Answers to questions raised over plan to interrogate terror

Imagine that. Our govt is so disjointed that it can not even figure out how to interrogate the enemy.

Boy, are the terrorists laughing at the US.

King of Pain
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Monday 18 September 2006

We know that the world would see this action as a U.S. repudiation of the rules that bind civilized nations. We also know that an extraordinary lineup of former military and intelligence leaders, including Colin Powell, have spoken out against the Bush plan, warning that it would further damage America's faltering moral standing, and end up endangering U.S. troops.

But I haven't seen much discussion of the underlying question: why is Mr. Bush so determined to engage in torture?

Let's be clear what we're talking about here. According to an ABC News report from last fall, procedures used by C.I.A. interrogators have included forcing prisoners to "stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours"; the "cold cell," in which prisoners are forced "to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees," while being doused with cold water; and, of course, water boarding, in which "the prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet," then "cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him," inducing "a terrifying fear of drowning."

And bear in mind that the "few bad apples" excuse doesn't apply; these were officially approved tactics - and Mr. Bush wants at least some of these tactics to remain in use.

I'm ashamed that my government does this sort of thing. I'd be ashamed even if I were sure that only genuine terrorists were being tortured - and I'm not. Remember that the Bush administration has imprisoned a number of innocent men at Guantánamo, and in some cases continues to imprison them even though it knows they are innocent.

Is torture a necessary evil in a post-9/11 world? No. People with actual knowledge of intelligence work tell us that reality isn't like TV dramas, in which the good guys have to torture the bad guy to find out where he planted the ticking time bomb.

What torture produces in practice is misinformation, as its victims, desperate to end the pain, tell interrogators whatever they want to hear. Thus Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi - who ABC News says was subjected to both the cold cell and water boarding - told his questioners that Saddam Hussein's regime had trained members of Al Qaeda in the use of biochemical weapons. This "confession" became a key part of the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq - but it was pure invention.

So why is the Bush administration so determined to torture people?

To show that it can.

The central drive of the Bush administration - more fundamental than any particular policy - has been the effort to eliminate all limits on the president's power. Torture, I believe, appeals to the president and the vice president precisely because it's a violation of both law and tradition. By making an illegal and immoral practice a key element of U.S. policy, they're asserting their right to do whatever they claim is necessary.

And many of our politicians are willing to go along. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives is poised to vote in favor of the administration's plan to, in effect, declare torture legal. Most Republican senators are equally willing to go along, although a few, to their credit, have stood with the Democrats in opposing the administration.

Mr. Bush would have us believe that the difference between him and those opposing him on this issue is that he's willing to do what's necessary to protect America, and they aren't. But the record says otherwise.

The fact is that for all his talk of being a "war president," Mr. Bush has been conspicuously unwilling to ask Americans to make sacrifices on behalf of the cause - even when, in the days after 9/11, the nation longed to be called to a higher purpose. His admirers looked at him and thought they saw Winston Churchill. But instead of offering us blood, toil, tears and sweat, he told us to go shopping and promised tax cuts.

Only now, five years after 9/11, has Mr. Bush finally found some things he wants us to sacrifice. And those things turn out to be our principles and our self-respect.

Previously unknown lawyer central to exposing mistreatment
Previously unknown lawyer central to exposing mistreatment
By Matthew Schofield
McClatchy Newspapers
9/28/06
ULM, Germany

When Khaled al Masri walked into Manfred Gnjidic's small-town law office more than a year ago, spinning a tale of government kidnappings, torture and secret prisons, the lawyer thought he was dealing with a crazy man.

These days - as German officials consider whether to file charges against CIA officials and contractors in Masri's case - Gnjidic is flying around the world trying to get the German and U.S. governments to help out a man who many now admit was wrongly, and severely, mistreated.

Nobody had heard of Gnjidic before, but he's now well known in Europe because of his role in bringing Masri's story to light. Masri has said he was wrongfully accused of links to al-Qaida, kidnapped in Macedonia and flown to Afghanistan, where he was beaten and interrogated for four months.

Involvement in a high-profile international rights case wasn't what Gnjidic had expected out of life. But the 42-year-old partner in a four-lawyer office in quaint, wood-framed and cobble-stoned Ulm - which with Neu Ulm across the Danube, where Masri lives, has a population of about 170,000 - now finds himself in the middle of world events.

Ben Wizner, lead attorney in the United States for the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued in the United States on behalf of al Masri, said Gnjidic had been central to exposing U.S. policy on extraordinary renditions, or moving suspects around the globe for questioning, and had highlighted concerns about torture.

"He's a big part of the reason we're arguing about torture in the middle of an American election, 100 years after most thought the issue was dead," Wizner said. "His work, his efforts, have been overwhelming."

Hans-Christian Stroebele, a member of the German parliamentary secret services investigation committee, said the work Gnjidic had started could lead to criminal charges in the coming weeks against American CIA agents, and had led many to rethink Germany's relationship with the United States.

"Politicians of all camps are now calling for warrants of arrest to be issued for the kidnappers," he said, adding that the case has led many to "resent the German investigators' `muzzle' when it comes to attacking Americans. A crime is a crime, regardless of who commits it. You can't spare a friend from facing the facts if he did wrong."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has declined to admit error in Masri's case, and other U.S. officials won't discuss it.

Gnjidic said handling a case that prompted that kind of discussion was like nothing he'd done before or since. He's now defending a man who'd been involved in a road rage fistfight and is preparing for the trial of a man who'd been in a fight at a disco.

"When this started, I was no different than anyone else," he said. "My concerns revolved around my family, my life. The September 11 attacks worried me, but I trusted others would keep me safe.

"I now know I was wrong to trust. This is what drives my life today."

When Masri first presented his story, Gnjidic asked him to write it down in detail. The story, in summary:

Short on cash, living in a cramped basement apartment with his wife and children, watching his car-repair business fail, he ran away just before New Year's Day 2004.

He said it was a break, to find his head, maybe even find a business opportunity. Masri, born in Lebanon but a German citizen, said the cheapest escape he could find was a bus trip to Skopje, the capitol of Macedonia. He rode out of Germany, through Austria, Slovenia, Bosnia and Serbia.

On the Macedonian border, there were problems with his passport. Macedonian officials started asking about ties to al-Qaida. For 23 days, he was held in a hotel room with the window shades pulled down. The Macedonian guards told him he'd be sent home if he'd admit belonging to the terrorist organization. He said he didn't.

Eventually, he was taken to an airport, stripped, beaten, humiliated, stuffed into a diaper and tracksuit and chained to the floor of a plane. He next remembers arriving someplace warm, which turned out to be Afghanistan. Again, he said, he was beaten - in the head, on the soles of his feet. He was told he was in a place where the law didn't apply.

During the next four months, he was beaten and questioned by men in black wearing ski masks, two of whom identified themselves as American. They asked about 9-11 conspirators, about meetings, about trips. He said he didn't know these people, events, places. He refused to eat and lost 40 pounds.

Eventually, they told him they were sending him home, though he thought they planned to kill him. He was flown to an unknown place, then driven into a mountainous wilderness, where his passport was returned to him and he was told to walk down a deserted road and not to look back. Another car met him and took him to an airport, where he learned he was in Albania, and he was sent back to Germany.

Gnjidic decided to see whether any of this could be verified. From passport stamps to witnesses from the original bus to chemical studies of Masri's hair - which showed he'd been under food stress and, from nutrients he'd consumed, also showed he'd been in Central Asia - it panned out.

News reports and European investigations further verified the story.

Armed with the written version of the story, Gnjidic set out to try to right the wrongs done to his client.

"It hasn't been easy," he said. "I would think everyone would have an interest in helping Khaled get a normal life. He doesn't want riches, but he would like a job, and he would like the stigma of this case removed, so that people wouldn't call out in hatred to him when he goes to the grocers."

A U.S. district judge threw out the lawsuit that the ACLU had brought on Masri's behalf, and lawyers for the rights group filed an appeal with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.

The lower court ruled that since there were national security issues at the heart of the case, it couldn't be examined in court. Gnjidic disagrees, saying the whole world knows Masri's story.

I think you can pretty well rest easy, woyo, in the end the government seems pretty well jointed in their zeal to incorporate tortue as a legitimate practice. I knew they would.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1883927,00.html

I don't see how we are ever going to bring up other counties use of torture even against our own troops since we now have sanctioned it in congress. We are no better than any of those countries we used in which we used to decry their inhumane practices.

Bush Appointees Browbeat Senior Military Officers on Geneva
Bush Appointees Browbeat Senior Military Officers on Geneva Conventions
By Ann Wright
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 28 September 2006

As a retired US Army Reserve colonel, I am aghast at the blatant browbeating by civilian political appointees of the Bush administration of another generation of senior US military officers. In late 2002 and 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld began the browbeating. He forced US Central Command commander General Tommy Franks into accepting a war plan for Iraq that Franks knew had too few military personnel for the job ahead - the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

After he retired, Franks said he was worn down by Rumsfeld's never-ending complaints about too many military troops in the general's operations plan. Franks eventually decided to invade and occupy with the minimal forces that Rumsfeld demanded. We know the result: not enough troops to protect the civilian population or the civilian infrastructure (water, sewage, electrical plants); not enough troops to prevent looting; not enough troops to seal the borders from those coming in from other countries; not enough troops to fulfill the responsibilities of an occupying force as required by international law; not enough troops to protect the troops.

Now, William Haynes, the chief civilian lawyer of the Department of Defense, one of the administration's architects of torture and nominated to a life-long judgeship on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, has browbeaten the four military services' senior military lawyers, the Judge Advocate Generals (all two star officers), into signing a "do not object" letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee. The letter says that the senior military lawyers do not object to two key provisions of the Bush bill that would reinterpret US obligations under the Geneva Conventions and also would protect US intelligence agents from war crimes prosecutions. Previously the military lawyers had publicly questioned, in Congressional hearings in both the Senate and House, the reinterpreting of the Geneva Conventions. The "do not object" letter was written when, after hours of browbeating by William Haynes, the two star officers refused to sign a "letter of endorsement" of the Bush plan, but instead signed the lesser of the two options, the "do not object" statement.

According to the Washington Post (September 15, 2006), the Air Force's top lawyer, Major General Charles J. Dunlap, said that he was not forced to sign the "do not object" letter, but still had reservations about the administration's proposal, just not in the areas discussed in the letter. But, late on September 15, the Army's Judge Advocate General, Major General Scott Black, sent another letter to Senator McCain reinforcing the earlier stand of the lawyers, stating "further redefinition" of the Geneva Conventions "is unnecessary and could be seen as a weakening of our treaty obligations, rather than a reinforcement of the standards of treatment." The senior lawyers have made a noble and professional end-run around the browbeating!

Remarkably, at long last, Bush family friend, former secretary of state, and 35-year military veteran Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, finally broke his silence and acknowledged a bit of conscience regarding the effects of Bush administration's policies that he was a part of. In a letter to McCain, he said that reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions would encourage other countries to "doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." No doubt Powell's goose is cooked with the Bush family.

The Bush administration's browbeating of senior military officers is over two key provisions of the bill concerning rules governing military commissions that will put terrorism suspects on trial.

In defining US obligations under the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, Bush's proposal is that only detainee treatment that "shocks the conscience" should be barred (and would allow degrading acts that do not shock the conscience of someone chosen by the Bush administration).

The Senate Armed Services Committee bill is silent on what constitutes compliance with Common Article 3 and thereby would force CIA officers to treat detainees humanely and to avoid degrading acts, under common understandings of international law. (CIA officers involved in the Bush administration's secret prisons program have consulted lawyers after being warned that they could face prosecution for illegally detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects, and new CIA recruits are advised to take out private liability insurance against the risk of lawsuits as CIA officers will have to pay for their own defense, according to the Washington Times (September 10, 2006).

The second key provision of the bill is on access to classified information during military commission trials of terrorism suspects. The Bush administration advocates classified information could be withheld from a defendant if a military judge approves the withholding and if the judge determines that the withholding of classified information would not obstruct a fair trial.

The Senate Armed Services Committee bill would give defendant declassified information or substitute summaries when possible. A military judge can dismiss charges if the government objects to a judge's order that sensitive information be provided to a defendant.

The Bush administration's violation of international law has severely damaged the reputation of the United States in the international community and has put our military personnel at risk throughout the world.

The browbeating for political ends of our senior military lawyers by the administration is degrading to our professional, volunteer military and calls into question, again, the actions of the civilian leadership of this nation. The administration policy approved by Donald Rumsfeld and William Haynes condoning torture, and now the silencing of professional views of proposed policies concerning the rules for military commissions trying terrorism suspects, undermine the "good order and discipline" of the military and are dangerous for our country.
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Ann Wright, retired from the US Army Reserves as a colonel after 29 years (13 on active duty and 16 in the Reserves). She also was a US diplomat for 16 years, serving in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. She was on the first team to reopen the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in December, 2001. She resigned from the US government in March, 2003, in opposition to the war on Iraq.