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Waterboarding: highly necessary or highly inhuman?
- Weigh in on waterboarding. Make your point, get on TV.
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- ENDS: 11/05/2008 04:00 PM
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Previously secret torture memo released
The Bush administration told the CIA in 2002 that its interrogators working abroad would not violate U.S. prohibitions against torture unless they "have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering," according to a previously secret Justice Department memo released Thursday.
Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft testifies before Congress this week about waterboarding.
Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft testifies before Congress this week about waterboarding.
The interrogator's "good faith" and "honest belief" that the interrogation will not cause such suffering protects the interrogator, the memo adds.
"Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture," Jay Bybee, then the assistant attorney general, wrote in the memo.
The 18-page memo is heavily redacted, with 10 of its 18 pages completely blacked out and only a few paragraphs legible on the others.
Another memo released Thursday advises that "the waterboard," or simulated drowning, does "not violate the Torture Statute."
It also cites a number of warnings against torture, including statements by President Bush and a then-new Supreme Court ruling "which raises possible concerns about future U.S. judicial review of the [interrogation] Program."
A third memo instructs interrogators to keep records of sessions in which "enhanced interrogation techniques" are used. The memo is signed by then-CIA director George Tenet and dated January 28, 2003.
The memos were made public by the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the three CIA-related documents under Freedom of Information Act requests.
"These documents supply further evidence, if any were needed, that the Justice Department authorized the CIA to torture prisoners in its custody," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project.
The Bush administration has consistently denied that the United States tortures detainees.
Reports say the CIA waterboarded three "high-value detainees," including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, although former Justice Department official Daniel Levin suggested in congressional testimony in June that there had been more than three instances of the practice, which critics call torture.
The third document released Thursday was blacked out except for a line saying "Unless otherwise approved by Headquarters, CIA officers (redacted) may use only Permissible Interrogation Techniques. Permissible Interrogation Techniques consist of both (a) Standard Techniques and (b) Enhanced Techniques," plus the instruction for interrogators to keep records of sessions in which enhanced interrogation techniques are used. The Bush administration told the CIA in 2002 that its interrogators working abroad would not violate U.S. prohibitions against torture... more -
Ashcroft: Waterboarding doesn't constitute torture
The controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding has served a "valuable" purpose and does not constitute torture, former Attorney General John Ashcroft told a House committee Thursday.
Testifying on the Bush administration's interrogation rules before the House Judiciary Committee, Ashcroft defended the technique while answering a question from Rep. Howard Coble, R-North Carolina.
"Waterboarding, as we all know, is a controversial issue. Do you think it served a beneficial purpose?" the congressman asked.
"The reports that I have heard, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, indicate that they were very valuable," Ashcroft said, adding that CIA Director George Tenet indicated the "value of the information received from the use of enhanced interrogation techniques -- I don't know whether he was saying waterboarding or not, but assume that he was for a moment -- the value of that information exceeded the value of information that was received from all other sources."
Ashcroft, who stated his opposition to torture, said the Justice Department has determined that waterboarding, as defined and described by the CIA, doesn't constitute torture.
"I believe a report of waterboarding would be serious, but I do not believe it would define torture," Ashcroft said, responding to questions from Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California.
The controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding has served a "valuable" purpose and does not constitute torture, former Att... more -
Secret Red Cross report of C.I.A. torture of Qaeda captives
Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes, according to a new book on counterterrorism efforts since 2001. The book says that the International Committee of the Red Cross declared in the report, given to the C.I.A. last year, that the methods used on Abu Zubaydah, the first major Qaeda figure the United States captured, were "categorically" torture, which is illegal under both American and international law. The book says Abu Zubaydah was confined in a box "so small ... he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position" and was one of several prisoners to be "slammed against the walls," according to the Red Cross report. The C.I.A. has admitted that Abu Zubaydah and two other prisoners were waterboarded, a practice in which water is poured in the nose and mouth to [cause near] suffocation and drowning. The book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, by Jane Mayer ... offers new details of the agency’s secret detention program, as well as the bitter debates in the administration over interrogation methods. Citing unnamed "sources familiar with the report," Ms. Mayer wrote that the Red Cross document "warned that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted." Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-l... more
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Waterboarded - let the debate begin
The controversy over waterboarding has bombarded U.S news for almost a year. In the U.K the debate is just about to peak.
Watch on.... The controversy over waterboarding has bombarded U.S news for almost a year. In the U.K the debate is just about to peak. ... more -
Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens Undergoes Waterboarding
Here's the report:
Just in case the revelation that American torturers took their cues from that model of moral clarity that was the Chinese Communist regime hasn't fully convinced you that the practice is unquestionably, incontrovertibly evil, Christopher Hitchens' column in the August 2008 Vanity Fair, "Believe Me, It's Torture," ought to drive the point home. That is, if the accompanying video, available online at Vanity Fair's website, doesn't do it first.
In the video, Christopher Hitchens is brought, hooded and bound, into an austere looking storage room, and placed on a board, slightly elevated at its foot. He is instructed by the similarly masked interrogators on how to call a halt to the procedure, either through a safe word - "red" - or by releasing the "dead man's handle" - a metal object placed in each hand. A towel is placed over his face and one of the interrogators begins pouring water on Hitchens' face from an ordinary-looking milk carton. The interrogators demonstrate no more aggression that one might when watering a houseplant. In fact, the process looks so unremarkable that you begin to wonder if they aren't simply "warming Hitchens up" for something worse.
Seventeen seconds pass, and then Hitchens drops the dead man's handle. When the hood is removed, it is jarring to see how panic-stricken Hitchens looks.
In the video, Hitchens describes the experience:
They told me that when I activated the 'dead man's handle' - which is a simple process, you simply release something, let it go - I didn't do that. I practically, even though my hands were bound, I...as near as I could...I threw the thing out of my hand. I mean, I really wanted it to stop.
I could swear I shouted the code word, but I hadn't.
Everything completely goes on you when you're breathing water. You can't think about anything else.
It would be bad enough if you did have something. Suppose if they wanted to know where a relative of yours was...or a lover. You feel, "Well, I'm going to betray them now. Because this has to come to an end. I can't take this anymore." But what if you didn't have anything? What if you'd got the wrong guy? Then you would be in danger of losing your mind very quickly.
That last paragraph, I believe, is critical, especially considering the torture practices of the Chinese Communists - who we are now emulating - were designed to elicit false confessions from those who were tortured.
Attention should be paid to the aftermath of the experience as well, which Hitchens relates thusly:
As a result of this very brief experience, if I do anything that gets my heart rate up, and I'm breathing hard, panting, I have a slight panic sensation that I'm not going to be able to catch my breath again...lately I've been having this feeling of waking up feeling smothered, trying to push everything off my face.
It takes only seventeen seconds to impact the life of an innocent man.
Here's the report: ... more -
On the Waterboard
On the Waterboard
How does it feel to be “aggressively interrogated”? Christopher Hitchens found out for himself, submitting to a brutal waterboarding session in an effort to understand the human cost of America’s use of harsh tactics at Guantánamo and elsewhere. VF.com has the footage. Related: “Believe Me, It’s Torture,” from the August 2008 issue. On the Waterboard ... more -
CIA Report: Bin Laden Is Dying Of Kidney Failure… Still
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
A top secret CIA report, leaked to TIME magazine, which suggests that Osama Bin Laden has between six and eighteen months to live, smacks of controlled propaganda as part of an effort to intensify the war on terror during the remaining months of the Bush administration.
Visit http://www.infowars.net/articles/july2008/020708Laden.h... for the full story.
Steve Watson Infowars.net Wednesday, July 2, 2008 ... more -
The Debate Is Over: Waterboarding Is Torture
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, July 3, 2008
The U.S. government continually claims that it does not torture people, yet it admits to using “waterboarding” as a method of interrogation. If there was ever a debate about whether or not waterboarding was a form of torture then it has now been definitively answered.
Neo-Con author and journalist Christopher Hitchens, a former Trotskyite turned staunch Iraq war proponent, underwent the lightest form of waterboarding possible and at the end of it still concluded, “Believe Me, It’s Torture”.
Writing in Vanity Fair, Hitchens described the experience.
In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted.
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet Thursday, July 3, 2008 ... more -
Waterboarded: you are being drowned
Vanity Fair magazine describes how the author Christopher Hitchens underwent waterboarding and his own portrayal of the experience. Hitchens stated, "You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning, or, rather, being drowned."
Photographs and two videos (including the video of Christopher Hitchens being waterboarded) are included. Vanity Fair magazine describes how the author Christopher Hitchens underwent waterboarding and his own portrayal of the experience. H... more -
War cheerleading journo is waterboarded
Christopher Hitchens, the British journalist who is among the staunchest defenders of the war in Iraq, was waterboarded for a recent article in Vanity Fair."Believe Me, It's Torture" is the article's title.In it and an accompanying video Hitchens outlines a trip to North Carolina where interrogators experienced in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) training that Special Forces soldiers participate in to resist torture at the hands of enemies."I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: 'If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.' Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture," Hitchens wrote after enduring the procedure. Hitchens is one of the staunchest defenders of the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq, arguing on the 5th anniversary of the invasion that he was right all along. After the photos of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib became public he wrote that such conditions nonetheless made the prison an improvement from its pre-war state. In his most recent piece, Hitchens does not touch on his arguments in support of the war, but he argues that waterboarding as a practice is not helpful in the pursuit and persecution of the war against al Qaeda."One used to be told—and surely with truth—that the lethal fanatics of al-Qaeda were schooled to lie, and instructed to claim that they had been tortured and maltreated whether they had been tortured and maltreated or not," he wrote. "Did we notice what a frontier we had crossed when we admitted and even proclaimed that their stories might in fact be true? I had only a very slight encounter on that frontier, but I still wish that my experience were the only way in which the words “waterboard” and “American” could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) breath." Christopher Hitchens, the British journalist who is among the staunchest defenders of the war in Iraq, was waterboarded for a recent a... more
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YouTube - Watch Christopher Hitchen Get Waterboarded (VANITY FAIR)
"How does it feel to be "aggressively interrogated"? Christopher Hitchens found out for himself, submitting to a brutal waterboarding session in an effort to understand the human cost of America's use of harsh tactics at Guantánamo and elsewhere. VF.com has the footage." "How does it feel to be "aggressively interrogated"? Christopher Hitchens found out for himself, submitting to a brutal waterboarding ... more
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Chris Hitchens submits himself to torture
Author and journalist Chris Hitchens had in the past declared that waterboarding, the practice of pouring water into the breathing passageways of a person, might not be classed as torture but as "extreme interrogation" so Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter challenged him to undergo the process. He is now very much convinced it is torture.
The "official lie" about waterboarding, Hitchens says, is that it "simulates the feeling of drowning". In fact, "you are drowning - or rather, being drowned". Author and journalist Chris Hitchens had in the past declared that waterboarding, the practice of pouring water into the breathing pas... more -
Getting Waterboarded
Kaj Larsen investigates the practice of waterboarding, an interrogation practice allegedly used by the U.S. government. Is it a legitimate technique or torture? Kaj Larsen investigates the practice of waterboarding, an interrogation practice allegedly used by the U.S. government. Is it a legit... more
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Torture timeline shows Bush administration planning torture
For years now, the Bush White House has claimed that the United States does not conduct torture. Prisoner abuse at places like Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, it has asserted, was an aberration -- the work of a few "bad apples" on the night shift. When the CIA used "enhanced" interrogation techniques such as waterboarding (simulated drowning), the abuse, according to Bush officials, did not add up to torture.
But as more and more documents from inside the Bush government come to light, it is increasingly clear that the administration sought from early on to implement interrogation techniques whose basis was torture. Soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon and the CIA began an orchestrated effort to tap expertise from the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape school, for use in the interrogation of terrorist suspects. The U.S. military's SERE training is designed to inoculate elite soldiers, sailors and airmen to torture, in the event of their capture, by an enemy that would violate the Geneva Conventions. Those service members are subjected to forced nudity, stress positions, hooding, slapping, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and, yes, in some cases, waterboarding.
END QUOTE For years now, the Bush White House has claimed that the United States does not conduct torture. Prisoner abuse at places like Abu Ghr... more -
Maybe these kids Know something, Let's Torture them!-- I mean, interrogate them!
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL0631915420080606
It is truly a sad day when America has less ethics than communist China. http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL0631915420080606 ... more -
Amnesty International's anti-waterboarding ad
Slick graphics and disturbing images...
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Our Nation On Paper
When the ACLU requested CIA documents about interrogation techniques, the CIA provided them...sort of.
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infoMania 06.05.08
Chewing up the week's media so we can regurgitate it, half-digested, into your mouth.
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eyewitness accounts of the occupations Winter Soldiers testify
eyewitness accounts of the occupations - Winter Soldiers testify
From March 13th-16th 2008 nearly 300 Veterans assembled outside Washington DC to share searing accounts of the occupations.Organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, the soldiers
testified to the brutality, torture, murder, and widespread mistreatment of Iraqi civilians at the hands of the U.S. military.
They call it Winter Soldier - Iraq and Afghanistan - eyewitness accounts of the occupations
Featured interview: Dahr Jamail , author of Beyond the Green Zone and an UNEMBEDDED journalist in Iraq.at the Winter Soldier hearings, March 15, 2008.
Iraq Veterans Against the War has over 1000 members in 49 states, Washington DC, Canada, and on military bases abroad.
Filmed by Paul Hubbard and Robert Malin eyewitness accounts of the occupations - Winter Soldiers testify ... more -
FBI opened "war crimes" file on Guantánamo
"FBI agents who witnessed the torture of detainees at the US prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba created what they called a “war crimes” file documenting what they had seen, according to a report released Tuesday by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
The file, initiated in 2002, was ordered shut down by higher-ups in 2003 and agents were told to stop keeping records of the illegal acts that they had seen. Nonetheless, the use of the term “war crimes” by the US government’s main domestic intelligence arm, an agency with its own long record of political repression, is an extraordinary confirmation of charges that have long been leveled by opponents of the Bush administration and the criminal practices it has carried out in the so-called “global war on terror.”
According to the OIG report, FBI agents objected to the use by the CIA and the US military of techniques that one FBI official called “borderline torture.” Some agents raised concerns within the agency, but these concerns were ignored or squelched by the White House.
The report is on the role of the FBI in observing or participating in abusive practices, and is based on a survey of several hundred FBI agents. It seeks to absolve the bureau and its agents of responsibility for the abuse".
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You can read the original report here: http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/s0805/final.pdf , but I'd say the article nails it pretty well.
"FBI agents who witnessed the torture of detainees at the US prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba created what they called a “war crime... more
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