On torture: Bush condemns world 2003; world condemns Bush 2006

[ProSense]

Bush 2003:

Statement by the President

United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

Today, on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States declares its strong solidarity with torture victims across the world. Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.

Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. Beating, burning, rape, and electric shock are some of the grisly tools such regimes use to terrorize their own citizens. These despicable crimes cannot be tolerated by a world committed to justice.

Notorious human rights abusers, including, among others, Burma, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Zimbabwe, have long sought to shield their abuses from the eyes of the world by staging elaborate deceptions and denying access to international human rights monitors. Until recently, Saddam Hussein used similar means to hide the crimes of his regime. With Iraq's liberation, the world is only now learning the enormity of the dictator's three decades of victimization of the Iraqi people. Across the country, evidence of Baathist atrocities is mounting, including scores of mass graves containing the remains of thousands of men, women, and children and torture chambers hidden inside palaces and ministries. The most compelling evidence of all lies in the stories told by torture survivors, who are recounting a vast array of sadistic acts perpetrated against the innocent. Their testimony reminds us of their great courage in outlasting one of history's most brutal regimes, and it reminds us that similar cruelties are taking place behind the closed doors of other prison states.

The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy. I further urge governments to join America and others in supporting torture victims' treatment centers, contributing to the UN Fund for the Victims of Torture, and supporting the efforts of non-governmental organizations to end torture and assist its victims.

No people, no matter where they reside, should have to live in fear of their own government. Nowhere should the midnight knock foreshadow a nightmare of state-commissioned crime. The suffering of torture victims must end, and the United States calls on all governments to assume this great mission.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/06/20030626-3.html

Bush 2006:

Bush admits to secret CIA prisons for terror suspects

by Olivier Knox Thu Sep 7, 10:17 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush has for the first time confirmed the existence of secret CIA prisons for suspected terrorists, and defended tough interrogations branded as torture by human rights groups.

Snip...

It was Bush's first indication that he knew that the US Central Intelligence Agency covertly held prisoners in overseas camps, reports of which had been publicly denied by many of the countries involved.

The US president also defended the interrogation tactics used by the CIA.

"I cannot describe the specific methods used," because that might help the suspects, Bush said. "But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary."

Critics have claimed CIA agents used techniques tantamount to torture such as simulated drowning, and exposing prisoners to extremes of temperature as well as sensory deprivation.

Human Rights Watch spokesman Kenneth Roth called Bush's speech "a full-throated defense of the CIA detention program and of the 'alternative procedures' -- read: torture -- that the CIA has used to extract information from detainees."

more...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060907/pl_afp/usattacksjustice_060907141709

The FBI forbids its agents from participating in any way in interrogation of detainees because of agents’ experience of what they considered torture. One agent in an email to bureau officials on August 2, 2004 described what he witnessed at the Guantanamo detainee prison camp: “On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more.” In one case, he said, “The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night.”

Article posted here.

Citing unnamed current and former intelligence officials, the Washington Post said Monday the trend reflects heightened anxiety at the Central Intelligence Agency that officers may be vulnerable to accusations they were involved in abuse, torture, human rights violations and other misconduct.

Bush in jeopardy? Yes. The issue is torture, which George W. Bush authorized in a Feb. 7, 2002, memorandum in contravention both of the Geneva Accords and 18 U.S. Code 2441—the War Crimes Act that incorporates the Geneva provisions into the federal criminal code which was approved by a Republican-led Congress in 1996. Heeding the advice of Vice President Dick Cheney’s counsel, David Addington, then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, the president officially opened the door to torture in that memorandum. His remarks yesterday reflect the determination of Cheney and Bush to keep that door open and accuse those who would close it of being "soft on terrorists."

The administration released that damning memorandum in the spring of 2004 after the photos of torture at Abu Graib were published. It provided the basis for talking points that the president wanted “humane” treatment for captured al-Qaida and Taliban individuals. And—surprise, surprise— mainstream journalists like those of The New York Times swallowed the bait, clinging safely to the talking points and missing altogether Bush’s remarkable claim that “military necessity” trumps humane treatment. That assertion, over the president’s signature, provided the gaping loophole through which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and then-CIA Director George Tenet drove the Mack truck of officially-sanctioned torture.

Moral confusion:

The White House wants to clarify the ban on "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" stated in Common Article 3.

"I'm saying that nobody knows what humiliating treatment is. What does it mean?" Hadley said on CNN's "Late Edition."

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/14/powell-letter">Colin Powell: “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk.”

Attorney general warns US on torture bill

Clare Dyer
Monday September 18, 2006
The Guardian

The attorney general warned the US at the weekend that its bill to try to limit its obligations under the Geneva convention while interrogating and trying detainees risked international condemnation.

Lord Goldsmith waded into the row after a Senate committee rejected the bill and backed alternative legislation proposed by Republican senator John McCain and supported by George Bush's former secretary of state, Colin Powell.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,1874783,00.html

[ProSense]

1. Bush was seeking approval for waterboarding!

The Politics of Torture

Lost amid the legal wrangling over how to interrogate detainees are the techniques used in the war on terror.
By Michael Hirsh and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek

Sept. 25, 2006 issue - Waterboarding, which dates back to the Spanish Inquisition, is an interrogation method that involves strapping a prisoner face up onto a table and pouring water into his nose. The idea is to create the sensation of drowning so that the panicked prisoner will talk. According to The New York Times, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded by the CIA. He eventually confessed what President Bush described last Friday as "information about terrorist plans we couldn't get anywhere else." Neither Bush nor any other administration official has acknowledged, on the record, the use of waterboarding or any other specific CIA method. But at a White House news conference, Bush passionately defended the once secret CIA interrogation program involving such "alternative" techniques as "vital."

The question is whether waterboarding, however effective, is torture—and whether Americans ought to be doing such things at all. Some leading Republican senators, John McCain, John Warner and Lindsey Graham, believe it should be clearly banned under new legislation. The Bush administration has proposed its own bill seeking to redefine the Geneva Conventions—which set out the rules of war—in order to preserve the CIA's right to use some harsher methods. But even Bush's former secretary of State, Colin Powell, publicly questioned last week whether the administration's stance might lead the world to "doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." And recently Bush administration officials, in private negotiations with the Senate, have agreed to drop waterboarding from a list of approved CIA interrogation techniques, according to a Senate source involved in the dispute. (He, like the other administration officials and congressional sources quoted in this story, asked not to be identified owing to the sensitivity of the negotiations over classified information.)

The Bush administration wants to maintain seven other approved CIA interrogation methods, however, for use against suspected high-level terrorists, according to one congressional source and a lawyer involved in the negotiations. A senior administration official said he could not discuss what CIA methods are still being considered. But the official added that "one should not assume all techniques used previously will be used in the future." He also noted that the new U.S. Army field manual bans waterboarding. Two other sources, one a U.S. legislator and the other a counterterrorism official, told NEWSWEEK that the total number of CIA detainees subjected to the "most rigorous" interrogation techniques was less than five. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the only one among them whose identity has been acknowledged by former government officials.

The GOP's intraparty dispute centers on a single provision of the Geneva Conventions. The president has criticized a Supreme Court decision last June that ruled all suspected terrorists, even those detained secretly by the CIA, are protected under Geneva's Common Article 3, which forbids "outrages upon personal dignity" and "cruel treatment."

more...

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14871154/site/newsweek

(emphasis added)

Bush was seeking approval for torture!

[ProSense]

2. Single greatest hypocrisy of the Bush Presidency

(September 17, 2006 -- 10:34 PM EDT)

If you were to pick the single greatest hypocrisy of the Bush Presidency, wouldn't it have to be this: that the man who ostentatiously claims Jesus as his favorite philosopher (he of "do unto others as ye would have them do unto you" fame) would say, in all seriousness, "Common Article III says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It's very vague. "What does that mean, 'outrages upon human dignity'?"

That's my entry. Yours?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/009836.php

[calimary]

3. Here's my take:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2832935

[ProSense]

4. Terrific! Thanks! n/t

[ProSense]

5. "President Bush was at his most pugnacious and disingenuous..."

Torture Is All in the Subtext

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, September 18, 2006; 12:58 PM

President Bush was at his most pugnacious and disingenuous Friday in a Rose Garden press conference, refusing to give reporters a direct answer about where he stands on torture.

Here's the transcript. Bush's repeated refrain -- that all he wants is for Congress to bring "clarity" to the Geneva Conventions -- was so far from the truth that straight news reporting simply wasn't up to the task of conveying the real meaning of the day.

Snip...

The Washington Post editorial board explains what Bush meant when he said his "one test" for legislation was whether Congress would authorize "the program."

Writes The Post: "He's talking about the practice of sequestering terrorist suspects indefinitely and without charge in secret foreign locations and holding them incommunicado even from the International Red Cross. Until recently, such 'disappearances' were the signature of Third World dictatorships. . . .

Snip...

The Los Angeles Times editorial board writes: "On the treatment of detainees, the president has been especially disingenuous. He has never been a fan of international law, so it's absurd for him to pretend to want to 'clarify' the Geneva Convention. What he clearly wants to do is gut the treaty's humanitarian protections for wartime detainees, with an eye toward retroactively legitimizing abusive CIA interrogation tactics used on terrorism suspects."

The New York Times editorial board writes: "Watching the president on Friday in the Rose Garden as he threatened to quit interrogating terrorists if Congress did not approve his detainee bill, we were struck by how often he acts as though there were not two sides to a debate. We have lost count of the number of times he has said Americans have to choose between protecting the nation precisely the way he wants, and not protecting it at all.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/09/18/BL2006091800455.html?nav=rss_world/mideast/iraq

[Uncle Joe]

6. Excellent post Prosense

Kicked and recommended

:kick:

[ProgressiveEconomist]

7. K&r -- SUPERB links

[Felinity]

8. B* must be smarter than me, I am confused K&R

If the Geneva article 3 is so vague, how is it that mini-legal-mind Gonzales was so clear on the provisions being "quaint." If he didn't understand Article 3 at the time, how could he write a legal opinion on it? How was he so certain about what it said that he could be so certain that we could violate it due to its being outdated? What was outdated and quaint, something we couldn't interpret.

So now the defense is it's vague?

I am obviously intellectually challenged because I am having a hard time expressing this.

[ProSense]

9. CNN's language of choice: alternative interrogation techniques

CNN's language of choice. From off the front page (emphasis added) ...

A spokesman for the Senate Armed Services chairman says draft legislation is headed to Capitol Hill with "new language," for a proposal that would allow the CIA to continue alternative interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists. Republican senators have voted against legislation aimed at detainees held at the U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

[mom cat]

10. Very good post. I just bookmarked it. ... Thanks.

[ProSense]

11. Every suspect is not a terrorist - just ask him

Opinion

Every suspect is not a terrorist - just ask him

Wed Sep 20, 6:56 AM ET

As Congress weighs how to treat and try suspected terrorists, it should consider the story of Maher Arar, a Canadian Muslim.

His case is a textbook example of what can go wrong, and why Americans should be leery of embracing the harsh tactics President Bush wants applied to terror suspects.

Arar's nightmare began in September 2002. The computer engineer, married and the father of two, was detained in New York's JFK Airport during a stopover on a flight home from Tunisia, where he had been with his family. Unknown to Arar, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, acting on faulty information, had told U.S. authorities Arar was an Islamic extremist with suspected links to al-Qaeda.

Arar was held and questioned for 12 days at JFK and in a U.S. detention center. When U.S. authorities told him they were sending him to Syria, from which he had emigrated to Canada at age 17, the mild-mannered Arar broke down crying, protesting the Syrians would torture him.

Arar was shackled by U.S. authorities in the rear of a small jet and flown to Jordan. There, he was hit by Jordanian guards and questioned. Then he was blindfolded and driven to Syria, where his life descended into a hellish round of beatings and interrogation. He was punched and whipped with an electric cable. Desperate to stop the beatings, he confessed to having been trained in Afghanistan - a country there is no evidence he has ever visited.

more...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20060920/cm_usatoday/everysuspectisnotaterroristjustaskhim