Torturer’s Apprentice - Magazine. The new science of interrogation is not, in fact, so new at all: “extraordinary rendition” and “enhanced interrogation” and “waterboarding” all spring directly from the practices of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. The distance, in both technique and ideology, between the Inquisition’s interrogation regime and 21st-century America’s is uncomfortably short—and provides a chilling harbinger of what can happen when moral certainty gets yoked to the machinery of torture.
Science Museum/SSPL Umberto Eco, in his best-selling 1980 novel, The Name of the Rose, summons to life a dark and compelling character: Bernard Gui, a bishop and papal inquisitor. In the movie, he is played with serpentine menace by F. Murray Abraham. The year is 1327, and Gui has come to an abbey where a series of murders has been committed. It falls to him to convene a tribunal and examine the suspects. Bernard Gui is a historical figure. Inquisition records can be highly detailed and shockingly mundane. George W. Bush and torture: America’s highest officials are responsible for the “enhanced interrogation” of prisoners.
Michelle Shepard/AFP/Getty Images. It began with one document. On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the terrorist attacks in Washington, D.C., President George W. Bush sent a 12-page Memorandum of Notification to his National Security Council. That memorandum, we know now, authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to set up and run secret prisons. We still don’t know exactly what it says: CIA attorneys have told a judge the document is so off-limits to the courts and the American people that even the font is classified. Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit—a lawsuit the New York Times has called “among the most successful in the history of public disclosure”—we now know much of what happened in those secret spaces the Bush administration created. Our highest government officials, up to and including President Bush, broke international and U.S. laws banning torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
Then they tortured. They tortured innocent people. Torture dehumanizes. Innocent and Imprisoned: A Former Gitmo Detainee Speaks Out - Conor Friedersdorf - Politics. Held without charges for seven years, he was finally freed when a federal judge reviewed the evidence against him. His captors never paid. For a brief moment at the end of George W. Bush's tenure, before Barack Obama even took office, a few naive souls hoped that Bush Administration officials would be investigated to determine if they broke the law while in power, tried if the evidence warranted it, and jailed (like so many less-politically-connected American lawbreakers) if their guilt was proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
Those who advocated treating Bush Administration officials as if they were accountable to the rule of law as regular citizens were deemed radicals. Never mind that Americans daily have their doors broken down by police with flash grenades and assault weapons for being suspected of possessing an ounce of marijuana. Never mind that law enforcement routinely seizes the assets of American citizens without proving they are guilty of a crime. That gave them carte blanche. Comment: Hiding at Guantánamo.
On Wednesday, Abd al Rahim al Nashiri will be arraigned at what is called the Expeditionary Legal Center at Guantánamo Bay. “Expeditionary” is the right word: the proceedings will enter new territory, on a course that is only half-plotted. Nashiri is charged with planning the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, in October, 2000, during the last months of the Clinton Administration, killing seventeen Americans. He was captured in the United Arab Emirates, in 2002, under George W. The trial is expeditionary in another sense, too: it seems, in some respects, to have been thrown together at the last minute.
A great deal of thought has been put into certain details—there’s a brand-new Web site, which cost the government half a million dollars, with a feature that allows you to add proceedings at Guantánamo to your calendar—and almost none into other, basic ones. There are reasons, or at least excuses, for the jerry-built feel of the military commissions. We don’t have jails? Why Obama Can't Close Guantanamo. The last two prisoners to leave the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay were dead. On February 1, Awal Gul, a 48-year-old Afghan, collapsed in the shower and died of an apparent heart attack after working out on an exercise machine.
Then, at dawn one morning in May, Haji Nassim, a 37-year-old man also from Afghanistan, was found hanging from bed linen in a prison camp recreation yard. In both cases, the Pentagon conducted swift autopsies and the U.S. military sent the bodies back to Afghanistan for traditional Muslim burials. These voyages were something the Pentagon had not planned for either man: each was an "indefinite detainee," categorized by the Obama administration's 2009 Guantánamo Review Task Force as someone against whom the United States had no evidence to convict of a war crime but had concluded was too dangerous to let go.
On paper, at least, the Obama administration would be set to release almost half the current captives at Guantánamo. Don't have an account? Register. Remember Guantanamo? On : Monday, 26 Mar, 2012 Hearts and Minds The Obama administration has yet to fulfill its promise of closing Guantanamo. This is in part due to the fact that the administration does not have many alternatives to the off-site prison. Repatriating detainees is a long, burdensome and political process as the case of Omar Khadr demonstrates. However, if the US intends on closing the prison, a solution must be found to the red tape that stands in the way.
Family and supporters of Omar Khadr rally across the street from the US consulate on University Ave in Toronto in January 2009 Since prior to taking office, President Obama made a series of promises regarding the trial of Guantanamo detainees and the eventual closure of the facility. Perhaps the story of Omar Khadr, an inmate in Guantanamo, illustrates the challenges that have lingered best. Ten years have past since then, and at 25 Mr. The problems arising in the repatriation process are both bureaucratic and political. Paula Mejia More Posts. What we might want to remember about forgetting on the 10th anniversary of the Prison Camp at Guantanamo. JOHN MOORE/Getty Images Ten years ago today, George W. Bush’s first 20 prisoners arrived at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. They were, we were promised at the time, “the worst of the worst.” Eventually the camp came to house almost 800 prisoners, of whom 171 still remain.
Dahlia Lithwick writes about the courts and the law for Slate. Follow In the foreign press they are saying that the camp “weighs heavily on America’s conscience” and that “the shame of Guantanamo remains.” So while the rest of the world experiences this day in terms of how the United States ever got itself into this situation and what it’s all done to America’s reputation abroad, here in the United States the discourse is confined to how we will continue to live with it and why. That’s always been the challenge of Guantanamo: making it seem real to Americans who have tended to think of the Cuban camp as the potted palm in the war on terror.
Guantanamo. 9/11 suspects refuse to answer judge's questions as Guantánamo trial opens | World news | The Observer. The self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and four other accused terrorists were ordered to stand trial at a hearing before a Guantánamo military tribunal that descended into chaos on Saturday as the defendants refused to acknowledge the judge and their lawyers repeatedly challenged the legitimacy of the court. The accused men, one of whom was brought to the arraignment hearing strapped to a restraining chair after refusing to attend, dropped their previous insistence on pleading guilty and demanding to be executed in favour of largely sitting in silence as defence lawyers attempted to raise the issue of torture and question the independence of the judge. None of the defendants chose to enter a plea at the hearing and reserved it for a later appearance. The judge set a tentative trial date of May 2013 although he acknowledged that there are likely to be more delays.
In contrast on Saturday the accused men refused to participate in the one-day hearing. Terror on Trial | William Shawcross on Legal Proceedings Against Extremists. The biggest problem with Qatada? He’s innocent | Luke Samuel. Nothing can reduce the British state to a jibbering wreck quite like a suspected terrorist. Following the decision of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission to release Abu Qatada, who is known by the Home Office as the ‘spiritual leader of al-Qaeda’, the message from the government was very clear: be afraid, be very afraid. Ministers fell over themselves to tell us how scary this portly preacher was.
Home secretary Theresa May called Qatada a ‘very dangerous terrorist’. Former security minister Hazel Blears said we should be ‘horrified’ at the prospect of Qatada being on the streets. Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the government should ‘strain every sinew’ to have Qatada deported. There is one fact about this case which gives this fearmongering its sinister edge: Abu Qatada is an innocent man. Despite his innocence, the British state has spent nine years straining sinews to keep Qatada locked up. How Much Is Security Worth? Soon after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, conventional wisdom argued that another attack was imminent. Ohio State University Professor John Mueller was among the few who challenged conventional wisdom. Mueller, who prides himself on questioning assumptions most consider fact, has applied this approach to topics as varied as public opinion during the Vietnam War, popular conceptions of warfare, and perceptions of democracy and capitalism.
In 2006, following the publication of Mueller’s book, Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them,he received an email from Mark Stewart, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Newcastle in Australia. Stewart, who had done work on risk and cost assessment and homeland security, happened to be visiting Ohio State at the time. They met for coffee. John Mueller: The question is not “Are we safer” but “How safe are we?” JM: We couldn’t find any. The spectacle of terror and its vested interests | Naomi Wolf. The news stories, which quickly surface, long enough to cause scary headlines, then vanish before people can learn how often the cases are thrown out. These are stories about "bumbling fantasists", hapless druggies, the aimless, even the virtually homeless and mentally ill, and other marginal characters with not the strongest grip on reality, who have been lured into discourses about violence against America only after assiduous courting, and in some cases outright payment, by undercover FBI or police informants.
They have become a litany in recent years. The terrifying 2003-2004 national news stories that a Detroit "sleeper cell" had sent Muslim terrorists to blow up Disneyland and other landmarks, including in Las Vegas, was later thrown out of court, with accusations of prosecutorial misconduct, to almost no press attention – the same cycle of hype and failed convictions that have characterized many such stories. The men's relatives accused the FBI of entrapment.
The U.S. Military’s “Third-Country Nationals” It was lunchtime in Suva, Fiji, a slow day at the end of the tourist season in September of 2007, when four men appeared in the doorway of the Rever Beauty Salon, where Vinnie Tuivaga worked as a hair stylist. The men wore polished shoes and bright Hawaiian shirts, and they told Vinnie about a job that sounded, she recalls, like “the fruits of my submission to the Lord all these years.”
How would she like to make five times her current salary at a luxury hotel in Dubai, a place known as the City of Gold? How would she like to have wealthy Arab customers, women who paid ridiculous fees for trendy cut-and-color jobs? “I’ll talk it over with my husband,” she replied, coolly, but her pulse was racing. Vinnie, who was forty-five, had never worked abroad, but she often dreamed of it while hearing missionaries’ lectures at her local church. Nearly six feet tall and two hundred and thirty pounds, Vinnie moved with an arthritic gait. But she took care with her appearance. That April, George W. How the War on Terror Has Militarized the Police - Arthur Rizer & Joseph Hartman - National.
Over the past 10 years, law enforcement officials have begun to look and act more and more like soldiers. Here's why we should be alarmed. Danny Moloshok / Reuters At around 9:00 a.m. on May 5, 2011, officers with the Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff's Department's Special Weapons and Tactics (S.W.A.T.) team surrounded the home of 26-year-old José Guerena, a former U.S. Marine and veteran of two tours of duty in Iraq, to serve a search warrant for narcotics. Within moments, and without Guerena firing a shot--or even switching his rifle off of "safety"--he lay dying, his body riddled with 60 bullets. Sadly, the Guerenas are not alone; in recent years we have witnessed a proliferation in incidents of excessive, military-style force by police S.W.A.T. teams, which often make national headlines due to their sheer brutality.
Ever since September 14, 2001, when President Bush declared war on terrorism, there has been a crucial, yet often unrecognized, shift in United States policy. How to Fund an American Police State. This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com. Click here to catch Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Salisbury discusses post-9/11 police “mission creep” in this country, or download it to your iPod here.
At the height of the Occupy Wall Street evictions, it seemed as though some diminutive version of “shock and awe” had stumbled from Baghdad, Iraq, to Oakland, California. American police forces had been “militarized,” many commentators worried, as though the firepower and callous tactics on display were anomalies, surprises bursting upon us from nowhere. About the Author Stephan Salisbury Stephan Salisbury is cultural writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Also by the Author Who is being killed by firearms, and in what numbers? There should have been no surprise. But why drone on? Farewell to Peaceful Private Life Can New York City ever be “secure”? The Counterterrorism Consensus - By Michael A. Cohen. There are few areas of greater disappointment for liberal supporters of President Barack Obama than his policies on civil liberties. From the failure to close Guantanamo Bay and his ramped up drone war to the continued reliance on indefinite detention, military commissions for accused terrorists, and the recent National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that potentially allows for the killing of American citizens without due process, Obama's presidency, or so the argument goes, has been one broken promise after another.
Yet, none of this seems to be having any effect on Obama's political standing -- even among Democrats. The results of a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll provide compelling evidence of how little a price Obama has paid for these policies. According to the poll, 70 percent of respondents support the president's decision to keep Guantanamo Bay open. Indeed, backing for Gitmo is actually higher today than it was in 2003. What about drone strikes? But what about drones? Adam Curtis Blog: HOW TO KILL A RATIONAL PEASANT.
The NDAA Makes it Harder to Fight Terrorism. Andrew Bacevich, Uncle Sam, Global Gangster. Why has so much been revealed about how US/Saudi intel foiled the AQAP bomb plot? US drone air strike kills al-Qaida terrorist wanted for USS Cole bombing | World news. Terrorist Fishing in the Yemen - By James Traub. Phillip Knightley: When is a terror threat not a terror threat? Let's ask a man called Felix... - Commentators - Opinion. Mumbai Terror Attack Group Lashkar e Tayyiba Now More Dangerous Than Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda's Merger - By J.M. Berger. Evaluating the war with al Qaeda. War against Islam? Bin Laden’s documents show Obama was right, and Gingrich and Santorum were wrong. Think Again: Al Qaeda - By Seth G. Jones. US drone targeted al-Qaida deputy | World news. Bin Laden's Death, One Year Later.
The New al Qaeda Franchises - By Lois Parshley and Hanna Trudo. Al Qaeda's Challenge. Al Qaeda Is Doing Nation-Building. Should We Worry? - By Will McCants. Bin Laden's Failure: How Islamists and the U.S. Ended His War With the West - Michael Hirsh - International. Analyzing the Bin Laden Documents. Al Qaeda magazine returns with two new issues.