Top-Secret Torture
The Bush administration claims detainees can't disclose how they were treated.
Buried within a recent government brief in the case of Guantanamo Bay inmate Majid Khan is one of the more disturbing arguments the Bush administration has advanced in the legal struggles surrounding the war on terrorism.
Mr. Khan was one of the al-Qaeda suspects who was detained in a secret prison of the CIA and subjected to "alternative" interrogation tactics -- the administration's chilling phrase for methods most people regard as torture.
Now the government is arguing that by subjecting detainees to such treatment, the CIA gives them "top secret" classified information -- and the government can then take extraordinary measures to keep them quiet about it.
If this argument carries the day, it will make virtually impossible any accountability for the administration's treatment of top al-Qaeda detainees. And it will also ensure that key parts of any military trials get litigated in secrecy.
The trouble is that at least some of the secrets the government is trying to protect are the very techniques used against people such as Mr. Khan -- and its means of protecting them is to muzzle him about what the CIA did to him.
CIA official Marilyn A. Dorn said in an affidavit that Mr. Khan might reveal "the conditions of detention and specific alternative interrogation procedures." In other words, grossly mistreating a detainee now justifies keeping him quiet.
Ok, follow the logic (if you dare).
I torture you. I torture you in top-secret ways, which are classified. You go on trial. You cannot testify as to how I tortured you because that would be giving away top-secret classified secrets. So by torturing you in classified ways, I am binding you to secrecy. About being tortured. In top-secret, classified ways.
(I could do this all day but my head hurts)
So in essence, I am giving away top-secret, classified information to suspected terrorists. By torturing them. Shouldn’t I be on trial then??? After all, I’m giving away classified, top-secret secrets. To terrorists. Top-secret.
By their own definition, if the terrorist can’t testify because he’s been given classified information (the "alternative" interrogation tactics) by the torturers themselves, then isn’t giving classified information to terrorist a crime in and of itself?
So does this mean the torturers are terrorists? At the very least I think this makes them un-American and therefore should be poked with a flag.
Seriously, my head hurts. And my brain is all twisty. Congratulations Rumsfeld, you evil genius…
Read on....
And in related news (now you've gone and done it)...
Janet Reno Files Challenge to Terror Law
Former Attorney General Janet Reno and seven other former Justice Department officials filed court papers Monday arguing that the Bush administration is setting a dangerous precedent by trying a suspected terrorist outside the court system.
"The government is essentially asserting the right to hold putative enemy combatants arrested in the United States indefinitely whenever it decides not to prosecute those people criminally _ perhaps because it would be too difficult to obtain a conviction, perhaps because a motion to suppress evidence would raise embarrassing facts about the government's conduct, or perhaps for other reasons," the former Justice Department officials said.
Read on...
4 comments:
Howard Zinn on The Uses of History and the War on Terrorism
A few excerpts:
"And this psychologist took notes and, in fact, a couple of years after the war, wrote a book called Nuremberg Diary, in which he recorded -- put his notes in that book, and he recorded his conversation with Hermann Göring. And he asked Göring, how come that Hitler, the Nazis were able to get the German people to go along with such absurd and ruinous policies of war and aggression?
And Göring said, “Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war? But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy. The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism. It works the same way in any country.”
I was interested in that last line: “It works the same way in any country.” I mean, here, these are the Nazis. That’s the fascist regime. We are a democracy. But it works the same way in any country, whatever you call yourself. Whether you call yourself a totalitarian state or you call yourself a democracy, it works the same way, and that is, the leaders of the country are able to cajole or coerce and entice the people into war by scaring them, telling them they’re in danger, and threatening them and coercing them, that if they don’t go along, they will be considered unpatriotic."
...
"If the American people really knew history, if they learned history, if the educational institutions did their job, if the press did its job in giving people historical perspective, then a people would understand. When the President gets up before the microphone, says we must go to war for this or for that, for liberty or for democracy, or because we’re in danger, and so on, if people had some history behind them, they would know how many times presidents have announced to the nation, we must go to war for this reason or that reason. They would know that President Polk said, “Oh, we must go to war against Mexico, because, well, there was an incident that took place on the border there, and our honor demands that we go to war.”
They would know, if they knew some history, how President McKinley took the nation into war against Spain and Cuba, saying, “Oh, we’re going in to liberate the Cubans from Spanish control.” And in fact, there was a little bit of truth to that: we did go in, we fought against Spain, we got Spain out of Cuba, we liberated them from Spain, but not from ourselves. And so, Spain was out, and United Fruit was in, and then the American banks and the American corporations were in."
...
"The people who go off to war are not doing fighting for their country. No, they’re not doing their country any good. They’re not doing their families any good. They’re certainly not doing the people over there any good. But they’re not doing it for their country. They’re doing it for their government. They’re doing it for Bush. That would be a more accurate thing to say: “I’m going off to fight for George Bush. I’m going off to fight for Cheney. I’m going off to fight for Rumsfeld. I’m going off to fight for Halliburton.” Yeah, that would be telling the truth."
...
"...Einstein said this after World War I. He said, “War cannot be humanized. It can only be abolished.” War has to be abolished..."
Something of historical note.
What people don't realize about Iran is that it had a democracy until the CIA had major part in the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 when Iran wanted to nationalize the oil industry. Kermit Roosevelt was part of that operation.
Then they installed the Shah.
And the rest is history.
Of your first comment: Why do people fall for this? Ok, ok, I realize that the fourth paragraph answers this question, but I think back to 2003 and the buildup to the war. There were educated (?) people who were all for it. And shame on the media. They ARE educated, and they’re also responsible for helping educate the public. But they were too afraid. The fear of being called anything other than super-patriotic superseded any rational thought.
What a frightening time in history this will be remembered as…
Read or better yet listen to the whole thing. It really gives you something to think about.
I remember the first thing I said to my mom after 9/11 was "looks like the US foreign policy is coming back on us."
When the US took an interventionist approach to foreign policy and getting involved in countries internal politics, then a lot of our problems started.
All the money the US poured into all these adventures could have achieved a perfect society by now.
Stephen Kinzer's book Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq documents that usually big business is the reason the US goes to war somewhere.
There's also a Democracy Now interview too here and here.
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