Normalizing Torture. By ALFRED W. McCOY After a decade of fiery public debate and bare-knuckle partisan brawling, the United States has stumbled toward an ad hoc bipartisan compromise over the issue of torture that rests on two unsustainable policies: impunity at home and rendition abroad. President Obama has closed the CIA’s “black sites,” its secret prisons where American agents once dirtied their hands with waterboarding and wall slamming.
But via rendition — the sending of terrorist suspects to the prisons of countries that torture — and related policies, his administration has outsourced human rights abuse to Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere. This “resolution” of the torture issue may meet the needs of this country’s deeply divided politics. Perfecting a New Form of Torture The modern American urge to use torture did not, of course, begin on September 12, 2001. The Korean War added a defensive dimension to this mind-control research. But when President Bill Clinton sent the U.N. Normalizing Torture. US Arms Arab Terrorists With Tanks, Fighter Jets, Helicopter Gunships: US Troops in Turkey at the Syrian Border.
Obama has signed a secret order authorizing US support of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The CIA and other agencies were empowered by Obama earlier this year to provide intelligence and training. As the FSA’s efforts have intensified in the last few months, the Obama administration is now admitting to arming them. The support of technology to the FSA has vastly improved their ability to organize and attack the Syrian governmental forces. Smartphones and sophisticated computer equipment provided by the US government have given the FSA an advantage with guerilla clusters hold up in remote trenches with cellular phone communications. A crafty directive was written, giving the US greater covert “non-lethal” assistance and the State Department “set aside” $25 million for the FSA.
Coinciding, another $4.6 million was supposedly being given over for “humanitarian assistance” through the UN’s World Hunger Program, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other various NGOs. Congress Wants to See Obama's "License to Kill" Congress is finally standing up to President Barack Obama on targeted killing. Almost a year after three American citizens were killed in US drone strikes, legislators are pushing the administration to explain why it believes it's legal to kill American terror suspects overseas. Congress is considering two measures that would compel the Obama administration to show members of Congress what Sen.
Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) calls Obama's "license to kill": internal memos outlining the legal justification for killing Americans overseas without charge or trial. Legislators have been asking administration officials to release the documents for nearly a year, raising the issue multiple times in hearings and letters. But the new proposals, including one from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) first flagged by blogger Marcy Wheeler and another in a separate intelligence bill, aren't requests—they would mandate disclosure.
AL QAEDA NEVER EXISTED! BBC Explains U.S. Created the Terrorist Network. The Cheney Fallacy. Former Vice President Cheney says that President Obama's reversal of Bush-era terrorism policies endangers American security. The Obama administration, he charges, has "moved to take down a lot of those policies we put in place that kept the nation safe for nearly eight years from a follow-on terrorist attack like 9/11. " Many people think Cheney is scare-mongering and owes President Obama his support or at least his silence. But there is a different problem with Cheney's criticisms: his premise that the Obama administration has reversed Bush-era policies is largely wrong. The truth is closer to the opposite: The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit.
Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric. This does not mean that the Obama changes are unimportant. The Bush approach to counterterrorism policy included eleven essential elements. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Obama’s embrace of Bush terrorism policies is celebrated as “Centrism” Most important, Goldsmith expresses admiration for Obama’s rhetorical and symbolic changes — such as Obama’s emphasis on obtaining Congressional support for Bush’s policies while highlighting his deep concern for “civil liberties” — because Goldsmith believes that Obama’s rhetoric vests Bush’s policies with more credibility, ensures more bipartisan and Congressional support for these policies, makes them more palatable to Democrats, and thus ensures that those policies will endure in a stronger and longer-lasting form: What’s most striking about the denial of so many Obama supporters about all of this is that Obama officials haven’t really tried to hide it.
White House counsel Greg Craig told The New York Times‘ Charlie Savage back in February that Obama “is also mindful as president of the United States not to do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency.” Adopting the Bush/Cheney approach to war and Terrorism is to “move toward the middle.” Creating a 'Gitmo North' an Alarming Step, Says ACLU. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASECONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org NEW YORK – The Obama administration announced today that it will purchase the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois for the purpose of holding some of the detainees currently remaining at Guantánamo.
Though the administration is leaving unsaid which detainees will be moved there and for what purposes, the information it has provided indicates that some detainees might be held for military commission proceedings in Illinois while others might be held at Thomson indefinitely without charge or trial. The administration has stated that "any detainees at Guantánamo who continue to be held, and for whom no prosecution is planned, will be held only under authority granted by Congress in 2001 under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, as informed by the law of war. " However, the so-called war on terrorism is not a traditional war, having no temporal or geographical boundaries. The following can be attributed to Anthony D. Classified in Gitmo Trials: Detainees’ Every Word. A shadow of a soldier next to a placard on the fence line of the 'Camp Five' detention facility of the Joint Detention Group at the US Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Jan. 19, 2012.
(Jim Watson, AFP, Getty Images) Update, Feb. 1, 2013: When a pretrial hearing for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged 9/11 plotters began this week, an unknown censor shut off the audio feed [1] from the courtroom even though no classified information was being discussed. Even the judge was caught by surprise, and he has now mandated that no one besides the security officer present in court may suspend broadcasting of the court proceedings, The New York Times reported.
Can the government declare anything a Guantanamo detainee does or says automatically classified? That’s the question posed by two challenges to a government order declaring [2] “any and all statements” by the five detainees allegedly behind the 9/11 attacks “presumptively classified.” Since 2002, The “Notorious US Human Rights Abuses” (i.e., Tortures) of 169 Young Arabs Continue in Guantanamo. Hope Dies at Guantánamo The tragic case of Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif hit a dead end when the US Supreme Court issued an order refusing to hear his case last week. Latif, a Yemeni man, has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay since January 2002, after being detained while traveling to seek medical treatment. Latif had suffered serious head injuries as the result of a car accident in 1994, and the Yemeni government paid for him to receive treatment in Jordan at that time. But his medical problems persisted, and in 1999 Yemen’s Ministry of Public Health recommended that Latif undergo tests, therapy and surgical procedures at his own expense.
Unable to afford it, Latif said he left Yemen in 2001 with the help of a charitable worker to seek free medical treatment in Pakistan. When he was picked up in Afghanistan — on his way to Pakistan — and transferred to US custody in December 2001, Latif had his medical records with him. Latif petitioned a federal district court for a writ of habeas corpus. Hiding 9/11′s last secrets. The Zelikow Memo: Internal Critique of Bush Torture Memos Declassified. Washington, DC, April 3, 2012 – The State Department today released a February 2006 internal memo from the Department's then-counselor opposing Justice Department authorization for "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the CIA.
All copies of the memo (Document 1), which reflect strong internal disagreement within the George W. Bush administration over the constitutionality of such techniques, were thought to have been destroyed. But the State Department located a copy and declassified it in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive. The author of the memo, Philip D. "At the time, in 2005 [and 2006]," he wrote, "I circulated an opposing view of the legal reasoning. OLC refers to the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. "My colleagues were entitled to ignore my views," he continued. Document 1: Philip D. Document 2: Stephen G. Document 3: Philip D. Document 4: Philip D. Document 5: Philip D. Jon Stewart on Obama’s Kill List (Video) Dylan Ratigan's epic "Morning Joe" rant. Those CIA Prisons. By KENNETH V. SMITH Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico. Intelligence agencies throughout the world could save a lot of money by simply interviewing taxi drivers.
They know the secrets of their cities and countries. Somehow, they know the truth whether or not it has been officially denied or acknowledged by their governments. There was some news this week about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and that reminded me of a taxi driver I met six years ago. I was planning my first trip to Romania to attend a wedding in Bucharest in January 2006. Included in the Google News links were some reports that the CIA had a super-secret interrogation site for Iraqi and Afghan prisoners near the Black Sea city of Constanta in Romania.
I had almost forgotten these news items. Figure out the Kennedy assassination, so I don’t need another grand global mystery.) I was living in France at the time. As I left the terminal, a taxi driver asked me in German if I wanted a taxi. Obama’s Leadership in War on Al Qaeda. Pete Souza/The White House President Obama in the Oval Office with Thomas E.
Donilon, left, the national security adviser, and John O. Brennan, his top counterterrorism adviser. , overseeing the regular Tuesday counterterrorism meeting of two dozen security officials in the White House Situation Room, took a moment to study the faces. “How old are these people?” It was not a theoretical question: Mr. Mr. “He is determined that he will make these decisions about how far and wide these operations will go,” said Thomas E. Nothing else in Mr. In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. The administration’s failure to forge a clear detention policy has created the impression among some members of Congress of a take-no-prisoners policy.
The Authoritarian Mind - Glenn Greenwald. (updated below – Update II) Yesterday, I wrote about the rotted workings of the Imperial Mind, but today presents a tragic occasion to examine its close, indispensable cousin: the Authoritarian Mind. From CNN today: A suspected NATO airstrike killed eight civilians — including six children — in eastern Afghanistan, a provincial spokesman said. The airstrike took place Saturday night in Paktia province, said Rohullah Samoon, spokesman for the governor of Paktia. The LA Times identified the victims as “Mohammed Shafi, his wife and his six children,” and cited the statements from the spokesman for the Paktia governor’s office that “there is no evidence that Shafi was a Taliban insurgent or linked with Al Qaeda.” An American drone fired two missiles at a bakery in northwest Pakistan Saturday, killing four suspected militants, officials said, as the U.S. pushed ahead with its drone campaign despite Pakistani demands to stop. File Under WTF: Did the CIA Fake a Vaccination Campaign? | Wired Science.
A number of years ago, I was in New Delhi, at the end of an exhausting 18 hours in which I had torn around the city to watch a National Immunization Day. On those days — like a national holiday, with flags and banners and kids let out from school — tens of millions of children line up to stick out their tongues and receive the sugary drops that contain the vaccine that should protect them against polio. The Indian government, along with the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization and the volunteer ground troops of Rotary International, has been organizing these days now for most of two decades, always coming closer to the goal of eradicating polio, never quite getting there. On this day, which occurred close to the end of weeks I had spent embedded with a WHO “STOP Polio” team, 135 million children were expected to queue in cities and suburbs and rich neighborhoods and slums.
There is no evidence the “vaccinations” produced DNA that helped identify bin Laden. War on Terror logic and the Saudis. Now, in sworn statements that seem likely to reignite the debate, two former senators who were privy to top secret information on the Saudis’ activities say they believe that the Saudi government might have played a direct role in the terrorist attacks. “I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia,” former Senator Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, said in an affidavit filed as part of a lawsuit brought against the Saudi government and dozens of institutions in the country by families of Sept. 11 victims and others. Mr. Graham led a joint 2002 Congressional inquiry into the attacks. His former Senate colleague, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a Democrat who served on the separate 9/11 Commission, said in a sworn affidavit of his own in the case that “significant questions remain unanswered” about the role of Saudi institutions.
From the White House, October 12, 2011: Exclusive Investigation: The Truth Behind the Official Story of Finding Bin Laden. Posters of 22 fugitives, including Osama bin Laden, line a wall at the FBI headquarters in Washington, October 10, 2001. (Photo: Stephen Crowley / The New York Times)A few days after US Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in a raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a "senior intelligence official" briefing reporters on the materials seized from bin Laden's compound said the materials revealed that bin Laden had, "continued to direct even tactical details of the group's management. " Bin Laden was, "not just a strategic thinker for the group," said the official.
"He was active in operational planning and in driving tactical decisions. " The official called the bin Laden compound, "an active command and control center. " Such was the official line at the time. In fact, during his six years in Abbottabad, bin Laden was not the functioning head of al-Qaeda at all, but an isolated figurehead who had become irrelevant to the actual operations of the organization. What the Bin Laden Documents Reveal. U.S. has made war on terror a war without end. The Last Months of Osama bin Laden. Karl Rove proud of using waterboarding and says it's not torture. Enhanced Interrogation Techniques: Little Evidence That Harsh Treatment Used By CIA Produced Any Counter-Terrorism Breakthroughs. Giant Mess O'Potamia - Slave Master of One - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 05/12/04. Selective bin Laden leaking.
Ex-CIA Officer Who Destroyed Waterboarding Videos: Torturers "Disgusted" at Being Labeled "Torturers" UK Judges Compare Binyam Mohamed’s Torture To That Of Abu Zubaydah. George W. Bush and torture: America’s highest officials are responsible for the “enhanced interrogation” of prisoners. Obama terror drones: CIA tactics in Pakistan include targeting rescuers and funerals. US Court Denies British MPs Access to Information about Rendition, Torture. Should Alleged Cole Bomber's Testimony Be Secret? Www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22373.pdf. EXCLUSIVE: "Guidebook to False Confessions": Key Document John Yoo Used to Draft Torture Memo Released. Protecting Psychologists Who Harm: The APA's Latest Wrong Turn.
Chris Hedges challenges NDAA in court. CIA Committed 'War Crimes,' Bush Official Says | Danger Room. Newly Released Documents Re-Expose Bush Administration to Legal Liability for Torture. The Drone and the Cross. US Sends Five 9/11 Suspects to Trial Before Military Tribunal. Casualty Comprehension. Hafiz Saeed Bounty: U.S. Offers $10 Million For Pakistani Militant Chief. Juan Cole: Polish PM Admits They Tortured Terror Suspects For US.
The civilian massacre the US neither confirms nor denies. Tongue-cutting at Al Jazeera. The French Way of Fighting Homegrown Terrorism.