Obama declassifies Bush administration

Torture Friday 24 April 2009

by: John Cory, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

They say that the first casualty of war is truth, but they are wrong. The first casualty of war - is reality. In war, the unreal becomes real and the lie becomes truth.

On Tuesday evening, I watched Anderson Cooper and Bill O'Reilly utter the same euphemism for torture. "Harsh" techniques, they said. And then, to each of their guests they posed the question of whether or not these "harsh interrogation techniques" worked and shouldn't that be an important part of judging their merit? I felt dirty just listening to them.

Harsh interrogation techniques, coercive tactics, enhanced techniques - These are the rebranding tools for torture. In order to avoid turning our eyes away or burying our heads in the sand, we grab politically acceptable words and terms to diminish the sting and shame of actual torture, so we can brag about being a moral society open to the discussion of stressful questioning of enemy combatants. Sterile words remove us from the very real sins of torturing human beings. And the more we become adept at anesthetic language, the easier it becomes to talk without vomiting when we speak our sins aloud. The easier it becomes to torture. The easier it becomes to maintain the nobility of torture as a tool of patriotism.

The talking heads on television now preen and prep to define reality. Torture is not the issue, they say. The politics of torture is the issue and that is the shiny object we should all be focused on. This is political. Right versus left, not right versus wrong.

The Republicans tell us that torture is legal if the Justice Department and the president say it is. Nixon said if the president does it, it is not illegal. But the ensuing investigations and judgments proved him wrong. This time around, the president generated supportive judicial opinions, so that everyone could wave a paper in America's face and say, "See, it's all legal. The Justice Department says so. It is not torture in the strictest legal definition because there is no organ failure or death. God bless America. Amen."

If torture (harsh interrogation) works - why does it take 183 times to get results? Does it wear off after the first five times? Like a bad inoculation? Or did the prisoner just forget the question while he was choking to death and so you had to keep repeating everything?

Republicans and FOX News tell me that President Obama has disgraced and endangered America by smiling and shaking hands with Hugo Chavez, a particularly despicable character. But incorporating the practices of the KGB and Communist China in our interrogation of enemy combatants is the American thing to do. We hate the Evildoers of the world except for those wonderfully effective torture techniques they use.

They tell us that torture is the only way to avoid another 9/11. Haven't we kept America safe since that awful day? Thanks to torture, no one has attacked us since. Never mind that we didn't pay attention to the threat previously, or that we lost focus because the warnings came from Clinton and he was not a real President. Or that Richard Clarke and others shouted about their hair being on fire over the possibility of an attack. No one could have imagined such a thing. No one. Except of course the people who put it in memos that were ignored.

But that was the past and this is the present. Do not look back in anger. Look to the future. Torture is the only way to protect us, to keep us safe. Torture will teach them not to dare think of another attack. It is revenge for what the Evildoers have wrought upon democracy, but even more importantly, it is the sword of justice that will lay waste to our enemies.

We are all Jack Bauer now. The ticking time bomb is out there and we need torture to save America. The threat is imminent. Be afraid. Be very afraid. There are voices telling us that "enhanced interrogation techniques" work, that multiple plots and potential attacks have been averted, secret incidents that cannot be revealed for reasons of national security. Voices intone the gravity of having released these memos authorizing torture that now tell the enemy what to expect and how to defend themselves against these "harsh" techniques. But these warnings and complaints come from the same men who willing revealed the identity of a covert CIA agent for political gain, an agent who was protecting America.

For 60 years, America has denounced the torture tactics of our enemies as being criminal. From WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam to the Iraq War, torture was evil. We invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam because he was evil and tortured his people. We denounced the torture of POWs in Hanoi and pointed out that torture only served a propaganda purpose. And now, we say torture is not torture because we do it humanely. If America tortures, it is not the same as Communists and tyrants and Islamic fundamentalists. There is good torture and bad torture. America defines the difference.

And so, the great talking heads and pundits of the media village will inoculate us against guilt and anger by explaining the game of politics and morality. The game of semantics will numb our indignation if we just listen to their soothing voices in the darkness that has become America. They will calm our troubled hearts. They will ease our pain and whisper the words we so desperately want to hear, "There, there, you are America. You are good. You are special. You do not torture. You simply protect us from the monsters under the bed. Hush now, don't look in the mirror; just close your eyes and everything will be all right."

amnestyusa.org/war-on-terror/

International Humanitarian Law - Treaties & Documents

Torture Memos: ‘What Is Done in the Dark’

by Valerie Elverton Dixon 04-23-2009

Jesus taught: “For nothing is hidden that will not be disclosed, nor is anything secret that will not become known and come to light” (Luke 8:17). In other words: the truth will come out.President Obama was right to release memos describing CIA interrogation techniques that add up to torture. News reports say there was controversy inside the administration about whether or not to release them. President Obama decided yes. Whether or not those who ordered the torture or devised the legal opinions to justify it will face prosecution remains an open question.

History shows us that at some point, some way, somehow the truth comes to light. It must, because the truth is that which coheres with reality. And the truth is deeper than a list of facts. The truth is facts in context, facts in use, facts and consequence, facts and meaning. Truth is the heart and soul of existence.

History also teaches us the harvest of terror and torture — continued cycles of violence, psychological trauma, and corruption of a national soul. There is no new thing under the sun. The French-Algerian anti-colonial war is an example of what happens when terrorism and torture become tactics of war. They both work in the short term, but in the long run they leave deep wounds that are slow to heal. Terrorism caused the French public to become weary of the war, but that same French public also became appalled by torture done in their name. Since the anti-colonial war, Algeria has been plagued by terrorism. Factions out of power seek power through the tactic of terrorism.

As for torture, the torture tortured the torturers. Writing in The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon wrote of the psychological damage the violence caused to those on all sides, including those who administered torture. In one case, a European police inspector came to the clinic where Fanon worked for psychiatric help. He had been torturing his wife and children. Fanon wrote: “At home he has a constant desire to give everyone a beating. And he violently assaults his children, even his twenty-month-old baby.” The torturer spoke of being worn out by the torture.

The psychological harm is true for American torturers as well. Writing for The New York Times, Scott Shane reports the trauma to those applying and watching the torture. One observer said: “Seeing these depths of human misery and degradation has a traumatic effect.” Moreover, the trauma is not limited to individuals.

In the case of the French-Algerian conflict, a scar remains on French society because of this history of torture. This ought to be a caution for us. Evil knows no boundaries. When we unleash it, even in response to evil, it washes over us all and corrupts. Torture is evil. That is why it is done in the dark. That is why we ought to bring it to light and hold those who ordered torture in our name to account. http://blog.sojo.net/2009/04/23/torture-memos-what-is-done-in-the-dark/

Dr. Valerie Elverton Dixon is an independent scholar who publishes lectures and essays at JustPeaceTheory.com. She received her Ph.D. in religion and society from Temple University and taught Christian ethics at United Theological Seminary and Andover Newton Theological School.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Torture In US Goes Unprosecuted Beyond Gitmo (VIDEO)

By John Hamilton

Finally, there's been a criminal indictment for acts of torture.

No, this isn't a case involving CIA operatives waterboarding high-value detainees. It's not a case, either, involving the Justice Department lawyers who redefined torture to allow for such niceties as "walling," "sleep deprivation," and "insects placed in a confinement box."

It's a case involving a 16-year-old runaway in the town of Tracy, a dusty suburb of Stockton surrounded by the farms of California's central valley. Husband and wife Michael Schumacher and Kelly Lau Schumacher and two accomplices stand accused of keeping the teen shackled as a prisoner in their home, where he says he was starved, repeatedly beaten with a baseball bat, and burned with corrosive chemicals. This month a grand jury indicted the four suspects on seventeen counts, including kidnapping, aggravated mayhem, and torture. This June they will stand trial for their alleged crimes. If convicted, they face sentences of up to life in prison.<

The Tracy case reminds us--as if we needed a reminder--that torture is among the most serious crimes that one human being can inflict on another. It's on a par with rape, with slavery, or murder. The U.S. felony statute against torture calls for up to 20 years in prison for anyone committing the act, or conspiring to commit torture.

Yet a number of well-documented cases of torture have gone unpunished. At secret prisons operated overseas by the CIA, and at military prisons at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, detainees in the "War on Terror" were subjected to physical abuse, prolonged sleep deprivation, and an infamous simulated drowning known as "waterboarding." Such torments would have been at home in that God-forsaken home in Tracy. Instead, they were official U.S. policy.

So what happens when those who ordered the crime of torture are high-ranking officials in the executive branch? What if the torturers were CIA and military officers, answering to the Attorney General, the Vice President, the National Security Advisor, or even the President himself? Can these people be held to account?

I set out to try to answer that question in a new documentary I created for Link TV, "Torture on Trial".

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In his relatively few public comments on the issue, President Obama has taken a firm stand against torture, but has gone to great lengths to avoid answering questions about whether officials in the former Bush administration should be held to account for violations of U.S. and international laws. Responding to a question from Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein about whether to prosecute former Bush administration officials, the President said that, "nobody's above the law and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen." But he hedged against prosecutions, saying that, "generally speaking, I'm more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards."

But the door to accountability is not closed. Though he has said he does not favor a Congressional inquiry, Obama has--grudgingly--said that it is up to the attorney general to investigate whether laws were broken.

So while accountability remains an option, how might it take place?

For starters, accountability could mean the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, or the disbarment of John Yoo. At the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, the pair co-authored a serious of now-infamous memos that argued an interrogation technique crossed the line into the realm of torture only if it produced pain equivalent to what a prisoner might experience during "organ failure...or even death."

Accountability might take shape through a non-partisan commission of inquiry--as Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy has suggested--similar to the 9/11 commission. Though the Obama administration has blown the lid off many of the dirty secrets of the Bush administration's interrogation tactics, there are still a great many unanswered questions swirling around the issue of torture. The task of reconstructing the past was made much more difficult after the CIA admitted its agents destroyed 92 videotapes showing "enhanced interrogation" methods used against detainees.

Finally, accountability might mean the appointment of a special prosecutor by the attorney general. That could ultimately culminate in real prosecutions of those found to have committed felony acts of torture.

The interrogation rooms of Guantanamo are a long way from the Schumacher's two-storey home in Tracy. But torture is torture. Shouldn't the law apply equally to all those who mete it out?

John Hamilton is a producer with Link TV, a nationwide television network available in more than 31 million U.S. homes as a basic service on DIRECTV channel 375 and DISH Network channel 9410. Select programs are shown on more than 50 urban cable systems, including New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. "Torture on Trial" premieres on Link TV this Sunday, May 3rdat 10:00 p.m. ET/7:00 p.m. PT, and will be viewable in its entirety online at LinkTV.org

Torture. The word appears almost daily in the headlines of newspapers across the country. As long-held secrets of the Bush administration's policies on detention and interrogation are revealed, Americans are increasingly asking questions: behind the closed doors of far-away prisons, what acts were committe d in our name? Who committed these acts? And will they be held to account? Can a nation that has committed torture afford to walk away from its past?

(Global Pulse: April 24, 2009) Obama declassifies Bush administration documents that detail and attempt to legalize what some have called "torture techniques."

While the U.S media seem focused on the political ramifications, media worldwide present the brutality of torture and point the finger of blame directly at Bush.

SOURCES: FOX, CBS, ABC, CNN, The Daily Show, U.S; TV5, France; Press TV, Iran; TVN, Chile; Al Jazeera English, Qatar