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| 5/23 |
| 2007/11/5-14 [Politics/Domestic/911] UID:48535 Activity:moderate |
11/4 Yes, Virginia, waterboarding is torture:
http://www.csua.org/u/jwk (WashPo)
\_ This article makes me extremely angry. Why is Bush still
in office? Why haven't the criminals responsible for allowing,
and administering waterboarding been put on trial?
\_ What about the invasion of Iraq and misrepresentation of
"intelligence" about wmd? Waterboarding isn't high on my
list of shits to give about.
\_ I'm angry about that too, but this is a black/white
issue that cannot be spun and clearly indicts the
Administration and the criminals running it.
\_ Where's the impeachment?
\_ Regardless of definitions, I want waterboarding to be used on
suspected terrorists.
\_ I suspect you of being a terrorist, can I have you waterboarded
now?
\_ What sort of ratio of innocent suspects to actual terrorists
is acceptable to you? How many innocents are you willing
to have wake up screaming every night from having been
tortured on a waterboard to catch one terrorist? What if
there are effective alternatives to torture? What if
waterboarding elicits incorrect confessions & info 95% of
the time? What then? I happen to think that the US should
not be in the atrocity business even if defending ourselves.
\_ Presumably we're talking about people with a known history
of blowing up innocent people, not some geek pulled off
the street for having an 'impeach bush/cheney' bumper
sticker. If we lived in that sort of society you'd already
be in a re-education camp.
\_ "The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one
spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is
against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed,
and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is
to be stopped at all." -H. L. Mencken
\_ Yes scoundrels like mass murderers. We heavily
enforce those laws in this country. Seriously, I don't
see how your quote applies in this case. You want to
treat foreign terrorists like they're common criminals
when in fact they're been at war for decades, you just
didn't notice. I feel like making the obHitler UN
War Trials @The_Hague reference.
\_ The quote applies like this: you don't _know_ who
is a terrorist and who is not. Few people would
consider it unjust to torture murderers, but it's a
short step from there to torturing _suspected_
murderers to get confessions, and then we're all in
danger of getting arrested at four in the morning.
If you can prove to me (or even a panel of judges
with Top Secret clearance) that an individual is a
terrorist and that this individual has info that
will prevent another 9/11, then you might, *might*
have a case for using torture to get that
information. Until we're at that stage, the very
idea of torturing should be dismissed. Also, this
idea of yours that because they think they're at war
with us we should abandon the principles on which
our society is based is alarmist and baseless.
More efficient organization of the information that
we had already gathered could have prevented 9/11,
so it's not our principles or ethics that must
change, it's what we do with what we already have.
\_ I don't see random people getting dragged off
the street. You're being alarmist. As far as
our Founding Fathers goes, you'd be hard
pressed to find an angel among the lot. What
they wrote did not align with how they acted,
especially compared to today's standards. I
also dispute your contention that we already
had everything we needed to know to stop 9/11.
Are you going to say the lone FBI hero out in
podunk knew and if only we'd listened to her...?
They get a zillion threats and leads every day.
Hers was just one more with no particular reason
at the time to put resources into it.
\_ Presidential Daily Briefing:
"Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US"
August 6, 2001
\_ The 9/11 Commission disagrees with you.
Our civil society is based mightily on
the ideas of due process, regardless of
the characters of our FF. Some of the Gitmo
detainees were dragged off the street:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/34fteo (AP via
Salon).
\_ Someone with a "known history of blowing up innocent
people" is not a suspected terrorist, they are a terrorist.
Do you know who we have been waterboarding? Many of them
have been totally random schmucks who just got picked up
for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
\_ Who? Are you saying Jose Padilla is a totally random
schmuck and he got water boarded? Someone else?
\_ Maher Arar
\_ He's a Canadian citizen. Everything that befell
him was a result of Canada's RCMP's intel failure.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0919/dailyUpdate.html
Got any American citizens dragged off the street
and tortured by the Bush admin?
\_ What I do have is an administration that
refuses to agree that it WON'T EVER drag
American citizens off the street and, umm,
interrogate them using enhanced methods.
Frankly I think that Padilla was tortured,
and the Bush admin. fought taking that to
trial for as long as possible.
\_ Oh, I see. It is okay to toture innocent
Canadians.
\_ I like to waterboard sometimes, but I don't swim that well so
I only do it when the surf is calm. |
| 5/23 |
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| www.csua.org/u/jwk -> www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html?hpid%3Dopinionsbox1&sub=AR Outlook TABLES TURNED Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime By Evan Wallach Sunday, November 4, 2007; Page B01 As a JAG in the Nevada National Guard, I used to lecture the soldiers of the 72nd Military Police Company every year about their legal obligations when they guarded prisoners. I'd always conclude by saying, "I know you won't remember everything I told you today, but just remember what your mom told you: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." CLOSE Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Links to this article That term is used to describe several interrogation techniques. The victim may be immersed in water, have water forced into the nose and mouth, or have water poured onto material placed over the face so that the liquid is inhaled or swallowed. The media usually characterize the practice as "simulated drowning." To be effective, waterboarding is usually real drowning that simulates death. That is, the victim experiences the sensations of drowning: struggle, panic, breath-holding, swallowing, vomiting, taking water into the lungs and, eventually, the same feeling of not being able to breathe that one experiences after being punched in the gut. The main difference is that the drowning process is halted. According to those who have studied waterboarding's effects, it can cause severe psychological trauma, such as panic attacks, for years. The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The US government -- whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community -- has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it. After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture. He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. "Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death." Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding. In this case from the tribunal's records, the victim was a prisoner in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies: A towel was fixed under the chin and down over the face. Then many buckets of water were poured into the towel so that the water gradually reached the mouth and rising further eventually also the nostrils, which resulted in his becoming unconscious and collapsing like a person drowned. This procedure was sometimes repeated 5-6 times in succession. Australia and other Allies) pursued lower-ranking Japanese war criminals in trials before their own tribunals. As a general rule, the testimony was similar to Nielsen's. Consider this account from a Filipino waterboarding victim: Q: Was it painful? |
| preview.tinyurl.com/34fteo -> dir.salon.com/story/news/wire/2005/05/31/detainees/index.html The Pakistani tribesmen slaughtered a sheep in honor of their guests, Arabs and Chinese Muslims famished from fleeing US bombing in the Afghan mountains. But their hosts had ulterior motives: to sell them to the Americans, said the men who are now prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Bounties ranged from $3,000 to $25,000, the detainees testified during military tribunals, according to transcripts the US government gave The Associated Press to comply with a Freedom of Information lawsuit. A former CIA intelligence officer who helped lead the search for Osama bin Laden told AP the accounts sounded legitimate because US allies regularly got money to help catch Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. Gary Schroen said he took a suitcase of $3 million in cash into Afghanistan himself to help supply and win over warlords to fight for US Special Forces. It wouldn't surprise me if we paid rewards, said Schroen, who retired after 32 years in the CIA soon after the fall of Kabul in late 2001. He recently published the book First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan. Rashid Dostum were among those who received bundles of notes. It may be that we were giving rewards to people like Dostum because his guys were capturing a lot of Taliban and al-Qaida, he said. Pakistan has handed hundreds of suspects to the Americans, but Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told the AP, No one has taken any money. The US departments of Defense, Justice and State and the Central Intelligence Agency also said they were unaware of bounty payments being made for random prisoners. The US Rewards for Justice program pays only for information that leads to the capture of suspected terrorists identified by name, said Steve Pike, a State Department spokesman. Some $57 million has been paid under the program, according to its Web site. It offers rewards up to $25 million for information leading to the capture of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But a wide variety of detainees at the US lockup at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, alleged they were sold into capture. Their names and other identifying information were blacked out in the transcripts from the tribunals, which were held to determine whether prisoners were correctly classified as enemy combatants. One detainee who said he was an Afghan refugee in Pakistan accused the country's intelligence service of trumping up evidence against him to get bounty money from the US When I was in jail, they said I needed to pay them money and if I didn't pay them, they'd make up wrong accusations about me and sell me to the Americans and I'd definitely go to Cuba, he told the tribunal. After that I was held for two months and 20 days in their detention, so they could make wrong accusations about me and my (censored), so they could sell us to you. Another prisoner said he was on his way to Germany in 2001 when he was captured and sold for a briefcase full of money then flown to Afghanistan before being sent to Guantanamo. They knew Americans were looking for Arabs, so they captured Arabs and sold them -- just like someone catches a fish and sells it, he said. The detainee said he was seized by mafia operatives somewhere in Europe and sold to Americans because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time -- an Arab in a foreign country. A detainee who said he was a Saudi businessman claimed, The Pakistani police sold me for money to the Americans. This was part of a roundup of all foreigners and Arabs in that area, of Pakistan near the Afghan border, he said, telling the tribunal he went to Pakistan in November 2001 to help Afghan refugees. The military-appointed representative for one detainee -- who said he was a Taliban fighter -- said the prisoner told him he and his fellow fighters were tricked into surrendering to Rashid Dostum's forces. Their agreement was that they would give up their arms and return home. But Dostum's forces sold them for money to the US Several detainees who appeared to be ethnic Chinese Muslims -- known as Uighurs -- described being betrayed by Pakistani tribesmen along with about 100 Arabs. They said they went to Afghanistan for military training to fight for independence from China. When US warplanes started bombing near their camp, they fled into the mountains near Tora Bora and hid for weeks, starving. One detainee said they finally followed a group of Arabs, apparently fighters, being guided by an Afghan to the Pakistani border. We crossed into Pakistan and there were tribal people there, and they took us to their houses and they killed a sheep and cooked the meat and we ate, he said. That night, they were taken to a mosque, where about 100 Arabs also sheltered. After being fed bread and tea, they were told to leave in groups of 10, taken to a truck, and driven to a Pakistani prison. From there, they were handed to Americans and flown to Guantanamo. When we went to Pakistan the local people treated us like brothers and gave us good food and meat, said another detainee. But soon, he said, they were in prison in Pakistan where we heard they sold us to the Pakistani authorities for $5,000 per person. There have been reports of Arabs being sold to the Americans after the US-led offensive in Afghanistan, but the testimonies offer the most detail from prisoners themselves. In March 2002, the AP reported that Afghan intelligence offered rewards for the capture of al-Qaida fighters -- the day after a five-hour meeting with US Special Forces. Intelligence officers refused to say if the two events were linked and if the United States was paying the offered reward of 150 million Afghanis, then equivalent to $4,000 a head. That day, leaflets and loudspeaker announcements promised the big prize to those who turned in al-Qaida fighters. This is enough to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life -- pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people. Helicopters broadcast similar announcements over the Afghan mountains, enticing people to Hand over the Arabs and feed your families for a lifetime, said Najeeb al-Nauimi, a former Qatar justice minister and leader of a group of Arab lawyers representing nearly 100 detainees. Al-Nauimi said a consortium of wealthy Arabs, including Saudis, told him they also bought back fellow citizens who had been captured by Pakistanis. Khalid al-Odha, who started a group fighting to free 12 Kuwaiti detainees, said his imprisoned son, Fawzi, wrote him a letter from Guantanamo Bay about Kuwaitis being sold to the Americans in Afghanistan. One Kuwaiti who was released, 26-year-old Nasser al-Mutairi, told al-Odha that interrogators said Dostum's forces sold them to the Pakistanis for $5,000 each, and the Pakistanis in turn sold them to the Americans. I also heard that Saudis were sold to the Saudi government by the Pakistanis, al-Odha said. If I had known that, I would have gone and bought my son back. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. SALON is registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon Media Group Inc. |
| www.csmonitor.com/2006/0919/dailyUpdate.html Canadian federal inquiry has found that that a Syrian-born Canadian who was seized by US officials at Kennedy Airport in New York in 2002, sent to Syria as a terrorist suspect, tortured, and eventually released after a campaign by his wife, should not have been on the US watch list for terror suspects that led to his ordeal. Justice Dennis O'Connor's newly released report on Arar's deportation by American authorities to Syria portrayed the RCMP as an inexperienced police force that passed erroneous information to American officials both before, and after Arar's detention on Sept. "The potential consequences of labeling someone an Islamic extremist in post-9/11 are enormous," O'Connor wrote in his 822-page report. Justice O'Connor also concluded that US officials acted alone in sending Arar to Syria, and that his deportation came as a "complete surprise to Canadian officials." O'Connor also said that even after he was deported and people had begun to raise questions about him, the RCMP continued to try and prove he was involved in terrorism. "I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr Arar has committed any offence or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada," O'Connor wrote. "This was not a case where investigators were unable to effectively pursue their investigative goals because of lack of resources or time constraints. On the contrary, Canadian investigators made extensive efforts to find any information that could implicate Mr Arar in terrorist activities . tried to smear Arar after his return, releasing "confidential and sometimes inaccurate information about the case to the media for the purpose of damaging Mr Arar's reputation or protecting their self-interest or government interests." Judge O'Connor referred to "leaks" to the Ottawa Citizen newspaper and CTV News that Mr Arar had admitted training at an al-Qaeda terrorist camp in Afghanistan, a country he's never seen. The Canadian government blacked out certain portions of Justice O'Connor's report, citing national security concerns. But the federal inqury's lawyer has already said they will fight this decision, in court if necessary, because Justice O'Connor believes that there is evidence that needs to known by the public. the US practice of "extraordinary rendition," which has "secretly spirited suspects to foreign countries for interrogation by often brutal methods." Although the report centered on Canadian actions, the counsel for the commission, Paul Cavalluzzo, said the results show that the US practice of renditions "ought to be reviewed." "This is really the first report in the Western world that has had access to all of the government documents we wanted and saw the practice of extraordinary rendition in full color," he said in an interview from Ottawa. "The ramifications were that an innocent Canadian was tortured, his life was put upside down, and it set him back years and years." draws "new attention" to the Bush administration's handling of detainees, and comes at time when "the White House and Congress are contesting legislation that would set standards for the treatment and interrogation of prisoners." "The American authorities who handled Arar's case treated Arar in a most regrettable fashion," O'Connor wrote in a three-volume report, not all of which was made public. "They removed him to Syria against his wishes and in the face of his statements that he would be tortured if sent there. Moreover, they dealt with Canadian officials involved with Arar's case in a less than forthcoming manner." The Globe and Mail reports Justice O'Connor also wrote that Canadian officials should never share information with other countries without written conditions on how that information would be used. no doubt that Arar was tortured in Syria, despite denials from Syria and US statements that it never sends anyone to a country where they will be tortured. The RCMP also continued to cause problems for Arar after he returned from Syria, refusing to devulge important information because it would have made the force look bad. Military chaplains: Part 2 Reporter Lee Lawrence spent three months embedded with US military chaplains in Iraq and Afghanistan. She profiles six of them - and their "ministry of presence" - in a weekly series. |