Condoleeza Rice and torture

A Stanford student posted some raw footage of Condoleeza Rice speaking about torture, rendition, and other "tough choices" that the Bush administration made after 9/11:

(Video link)

She makes this Nixon-like quote at around the 5:30 mark: “By definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture.”

Nice.

Ronald Reagan and torture

Glenn Greenwald comments on how far we've come since 1988 when President Ronald Reagan had this to say when asking Congress to ratify the international Convention Against Torture treaty:

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called "universal jurisdiction." Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.

The treaty that Reagan was talking about has this to say:

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. . . Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law.

Obama, what about torture?

The ACLU has a campaign to urge White House correspondents to ask President Obama the following question in Wednesday's "100th Day" press conference:

The so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” exposed in the torture memos include keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, dousing them with cold water and placing them naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. One prisoner -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- was waterboarded 183 times in a month. Do you believe that a country - or a president - can afford to look at shocking evidence of illegal torture and simply look away?

Think about that: our government waterboarded a man--poured water over his face to give him the feeling of being drowned--ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THREE TIMES in one month. What would you tell your interrogators if you were in his position?

The ACLU has been instrumental in holding the Bush administration accountable for its decision to use torture. From the email they sent me:

• Today, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the ACLU in an important case against Jeppesen Data Plan -- a subsidiary of Boeing. Jeppesen was responsible for organizing extraordinary rendition flights used repeatedly by the CIA to move detainees to countries where they could be tortured.
• In response to a long-standing ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Department of Defense has agreed to release a substantial number of photos depicting the abuse of prisoners by U.S. personnel by May 28.
• In another crucial ACLU case, a federal judge has rejected the CIA’s attempt to withhold records related to the agency’s destruction of 92 videotapes that depicted the harsh interrogation of CIA prisoners.

Ticking time bomb in the White House: selling the Iraq War

Frank Rich paints an ugly picture... President Bush and VP Cheney approved of the use of torture in their efforts to sell Congress and the American people on invading Iraq:

Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.

Read his full column here.

A torture timeline

Someone has taken the time to construct a timeline from 2001-2009 documenting what we know about our government's involvement in torturing people.

I have to admit to being a bit overwhelmed by all of the stories swirling about on the topic. It was one thing to be one of those people on the sidelines saying, "Hey, this is something important that's being ignored." Now that it's seeing the light of the day, it's so horrifying that you just want to look the other way. But Bush, Cheney, & Co. did this in our names. It's our responsibility to pay attention.

I'm reading an article about the torture and murder perpetrated as part of the Mexican drug wars, and I'll be writing something more about that--and our own actions--soon.

The truth on torture

I just saw Rachel Maddow's interview with former Secretary of State Colin Powell. She pressed him on whether he was present at meetings with other Bush administration "principals" when the interrogation--and torture--of detainees at Guantamo was discussed.

Maddow displays a lot more journalistic integrity than most reporters these days, give it a watch:

(Video link)

And if you think we need to know more about what was done in our name, you can sign an ACLU petition here asking Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate whether actions were taken that violate U.S. laws against torture.

Not only is torture wrong...

but it's also pointless:

When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.

The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

The full story is in today's Washington Post.

Tales of U.S. torture leak out

Andrew Sullivan has a bunch of posts today about new details coming out on U.S. torture of detainees. I'll simply link to them: one and two (reports of what detainees experienced), three (a comparison of U.S. and Gestapo techniques), and four (the involvement of medical doctors).

Colbert interviews Jane Mayer

Jane Mayer's recent book, The Dark Side, chronicles U.S. government-sanctioned torture since 9/11.

Stephen Colbert brings the issue to the masses in his own inimitable way.

(Video link)

Why Ralph Nader is wrong

Ralph Nader likes to make the argument that voting for a Republican or Democrat amounts to the same thing: voting for corporate puppet.

But if anyone still believes that there was no difference in voting for Bush or Gore in 2000, a new Senate report should hopefully dispel that notion.

The Senate Intelligence Committee found that while there was typically some supporting evidence from the U.S. intelligence community for most of the Bush administration's assertions about Iraq, the White House and Pentagon very carefully cherry-picked what was known about Saddam's WMD efforts in making its case.

For example, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld made the argument before Congress that an aerial bombing campaign was necessary:

The new Senate report also discloses that on Sept. 18, 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction facilities could not be eliminated by simple aerial bombing because "a good many are underground and deeply buried" and therefore "not … vulnerable to attack from the air."

Unfortunately, the evidence at the time of his testimony didn't support his version of the facts, and subsequent research further undercut Rumsfeld.

In fact, the Senate report found, there was no intelligence-community reporting to support Rumsfeld's assertion. An August 2002 DIA report on the subject stated flatly that "no biological weapons (BW)-related underground facilities are currently confirmed to be in use in Iraq."

In a disclosure that one Intelligence Committee member, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, called "stunning," the Senate panel found Rumsfeld commissioned the National Intelligence Council to prepare a secret special assessment on the underground-facilities issue. The council's conclusion in November 2002 ran directly counter to Rumsfeld's testimony to Congress: it found that "all the military and regime associated UGFs [underground facilities] we have identified thus far are vulnerable to conventional, precision-guided penetrating munitions because they are not deeply buried."

Even more damning: a key source for Bush's argument that Saddam had aided al-Qaeda was an operative named Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The intelligence community, however, had strong doubts about al-Libi's "forthrightness and truthfulness." And it turns out that his statements about al-Qaeda were only made after he was tortured, further proof of why torture is not only immoral but also pointless:

... Al-Libi only made his claims about Saddam's training for Al Qaeda after the CIA rendered him to a foreign intelligence service (later identified by Tenet as Egypt), where he was allegedly subjected to brutal interrogation. According to al-Libi, he was locked in a tiny box less than 20 inches high and held for 17 hours--an interrogation technique known as a "mock burial," which was considered even by some of the most aggressive Bush administration lawyers as illegal under U.S. and international laws banning torture. After being let out, al-Libi claimed, he was thrown to the floor and punched for 15 minutes. According to CIA operational cables, only then did he tell his "fabricated" story about Al Qaeda members being dispatched to Iraq.

Do you believe Al Gore had the same kind of axe to grind with Saddam that led George W. Bush to so deliberately engage in the deception of the American people?

At last... Bush connects with the "reality-based" community

Last Friday, President Bush admitted to ABC News that he was aware that his senior aides discussed and approved specific interrogation techniques. Given the nature of the techniques and the widely held belief that they constitute torture, this was a stunning admission on the President's part. Read more here.

The ACLU has been instrumental in obtaining the so-called "torture" memos. Click here to add your name to those calling on Congress to investigate the government's actions fully.

News round-up

A couple of stories that caught my eye earlier in the week:

• Time Magazine's Joe Klein comments on Obama's questioning of General Petraeus when he appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations committee this week. The full transcript here.
• ABC News reports that high-ranking Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific "enhanced interrogation" techniques:

  The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic. The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

  At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

  The Bush administration's denials on the use of torture are just so many lies.

Vanity Fair article on Bush's path to torture

Phillippe Sands writes about the evolution of the Bush administration's thinking on torture for the May issue of Vanity Fair. Read "The Green Light."

Yoo is not getting enough attention

John Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer who authored the recently declassified torture memo, is little in the news these days. So I'll do what I can to help spread the word.

Here's an editorial from the Los Angeles Times. And here is a summary of some of the memo's key arguments, as well as links to the memo itself.

In short, Yoo argues that neither an international treaty nor an act of Congress can in any way constrain the ability of the President to order torture, and no one can be held responsible for any harm suffered by the tortured.

Outrageous.

McCain and torture

My respect for John McCain continues to wane... he no longer strikes me as the principled, non-ideological maverick that he did a few years ago.

After vocally arguing with the administration this past year over the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture, last week he voted against a bill that would have specifically prohibited the CIA from using waterboarding.

His explanation didn't convince me that his vote was a wise one, particularly given his previous strong position on the issue.

Andrew Sullivan on torture

Read what Andrew Sullivan has to say on the torture of Abu Zubaydah and on torture in general:

Notice what the Zubaydah case tells us about the key argument of torture advocates like Charles Krauthammer: that torture should only be used when we already know that someone has actionable information on an imminent catastrophic threat. We're five years into the Bush torture regime and despite hundreds - and possibly thousands - of torture sessions, this was never, ever the case. Charles' abstract argument has been rendered completely moot by the evidence of the past five years. The United States made the decision to torture Zubaydah after he had already given helpful information - solely because they suspected he had more - and not in response to any knowledge of any imminent, catastrophic threat. In the beginning - not even in the end - torture became its own rationale, creating a need for torturers to justify their war crimes by finding more information through more torture, and unleashing the sadism and evil that exists in every human heart - even the most trained and professional. And then the war crimes created a need to destroy the evidence of war crimes and so the criminality of the government deepened, cloaked in the secrecy of national security. and now we are caught between an acceptance that the president is a war criminal and the necessity to keep fighting a vital war.

McCain on torture

Senator John McCain commenting on the controversy over the CIA's destruction of tapes documenting waterboarding and a former agent's assertion that the practice has prevented terrorist attacks:

Waterboarding will give you a confession, but it won't always get you the truth.

I'm not going to condone a practice that we used as the rationale for prosecuting the Japanese for war crimes in World War II.

I maintain my belief that it is harmful to America's national security because it damages our image so badly and we lose the ideological struggle, which is based on the moral high ground.

I wholeheartedly agree.

If you do as well, sign the ACLU's petition.