Émission de radio L'Autre Monde

Émission de radio L'Autre Monde

samedi 10 novembre 2007

La torture et les États-Unis





La torture et les États-Unis


Voici un compilation extrèmement choquante sur la pratique courante et systématique de la torture comme technique d'interrogation par les États-Unis. Cette pratique a été approuvé par les hauts échelons du régime Bush, avec en tête Bush lui-même, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney et Alberto Gonzales. Waterboarding, positions de stress, multitudes de sévices physiques, empêcher de dormir pendant des jours, déprivation sensorielle et isolation totale, chocs électriques, prisonniers battus et humiliés, dormir mouillé par des températures très froides, viol, torture d'enfants et de femmes, et j'en passe. La torture est même enseignée par différentes écoles militaires au É-U, dont une avec à sa tête lèancienne responsable des camps d'Abu Ghraib dans le temps où le scandale éclata en premier. Ils récompensent les meilleurs!

Complète déshumanisation et retour à une sombre forme de folie fachiste du temps des nazis, si ce n'est pire. C'est une honte, une horreur sans nom. Et nous ne sommes pas à l'abris de cette dangereuse dérape: rappelez-vous du cas de Maher Arar et des milliers d'autres innocents qui sont dans le réseau de prisons secrètes de la CIA dans le monde, depuis des années, et qui sont dans un trou noir où aucune loi ni droit n'existe. Ils ont disparu et ils sont devenu la propriété des É-U, qui se donne le droit de vie ou de mort sur chacun d'eux, comme dans le bon vieux temps féodaux du Moyen Âge.

Olbermann: Habeus Corpus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jGLgkn5HSo





Bush veut étendre aux citoyens américains les procédures de Guantanamo

Dans un projet de loi préparé par l’administration Bush en réponse à la décision prise le mois dernier par la Cour suprême contre l’usage de tribunaux militaires pour juger les prisonniers de Guantánamo Bay, le gouvernement propose d’étendre aux citoyens américains la pratique de la détention illimitée et du procès sommaire aux mains de commissions militaires.

Selon des reportages parus dans la presse vendredi et s’appuyant sur des fuites provenant de gens ayant accès au projet de loi, la loi rendrait effectivement légal, avec des modifications mineures, l’usage de tribunaux militaires sous la forme ordonnée par Bush en 2001 et soumettrait pour la première fois, de même que des ressortissants étrangers, des citoyens américains à de telles procédures judiciaires sommaires.

Ces tribunaux, des commissions composées de personnel militaire actif et sous les ordres du président-chef des armées, auraient le pouvoir d’imposer la peine de mort, s’appuyant sur des dépositions secrètes au cours d’audiences dont les accusés pourraient être exclus chaque fois que les juges militaires décideraient que cela est « nécessaire pour protéger la sécurité nationale ».

Le Washington Post a écrit que le projet de loi avait initialement confirmé le décret présidentiel de 2001 limitant la juridiction des commissions militaires à des « combattants ennemis étrangers ». Cette ancienne formulation a été, selon ce journal, rejetée et remplacée par un texte donnant aux commissions l’autorité de juger quiconque serait « engagé dans des hostilités envers les Etats-Unis ou ses alliés » indépendamment de la nationalité.


Bush : Légitimation et Légalisation de la Torture et de la Surveillance Rapprochée des Citoyens Us

Actuellement, Bush essaie d'obliger, y compris par le chantage, le Congres américain à voter une loi légalisant la torture et les tribunaux militaires d'exception, ainsi qu'une loi pour autoriser la surveillance rapprochée des citoyens américains, restreignant largement leurs libertés, sous prétexte d'assurer « leur sécurité » contre une « nouvelle attaque » (Par Qui ?). Il faut d'urgence un changement de régime à Washington ! Extraits de sa dernière conférence de presse au cours de laquelle il vante la torture, les tribunaux militaires d'exception et la surveillance renforcée des citoyens. Rebellion contre la torture et contre Bush.


Le nouveau Goulag : quelque 14 000 personnes détenues dans le monde par les USA hors du cadre légal

Depuis le transfert à Guantánamo des premiers prisonniers venus d'Afghanistan, l'armée américaine a mis sur pied, en quelques années seulement, un réseau international de prisons de haute sécurité où elle détient, en dehors de tout cadre légal bien défini, quelque 14.000 personnes. Les révélations successives sur les tortures et les détentions arbitraires de longue durée ont déclenché de nombreuses dénonciations, notamment du secrétaire général de l'ONU Kofi Annan et de la Cour suprême des Etats-Unis. "C'était difficile de penser que j'en sortirais un jour. J'ai vécu avec les Américains pendant un an et huit mois comme si je vivais en enfer", raconte le Bagdadi Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi, libéré le mois dernier. Sans avoir été inculpé de quoi que ce soit.

Des dizaines de milliers d'individus sont passés par ce réseau de détention, l'immense majorité en Irak. Nombre d'entre eux racontent avoir été interrogés jour et nuit, relâchés des mois, voire des années plus tard sans une excuse, une compensation, ni même une information sur la raison de leur arrestation. Entre 70% et 90% des détentions en Irak en 2003 étaient des "erreurs", ont déclaré des officiers américains au Comité international de la Croix-Rouge.


The Military Commissions Act: Question and Answers

This PDF file sets out in clear terms just what the Military Commissions Act has done to turn what was once a great Republic into the dictatorship Bush loves to joke about.


William Cox: A Brief on the Use of Water Torture by American Officials in the War on Terrorism

During water torture, the body and head of a victim are typically strapped to an inclined board with the head lower than the feet. The victim's jaws are forced open and a cloth is forced deep into the mouth and over the nose. Water is continuously poured over and into the cloth forcing the victim to stop breathing until forced to either swallow water and/or aspirate it into the lungs, triggering the gag reflex.

Water torture results in controlled drowning, the degree of which depends upon the ability of an individual to resist and the will of the torturer. The punishment ranges from psychological torment and physical suffocation to death. At the least, water torture represents a mock execution. The primeval fear of asphyxiation leads to overwhelming panic in even the most disciplined individuals who may be trained and psychologically conditioned to die rather than submit.

Water torture can lead to serious injury to the victim. A lack of oxygen can quickly result in permanent brain damage, and the aspiration of even small amounts of water can lead to lung disease, including pneumonia. Struggles by the victim against the restraints can produce severe sprains and broken bones. Significantly, the intense fear of imminent death and the victim's helplessness to prevent it produces devastating and long lasting psychological damage

Any questions?


Top US legal adviser refuses to rule out 'torture' technique

The top legal adviser within the US state department, who counsels the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, on international law, has declined to rule out the use of the interrogation technique known as waterboarding even if it were applied by foreign intelligence services on US citizens.

"... even if it were applied by foreign intelligence services on US citizens."

"... even if it were applied by foreign intelligence services on US citizens."

"... even if it were applied by foreign intelligence services on US citizens."

On Friday's Countdown Keith Olbermann talked to Newsweek's Richard Wolfe and Former Nixon White House Counsel, John Dean, about Senators Feinstein and Schumer's inexcusable caving on President Bush's Attorney General nominee and an ABC News report that claims former acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin was forced out of the DoJ when he declared waterboarding to be torture — after allowing himself to be waterboarded."





Video: DoJ Official Pushed Out For Calling Waterboarding Torture

"On Friday's Countdown Keith Olbermann talked to Newsweek's Richard Wolfe and Former Nixon White House Counsel, John Dean, about Senators Feinstein and Schumer's inexcusable caving on President Bush's Attorney General nominee and an ABC News report that claims former acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin was forced out of the DoJ when he declared waterboarding to be torture — after allowing himself to be waterboarded."

Ok folks, here's what this looks like and sounds like: any questions as to whether this is truly torture or not?


***** General claims Bush gave 'marching orders' on aggressive interrogation at Guantanamo

More than 100,000 pages of newly released government documents to demonstrate how US military interrogators "abused, tortured or killed" scores of prisoners rounded up since Sept. 11, 2001, including some who were not even expected of having terrorist ties, according to a just-published book.

Most of the documents on which Administration of Torture is based were obtained as a result of ongoing legal fights over a Freedom of Information Act request filed in October 2003 by the ACLU and other human rights and anti-war groups, the ACLU said in a news release.

So much for "we don't torture", as publicly stated by Bush a couple of weeks ago


*****Getting Waterboarded

Now, as horrific as this tape is, there is information that suggests waterboarding can actually go further. There is a version of this where the victim is strapped to a board that is actually tilted head down at about 30%. Far more water can be used, indeed to the point of completely filling the mouth, sinuses and trachea, but since gravity keeps the water from rushing up into the lungs, actual drowning is prevented, regardless of how close it feels.

This is what Mukasey says he doesn't think is torture.


This Is What Waterboarding Looks Like


Bush Given Authority To Sexually Torture American Children

Yoo's comments were made before the passage of the torture legislation last night. Up until that point Bush had merely cited his role as dictator-in-chief as carte-blanche excuse for ordering torture - now his regime have the audacity to openly put it in writing - going one step further than even the Nazis did.

Again, for those who are still deluded into thinking the extent of the "pressure" is loud music and cold water being thrown over Johnny Jihad in Ragheadistan, consider for a moment the fact that your own Congress and President who, according to the Constitution, are mandated to serve you, have just legalized abducting your kids from your home and electric shocking their genitals.

Now that the criminals have declared themselves outside of the law does that mean we'll see Bush barbecuing babies on the White House lawn? Of course not, but the policy of torturing children in front of their parents has already been signed off on by the Pentagon and enacted under the Copper Green program and it happened at Abu Ghraib.

Women who were arrested with their children were forced to watch their boys being sodomized with chemical glow sticks as the cameras rolled. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says that the U.S. government is still withholding the tapes because of the horror of the "soundtrack of the shrieking boys" and their mothers begging to be killed in favor of seeing their children raped and tortured.

Your government has just lobbied for and Congress has passed legislation to discard the Geneva Conventions and mandate all this.


Things That Go Bump in the Night: The President and His Perverts.

Bush himself has openly championed "tough interrogation methods" used in secret prisons, based on principles that he approved when Alberto Gonazales, John Yoo and other factotums in the poison kitchen cooked up the "legal briefs" and presidential directives that declared Bush above the law and greenlighted any form of torture that did not cause near-fatal physical damage to the victim. (Although the Bush memos did explicitly provide a giant loophole for any interrogator who got carried away and actually killed a chained, helpless prisoner, saying that if the torturer did not intend to kill the victim, why then, that's OK.) We know that Bush signed off on the Yoo vision of approved savagery just short of the point of death or permanent crippling, as well as the tyrannical notion that the president alone can determine what is legally torture and what is not. Thus, when Bush speaks of "tough interrogation methods" – which he and his minions adamantly refuse to reveal – yet insists that these methods "are entirely legal," we know the true parameters of these operations.

We have become what we used to despise: welcome to the United States of Torture.


Bush’s torturers follow where the Nazis led

From almost the beginning of the war, it is now indisputable, the Bush administration made a strong and formative decision: in the absence of good intelligence on the Islamist terror threat after 9/11, it would do what no American administration had done before. It would torture detainees to get information.

The argument was that stripping a chained detainee naked, pouring water over him while keeping room temperatures cold enough to induce repeated episodes of dangerous hypothermia, was not “cruel, inhuman or degrading”. We have a log of such a technique being used at Guantanamo. The victim had to be rushed to hospital, brought back from death, then submitted once again to “enhanced interrogation”.

So is “enhanced interrogation” torture? One way to answer this question is to examine history. The phrase has a lineage. Verschärfte Verneh-mung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the “third degree”. It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.


Administration: Detainees Have No Rights


Immigrants May Be Held Indefinitely


CIA acknowledges existence of presidential order authorizing it to detain, interrogate terror suspects overseas


Post editor says Bush, Gonzales should be tortured

"My proposal on torture is serious," Robinson wrote on a washingtonpost.com discussion board Sunday. "Let me know if you agree: Bush administration officials who claim the "harsh" interrogation techniques being used on terrorism suspects are not torture should have to undergo those same techniques. Personally. Repeatedly."

Any objections? Anyone? Hello


Why Torture?

Robinson has a point. After all, this would be a good experiment to conclude whether or not the administration's policies mesh with their rhetoric, and would bring a lot of peace of mind for those of us who are worried that the U.S. is breaking international and domestic laws that prohibit torture.

After all, If being waterboarded and/or having to sit naked for 3 days in a cold cell is fine with them, maybe we would need to reevaluate our revulsion to such practices.

But, of course, we know that President Bush, Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo, co-author of the "torture memos," would never take up such a bold proposition. They know exactly what these "harsh" treatment are: torture by another name. They would never submit to what the goat herder who got swept up in Afghanistan for the ransom money would submit too. They would be terrified and wet their pants.


US accused of torture

THE United States's willingness to resort to harsh interrogation techniques in its so-called war on terror undermined human rights and the international ban on torture, a United Nations spokesman says.

Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on torture, said the US's standing and importance meant it was a model to other countries which queried why they were subject to scrutiny when the US resorted to measures witnessed at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison.


US refuses to sign UN ban on renditions and secret detention


Bush signs terror bill in victory for White House


Bush signs law authorizing harsh interrogation


The Bush Era's Dark Legacy of Torture

To anyone opposed to the government practice of snatching people off the street, erasing any record of their whereabouts, flying them off to a black hole in some human rights-violating netherworld, and subjecting them to sadistic torture techniques in the name of a "war on terror," the answer is painfully obvious. But in our enduringly surreal political era, the question cuts to the heart of the actual debates that are currently playing out on Capitol Hill.


American Prison Planet The Bush Administration as Global Jailor


Mukasey Won’t Say Waterboarding Is Torture But in 1947 the U.S. Called It a War Crime, Sentenced Enemy Officer to 15 Years Hard Labor


Mukasey's nomination runs into trouble

Judge Michael Mukasey's nomination for attorney general ran into trouble Thursday when two top Senate Democrats said their votes hinge on whether he will say on the record that an interrogation technique that simulates drowning is torture.

Separately, a Democrat familiar with the panel's deliberations said Mukasey may not get the 10 committee votes his nomination needs to be reported to the Senate floor with a favorable recommendation unless he says, in effect, that waterboarding is torture. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak more freely.

Hey, I've got a great idea. Why doesn't the CIA fly Mukasey to one of their "black sites" where this is routine, and let him watch it, first hand.

I honestly don't believe he'll have trouble making up his mind, once he sees this up close and personal!


The Justice Department’s Culture of Torture

Daniel Levin is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative Republican. Now, recall Michael Mukasey’s suggestion that he didn’t know what waterboarding was. Levin took a logical approach: he decided to experience it firsthand. And he came to a conclusion that, in my mind, shows unacceptable flexibility in accepting the technique. But how did the Bush White House react to this? It was swift and simple: Levin was forced out of office.

America tortures: it is now a plain and simple fact of this administration's culture.

And the world knows it, no matter how much Bush attempts to deny it.


In US war on terrorism, 'waterboarding' not deemed torture

During a Senate confirmation hearing earlier this month, attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey refused to address the legality of bringing a prisoner to near drowning to make him talk, drawing fire from opposition Democrats and human rights groups.

"If he is still unsure whether the horrific practice of waterboarding is illegal, then he shouldn't be confirmed," said Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth.

"The only reason to equivocate on waterboarding is to protect administration officials who authorized it from possible prosecution," he added.

This is precisely why Mukasey will be confirmed: to avoid the prosecution of the administration officials who authorized this, and to provide a slippery slope for the inclusion of more "enhanced interrogation procedures" which will again never be referred to as "torture" by this and future administrations.


TORTURE OFFICIALLY ENDORSED IN AMERICA

The Bush administration has made the tortures used during the 'dark ages' in Europe look like child's play. But, an administration that backs every evil move made by Israel, a country many times condemned by UN resolutions apparently has the same lack of morals.


Senate confirms Mukasey as US attorney general

Mukasey was confirmed late Thursday on a 53 to 40 vote in the Democrat-controlled senate, the lowest level of congressional support for any US attorney general since 1952, according to the Washington Post.

That steady, mechanical "thumpa thumpa thumpa" sound you're hearing is that of this country's founding fathers turning over collectively in their graves.


ACLU learns of third 'secret' torture memo from Gonzales Justice Department

ACLU learns of third 'secret' torture memo from Gonzales Justice Department

Legal papers filed in federal court Monday in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations disclose that the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued three secret memorandums relating to interrogation practices of detainees -- one more than has been publicly revealed.


Bush aide steps down from 'mission impossible' - Independent Online Edition > Americas

America remains a "proud beacon for human rights", she argues, despite the images of the abuse at the Iraqi jail of Abu Ghraib, the continued existence of the Guantanamo detention centre, and the outsourcing of torture to "black site" prisons outside America.

"Those pictures from Abu Ghraib were sickening. They were sickening to Americans and they were sickening to people across the world." She points out that those who carried out the prison abuse are now serving jail sentences: "I would submit to you that not very many audiences around the world know that, because those pictures got front page news, but the prison sentence did not. That's an example of the fact that it's very challenging at a time of war, at a time of difficult decisions, to convey accurate information."

Memo to Karen Hughs: please, please stop drinking the koolaid.

Perhaps the most graceful thing you can do is to stop giving interviews, because the entire world knows when you are lying, and it's digging the reputation of this country even further into the ditch.

You recently gave an interview with BBC America's Matt Frei, and stated categorically that all those who had participated in the atrocities at Abu Ghraib had been punished.

There's a massive problem with that statement, Ms. Hughes, and you know it.

Colonel Barbara Fast, who was head of all military intelligence in Iraq during the time of the atrocities of Abu Ghraib was never punished.

And where is she now?

She not only did not get punished for what happened under her watch: she got promoted.

She is now the commander of For Huachuca, where the military are taught torture interrogation techniques.


Detainee Abuse Was Well Planned

Many of the controversial interrogation tactics used against terror suspects in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo were modeled on techniques the U.S. feared that the Communists themselves might use against captured American troops during the Cold War, according to a little-noticed, highly classified Pentagon report released several days ago.


President Authorized Abu Ghraib Torture, FBI Email Says


War Criminal


Secret US endorsement of severe interrogations


Amnesty slams US for trampling on human rights


U.S. officials respond to U.N. questions on torture


U.S. is world leader in avoiding human rights accountability: Says Amnesty International report


The Shame of Diego Garcia

In their resistance to the islanders' claims, Blair and the Foreign Office were clearly protecting the interests of their American allies, for whom the geopolitical importance of Diego Garcia as a strategic base had recently been augmented by its use, and the use of some of the ships moored there, as fabulously remote offshore prisons in which to hold and interrogate "high-value" al-Qaeda suspects.


WRH: THE POINT OF NO RETURN

That the US Government is using torture on POWs (just as Hitler did) is beyond argument. One can either stand up and denounce that torture and demand the firing of all who took part in it (and the end of the war), or one is by default complicit, an accessory after the fact, seen by all to condone such barbarism.



"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator"

G.W. Bush 12/18/2000

CNN video of comment



THE POINT OF NO RETURN

Dictators do not appear overnight. They must gradually assume more and more power over time so that the population does not realize what is going on, or does not feel it is worthwhile to object.

But to maintain control, dictators "seduce" their population into greater and greater atrocities, over time. There is more than simply acclimating the population involved to the dictator's agenda. By tricking the population into acceptance of greater and greater atrocities, the dictator will eventually reach a position where the people will be too afraid to examine what they themselves have become. Trapped by the fear of examining themselves, such people turn into the most fanatical of the dictator's supporters. They dare not look at the dictator's evil for to do so is to look at their own. Once the dictator can trick his people past that point, they are his slaves. Hitler used this tactic. So did Stalin.


The people of the United States stand at that point right now. That the US Government is using torture on POWs (just as Hitler did) is beyond argument. One can either stand up and denounce that torture and demand the firing of all who took part in it (and the end of the war), or one is by default complicit, an accessory after the fact, seen by all to condone such barbarism.

Anyone who steps across that line is trapped. Unable to look at what they themselves have become they will refuse to look at what the government has become, indeed will create or accept any justification, no matter how thin and transparent, rather than question that government. And indeed this web site gets email from people who have already crossed that point, and are trying to explain why torture is really necessary "this time".

So, you are down to a choice. There is no more being neutral, or sitting on the fence. As Bush himself said, you are either with him or against him, and unless you are actively against him and his war machine, then he wins by default. Unless you stop them now, sooner or later, Bush and the NeoCons will succeed in turning this nation into the 21st century version of Nazi Germany, powered by fanatics so afraid to look in a mirror that they will inflict any pain on any people, rather than do so.

Time to decide.

See also:

Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack
US Has Been Preparing to Turn America Into a Military Dictatorship
Concentration Camps in America - Are They For You?


"My Name Used to Be #200343"

An American former Navy soldier and private contractor imprisoned and tortured in Iraq by the U.S. military and falsely accused of "aiding terrorists" warns that our worst fears about Iraq have come true.

Those who tolerated the torture scandal because the US Government would never torture Americans need to wake up, because it has already happened!


Pentagon Pushes For ‘High-Profile’ Convictions Of Detainees Ahead Of ‘08 Elections

Today, Air Force Col. Morris Davis, formerly the lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay, tells the Washington Post that “[p]olitically motivated officials at the Pentagon” are pushing for “convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008 elections”:

This shows the detainee trials, complete with their kangaroo courts, for what they really are: a photo-op to justify what has been done with our tax dollars and in our names at Gitmo, and just in time for the the 2008 elections.

This has never been about "justice". It's all just about justification of what has been done to these people, many of whom were simply in the absolutely wrong place at the wrong time, and got literally sold to US agents in Iraq or Afghanistan for a bounty.


Cheney confirms that detainees were subjected to water-boarding

Great: now we can expect just this kind of abuse for any Americans captured.

And of course, to the best of my knowledge, none of Cheney's close family is in the military; therefore, he has no immediate worries about this happening to any of his family.


Call It What It Is - Bush Wants to Torture People


It's so annoying to read mainstream press articles where they dance around what the real issue is on "terror suspect interrogations." They use every euphemism in the book. Bush seeks "clarity" on interrogations. Bush wants "wider leeway" in interrogations. Bush wants "tougher interrogations."


Bush's Absolute Power Grab


President’s Inaction May Equal Pocket Veto

Under the Constitution, the President must sign a bill within ten days of passage by Congress. If he fails to do so while Congress is in session, the bill becomes law automatically. But if Congress is in recess, the bill is automatically vetoed. Bush took longer than ten days to sign the Military Commissions Act. Under the Constitution, the bill had already defaulted to vetoed and is not a legal bill, even with Bush's signature.

Of course, nobody in DC has the balls to call him on it.


Rumsfeld expels US media from Guantanamo Bay

The United States military has ordered all independent media off the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base following the suicides of three detainees, RAW STORY has learned.

Writing for the Miami Herald, journalist Carol Rosenberg stated Wednesday morning that the military had "ordered all independent news media off the base by 10 a.m. Wednesday, and had arranged a flight to Miami to expedite their departure."

Obviously, someone tripped over something they weren't supposed to see.


UK suspects in new claims of torture at Guantanamo


Video reveals harsh treatment of terror suspect


War Crimes Suit Filed in Germany Against Rumsfeld, Other Top U.S. Officials Over Prisoner Torture


Listen to Segment || Download Show mp3


Document shows Bush guided CIA on detention


Amnesty exec: U.S. is abuser of rights


House committee passes Bush torture bill by one vote -- two Dems are absent

Keep in mind that everything Nazi Germany did was legal under the laws passed by the German government. Did that make it right?


House approves bill on terror detainees

The provisions are intended to protect CIA interrogators from being prosecuted for war crimes.

Soooooo, remember all those WW2 stories about how evil the Japanese and Germans were for torturing prisoners. Well, you can forget all about those, because now torture is COOL because the United States has decided it is okay to torture prisoners even if they haven't actually done anything justifying arrest. Except that we don't call it torture any more. It's now called "forceful interrogation techniques." No doubt, the Germans and Japanese during WW2 had similar warm and fuzzy euphemisms for what they were doing. But in the modern United States, it is no longer torture to beat someone to unconsciousness. It is only torture if they subsequently die from it.

The Founding Fathers would be SOOOOOOOO proud of what their nation has become.


Closing the gap between torturer and victim

John Pilger reports on new revelations that torturers in America's 'war on terror' were directed personally by the US secretary of defence. He argues that the historical antedote to such barbarity is the new exuberant democracy movement in Latin America.


How Rumsfeld Micromanaged Torture


The CIA's Pain Project

Democracy Now - Editor's Note: This is an edited transcript of an interview between Amy Goodman and Alfred McCoy from Democracy Now!. It originally aired on February 17, and is available for download from DemocracyNow.org.

Amy Goodman: A new expose gives an account of the C.I.A.'s secret efforts to develop new forms of torture, spanning half a century. It reveals how the C.I.A. perfected its methods, distributing them across the world, from Vietnam to Iran to Central America, uncovering the roots of the Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo torture scandals.

The book is called "A Question of Torture: C.I.A. Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror," and we're joined by its author, Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. We welcome you to Democracy Now! I first learned of you with your first book "The Politics of Heroin: C.I.A. Complicity in the Global Drug Trade," for which you almost died. What happened then?


The Assassins of Truth


Doctors, Torture, and the War

Various reports have alleged physicians' complicity in the mistreatment of prisoners being held by the United States at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo. Physicians are reported to have advised interrogators as to whether particular prisoners were fit enough to survive physical maltreatment, informed interrogators about prisoners' phobias and other psychological vulnerabilities that could be exploited during questioning, failed to report incidents of alleged torture, force-fed prisoners who were on hunger strikes, and altered the death certificates of prisoners who died.

If US physicians are educated about military medical ethics - especially the Geneva Conventions - they could lead calls for humane treatment of prisoners, regardless of their legal status. Doing so might begin to heal our country and to restore the United States' position as a moral agent in the world.

Mengele would be proud of these people!

Unfortunately, Dr. Boyd's very idealistic premise that doctor education could turn the tide on the American torture scandal has missed a very important point: medical professionals who continue to collaborate in torture, and stay in places like Guantanamo, have a very specific reason for continuing to be a part of this process.

It gives them an enormous sense of power, protected and enhanced by their belief that by being torture enablers, they are truly doing something patriotic.

One has to remember the actions of Inquisitors of the Catholic Church.

They were taught to believe that by creating excruciating pain for their victims, (torture, leading to death) they were actually sending them to heaven, and preventing them from going to hell. So any possible gut-level guilt at the torture and destruction of a fellow human being became transmuted to satisfaction and pride in "Doing the Lord's Work".

There is very little difference here, except that the torture has become more sophisticated, thanks to the work of these "medical professionals".


Doctors accuse US of 'unethical practices' at Guantanamo Bay

More than 260 doctors from around the world have launched an unprecedented attack on the American medical establishment for its failure to condemn unethical practices by medical practitioners at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.

They compare the actions of the military doctors, whom they accuse of being involved in the force-feeding of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and of turning a blind eye to evidence of torture in Iraq and elsewhere, to those of the South African security police involved in the death of the anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko 30 years ago.


Kessler: Torture law not needed


Top US court rejects damages claim by former CIA prisoner

The US administration had called on the Supreme Court to reject the case for reasons of national security, arguing it would reveal the secret activities of the CIA which could not be either confirmed or denied.

Translation: the CIA is now completely above the law, and can do whatever it will with complete impunity, knowing it is unanswerable to anything but the executive branch of this government.


Poster for Guantanamo Documentary Is Censored:


A Child in War: Detaining Omar Khadr Violates Our Moral and Legal Principles


'Inside the wire'

Most of the poems, including the lament by Al Hela which first sparked Falkoff's interest, are unlikely to ever see the light of day. Not content with imprisoning the authors, the Pentagon has refused to declassify many of their words, arguing that poetry "presents a special risk" to national security because of its "content and format". In a memo sent on September 18 2006, the team assigned to deal with communications between lawyers and their clients explains that they do not "maintain the requisite subject matter expertise" and says that poems "should continue to be considered presumptively classified".

What the................?!?!?!?!?!?

Poetry now threatens US national security?

Unflipping believeable.


Former 'enemy combatant' claims torture

Terrorism suspect Jose Padilla, originally held as an enemy combatant, has asked a federal judge in Miami to drop charges against him because he was tortured.

But under the recently signed Military Comissions Act, torture, when it has been deemed necessary by the executive against ANY American citizen is perfectly legal these days, and applies retroactively.


Republican "People of the Lie" must disgorge the Abu Ghraib child rape photos, videos, Judge rules


American Gulag: Close the prison camps


A voice from Gitmo's darkness


Terror suspect 'tortured by US'


Secret Existence

Since so much was happening this weekend politically, it was easy to miss one story by The Washington Post on Saturday, which covered the Justice Department's declaration that one of our detainees at Guantánamo is a human “state secret.” Meaning the very act of being a detainee had given the man “Top Secret” information which he’s not supposed to share—like with a lawyer. What do you know about our torture techniques and where our black sites are? Sorry, you weren’t supposed to know that, therefore no lawyer for you.

That’s right folks, Majid Khan, one of the detainees from the CIA “black sites” is not allowed to talk about his detention and (likely) torture because the lawyer he could speak to doesn’t have clearance to know about U.S. detention policies and “interrogation” procedures.


3 commit suicide at Guantanamo Bay camp


This is a US torture camp


Army file details brutal deaths of un-tried Afghan detainees

An interrogator told Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen.

This is the image America will have to live with for the next half-century.


AP Learns Gitmo Guards Brag of Beatings


Guantanamo suicides 'acts of war'

The camp commander said the two Saudis and a Yemeni were "committed" and had killed themselves in "an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us".

What kind of drugs are these bozos ON?!? I have never seen a more pathetic attempt at "blame the victim" than this desperate attempt to deflect attention from the conditions these men were being held in, and the dubious legalities of their confinement in the first place.


Camp suicides 'hard to believe'

The sister of a UK inmate of Guantanamo Bay has said she is "suspicious" about the suicides of three detainees at the US base in Cuba.

So am I, especially after that pathetic attempt to claim the suicides were an "attack" (see below).


Americas">Washington condemns first suicides by Guantanamo inmates as 'a PR exercise'

"They just killed themselves to make us LOOK bad!" -- Official White Horse Souse


Guantánamo inmates ‘driven insane’

Prisoners held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba are being driven insane by a tightening of conditions and the situation of their indefinite detention without trial, according to lawyers and rights activists involved with the US camp.

Attorneys representing other prisoners say their clients kept in isolation are going insane.

What other outcome could you possibly expect, given the treatment these people have endured?


Guantanamo detainee review boards: 'Often fallen short'

Some limitations have long been evident. The prisoners have no right to a lawyer, or to see evidence, or even to know the identity of their accusers. What has been less visible, however, is what many officials describe as a continuing shortage of information about many detainees, including some who have been held on sketchy or disputed intelligence.

"We have tried again and again to have a say in the process," said Barbara Olshansky, a lawyer who has coordinated much of the work of the detainee lawyers for the Center for Constitutional Rights. "But we learned pretty early on that these were kangaroo courts."

This lack of due process will find itself cascading into legal issues regarding every single citizen of this country very soon.

The US's treatment of Guantanamo's "enemy combatants" is just the kickoff to events that will make the US system of justice unrecognizable to anyone at all familiar with the Constitution and Bill of Rights very soon.


New hunger strike breaks out in Guantanamo: report


Guantanamo conditions 'worsening'


Detainee says he confessed to stop torture


JDetainee abuse in CIA secret prisons documented in ICRC report

Well, folks, for those of you who just wouldn't believe that we're anything but the "good guys", it's official: the US has now become the United States of Torture.


New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action


Why CIA abuse is medieval madness


We wouldn't be allowed to treat animals like this


ON MONDAY night (12/6), the ABC's Four Corners featured a program on the experiments of American psychologist Professor Harry Harlow. He is best known for his experiments on maternal deprivation and the outcomes for infant monkeys having to bond with bare wire versus soft terry-clothed surrogates. We learnt that Professor Harlow also attempted to scientifically study the development of abject depression by subjecting monkeys to what he coined "the pit or dungeon of despair and the hell of loneliness". Here monkeys were placed in isolation for up to 12 months in wire cages where they were unable to get out, were denied all sensory stimulation and had no human or animal contact other than seeing the researcher's hands when they were fed. The result was extreme psychosis, depression and self-abuse.


'We were torturing people for no reason'


Desperation in Gitmo's Camp 6


Court Told It Lacks Power in Detainee Cases

Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

The checks and balances outlined in the American Constitution and Bill of Rights have been ripped to shreds right before our eyes: the country I thought I used to live in has stopped existing, except in name only.


Post-9/11 Renditions: An Extraordinary Violation of International Law


Outsourcing Torture

The Bush administration has called for the respect of human rights in Burma, a pretty safe piece of posturing, but it remains silent as Egypt’s dictator, Gen. Hosni Mubarak , unleashes the largest crackdown on public opposition in over a decade. Our moral indignation over the shooting of monks masks the incestuous and growing alliance we have built in the so-called war on terror with some of the world’s most venal dictatorships.

Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 26 years and is grooming his son, Gamal, to succeed him, can torture and “disappear” dissidents—such as the Egyptian journalist Reda Hilal, who vanished four years ago—without American censure because he does the dirty work for us on those we “disappear.”


Psychiatrist says US terror suspect has Stockholm syndrome


Psychology and Coercive Interrogations in Historical Perspective


History Will Not Absolve Us

While the Democratic Congress has yet to begin a serious investigation into what many European legislators already know about American war crimes, a particularly telling report by the International Committee of the Red Cross has been leaked that would surely figure prominently in such a potential Nuremberg trial. The Red Cross itself is bound to public silence concerning the results of its human-rights probes of prisons around the world—or else governments wouldn't let them in.

But The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has sources who have seen accounts of the Red Cross interviews with inmates formerly held in CIA secret prisons. In "The Black Sites" (August 13, The New Yorker), Mayer also reveals the effect on our torturers of what they do—on the orders of the president—to "protect American values."

If we, the people, are ultimately condemned by a world court for our complicity and silence in these war crimes, we can always try to echo those Germans who claimed not to know what Hitler and his enforcers were doing. But in Nazi Germany, people had no way of insisting on finding out what happened to their disappeared neighbors.

We, however, have the right and the power to insist that Congress discover and reveal the details of the torture and other brutalities that the CIA has been inflicting in our name on terrorism suspects.


New Army documents reveal US knew of and approved torture before Abu Ghraib scandal

New Army documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union today reveal that Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez ordered interrogators to "go to the outer limits" to get information from detainees. The documents also show that senior government officials were aware of abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan before the Abu Ghraib scandal broke

Translation: the torture scandals go ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP of this government!


Another Smoking Gun Indicating Bush Guilt; Another Smoking Gun Indicating Media

Conspiracy


New detainees show Bush has no plans to close Guantanamo Bay


Military Commissions Act Headed for Supreme Court


Police torture in Knoxville TN


In Case I Disappear


The day the darkness descended


New legislation authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants



Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)


Is your daughter a future detainee?


King George And The Tortured Truth


Are You an 'Unlawful Combatant'?


Decimating the Constitution with Military Tribunals



The President Of Hypocrisy

Video - 09/20/07

Keith Olbermann's, Countown Special Comment










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