Blumenthal: The torture battle royal (* vs Military)

[kskiska]

The public violation of the Geneva convention has created a schism between the president and military

Sidney Blumenthal

President Bush's torture policy has provoked perhaps the greatest schism between a president and the military in American history. From the outside, this battle royal over his abrogation of the Geneva conventions appears as a shadow war. But since the supreme court's ruling in Hamdan v Rumsfeld in June, deciding that Bush's kangaroo court commissions for detainees "violate both the UCMJ and the four Geneva conventions", the struggle has been forced into the open.

On September 6 Bush made his case for torture, offering as validity the interrogation under what he called an "alternative set of procedures" of an al-Qaida operative named Abu Zubaydah. Bush claimed he was a "senior terrorist leader" who "ran a terrorist camp" and had provided accurate information about planned terrorist attacks. In fact, Zubaydah was an al-Qaida travel agent (literally a travel agent), who, under torture, spun wild scenarios of terrorism that proved bogus. Zubaydah, it turns out, is a psychotic with the intelligence of a child. "This guy is insane, certifiable," said Dan Coleman, an FBI agent assigned to the al-Qaida taskforce.

Bush's argument for torture is partly based on the unstated premise that the more sadism, the more intelligence. While he referenced Zubaydah, he did not mention Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, described by the FBI, according to the New Yorker, as "arguably the US's most valuable informant on al-Qaida", who is wined, dined and housed by the federal witness protection programme.

(snip)

In the summer of 2004 General Thomas J Fiscus, the top air force JAG, informed the senators that the administration's assertion that the JAGs backed Bush on torture was utterly false. Suspicion instantly fell upon Fiscus, one of the most aggressive opponents of torture policy, as the senators' source. Within weeks he was drummed out under a cloud of anonymous allegations by Pentagon officials of "improper relations" with women. His discharge was trumpeted in the press, but his role in the torture debate remained unknown.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1877301,00.html

[Phredicles]

1. The Pentagon is the voice of reason and humane conduct-

Time for some ice-skating on the River Styx???

[Keepontruking]

2. torture battle

Torture and Geneva convention have no business being in the same article...........this makes me Ill. This alone makes me want to go ballistic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Circus Girl