Archive for category Torture
Who Is Going To Federal Prison For The CIA’s Torture Program?
Posted by Richard Warnick in Afghanistan, Bush Administration, Human Rights, National Politics, Terrorism, This Blog, Torture, War Crimes on January 27, 2013
Last August, the Department of Justice ended a four-year criminal investigation by federal prosecutor John Durham into interrogation techniques used during the presidency of George W. Bush, including torture. At least two cases resulted in the deaths of detainees in CIA custody. This investigation began in 2008, after we learned about the CIA’s destruction of videotapes of interrogations of terror suspects. Attorney General Eric Holder decided not to initiate any prosecutions.
Late last year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled German citizen Khaled el-Masri was tortured by CIA agents. He was seized in Macedonia in December 2003, tortured, and secretly flown to Afghanistan. Then he was released in April 2004. after the CIA admitted he was wrongly detained. El Masri’s lawsuit in U.S. court for illegal detention was dismissed in 2006 when the court accepted the government’s position that it could invoke the so-called “state secrets privilege” in order to avoid having to admit what the CIA did.
The US Senate’s select committee on intelligence conducted a three-year review of CIA treatment of detainees, producing a 6,000-page classified report that is believed to conclude that the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” adopted by the CIA during the Bush years did not produce any major breakthroughs in intelligence, contrary to previous claims. This report is likely to remain secret. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the intelligence committee chair, says the report contains “startling details” about waterboarding, stress positions, forced nudity, beatings and sleep and sensory deprivation.
Torture and conspiracy to commit torture is a federal crime punishable by up to 20 years in a federal penitentiary, or by the death penalty if it results in the victim’s death. So who is going to prison now that the CIA torture program has been thoroughly investigated?
1. Someone who conducted “enhanced interrogation” torture sessions.
2. Someone who destroyed evidence of torture.
3. Someone who wrote a legal memo justifying the use of torture.
4. Someone high up in the Bush administration who authorized torture.
5. Someone who opposed torture within the CIA and later blew the whistle on the terrible crimes committed in our name.
If you guessed #5, you’re correct.
Last Friday, ex-CIA officer John C. Kiriakou became the first person to be sentenced to prison for issues related to CIA torture. Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act for revealing the name of a former operative involved the Bush era’s brutal interrogation of detainees at Guantanamo to a reporter.
Kiriakou worked as a CIA operative for more than two decades and led a March 2002 raid that captured high-ranking Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah. He was also a vocal torture opponent who revealed his knowledge of U.S. enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, in an ABC interview in 2007.
UPDATE: From Roots Action: Free John Kiriakou
On June 18, 2009, President Obama declared that no one in the CIA would be prosecuted for torture. But now a CIA officer is finally going to prison in connection with torture. However, this CIA officer didn’t torture anyone — he blew the whistle on torture.
In 2007, John Kiriakou was the first person to publicly acknowledge that the CIA was waterboarding people. The retribution for that act of whistleblowing began immediately.
The CIA began filing crime reports with the Department of Justice against Kiriakou. The IRS audited him in 2007 and has done so every year since. His wife was forced out of her job at the CIA. In 2010 an FBI agent pretending to be a foreign spy tried to entrap Kiriakou, who reported the incidents to the FBI. The same FBI follows him everywhere, including into his children’s school.
The DOJ tried unsuccessfully to prosecute Kiriakou under the Espionage Act as a supposed enemy of the state. He became unemployable and racked up a million dollars in lawyers’ bills.
Now Kiriakou is finally going to prison for 30 months for the act of telling an author the name of someone to interview, even though the name was already known and Kiriakou’s prosecution has made it better known.
Kathryn Bigelow’s Torture Movie #1 At Box Office
Posted by Richard Warnick in Bush Administration, Entertainment, National Politics, Terrorism, This Blog, Torture, War Crimes on January 13, 2013
It’s the height of irony that after the CIA illegally destroyed nearly 100 video recordings of torture sessions to avoid being held accountable, the number one movie in American theaters this weekend devotes most of its first hour to a Hollywood re-creation. Director Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-nominated film “Zero Dark Thirty” [Full disclosure: I haven't seen the film and don't intend to] turns torture into entertainment:
Those scenes …show terrified, disoriented and bloodied detainees kept awake for days on end by having their arms painfully suspended from the ceilings of secret jails; stuffed into tiny wooden boxes when they don’t cooperate with their inquisitors; and waterboarded on soiled mattresses while interrogators bark questions.
Bigelow ignores both the illegality and immorality of using torture. As if that’s not bad enough, “Zero Dark Thirty” delivers the message that it was CIA torture that led to finding Osama bin Laden’s hiding place in Pakistan. This is factually wrong. The statement “based on first-hand accounts of actual events” is deceptive because it causes the viewer to think the story is accurate, when what it really means is “based on CIA propaganda.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation program concluded that the CIA did not first learn about the existence of the bin Laden courier from CIA detainees subjected to coercive interrogation techniques and that the CIA detainee who provided the most accurate information about the courier provided the information prior to being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques.
Senators John McCain, Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin have requested information and documents related to the CIA’s cooperation in the making of this film, which lies to the American people about one of the most critical issues of the Bush administration: the criminal use of torture by the CIA, for which no one has ever been prosecuted. We know that on many occasions, detainees were tortured to death in secret CIA prisons.
Sony Chairman Amy Pascal tried to refute criticism of “Zero Dark Thirty” by a member of the Oscar voting academy on Friday, saying her studio’s movie “does not advocate torture.” No one has claimed that it does – only that it lies about torture.
UPDATE: Kevin Gosztola on FDL:
[I]t is impossible not to conclude that this film is the kind of production that greatly pleases the national security state especially because it does not question what they do.
…This is the hunt for Bin Laden told with information from officials in government, who have no objection to America’s increased reliance on secret war or covert operations. Bigelow and Boal wanted the information necessary to tell the version of the story that they believed to be true in a way that would garner them high praise. The CIA gave them that while at the same time manipulating them into presenting torture tactics used to create learned helplessness in prisoners as part of the timeline of events that eventually led to Bin Laden. They showed the NSA intercepting communications and the dolly shot past hardware with wires and cords popping out is made completely innocuous and acceptable. A scene shows a video screen with imagery from a drone striking a target and Maya looks on coldly, completely numbed by the lethal use of force.
The filmmakers played their part. They were given access and what Americans are flocking to this weekend is nothing that would alienate the officials they collaborated with and nothing less than a conventional story of revenge on an American enemy.
The Mother of Awkward Moments
Posted by Larry Bergan in Conservative Sell-Outs, Internet, Torture on October 26, 2012
And I’ve had some BIG ones, but this is precious.
Meatloaf tortures Romney, LIVE, on stage.
Lee Greenwood called in sick.
Rosanne Barr’s plane got delayed.
I haven’t even looked to see if Romney was wearing his flag lapel pin, and I don’t care. We all know he was wrapped in the flag.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
WikiLeaks Releases Prisoner Treatment Manual From Guantanamo
Posted by Richard Warnick in Bush Administration, George W. Bush, Human Rights, Military, National Politics, Prisons, The Constitution, Torture, Transparency, War Crimes on October 25, 2012
Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks website on Thursday started publishing more than 100 US Department of Defense documents including the first prisoner treatment manual for Guantanamo Bay.
…Among the documents is the 2002 manual for staff at Camp Delta at Guantanamo, shortly after it was set up by US President George W. Bush to house alleged Al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees from the “war on terror”.
“This document is of significant historical importance. Guantanamo Bay has become the symbol for systematised human rights abuse in the West with good reason,” said Assange, the founder of the website.
He added: “‘The ‘Detainee Policies’ show the anatomy of the beast that is post-9/11 detention, the carving out of a dark space where law and rights do not apply, where persons can be detained without a trace at the convenience of the US Department of Defense.
“It shows the excesses of the early days of war against an unknown ‘enemy’ and how these policies matured and evolved, ultimately deriving into the permanent state of exception that the United States now finds itself in, a decade later.”
UPDATE: WikiLeaks Releases US Military Policies for Detention & Avoiding Accountability for Torture
Why Do ‘They’ Hate Us?
Posted by Richard Warnick in Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Human Rights, National Politics, Pakistan, Taliban, Terrorism, This Blog, Torture, Tribalism & Blind Obedience to Authority, War, War Crimes on June 13, 2012
Pakistanis hold up a burning mock drone aircraft during a 2011 rally against drone attacks in Peshawar.
Why do “they” hate us? The answer ought to be so obvious that there’s no need to actually explain it. Glenn Greenwald (the whole post is well worth reading):
Far from believing that another 9/11 can’t happen, I’m amazed that it hasn’t already, and am quite confident that at some point it will. How could any rational person expect their government to spend a full decade (and counting) invading, droning, cluster-bombing, occupying, detaining without charges, and indiscriminately shooting huge numbers of innocent children, women and men in multiple countries and not have its victims and their compatriots be increasingly eager to return the violence?
…I realize that screaming “9/11″ has been the trite tactic of choice for those seeking to justify the U.S. Government’s militarism over the last decade, but invoking that event strongly militates against the policies it’s invoked to justify, precisely because those policies are the principal cause of such attacks, for obvious reasons.
…Anwar Awlaki was once such a moderate that he vehemently denounced the 9/11 attacks, got invited to the Pentagon to speak, and hosted a column in The Washington Post on Islam — but then became radicalized by the constant post-9/11 killing of Muslims by his country (the U.S.).
There are plenty of intelligent people in the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon. Why is our foreign policy so boneheaded?
UPDATE: Members of Congress call on Obama to justify drone strikes
“We are concerned that the use of such ‘signature’ strikes could raise the risk of killing innocent civilians or individuals who may have no relationship to attacks on the United States,” the members of Congress, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), wrote Wednesday in a letter to Obama. “Our drone campaigns already have virtually no transparency, accountability or oversight. We are further concerned about the legal grounds for such strikes under the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force.”
“The implications of the use of drones for our national security are profound,” they added. “They are faceless ambassadors that cause civilian deaths, and are frequently the only direct contact with Americans that the targeted communities have. They can generate powerful and enduring anti-American sentiment.”
UPDATE: Ibrahim Mothana: How Drones Help Al Qaeda
Anti-Americanism is far less prevalent in Yemen than in Pakistan. But rather than winning the hearts and minds of Yemeni civilians, America is alienating them by killing their relatives and friends. Indeed, the drone program is leading to the Talibanization of vast tribal areas and the radicalization of people who could otherwise be America’s allies in the fight against terrorism in Yemen.
UPDATE: Clive Stafford Smith: I Met a 16-Year-Old Kid. 3 Days Later Obama Killed Him
UPDATE: UN Investigator Says Drone Strikes May Constitute War Crimes
Killings may be lawful in an armed conflict but many targeted killings take place far from areas where it’s recognized as being an armed conflict. [If] there have been secondary drone strikes on rescuers who are helping [the injured] after an initial drone attack, those further attacks are a war crime.
Related One Utah posts:
Why Do ‘They’ Hate Us? (October 6, 2010)
Why Do ‘They’ Hate Us? (October 20, 2009)
The Long Goodbye
Posted by Richard Warnick in Afghanistan, American History, Bush Administration, Disaster, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Military, National Politics, Pakistan, This Blog, Torture, War, War Crimes on December 18, 2011
Retiring the colors, US Forces Iraq.
Most accounts of the pullout are brief. Five years after Americans voted for withdrawal in the 2006 elections, the U.S. departed Camp Adder on December 16, the last base to be turned over to Iraq. It is now called Imam Ali Base and will be used by the Iraqi Air Force. (Shi’a Muslims regard Ali as the first Imam).
The Iraq fiasco started as a war of aggression labeled “Operation Iraqi Liberation” (OIL), which quickly changed to “Operation Iraqi Freedom” because the acronym gave away the real objective. At the end, it was “Operation New Dawn” (specially formulated for grease-cutting, but gentle enough for your hands).
More than 1.5 million U.S. soldiers have served in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, with around 4,500 of them losing their lives, out of more than 30,000 American casualties. At least 104,000-113,000 Iraqis were killed, though exact totals are nearly impossible to calculate. More than 1.6 million Iraqis fled the country, with another 2.5 million internally displaced. We lost $3 trillion of our taxpayers money.
For America, the occupation of Iraq was unwinnable. Intended to demonstrate the extent of our military power, it instead exposed how limited it really is. At one point almost all our ground forces were either in Iraq, just returned from Iraq, or preparing to deploy back to Iraq. The winners, such as they are: the Kurds, the Shiites, the Iranians and the Chinese.
Iraqis continue to live with a level of violence that would be considered apocalyptic anywhere else. Parts of Baghdad still get only 5 hours of electricity a day. A bomb attack on the oil fields halved production again this week.
Now, the “Mission Accomplished” banner is in storage awaiting the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in 2013.
We can hope to assign to the history books (but never forget) Saddam Hussein, WMD, “shock and awe,” “enhanced interrogation,” Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, Haditha, “Concerned Local Citizens,” and The Sandbox.
Still with us: security contractors (aka mercenaries), “kinetic operations,” PTSD, and the unfinished unwinnable war in Afghanistan/Pakistan.
UPDATE: In Iraq, the last to fall: David Hickman, the 4,474th U.S. service member killed
UPDATE: Video: Drone Watches Last U.S. Convoy Leave Iraq
UPDATE: Andrew Bacevich: “Seldom in the course of human history have so many sacrificed so dearly to achieve so little.”
Utah At Forefront of National, Political Realignment: Run Rocky Run!
Posted by Cliff Lyon in 2012 Elections, Bill O'Reilly, Climate Change, Economic Exploitation, Maddow, National Politics, Occupy Wall Street, Party Politics, Rachel Maddow, Rocky Anderson, Salt Lake City, Sean Hannity, The Constitution, Torture, utah on December 11, 2011
I think I’ve just eye-witnessed the spontaneous birth of a new political party and in the most unlikely of places – Utah.
But, hey. Why not Utah? Are we not the home of political mavericks?
Did we Utahns not replace a senior, sitting senator at convention (Bennett R-UT) with an insane, tea-party nobody? Did we not also deliver the only sane GOP candidate for president (Jon Huntsman)?
That’s right. So no one should be surprised widely popular, 2-term, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson is running for President. And its about time. Even if this time around is just a warm up, it will be fun.
Follow @PresidentRocky
Here’s why: How many progressive, red-state mayors can say they handed Bill O’Reilly his ass on O’Reilly’s own show …/anderson-spanks-bill-oreilly/, or provoked Sean Hannity into to a live debate televised on Fox News! (…that one turned into a professional wrestling match. Make some popcorn its a 2-hour brawl.)
So the news of Rocky’s intentions leaked far too soon and Rachel Maddow got the scoop and the new party’s name – Justice Party – was chosen on Facebook in the hours before the announcement on Maddow.
That was two Wednesday’s ago. The next day, folks began to gather at Rocky’s house in Salt Lake. Paul Zieitz came out from Washington and a nascent steering committee kicked into high gear. The first state committee was tele-formed and a plan to get on the ballot in all fifty states was hatched around a dining room table and a speaker phone. (If you would like to form a committee in your state, contact Paul (end of press release)
This is not at all how I expected a third party to form. I always thought it would be a well funded, meticulously-planned, institutionally sponsored effort. Instead, it just happened. And like the Occupy Movement, no one owns it and it has no platform…yet.
The founding and interim steering committee are made up of the most unlikely characters: more women than men, all busy and passionate, but otherwise ‘unremarkable.’
The first, monumental task ahead is to get on the ballot in California. That means 103,000 Justice party registrations or approx 200K signatures BY JAN 2…two weeks? If that miracle happens, the other 49 states should be a cinch. Stranger things have happened.
Hey, people are winter camping in public parks in every major city in the world and one of the major American political parties seems about to crash and burn along with its media arm (Murdoch). A political vacuum is forming.
Its crazy. Everything is crazy. The rules are changing. A Dkos recommend can change the world. But it feels right and it feels unstoppable.
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