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Wilkerson, we also have Glenn Greenwald on the line with us from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is a constitutional law attorney, political and legal blogger for Salon.com. His recent article on Cheney’s book is called "The Fruits of Elite Immunity." Glenn, explain.

GLENN GREENWALD: One of the most significant aspects of the rollout of Dick Cheney’s book is that he’s basically being treated as though he’s just an elder statesman who has some controversial, partisan political views. And yet, the evidence is overwhelming, including most of what Colonel Wilkerson just said and has been saying for quite some time, and lots of other people, as well, including, for example, General Antonio Taguba, that Dick Cheney is not just a political figure with controversial views, but is an actual criminal, that he was centrally involved in a whole variety not just of war crimes in Iraq, but of domestic crimes, as well, including the authorization of warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens in violation of FISA, which says that you go to jail for five years for each offense, as well as the authorization and implementation of a worldwide torture regime that, according to General Barry McCaffrey, resulted in the murder—his word—of dozens of detainees, far beyond just the three or four cases of waterboarding that media figures typically ask Cheney about.

And yet, what we have is a government, a successor administration, the Obama administration, that announced that there will be no criminal investigations, no, let alone, prosecutions of any Bush officials for any of these multiple crimes. And that has taken these actions outside of the criminal realm and turned them into just garden-variety political disputes. And it’s normalized the behavior. And as a result, Dick Cheney goes around the country profiting off of this, you know, sleazy, sensationalistic, self-serving book, basically profiting from his crimes, and at the same time normalizing the idea that these kind of policies, though maybe in the view of some wrongheaded, are perfectly legitimate political choices to make. And I think that’s the really damaging legacy from all of this.

AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Wilkerson, do you think the Bush administration officials should be held accountable in the way that Glenn Greenwald is talking about?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I certainly do. And I’d be willing to testify, and I’d be willing to take any punishment I’m due. And I have to say, I agree with almost everything he just said. And I think that explains the aggressiveness, to a large extent, of the Cheney attack and of the words like "exploding heads all over Washington." This is a book written out of fear, fear that one day someone will "Pinochet" Dick Cheney.

you GO, colonel...!

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Jeremy Scahill on Bush administration torture tactics

and we still have a president who isn't the least bit interested in accountability...

jeremy scahill on olbermann's countdown...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Electroshock torture, lethal beatings and humiliation at Guantánamo

first-person testimony on guantánamo torture...

from russia today...

German Guantanamo detainee Murat Kurnaz has publicly spoken about being subjected to electroshock torture, lethal beatings and humiliation during his years of unlawful detention.

In an exclusive interview with Russia Today news network on Monday, the former detainee said he was held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp for five years before being released without charges.

Kurnaz went on to say that Americans have not apologized for his years of torment at the notorious detainment facility, and he doesn't think they would ever do so.

He further explained that he was arrested in Pakistan in 2001, and turned to the Americans after he had visited a school run by Tablighi Jamaat -- a religious movement hated by the al-Qaeda and the Taliban for its non-political stature -- in the Asian country.

Kurnaz had earlier become familiar with Pakistan-based Tablighi Jamaat movement through its assistance to homeless people and youth, who had problems with drugs.

He added that when he got booked, Pakistani forces didn't tell him anything about what was going on.

"They didn't tell me that they were looking for terrorists or whatever. They said we're just going to check your passport. I didn't know at that time they get a bounty of $3,000 for each person. Not under my name, but for anyone turned over to the Americans as terrorist they get $3,000, and $3,000 in Pakistan is a lot of money," Kurnaz said.

He noted that after being transferred to Kandahar in Afghanistan, he witnessed all kinds of things that one can imagine as torture.

"I saw many killed under torture. I was one of those who survived those kinds of torture. They used electroshocks on me because I would not sign papers."

"I was forced to agree I was a member of the Taliban and the al-Qaeda and I said I'm not. Really I didn't know at that time what al-Qaeda was, I didn't know [anything] about al-Qaeda. So when they asked me about al-Qaeda and Taliban, I said I'm not a member of them. And they brought me papers, forced me to sign. I refused," the former Gitmo prisoner said.

"That's why they tried to make me sign by electroshocks. And another time they forced me by water boarding. Another time they hanged me on chains. I was hanging on the ceiling. They were pulling me on the ceiling with the chain, and until my feet were over the floor. After a few days I started to pass out, because in that situation I couldn't eat or drink and it was freezing cold. It was wintertime and I had no clothes on," he added.

Kurnaz said Guantanamo detainees were chained hand to foot in a fatal position on the floor with no chair, food, or water for 24 hours or more.

He also said that the youngest Gitmo prisoner was nine years old, and the second underage detainee in Guantanamo was 12.

Upon taking office, US President Barack Obama signed an executive order to stop military commissions in order to close down the facility by 2010. However, this has not happened yet.

accountability...? fughedaboudit...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Accountability...? Rule of law...? Pish-tosh... Fuhgeddaboudit... Not in MY country...

to say that this is a sad moment for my country would be an understatement in the extreme... i read stuff like this and i just want to crawl into a hole and never come out...

glenn...

Torture crimes officially, permanently shielded

[...]

The answer is resoundingly clear: American war criminals, responsible for some of the most shameful and inexcusable crimes in the nation's history -- the systematic, deliberate legalization of a worldwide torture regime -- will be fully immunized for those crimes. And, of course, the Obama administration has spent years just as aggressively shielding those war criminals from all other forms of accountability beyond the criminal realm: invoking secrecy and immunity doctrines to prevent their victims from imposing civil liability, exploiting their party's control of Congress to suppress formal inquiries, and pressuring and coercing other nations not to investigate their own citizens' torture at American hands.

All of those efforts, culminating in yesterday's entirely unsurprising announcement, means that the U.S. Government has effectively shielded itself from even minimal accountability for its vast torture crimes of the last decade. Without a doubt, that will be one of the most significant, enduring and consequential legacies of the Obama presidency.

i've repeatedly asked and am asking again, how did we get so far off the rails...?

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

VoteVets endorses General Sanchez for U.S. Senate, the same Sanchez who approved torture at Abu Ghraib

what is it with memory in my country...? either people don't remember, don't WANT to remember or never have bothered to find out in the first damn place...

here's my response to votevets and their execrable endorsement of ricardo sanchez for the u.s. senate seat in texas...

Dear Friends.

Ricardo Sanchez is the one who authorized the torture/enhanced interrogation techniques used at Abu Ghraib and then lied about it in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on 19 May 2004. He would like you to believe he's rehabilitated but, unless and until he is held accountable for his past actions, he has no business presenting himself as a serious candidate for the United States Senate. Furthermore, as a Vietnam Veteran and someone who is currently working in Afghanistan, i think it is an absolute disgrace that an organization like VoteVets would endorse such a candidate.

Before putting more of your organizational credibility on the line, I suggest you follow up on the following links.

Blog posts on General Sanchez

Copies of the documents authorizing torture techniques under General Sanchez' signature

Washington Post story on Sanchez' testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee

I know General Sanchez thinks all of this is behind him and, for most people who don't pay close attention, it probably is, but General Sanchez is just as guilty of war crimes as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and, more recently, Barack Obama.

Shame on you VoteVets for not properly vetting your endorsements.

Sincerely,

XXX XXXXX
U.S. Army 1968-1971
Vietnam Veteran

and here's the votevets endorsement...

On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 8:10 AM, Ashwin Madia <info@votevets.org> wrote:

Dear XXXX,

Today I’m writing with some exciting news. We have a chance to send a veteran to the Senate, from Texas. Not only that, but this veteran also happens to be a retired Lieutenant General who commanded forces in Iraq. Today, we’re endorsing Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez (USA, Ret.) for Senate. He needs your help.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO SANCHEZ FOR SENATE

General Sanchez has a compelling story and honorably served our country in uniform. He’ll make an outstanding Senator for the people of Texas. We're always happy to see veterans entering politics as a way to continue their public service, but it's especially encouraging to see one of our military's finest minds, General Sanchez, look to continue that service as a public servant. General Sanchez knows what this generation of warriors has gone through, and how Washington can best serve them. For the people of the state of Texas, they will have a Senator who is committed to America’s security, and just as committed to the state he loves

General Sanchez graduated from Texas A&I University in Kingsville, Texas, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1973. After decades of service, following nomination to Lieutenant General, he assumed command in Baghdad, Iraq, of the Army’s Fifth Corps and became the commander of one of the largest combat forces deployed in US military history. Upon the reorganization of command-and-control structures in Iraq, he commanded Headquarters, Multi-National Forces (Iraq) from 14 May 2004 to 1 July 2004. After 33 years of service, he retired in 2006.

CLICK HERE TO SEND RICARDO SANCHEZ TO THE SENATE

Texas is a huge state, and running for office there isn’t cheap. But any donation you can afford will go a long way towards sending Ric Sanchez to the Senate. This is an open seat, because Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson is stepping down, so it is an excellent opportunity for a candidate with strong credentials – like General Sanchez – to win. Please click the link above, and help get him to the finish line!

Sincerely,

Ashwin Madia

Iraq War Veteran
Interim Chairman, VoteVets.org

Paid for by VoteVets Political Action Committee
Not Authorized by Any Candidate or Candidate’s Committee

sad... accountability seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Has the government engaging in torture become as accepted as government official lying when the truth is inconvenient?

an articulate voice of reason, all too rare in today's public discourse...

morris davis...

In the fall of 2005, when I was chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, I sat down for a lengthy discussion with a veteran member of the prosecution team, a Marine Corps officer with an extensive background in criminal prosecution. We discussed a case that caused him concern, one he said he was not comfortable prosecuting. After describing some of the specifics of the detainee’s treatment at Guantanamo, which was documented in official records, the prosecutor said: “Sir, they fucked with him and they fucked with him until now he’s as crazy as a shit-house rat.” In an interview with Bob Woodward published in the Washington Post in January 2009, Susan Crawford, the Bush administration official who supervised the military commissions, explained why she refused to send the same case to trial when it reached her desk in the spring of 2008. “We tortured Qahtani,” she said, “His treatment met the legal definition of torture.”

The alleged torture of Hamza Ali al-Khateeb, Syed Saleem Shahzad, and Mohammed al Qahtani by government agents that signed the Convention Against Torture begs the question, is a law that is ignored worth the paper it is written on?

Some people dismiss the Geneva Conventions as “quaint,” and some believe “law” and “war” have no place in the same sentence; but few who make the military a profession hold such mistaken beliefs. Service members understand that war is hell and the law of war constrains the hellishness. It is a code of conduct developed by warriors over centuries on battlefields around the world.

The law of war is drilled into every U.S. service member from the start of basic training. It is reinforced regularly and tested during combat exercises in the belief that engrained values survive the fog and friction of war. Honor matters to service members. The failure to abide by the law of war dishonors the military profession and discredits military professionals. Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock pled guilty in March and accepted responsibility for his role in murdering innocent Afghan civilians, telling the court, “I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on how I lost my moral compass.”

Nothing is further from the profession of arms than the cowardice of terrorism. The mass murder of innocent civilians, sending children into crowded markets on suicide missions, and hiding explosives in the trunks of cars to kill and maim indiscriminately—calling those who use such tactics “combatants” gives them more status than they deserve.

[...]

Those who bias the torture debate by pandering to fear and casting it as “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists” are as disingenuous as those who try to justify terrorism by perverting Islam. It is not a choice of one or the other. There is nothing inconsistent in holding torturers and terrorists accountable for acts that break the law.

[...]

Who decides which obligations are truly obligatory and which means go too far to ever justify the ends? Chemical weapons may have been a fast and convenient way to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda in the rugged Tora Bora region in late 2001 and may have killed Bin Laden a decade earlier, but is effectiveness, or that it might work, or that others do it justification to violate the Chemical Weapons Convention prohibitions and commit a war crime? If the standard is the United States decides ad hoc which commitments it will honor and which it will not then it should be honest and repudiate those it considers non-binding and the sense to stop the hypocritical criticism of others that fail to live up to its “do as we say, not as we do” example. On the other hand, if the United States means what it says about the rule of law, it has to demonstrate that it practices what it purports to preach.

[...]

Do decent human beings have the temerity to stand up and insist the law be enforced? Does the United States have the integrity to lead by example, or has the government engaging in torture become as accepted as government official lying when the truth is inconvenient? We need to find our moral compass.

finding something that you've consciously thrown away is a bigger challenge than finding something you've unintentionally lost...

thanks to marcy...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Obama on Bradley Manning: Guilty until proven innocent

glenn...

Protesters yesterday interrupted President Obama's speech at a $5,000/ticket San Francisco fundraiser to demand improved treatment for Bradley Manning. After the speech, one of the protesters, Logan Price, approached Obama and questioned him. Obama's responses are revealing on multiple levels. First, Obama said this when justifying Manning's treatment (video and transcript are here):

We're a nation of laws. We don't let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.

The impropriety of Obama's public pre-trial declaration of Manning's guilt ("He broke the law") is both gross and manifest. How can Manning possibly expect to receive a fair hearing from military officers when their Commander-in-Chief has already decreed his guilt? Numerous commentators have noted how egregiously wrong was Obama's condemnation. Michael Whitney wrote: "the President of the United States of America and a self-described Constitutional scholar does not care that Manning has yet to be tried or convicted for any crime." BoingBoing's Rob Beschizza interpreted Obama's declaration of guilt this way: "Just so you know, jurors subordinate judging officers!" And Politico quoted legal experts explaining why Obama's remarks are so obviously inappropriate.

so sad, coming from our president...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 1 comments

Bradley Manning being moved to Leavenworth

no mention of whether or not he will get to see any outside observers there... it will be certainly a more inconvenient trip...

The Army private suspected of giving classified data to WikiLeaks is being moved to a state-of-the-art facility at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where Pentagon officials said more extensive mental, emotional and physical health care will be available.

[...]

The new facility, they said, will be more open, have more space, and Manning will have a greater opportunity to eat and interact with other prisoners there. They added that the move was in Manning's best interest because Leavenworth's Joint Regional Correctional Facility has a broader array of facilities, including trained mental, emotional and physical health staff.

Lt. Col. Dawn Hilton, who is in charge of the medium-security detention facility at Leavenworth, said Manning will undergo a comprehensive evaluation upon his arrival to assess whether he is a risk to his own or others' safety. The 150 inmates there — including eight who are awaiting trial — are allowed three hours of recreation per day, she said, and three meals a day in a dining area.

She said the facility, which opened in January, is designed for long-term detention of pretrial inmates. Officials agreed that Manning's case, which involves hundreds of thousands of highly sensitive and classified documents, is very complex and could drag on for months, if not years.

Johnson said that Manning, who has been at Quantico for more than eight months, can be moved now because his interview in the Washington region to determine his competency to stand trial has been completed. That interview lasted one day and was done April 9.

eight months in inhumane conditions for a one day interview... shit...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

This is just plain disgusting and completely uncalled for

glenn...

Top Bush-era GITMO and Abu Ghraib psychologist is WH's newest appointment

what in the freakin' hell is obama thinking...? oh, never mind... he's has long since lost whatever scraps of confidence in him i might have been desperately clinging to...

p.s. in an update, glenn offers this...

"Dr. James has not been appointed to serve in any capacity with the White House."

maybe dr. james is a legend in his own mind...?

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Yes, it's more than "merely" torture, it's full-bore exploitation

a special report from truthout reveals the full extent of the CIA/DoD torture program...

retired air force capt. michael kearns was party to the hiring of dr. john bruce jessen, the psychologist who was under contract to the CIA and credited as being one of the architects of the government's top-secret torture program... kearns is interviewed in this truthout investigative report...

The CIA/DoD torture program appears to have the same goals as the terrorist organizations or enemy governments for which SV-91 and other SERE courses were created to defend against: the full exploitation of the prisoner in his intelligence, propaganda, or other needs held by the detaining power, such as the recruitment of informers and double agents. Those aspects of the US detainee program have not generally been discussed as part of the torture story in the American press.

jessen describes his techniques...

"From the moment you are detained (if some kind of exploitation is your Detainer's goal) everything your Detainer does will be contrived to bring about these factors: CONTROL, DEPENDENCY, COMPLIANCE AND COOPERATION," Jessen wrote. "Your detainer will work to take away your sense of control. This will be done mostly by removing external control (i.e., sleep, food, communication, personal routines etc. )…Your detainer wants you to feel 'EVERYTHING' is dependent on him, from the smallest detail, (food, sleep, human interaction), to your release or your very life … Your detainer wants you to comply with everything he wishes. He will attempt to make everything from personal comfort to your release unavoidably connected to compliance in your mind."

Jessen wrote that cooperation is the "end goal" of the detainer, who wants the detainee "to see that [the detainer] has 'total' control of you because you are completely dependent on him, and thus you must comply with his wishes. Therefore, it is absolutely inevitable that you must cooperate with him in some way (propaganda, special favors, confession, etc.)."

Jessen described the kinds of pressures that would be exerted on the prisoner to achieve this goal, including "fear of the unknown, loss of control, dehumanization, isolation," and use of sensory deprivation and sensory "flooding." He also included "physical" deprivations in his list of detainer "pressures."

"Unlike everyday experiences, however, as a detainee we could be subjected to stressors/coercive pressures which we cannot completely control," he wrote. "If these stressors are manipulated and increased against us, the cumulative effect can push us out of the optimum range of functioning. This is what the detainer wants, to get us 'off balance.'"

"The Detainer wants us to experience a loss of composure in hopes we can be manipulated into some kind of collaboration..." Jessen wrote. "This is where you are most vulnerable to exploitation. This is where you are most likely to make mistakes, show emotions, act impulsively, become discouraged, etc. You are still close enough to being intact that you would appear convincing and your behavior would appear 'uncoerced.'"

kearns calls this horrific, tyrannical and wrong... how can we not agree...? it's enough to make me vomit as kearns said he did upon full realization of what took place here...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Bullshit

ain't buyin' it...

Obama Defends Detention Conditions for Soldier Accused in WikiLeaks Case

President Obama has defended conditions in a Marine Corps jail for Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, who is accused of leaking classified government documents to WikiLeaks. The president said Friday that he had been assured that such measures as forcing Private Manning to sleep without clothing were justified and for his own safety.

Bradleymanning.Org/Handout/
European Pressphoto Agency

“With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference. “They assure me that they are.”

“I can’t go into details about some of their concerns,” he added, “but some of this has to do with Private Manning’s safety as well.” He appeared to be referring to fears that Private Manning might harm himself, though the private, his friends and his lawyer have all denied that he is suicidal.

why doesn't obama motorcade his ass down to quantico and see for himself...?

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Manning's request for less harsh treatment denied; Amnesty Int'l calls for protests

glenn details the latest developments in the treatment of bradley manning at the marine corps facility in quantico, virginia...

Yesterday, the Quantico base commander denied Manning's formal request for less harsh treatment -- including an end to his forced nudity and 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement. That request -- which is really a formal complaint of mistreatment -- will now be forwarded to the Secretary of Navy, and if he also rejects it, then Manning's lawyer will file a Writ of Habeas Corpus with the Army Court of Criminal Appeals. Manning's counsel today released his rebuttal to the Commander's decision and it supplies much more detailed information about just how harsh and punitive is Manning's treatment; Marcy Wheeler documents how similar in language and content is this treatment to many of the core methods of degradation popularized during the Bush administration. But as we well know, caring about what Amnesty thinks is -- just like concerns over detainee abuse and indefinite detention -- so very 2005.

he also summarizes the call for protests being led by amnesty international...

Amnesty said that "the conditions inflicted on Bradley Manning . . . amount to inhumane treatment by the US authorities" and "appear to breach the USA’s human rights obligations." As a result, the group is encouraging as many Americans as possible to demand an end to these conditions (independent of Amnesty, there is a planned protest outside the Quantico brig on March 20, expected to be fairly large in size, with others being planned at military detention facilities around the country for later dates).

how can the united states, with a straight face, lecture gadhafi about his treatment of his fellow citizens when we are doing the very same thing...?

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Meanwhile, Egyptians are busy documenting their fallen government's use of torture

do you think we in the u.s. could take a lesson here...?

With Mubarak out of power, Egyptians turned today on the brutal State Security Services he used to cement his reign. Thousands of protestors stormed the agency's main headquarters in Cairo, ransacking offices and searching for evidence of Mubarak's wrongdoing among classified documents. This is basically like if Americans were given free reign at the FBI's HQ.

The State Security Services were responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses during Mubrarak's 30-year rule, according to the AP. "We all suffered and saw horrible torture at the hands of this agency," one protestor said. And many of those who raided the agency's offices today were victims of abuse.

not only did they raid the headquarters of the state security services, they also documented everything they found, posting it on social networking sites... NOW, it's getting really REAL...!

again, scott horton...

This weekend tens of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in Egypt [flooded] the Internet with pictures of the cells and torture devices used there. Leaders of the effort said their raid was undertaken to preserve evidence of the mistreatment of prisoners so that appropriate measures could be taken for accountability in the future. Around the world, the outcry against this regime of torture and terror is rising and fueling massive public uprisings–as we see today in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen.

here's a photo gallery... like scott says, what if the american people could do the same at fbi headquarters...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Why is Bradley Manning being subjected to abuse

scott horton at harpers via information clearing house...

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.

i continue to be appalled by the stunning disregard our government displays for basic human rights... how can we dare preach human rights to the rest of the world when we simply refuse to walk our talk...?

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

War crimes and whistleblowers

yeah... medea benjamin and charles davis make an excellent point: god help anyone who dares to speak out about the horrors and outrages being perpetrated by our esteemed leaders... but if you're one of the ones who have committed those horrors and and outrages, feel free to cash in...

[Bradley Manning] allegedly leaked tens of thousands of State Department cables to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. These cables show U.S. officials covering up everything from U.S. tax dollars funding child rape in Afghanistan to illegal, unauthorized bombings in Yemen. Manning is also accused of leaking video evidence of U.S. pilots gunning down more than a dozen Iraqis in Baghdad, including two journalists for Reuters, and then killing a father of two who stopped to help them. The father's two young children were also severely wounded.

“Well, it's their fault for bringing kids into a battle,” a not-terribly-remorseful U.S. pilot can be heard remarking in the July 2007 “Collateral Murder” video.

None of the soldiers who carried out that war crime have been punished, nor have any of the high-ranking officials who authorized it. Indeed, committing war crimes is more likely to get a solider a medal than a prison term. And authorizing them? Well, that'll get you a book deal and a six-digit speaking fee. Just ask George W. Bush. Or Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld or Condoleezza Rice. Or the inexplicably “respectable” Colin Powell.

so sad...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments