Oh... you meant THIS torture tape???

You gotta be sh!tting me.

Gitmo in Brief

(Via ProPublica)

So far, only 24 of the 779 men held at Guantánamo at some point have been charged with a crime to be heard by a military commission. Four of them have been convicted. Only one detainee, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, has been moved from Guantánamo to face charges in a civilian court; that case is currently unfolding in federal court in New York.

For those of you keeping score at home, that would be 3% of those ever held at Gitmo end up getting charged - and 17% of those charged so far have been convicted.

Pivot Point on Waterboarding

(Via Glenn)

Is waterboarding torture?

Well, according to the John F. Kennedy School of Government, it depends on when you ask (emphasis added):

Examining the four newspapers with the highest daily circulation in the country, we found a significant and sudden shift in how newspapers characterized waterboarding. From the early 1930s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27). By contrast, from 2002‐2008, the studied newspapers almost never referred to waterboarding as torture. The New York Times called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles (1.4%). The Los Angeles Times did so in 4.8% of articles (3 of 63). The Wall Street Journal characterized the practice as torture in just 1 of 63 articles (1.6%). USA Today never called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture. In addition, the newspapers are much more likely to call waterboarding torture if a country other than the United States is the perpetrator. In The New York Times, 85.8% of articles (28 of 33) that dealt with a country other than the United States using waterboarding called it torture or implied it was torture while oly 7.69% (16 of 208) did so when the United States was responsible. The Los Angeles Times characterized the practice as torture in 91.3% of articles (21 of 23) when another country was the violator, but in only 11.4% of articles (9 of 79) when the United States was the perpetrator.

Nice.

Flip the lights on...

...and watch the roaches scatter.

The British courts have ruled against American and British assertions of national security in the Binyam Mohamed case.

I have to say, I'm completely unimpressed with the Obama administration's reflexive defense of Bush era secrets. So it's good to see some daylight finding its way to the public, even if it had to happen overseas.

And now we know that we shall never know

Liebermann's transparent attempt to conceal evidence of the abuse of prisoners in American custody is all but assured of passage.

That would be a Democratic congress, working in harmony with a Democratic President, to hide evidence of crimes ordered by the previous administration.

What an absolute disgrace.

Freedom of information, provided you can pay for it

Balkinization has a great post about the ACLU's role in prying documents out of the government.

The torture story is one of the most important examples of American journalism in the last decade. But it was not revealed through traditional investigative reporting alone. Instead, a non-profit organization-- the ACLU--worked in coordination with journalistic efforts to mount a long-term litigation campaign to gain access to important government information. The ACLU then provided the information to the general public on the Internet, and journalists wrote stories based on the revelations, which led to further ACLU requests and more litigation, producing further revelations, and so on.

It is unlikely that many newspapers today--strapped as they are for cash--would have been able to mount a litigation campaign of many years as expensive or as effective as the ACLU did in order to obtain information for a story.

America's Minotaur debate

Once again, the foolishness of American political debate is best encapsulated by satire.

Witness - the torture debate, as rendered by The Onion:



(H/t to CJR)

The inevitable first ruling on torture evidence

Shows up at last:

In the first ruling of its kind, a federal judge on Friday barred the federal government from using any statements made by a Guantanamo Bay detainee since he was captured in Afghanistan more than six years ago, finding that all of them were “a product of torture.”  U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle did so two days after the Obama Administration notified her that it would not oppose the efforts by lawyers for Mohammed Jawad to block the use of any of those statements as a basis for keeping him in captivity.

(Via SCOTUS blog)

Maddow's Whitehouse interview

Sen. Whitehouse is acting like the SSCI has the goods on the torture debate.

Good stuff all round.

(H/t to emptywheel, natch)

DOJ's Comey: Truth to Power

Wow. If you're tracking the torture debate - you can do worse than read the recently released emails from then-Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey.

Glennzilla takes the emails, the slanted NTY story based on them and basically beats them senseless.

Good times.

There are some real money quotes in Comey's emails:

Regarding the current crop of decision makers at DOJ:

Everyone seemed to be thinking as if they still worked at the White House and not the United States Department of Justice

or (regarding then-AG Alberto Gonazlez):

People may think it strange to hear me say I miss John Ashcroft, but as intimidated as he could be by the WH, when it came to crunch time, he stood up, even from an intensive care hospital bed. That backbone is gone.

Ex Post Facto

Okay, I'm a bit behind on things, but Lindsey Graham and Joe Liebermann are complete tools.

They seem to have fallen in with the "If we did it, we needed to at the time and besides it's in the past" crowd.

They're pushing the Orwellian named Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009.

And by protecting, they mean that we are being protected from knowing what was done.
Which is a very wordy way of saying cover up.

I get that there are people out there who think that these pictures will cause problems for us. I get that. But that's like the criminal saying we shouldn't look into his car because he might go to jail for what's in his trunk.

Obama's all for it, apparently.Perhaps he's glad someone else is stepping forward so he doesn't have to.

These pictures have been ordered released by the courts, now the rules will be amended to undo that ruling. Retroactively.

Here's the language of the act:

(b) Definitions- In this section:

(1)COVERED RECORD- The term ‘covered record’ means any record--

(A) that is a photograph that was taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States; and

(B) for which a certification by the Secretary of Defense under subsection (c) is in effect.

(2) PHOTOGRAPH- The term ‘photograph’ encompasses all photographic images, whether originals or copies, including still photographs, negatives, digital images, films, video tapes, and motion pictures.

(c) Certification-

(1) IN GENERAL- For any photograph described under subsection (b)(1)(A), the Secretary of Defense shall certify, if the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, determines that the disclosure of that photograph would endanger--

(A) citizens of the United States; or

(B) members of the Armed Forces or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States.

(2) CERTIFICATION EXPIRATION- A certification submitted under paragraph (1) and a renewal of a certification submitted under paragraph (3) shall expire 3 years after the date on which the certification or renewal, as the case may be, is submitted to the President.

(3) CERTIFICATION RENEWAL- The Secretary of Defense may submit to the President--

(A) a renewal of a certification in accordance with paragraph (1) at any time; and

(B) more than 1 renewal of a certification.

(4) CERTIFICATION RENEWAL- A timely notice of the Secretary’s certification shall be provided to Congress.

(d) Nondisclosure of Detainee Records- A covered record shall not be subject to--

(1) disclosure undersection 552 of title 5, United States Code (commonly referred to as the Freedom of Information Act); or

(2) disclosure under any proceeding under that section.

(e) Nothing in this section shall be construed to preclude the voluntary disclosure of a covered record.

(f) Effective Date- This section shall take effect on the date of enactment of this Act and apply to any photograph created before, on, or after that date that is a covered record.

There are smarter people than me spelling out what's wrong with this law, but here's my bullet list:

1) It retroactively undoes the rulings of the federal courts (nothing new here, but when there is the likelihood of wrongdoing, it smells pretty bad.)
2) There's no oversight. The SecDef gets to designate any photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 as off limits to the public. They have to say that it will endanger the troops, but there is no independent arbitrator of their assessment. They say so, it's secret for three years.
3) It can be renewed indefinitely. This makes the records secret until somebody forgets to keep them secret.

I'm just flat out disgusted with the new administration for not publically opposing this piece of legislative dung.

6 second conversion

(Via TPM)

I don't know how many times this demonstration has to be done, but here is yet another defender of waterboarding changing his tune after experiencing it.

This time around, it's radio host Eric Mueller.

Had I known that it was that bad I wouldn't have done this ...
I don't want to say this: absolutely torture.

Props to the man for putting his nose and mouth where his mouth was - but really: why does anyone still need to learn this lesson?

Calling Dick Cheney's bluff

TPM asks a question that guts the position of the former vice president:

If Torture Stopped In 2004, How Is Obama Endangering Americans By Banning It?

Forget Pelosi, watch Maddow

Pelosi's flap is a sideshow. Sure, she'll get hers, but who gives a sh!t?

THIS is the big deal. Torturing people is (dubiously authorized) to defend America.
Despite this, torture is actually used to retcon a reason to invade Iraq.

Yes, that's been said before - but not with quite as many sources as we're seeing now.

Just watch the first six and a half minutes.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

If that's true (even in part) there are some people who need to go to jail. And some of them used to hold elected office.

Worse than Obama's adoption of Bush policies

Glennzilla pegs perhaps a potentially more enduring and insidious byproduct of Obama's decisions to proceed with military tribunals and conceal evidence of prisoner abuse:

Under Bush, half the country was trained to recite all sorts of dangerous propositions about how important it is to vest The President with all sorts of powers to keep us safe, how vital it is that he keep things secret to protect us from the Terrorists, how we can trust in our leaders to exercise in ways we don't understand because we know he's good at heart.

And now, with Obama, a significant portion of the other half of the country is being trained to recite the same things.

Any Obama supporters who feel the urge to back these reversals because Obama's "their guy" had better think long and hard about what that means.

Stating what is obvious [to everyone but Washington]

(Via Glenn Greenwald)

Props to MN's ex-governor. Say what you want about the man, he knows crime when he sees it - and he's got a gift for the soundbite (emphasis mine):

[Jesse] VENTURA:  I don't watch much TV. This year's reading, I covered Bush's life. I covered Guantanamo and a few other subjects. And I'm very disturbed about it. I'm bothered over Guantanamo because it seems we've created our own Hanoi Hilton. We can live with that?  I have a problem. I will criticize President Obama on this level; it's a good thing I'm not president because I would prosecute every person that was involved in that torture. I would prosecute the people that did it. I would prosecute the people that ordered it. Because torture is against the law. 

[CNN's Larry] KING: You were a Navy SEAL.

VENTURA: That's right. I was water boarded, so I know -- at SERE School, Survival Escape Resistance Evasion. It was a required school you had to go to prior to going into the combat zone, which in my era was Vietnam. All of us had to go there. We were all, in essence -- every one of us was waterboarded. It is torture.

KING: What was it like?

VENTURA:  It's drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you -- I'll put it to you this way, you give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.

Watch the video clip.

It's just so illuminating to see a member of the the media softball club confronted with someone who is unabashedly accusing the Bush administration of criminal conduct. King's running footage of the White House Correspondents dinner, asking if Obama is "likeable" saying "alright already with Bush" - and Ventura just steamrolls him.

Ventura is certainly not the most enlightened politician - but as Glenn points out - he's hardly a bleeding heart from the far-left.

He wants torture prosecuted because it is wrong. Because it is a stain on the country he loved and served.

Hell yeah.

Zelikow Torture Memo Found

(via TPM)

Zelikow told the Senate committee that the memo, which had not previously been found, "has been located in State Department files and is being reviewed for declassification."

Weak

Torture Memos Will Not Result in Prosecutions

By DAVID JOHNSTON and SCOTT SHANE

Published: May 6, 2009

A draft of a Justice Department report found serious errors of judgment in secret memos authorizing brutal interrogations, but opposed prosecuting the authors.

Yes, they greenlighted procedures that violated the US code, but it's not like they engaged in a crime...

Brian Tamanaha over at Balkinization has a excellent description of what is about to occur:

These events ...have revealed a template for how high government officials can successfully engage in a conspiracy to violate U.S. law: Run a proposed illegal course of action through the OLC, have the Office lawyers produce a "legal opinion" (no matter how tortured) finding that the actions do not violate the law, and you are all set. The key is to get the OLC lawyers to go along.

After the dirty deeds are done, if the illegal conduct is exposed and serious heat comes, the policy makers (the "deciders") can say they cleared it with the OLC lawyers; those who engaged in the illegal conduct can say they relied upon the authorization of the OLC lawyers; the OLC lawyers can claim they wrote the memos in good faith under pressure, and complain that it is unfair to second guess them after the fact.

Nice and tidy. Ready to be pulled out the next time a group of crazies decide their ends justify any means.

Sec. Clinton to Cheney: Shut up

I love this (via Reuters):

"It won't surprise you that I don't consider him (Cheney) a particularly reliable source," [Sec. of State Hillary] Clinton told the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee.

[snip]

"That policy disagreement is whether or not you can uphold the values in which this country was founded at the same time that you protect the citizens that live in that country. (The) president of the United States in this administration believes that you can. The vice president has come to, in our opinion, a different conclusion,"

'bout time somebody pointed out that Cheney's mouth is bigger than his grasp on reality.

In our own defense, we're idiots

I'm going to ask you to belive I'd drafted a lengthy post about the recent NYT article:

In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Look at Past Use

Top U.S. officials involved in the adoption of brutal interrogation methods did not investigate the origins of the techniques they approved with little debate.

I did. Seriously.

The general thrust of which was this: Are you f-ing kidding me??

The NYT has interviewed "more than two dozen current and former senior officials of the C.I.A., White House, Justice Department and Congress."

Anonymously.

All are trying to sell the line of crap that everyone greenlighting the adaptation of SERE's torture techniques to interrogating US prisoners never bothered to look into what they were authorizing.

SERE: designed to brutalize US soldiers in preparation for torture at the hands of our enemies. NOBODY thought to look into what techniques are used and if they have historically been viewed as torture?

-But there I go off track.

I was about to write that post, but then I read Charles Kaiser in CJR and figured - screw it, leave it to the pros.

Arrgh!