Gingrich's Long History as Bully-Boy for the CIA

Ex-House Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich has been apoplectic about current Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi's claim that the CIA lied about briefing her about the use of torture ("enhanced interrogation techniques") at a meeting in September 2002. Like a diminutive Zeus, thundering from the heights of Mt. Lilliput, Gingrich railed against what he called Pelosi's "despicable, dishonest and vicious political effort," and called for investigations.

Whatever Pelosi's ultimate political fate on this matter -- and she appears to have backed off a little on Friday, shifting her emphasis from the lies of the CIA to the lies of the Bush administration in general, after a letter from CIA Director Leon Panetta to his troops -- a person would have to be totally obtuse not to see Gingrich's attack as cover for the CIA and its torture crimes. It is also a fiercely partisan attack, laying down a smokescreen for the real criminals, Cheney, Bush, Tenet, Rumsfeld and their ilk.

But this is not the first time we've seen Newt play this role. In 1995, then-Democratic Representative Robert G. Torricelli received information from a State Department whistleblower, Richard Nuccio, that a long-time Guatemalan CIA agent, Colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez, was responsible for the controversial killing of an American innkeeper living in Guatemala, as well as the murder of a leftist guerrilla leader married to an American citizen, Jennifer Harbury. The guerrilla leader, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, was ordered killed at the end of his interrogation by Alpirez, who also was a Guatemalan military intelligence officer. Both the State Department and the National Security Council knew the identity of the killer, but withheld the information, even as Harbury was conducting hunger strikes to get the government to pursue what then appeared to be her husband's disappearance.

Torricelli, who was a member of the House Intelligence Committee, released the name of the CIA agent and announced in a letter to President Clinton:

The direct involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency in the murder of these individuals leads me to the extraordinary conclusion that the agency is simply out of control and that it contains what can only be called a criminal element..."

Torricelli's bombshell caused a huge scandal, coming in the wake of revelations of a bloody U.S.-backed Guatemalan counter-insurgency campaign that killed over 100,000 civilians, led by the Guatemalan military and intelligence services. According to a New York Times article in March 1995, Alpirez had been a CIA informer since the 1980s, and then trained at the U.S. Army-run School of the Americas in 1989.

By the time of the 1990 murder of Michael DeVine, "an American citizen who ran a hotel in the Guatemalan rain forest and apparently had stumbled onto a smuggling operation involving the Guatemalan military," Alpirez was a contract agent for the CIA. The controversy over DeVine's murder forced the Bush I administration to cut off military aid to the Guatemalan regime, all the while, according to the UK Independent, secretly channeling $7 million a year to the Guatamalan government through the CIA.

The mid-90s scandal grew uglier and uglier. From the NY Times article:

The role of Guatemala's military and intelligence services in death-squad killings has long been suspected. In 1993 that role was confirmed by two Guatemalan soldiers, who linked many such killings to the military high command.

The C.I.A.'s station in Guatemala has had close links to the military since 1954, when the intelligence agency led a coup that overthrew the nation's President, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, and helped install a right-wing junta.

The stage was set for Speaker Newt to spring into action. He called Torricelli's disclosures "explicitly inappropriate," and called for the House Intelligence Committee to expel the New Jersey congressman. "I think he just decided it was better to go ahead and cause a public embarrassment to the United States," Gingrich said.

In the end, Gingrich did not get his way, as supposedly "not wanting to make the Democrat a martyr," the Republicans backed down and Torricelli stayed on the committee. Meanwhile, the next year found Gingrich mixing it up with fellow Republican Arlen Specter, as Gingrich fought to increase the CIA budget for covert operations against Iran from $4 million to $18 million dollars ($19 million was already set aside for destabilization operations against Iraq). And then it seems only yesterday (2007), when Newt attacked then-Senator Biden's call for a special prosecutor in the case of the destroyed CIA torture tapes.

According to a Jeff Stein interview with Nuccio in 1997, published at Salon, the Torricelli disclosures led to a change in Clinton-era CIA hiring policy, which now was to exclude hiring agents who were implicated in human rights abuses. Even further, then CIA-director John Deutch ordered an internal review of current agents involved in such abuses, and approximately 100 agents fitting such criteria were fired.

The denouement was not so pretty, however. The CIA rank-and-file mutinied -- "poor morale," don't you know -- and got Deutch kicked out and a new CIA director appointed. Before Deutch was gone, two senior CIA officials were also let go for lying to Congress. Meanwhile, the CIA saw to it that Nuccio lost his security clearance, thereby wrecking his career. Torricelli won the New Jersey Senate seat, only to bow out after one term because of financial scandal. Gingrich went on to even bigger game, helping impeach President Clinton for lying about a blow job, only to fall in disgrace himself a few years later. Deutch was replaced by George Tenet.

The CIA and the U.S. government's policy over prisoners did not fall from the clouds. Nor did it come from the original sin of Dick Cheney, as guilty as he may be in this instance. All these "secret cabals" (Lawrence Wilkerson's term, not mine) within the government are incubated in the attitudes and crimes of normative government/military functioning. Just ask the 100,000 dead Guatemalan civilians, predecessors to the 100,000s thousands of dead in Iraq. Or ask Jennifer Harbury... or Abu Zubaydah.

Newt Gingrich's charges against Nancy Pelosi are not motivated by a desire for truth, but to cover for the crimes of the CIA. This is his M.O. This is his job. If only the press had a memory they would not report the fulminations of this shill for torturers and murderers. They might report this, from a story by Jeremy Scahill on the "extrajudicial terror squad" still active at Guantanamo, published in Friday's AlterNet:

As the Obama administration continues to fight the release of some 2,000 photos that graphically document U.S. military abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, an ongoing Spanish investigation is adding harrowing details to the ever-emerging portrait of the torture inside and outside Guantánamo. Among them: "blows to [the] testicles;" "detention underground in total darkness for three weeks with deprivation of food and sleep;" being "inoculated … through injection with 'a disease for dog cysts;'" the smearing of feces on prisoners; and waterboarding. The torture, according to the Spanish investigation, all occurred "under the authority of American military personnel" and was sometimes conducted in the presence of medical professionals....

The force is officially known as the the Immediate Reaction Force or Emergency Reaction Force, but inside the walls of Guantánamo, it is known to the prisoners as the Extreme Repression Force. Despite President Barack Obama's publicized pledge to close the prison camp and end torture -- and analysis from human rights lawyers who call these forces' actions illegal -- IRFs remain very much active at Guantánamo.

Or they could do the kind of digging Jason Leopold did in his latest article, Documents Describe Prisoner Abuse Photos Obama is Withholding. Besides describing a number of the photographs Obama does not now want the U.S. public to see, the article demonstrates how widespread the abuse and torture of prisoners actually was, a horrific combination of official policy, and an army brutalized by its own leadership, inured to the idea of prisoner abuse by observing the policy of the higher ups:

Another photograph that was set for release at the end of month that is now being withheld was taken in December 2003 and was found on a government computer. The image shows three soldiers at the St. Mere Forward Operating Base posing with three Iraqi detainees “zip-tied to bars in a stress position, fully clothed, with hoods over their heads.”

One female soldier in the photo is pointing a broom "as if I was sticking the end of a broom stick into the rectum of a restrained detainee," she testified to Army investigators in April 2004....

One soldier said they “kept the detainees awake by holding them up or by playing the loud music,” the report noted. The soldier said Special Forces instructed soldiers that prisoners who were “violent or had information” were “flex-cuffed on their hands, heads covered and not allowed to sleep"....

Most of the soldiers interviewed in all of the incidents stated that they were not aware of any set policy on the treatment of detainees, and did not realize at the time that their actions were wrong nor did they believe it was inappropriate. A sergeant stated that he had also seen pictures on Army computers of detainees being kicked, hit or inhumanely treated while in U.S. custody.

Another soldier said he had “seen a few pictures of this nature before but thought nothing of it since these people are the ones that are trying to kill us.”

On Wednesday, Obama told reporters that the photographs “are not particularly sensational.”

Also posted at Firedoglake

Torture News Roundup: Breaking: al-Libi Found Dead in Libyan Prison

Also posted now at Daily Kos and Antemedius

This just in from Andy Worthington (H/T Barb):

The Arabic media is ablaze with the news that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the emir of an Afghan training camp — whose claim that Saddam Hussein had been involved in training al-Qaeda operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons was used to justify the invasion of Iraq — has died in a Libyan jail. So far, however, the only English language report is on the Algerian website Ennahar Online, which reported that the Libyan newspaper Oea stated that al-Libi (aka Ali Abdul Hamid al-Fakheri) “was found dead of suicide in his cell,” and noted that the newspaper had reported the story “without specifying the date or method of suicide.”

It was al-Libi who was tortured by the CIA, subjected to mock burial in a box 20 inches high, in order to "confess" to a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, just days after the start of the Iraq War. Al-Libi later recanted. Afterwards, he was disappeared.

This news resolves, in the grimmest way possible, questions that have long been asked about the whereabouts of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, perhaps the most famous of “America’s Disappeared” — prisoners seized in the “War on Terror,” who were rendered not to Guantánamo but to secret prisons run by the CIA or to the custody of governments in third countries — often their own — where, it was presumed, they would never be seen or heard from again.

Top Story

Holder cautious on U.S. interrogations probes

Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday vowed to move cautiously and avoid partisan politics in deciding whether any Bush-era officials should be prosecuted for justifying harsh interrogation techniques.

Holder said he had not yet read the draft report from a review by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility conducted during the previous administration of lawyers who wrote the Bush-era interrogation legal opinions.

"I have not reviewed it. It is not in final form yet," Holder said. "It deals, I suspect, not only with the attorneys but the people that they interacted with, so I think we'll gain some insights by reviewing that report."

He said the review could lead to probes of other officials.

See also, Republicans Warn Holder on Torture.

This is an ongoing weekly series with editors Valtin, Meteor Blades and Patriot Daily. If you have not signed the petition for a special prosecutor to investigate Bush, Cheney et al, you’re just one click away!

(Those who read all the way through this diary will be rewarded by a real treat: a long suppressed U.S. document made public here for the first time on the Internet!)

ALSO BREAKING: Memos shed light on CIA use of sleep deprivation

As President Obama prepared last month to release secret memos on the CIA's use of severe interrogation methods, the White House fielded a flurry of last-minute appeals.

One came from former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, who expressed disbelief that the administration was prepared to expose methods it might later decide it needed....

"Are you telling me that under all conditions of threat, you will never interfere with the sleep cycle of a detainee?" Hayden asked a top White House official, according to sources familiar with the exchange....

A CIA inspector general's report issued in 2004 was more critical of the agency's use of sleep deprivation than it was of any other method besides waterboarding, according to officials familiar with the document, because of how the technique was applied.

The prisoners had their feet shackled to the floor and their hands cuffed close to their chins, according to the Justice Department memos.

Detainees were clad only in diapers and not allowed to feed themselves. A prisoner who started to drift off to sleep would tilt over and be caught by his chains....

When detainees could no longer stand, they could be laid on the prison floor with their limbs "anchored to a far point on the floor in such a manner that the arms cannot be bent or used for balance or comfort," a May 10, 2005, memo said.

"The position is sufficiently uncomfortable to detainees to deprive them of unbroken sleep, while allowing their lower limbs to recover from the effects of standing," it said.

In the Red Cross report, prisoners said they were also subjected to loud music and repetitive noise.

What this L.A. Times story demonstrates is the proclivity of the CIA and other government torturing agencies to twist the meaning of words, and stuff into the nomenclature of one "technique" or procedures a veritable cornucopia of different torture methods. In this "enhanced interrogation" version of sleep deprivation, forced sleep deficit was combined, as we can see, with shackling, forced positions and forced standing, humiliation, manipulation of diet, sensory overload, and possibly other torture procedures.

So this is what the CIA and U.S. government has been selling as "sleep deprivation"! The situation is reminiscent of the Army Field Manual's use of the "Separation" technique in its Appendix M. It, too, is really an omnibus set of procedures, including solitary confinement, restriction of sleep (not using the term "sleep deprivation" here in order to avoid confusion), partial sensory or perceptual deprivation, use of fear, and likely use of sensory overload, and manipulation of environment, among other possible variations.

The Bush Administration Homicides

An important piece by John Sifton at The Daily Beast:

For five years as a researcher for Human Rights Watch and reporter, John Sifton helped investigate homicides resulting from the Bush administration's torture policy. His findings include:

• An estimated 100 detainees have died during interrogations, some who were clearly tortured to death.

• The Bush Justice Department failed to investigate and prosecute alleged murders even when the CIA inspector general referred a case.

• Sifton’s request for specific information on cases was rebuffed by the Bush Justice Department, though it was “familiar with the cases.”

• Attorney General Eric Holder must now decide whether to investigate and prosecute homicides, not just cases of torture.

Cheney tried to revive torture after Hamdan decision
From a New York Times article (H/T indiemcemopants):

The real trouble began on May 7, 2004, the day the C.I.A. inspector general, John L. Helgerson, completed a devastating report. In thousands of pages, it challenged the legality of some interrogation methods, found that interrogators were exceeding the rules imposed by the Justice Department and questioned the effectiveness of the entire program....

Nobody knew it then, but the C.I.A.’s fateful experiment in harsh interrogation was over. The “enhanced” interrogation, already scaled back, would not be used again....

Still, Mr. Cheney and top C.I.A. officials fought to revive the program. Steven G. Bradbury... began drafting another memorandum in late 2006 to restore legal approval for harsh interrogation....

Early drafts of the memorandum, circulated through the White House, the C.I.A. and the State Department, shocked some officials. Just months after the Supreme Court had declared that the Geneva Convention applied to Al Qaeda, the new Bradbury memorandum gave its blessing to almost every technique, except waterboarding, that the C.I.A. had used since 2002.

Meanwhile, Cheney appeared today on CBS Face the Nation, and did not rule out testifying under oath to Congress about the Bush administration use of coercive interrogations (he'd never call it "torture"), or did he simply artfully dodge the question? You be the judge.

Psychologists, the APA, and the Torture Scandal

Psychologists Complicit in Torture, Physicians’ Group Charges

Bill Fisher of Inter Press Service describes how, in 2005, Department of Defense officials monopolized an ethics review by the American Psychological Association (APA) on national security and psychological ethics (PENS). They they were able to do this with connivance of top APA officers.

Nathaniel Raymond, director of PHR's Campaign Against Torture, told us, “The APA’s ethics task force on national security interrogations produced a report that was rushed, secret, and being driven to already-reached conclusions – conclusions that violated the Geneva Convention.”

“The APA made ethics subservient to law by following guidelines set out by the Pentagon. Members of the task force had long-standing ties to the Pentagon, and the task force was stacked with Defense Department and Bush Administration officials. There were clear conflicts of interest,” he said, adding, “The APA needs to explain how that happened. And the Pentagon’s Inspector General needs to look into how this was allowed to happen.”

The scandal over the APA's role in legitimating psychologists participation in torture was explored in an article by Sheri Fink published at both ProPublica and Salon.com. The APA's Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) Task Force report "'found it to be "consistent with the APA Ethics Code' for psychologists to consult with interrogators in the interests of national security."

While noting that psychologists do not participate in torture and have a responsibility to report it, and should be committed to the APA ethics code whenever they "encounter conflicts between ethics and law," the task force decided that "if the conflict cannot be resolved ... psychologists may adhere to the requirements of the law."

The controversy over APA and the DoD has simmered for some time, and has erupted again with the publication of the private email listserv (PDF) between the participants at the APA PENS Task Force, including the top military figures involved.

The Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, and Physicians for Human Rights, among others, have called for an independent investigation of the ties between the American Psychological Association and the Defense-Intelligence Establishments.

Meanwhile, one psychologist has been doggedly trying to pursue APA members who have been implicated in torture.
Lawsuit seeks board action -- Psychologist demands censure

A Louisiana-licensed psychologist played a key role in harsh Army interrogations at U.S. prisons in Cuba and Abu Ghraib in Iraq, according to a lawsuit filed in state district court in Baton Rouge.

The suit pits Ohio psychologist Trudy Bond against the Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists and accuses retired Army Col. Larry C. James of professional and ethical violations in his former role as chief psychologist at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

Bond, who filed a complaint against James with the Baton Rouge-based LSBEP in February 2008, sued the board in July after it dismissed her complaint and rejected her request for an investigation of James.

Bond wants a 19th Judicial District Court judge to send the case back to the board “for a full and complete investigation and hearing,’’ according to her petition for judicial review of the board’s actions.

James, a former New Orleanian who has been licensed in Louisiana since 1990, became dean of Wright State University’s School of Professional Psychology in Dayton, Ohio, on Aug. 1.

Noted bioethicist Steven Miles, author of Oath Betrayed: America's Torture Doctors, discusses implications of the APA/PENS scandal and other aspects of medical complicity with the U.S.'s torture program on Jon Elliott's "This is America" show on Air America (H/T Ms Grin).

Bloggers Against Torture oppose torture and cruel, inhuman & degrading treatment of all persons, whether they be prisoners at Guantanamo, Bagram or CIA black sites; immigrants; civilians, or prisoners in civilian prison systems. Most members support investigation & prosecution of Bush officials for war crimes & torture.

The Pelosi Scandal: Did She or Didn't She?

Records suggest Pelosi, others were told of harsh interrogations

A chart compiled by the CIA indicates that Pelosi (D-San Francisco) was briefed on Sept. 4, 2002, on the agency's interrogation of alleged Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, and that the session covered "the particular [enhanced interrogation techniques] that had been employed." The chart does not list the specific methods covered during the briefing. But during the preceding month, the CIA had used the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding on Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times, according to a Justice Department memo released last month.

Pelosi has acknowledged being briefed on the CIA's interrogation program, but said she was told only about methods the agency was considering, not about techniques it had actually employed.

As recently as a week ago, Pelosi said, "We were not -- I repeat were not -- told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used."

Marcy Wheeler (Emptywheel) at Firedoglake led a host of bloggers who shot holes in the press story.

We knew that CIA was playing around with its obligation to inform the intelligence committees before it starts any big new projects--like opening torture factories around the world.

But that's the real story of this briefing list--aside from what a bunch right wingers are claiming it says, the actual details of the briefing list notwithstanding. The real story is that the CIA was playing a bunch of games to be able to claim it had informed Congress, even while only informing some of Congress some things.

First, CIA has officially confirmed what I have been saying for weeks. The CIA first briefed Congress on torture on September 4, 2002, 35 days after CIA purportedly began waterboarding and much longer after we know CIA started torturing Abu Zubaydah. Moreover, we have on the record statements from Pelosi and Goss (and I've had even stronger assurances elsewhere) that CIA did not tell Congress they were already in the business of torture.

Meanwhile, Greg Sargent at The Plum Line is reporting that there are more docs to follow:

GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra is upping the stakes of the torture fight in response to Nancy Pelosi’s claims that she wasn’t briefed on the use of waterboarding.

His office tells me that he’s seen documents that will prove this isn’t true.

Meanwhile, EW counters that with the fact that there are discrepancies between the CIA timeline and that found in the recently released Senate Armed Services Committee narrative released last month.

Meanwhile, a new wrinkle from Saturday's Washington Post: Top Pelosi Aide Learned Of Waterboarding in 2003

Pelosi has insisted that she was not directly briefed by Bush administration officials that the practice was being actively employed. But Michael Sheehy, a top Pelosi aide, was present for a classified briefing that included Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), then the ranking minority member of the House intelligence committee, at which agency officials discussed the use of waterboarding on terrorism suspect Abu Zubaida.

A Democratic source acknowledged yesterday that it is almost certain that Pelosi would have learned about the use of waterboarding from Sheehy. Pelosi herself acknowledged in a December 2007 statement that she was aware that Harman had learned of the waterboarding and had objected in a letter to the CIA's top counsel.

Glenn Greenwald concludes (emphasis in original):

But what's the point of all of this? Secretly telling Nancy Pelosi that you're committing crimes doesn't mean that you have the right to do so. And the profound failures of the other institutions that are supposed to check executive lawbreaking during the Bush era -- principally Congress and the "opposition party" -- is a vital issue that demands serious examination. This dispute over what Pelosi (and Jay Rockefeller and others) knew highlights, rather than negates, the need for a meaningful investigation into what took place.

Torture and the CIA

Two from Jason Leopold, who continues to keep a close eye on developments in the torture scandal. Patriot Daily posted the first one in Friday night's Overnight News Digest:

CIA Refuses to Turn Over Torture Tape Documents to ACLU

The CIA claims the integrity of a special prosecutor’s criminal investigation into the destruction of 92 interrogation videotapes will be compromised if the agency if forced to turn over to the American Civil Liberties Union detailed documents identifying the individuals responsible for destroying the material, the reasons for the purge, and the torturous tactics depicted on the tapes, according to newly released court documents....

Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney, said the move is “a classic CIA delay tactic.”

In court papers, she said the government is using the criminal investigation “as a pretext for indefinitely postponing” its obligation to produce documents related to the destruction of the videotapes.

Top CIA Officials Were Given Daily Torture Updates of Zubaydah

Leopold's second article looks at how the hunt for records of the CIA's torture as turned up some new evidence.

The first set of indexes contains information about cables sent on Aug. 1, 2002 and ends on Aug. 7, 2002. The second set of indexes begins on Aug. 8, 2002 and ends on Aug. 18, 2002 but does not contain an entry for correspondence sent back to the CIA on Aug. 13, 2002 describing the status of interrogations.

The indexes were turned over as part of a contempt lawsuit filed by the ACLU against the Department of Defense related to 92 interrogation videotapes that were destroyed by the agency in 2005 as public attention began focusing on allegations that the Bush administration had subjected “war on terror” detainees to brutal interrogations that crossed the line into torture....

Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney, said, “it’s disappointing that the Obama administration is continuing to withhold the text of these cables despite the promise of transparency"....

“I think the frequency of the cables showed that CIA headquarters and senior officials had sanctioned interrogation methods that were illegal,” she said. “We see no basis for continuing to withhold this information.”

The OLC Memos on Torture

Another round of scandal and speculation was generated by a New York Times report that an internal Justice Department inquiry into the memos written by John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Stephen Bradley and others to justify Bush administration torture would censure the attorneys but not call for prosecutions.

Interrogation Memos: Inquiry Suggests No Charges

An internal Justice Department inquiry has concluded that Bush administration lawyers committed serious lapses of judgment in writing secret memorandums authorizing brutal interrogations but that they should not be prosecuted, according to government officials briefed on its findings.

The report by the Office of Professional Responsibility, an internal ethics unit within the Justice Department, is also likely to ask state bar associations to consider possible disciplinary action, which could include reprimands or even disbarment, for some of the lawyers involved in writing the legal opinions, the officials said.

The conclusions of the 220-page draft report are not final and have not yet been approved by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

According to an Huffington Post report:

The Washington Post reports that former Bush administration officials are "launching a behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign" to urge Obama Justice officials to "soften" the ethics report on the torture memo authors.

Israel/Palestine: Facility 1391

UN committee charges Israel with maintaining secret jail

GENEVA, (PIC)-- The UN committee against torture has denounced the Israeli general security apparatus for using a secret detention center for interrogation that could not be visited by the Red Cross, lawyers or relatives of those detainees.

The ten independent experts, members of the committee, said that the installation "1391" was located in an unspecified area in Israel. They added that the committee received complaints on torture, maltreatment and inappropriate detention conditions in this installation....

Such practices include severe beating, forcing detainees to sit in awkward positions for long period, tightening the handcuffs, violently shaking the detainee and turning his head suddenly and violently, the committee elaborated....

It asked Israel on the measures taken in response to the UNHCR call for an immediate end to the siege on Gaza Strip, which deprives one and a half million Palestinians from the simplest human rights.

The committee is expected to hear answers from Israel before issuing its report at the end of its current session on 15th May.

The story was further reported in the Jerusalem Post:

The Jewish state is one of seven countries under period review this year by the committee, which has received reports on Israeli violations of the UN Convention Against Torture from at least eight NGOs, including B'Tselem, Hamoked Center for the Defense of the Individual, Physicians for Human Rights and Amnesty International.

In a report submitted to the committee in late 2007, Israel said it had made improvements in a number of areas relating to that convention since it last submitted a report in 2001....

The committee also said it was concerned about allegations that the Shin Bet was operating a secret detention and interrogation facility known as Facility 1391, where detainees had no access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

It asked Israel to explain allegations that Palestinian detainees were beaten, bound, denied sleep and placed in odd positions such as crouching in a frog position or bending their backs in a banana position.

Miscellaneous

Binyam Mohamed ruling: Judges will re-consider public disclosure of UK complicity in torture

The High Court has announced that it will re-open its original judgment that details of the torture of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed should remain secret in the interests of national security.

In February the High Court refused the application of Mr Mohamed and a coalition of media organisations seeking public disclosure of details of his ill-treatment at the hands of the CIA and Pakistani intelligence services. The Court had already found that the British Security Services had colluded in his illegal treatment. After the Foreign Secretary informed the Court that US had threatened to down-grade intelligence sharing with the UK if details were made public, the Court judged that it had no choice but to refrain from publishing details....

Mr Miliband is to be given a final opportunity to present evidence to the Court of the true situation if he wishes to continue to seek to suppress the details of Mr Mohamed's treatment. The Court will then reconsider the question of whether it will publish those details. It is anticipated that the issue will finally be determined in June.

Clive Stafford Smith, Director, of Reprieve, said: "It is long past time that this evidence was made public. How can it be that two governments that purport to uphold the rule of law be working together to cover up crimes committed against Binyam Mohamed?"

Royal Sheikh Detained by UAE Over Torture Tape Allegations

A member of the royal family in the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, has been "detained" in Abu Dhabi by authorities investigating a chilling videotape that shows him torturing an Afghan grain dealer, according to officials in Washington.

Religious leaders call for a commission of inquiry on torture by U.S.

Fiery Response to Pew's Torture Analysis

A firestorm erupted this week over an analysis from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life showing that white evangelical Protestants are far more likely than those in other faith traditions to support the use of torture against suspected terrorists....

But the original analysis overlooked a centrally important piece of information: the big dividing line on public support for torture as a tool in terrorism investigations is along partisan lines, not religious ones.

Government Could Destroy Records in Hundreds of Guantanamo Cases

A stockpile of documents about hundreds of Guantanamo Bay detainees, some written by the prisoners themselves, could be destroyed under a little-known provision of a federal court order the Bush administration obtained in 2004.

Senators Urge Obama to Block Release of New Detainee Abuse Photos (article by William Fisher)

The plea to intervene to stop the expected May 28 release of the photos came in a letter Thursday to President Barack Obama from Senators Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham.

"The release of these old photographs of past behavior that has now been clearly prohibited will serve no public good, but will empower al-Qaeda propaganda operations, hurt our country's image, and endanger our men and women in uniform," the Senators wrote.

Release of the photos is expected in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

"We urge you in the strongest possible terms to fight the release of these old pictures of detainees in the war on terror, including appealing the decision of the Second Circuit in the ACLU lawsuit to the Supreme Court and pursuing all legal options to prevent the public disclosure of these pictures," the senators wrote.

If Lieberman and Graham aren't the slimiest, most unctuous creatures in Congress, then I don't know who would be.

The Bush Era Torture-Homicides, By Scott Horton

In a recent television appearance, one of the nation’s foremost retired military leaders, General Barry McCaffrey, said: “We should never, as a policy, maltreat people under our control, detainees. We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A.” The fact of dozens of homicides is frankly acknowledged in discussions with military and intelligence experts, but the press seems to regard the subject as taboo.

Why is Condi Rice Joining the Torture Debate?

The NYT's definition of blinding American exceptionalism (Glenn Greenwald -- H/T Stephen Soldz)

Greenwald takes on the hypocrisy of how torture is covered by The Gray Lady, and the press in general, where it's torture if it's done to an American, and "harsh tactics some critics decry as torture" if done by Americans to other people.

Sleight of Hand: Obama's Military Commissions Redux

I don’t think, however, that the resurrection of the military commissions is a manifestation of laziness on Obama’s part. Nor is it a failure of leadership, per se. The Military Commissions are a constituent part of the torture program which, even now, is not dismantled, and continues in somewhat attenuated form as part of the Army Field Manual. It is also part of the cover-up of the previous torture program, allowing for the use of torture evidence without the political explosion that would take place by having to release or acquit “terrorists” (really “accused terrorists,” but who cavils about such things in our modern America anymore?) because the evidence was tainted by torture, and therefore inadmissible.

All signs point to the fact that when it comes to national security and military matters, Obama is compliant to the wishes of the Pentagon, that he has no real policy of his own.

A new Torture Evidence Database, collected by Edger at Antemedius

Andy Worthington on Obama’s First 100 Days: Mixed Messages On Torture

Among other things, Andy reports that Amnesty International (PDF) has picked up the campaign pushed by myself and others to expose the use of abusive interrogation techniques in the Army Field Manual, and that organization's "disappointment that the administration was 'endorsing without qualification' a document 'which permits prolonged sleep deprivation, isolation and manipulation of a detainee’s fears contrary to the international ban on torture.'"

Final Archival Treat: From the Pike Committee Report

The transcribed quote that follows is from the introduction to the suppressed 1975 Pike Committee Report, the product of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. This committee's report on CIA activities was never published by the government, as Congress backed down after the CIA protested any distribution, claiming national security would be harmed. Over 30 years later, I can't imagine why this report has not been made public.

This selection from Part One: The Select Committee's Oversight Experience has never been published in full on the Internet. In the future, I will post more from this extraordinary report, a copy of which I have secured.

If this Committee's recent experience is any test, intelligence agencies that are to be controlled by Congress are, today, beyond the lawmaker's scrutiny.

These secret agencies have interests that inherently conflict with the open accountability of a political body, and there are many tools and tactics to block and deceive conventional Congressional checks. Added to this are the unique attributes of intelligence -- notably, "national security," in its cloak of secrecy and mystery -- to intimidate Congress and erode fragile support for sensitive inquiries.

Wise and effective legislation cannot proceed in the absence of information respecting conditions to be affected or changed. Nevertheless, under present circumstances, inquiry into intelligence activities faces serious and fundamental shortcomings.

Even limited success in exercising future oversight requires a rethinking of the powers, procedures, and duties of the overseers. This Committee's path and policies, its pluses and minuses, may at least indicate where to begin.

Access to Information

The key to exercising oversight is knowledge. In the case of intelligence agencies, this translates into a need for access to information often held by the agencies themselves, about events in distant places.

It is an uncertain approach to gathering facts, given the best of circumstances. The best of circumstances thereby become a minimum condition.

The Select Committee's most important work may well have been its test of those circumstances, testing perhaps for the first time what happens when Congress unilaterally decides what it wants to know and how it wants to know it.

There were numerous public expressions by intelligence agencies and the Executive that full cooperation would be accorded. The credibility of such assurances was important, since almost all the necessary materials were classified and controlled by the executive branch. Despite these public representations, in practice most document access was preceded by lengthy negotiations. Almost without exception, these negotiations yielded something less than complete or timely access.

In short, the words were always words of cooperation; the reality was delay, refusal, missing information, asserted privileges, and on and on.

The Committee began by asserting that Congress alone must decide who, acting in its behalf, has a right to know secret information. This led to a rejection of Executive "clearances" or the "compartmentation" of our staff. The Committee refused, as matter of policy, to sign agreements. It refused to allow intelligence officials to read and review our investigators' notes, and avoided canned briefings in favor of primary source material. The Committee maintained that Congress has a right to all information short of direct communications with the President.

Our ability to abide by these policies has been a mixed record.

On the plus side, an aggressive pursuit of facts and a willingness to back up this pursuit with subpoenas produced some unprecedented results. As an example, never before had either the Executive or Congress put together a ten-year review of covert action projects. By subpoena -- which unfortunately, had to be taken to the brink of contempt enforcement -- the staff of the Committee analyzed all official covert action approvals since 1965, and reported its results to the Committee in a closed hearing. That presentation was one of the most interesting and accurate pictures of U.S. covert policies yet assembled, and was of no small value to our findings. Other examples appear throughout the remainder of this report.

Nevertheless, if that is the positive side, it was offset by the extraordinary efforts that were required, even in a climate favorable to reviewing past Executive conduct, to identify and obtain document.

It is a commentary in itself that subpoenas were necessary.

It is a further commentary that much of the time subpoenas were not enough, and only a determined threat of contempt proceedings brought grudging results.

In the future, I'll post more of this extraordinary document, a part of our history, suppressed by our own government.

Thanks to Patriot Daily, Meteor Blades, and all those cited and uncited, all those hard workers in the cause of justice and against cruelty and inhumanity from whom I gathered these links, and to those who have survived unbelievable pain and mental anguish, I honor all of you.

Supreme Court Slaps Bush, Congress on Habeas Corpus

By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional the provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that suspended the use of habeas corpus by detainees in Bush's "war on terror." The MCA was pushed by Bush, and overwhelmingly approved by Congress, including both supposed anti-torture politician John McCain and many Democrats.

From Justice Kennedy's majority opinion:

Security depends upon a sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our Armed Forces to act and to interdict. There are further considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom’s first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers. It is from these principles that the judicial authority to consider petitions for habeas corpus relief derives....

The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law....

Congress has enacted a statute, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (DTA), 119 Stat. 2739, that provides certain procedures for review of the detainees’ status. We hold that those procedures are not an adequate and effective substitute for habeas corpus. Therefore §7 of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA), 28 U. S. C. A. §2241(e) (Supp. 2007), operates as an unconstitutional suspension of the writ. [Thanks to Phil at Daily Kos for the quotes]

The decision was a defeat for the attack on civil liberties championed by the Bush administration, which has led to years of indefinite detention and torture of prisoners at Guantanamo and other prisons in the U.S. gulag established in the wake of 9/11 and Bush's invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. While championed by Bush, Cheney, et al., this tyrannical program of rights suspension and abuse has been backed by the Democratic Party, or at least a significant section of the party, which voted for MCA, the Patriot Act, and other anti-democratic legislation, and has also failed to hold the Bush Administration to account for any of their crimes.

The latest example of the failure of the Democratic Party leadership was the shameful suppression of Congressman Dennis Kucinich's resolution to impeach George W. Bush. Despite a throrough vetting of the crimes of the Bush administration in a speech that lasted over four hours on the House floor, the Democrats voted practically unanimously to send the bill to an ignominious fate: a referral to committee, where the bill could languish unheard and ignored for eternity, if need be. Democratic Party chair Howard Dean explained, "The American people sent us there [to Congress] to get things done... They didn't send us there to impeach the President." The failure to get anything of note done in this current Congress belies Dean's statement, and stands as mute testimony to the impotence of the mainstream Democratic Party's opposition policies.

To remind us of the Democrats role in the habeas controversy, let's refer back to an excellent article Glenn Greenwald wrote in May 2007:

It is worthwhile to review briefly the history of how this legislative atrocity came to be. When the White House proposed this bill, Democrats were as meek and as silent as could be. They literally disappeared from the debate, allowing the illusion of "negotiations" between the White House on the one hand, and a handful of allegedly principled and independent Republican Senators (McCain, Warner and Graham) on the other.

When -- as was both painfully predictable and predicted -- those Republican Senators capitulated almost in full to the White House, "winning" only the most meaninglessly symbolic linguistic changes to the bill while acquiescing to its most Draconian provisions, the fate of the bill was sealed because Democrats had ceded their authority to those "rebel" GOP Senators....

It is true that most Democrats in both the House and Senate ultimately voted against this law (though 12 Democratic Senators out of 44 voted in favor). But even among the Senate Democrats who did vote against its enactment, many of them did not even reveal how they would vote until -- literally -- the very day before the vote occurred, and many such Democratic Senators announced their opposition only once it became clear that it would pass....

Far worse, many Democrats -- led by Harry Reid (who at the last minute announced his opposition) -- even spoke favorably of the MCA in the days immediately preceding the vote.

In all the disgust and even hatred that Bush's bellicose and autocratic and illegal policies have engendered, it becomes easy to forget that the Democrats acted way too often as a handmaiden to Bush, beginning with the Patriot Act, and further to the Iraq War. Even today, the supplemental funding bills for the continuation of U.S. military adventures and occupation policies in Iraq and Afghanistan are seen by the Democrats as opportunities to bargain for concessions on other issues, e.g., unemployment insurance, rather than as opportunities to secure principled opposition to a failed war policy. Along these lines, Speaker Pelosi now promises she'll deliver Bush's $170 billion war funding bill by July 4 (how patriotic of her).

The euphoria in certain circles over Obama's candidacy masks some very important political realities that cannot be ignored. The recent Supreme Court decision in the consolidated cases of Boumediene v. Bush and Al-Odah v. Bush is very welcome news. But in very important ways, it also points out how very, very far off the track politics in America has gone.

Answering the Question -- "Will They Get Away with It?"

Buhdydharma, the intrepid web proprietor of Docudharma, has posted an article today asking if, after the revelations by ABC news that basically the entire top administration hierarchy has been implicated in the oversight and implementation of a secret torture program, right out of the White House, if after such a massive revelation Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al. "will they get away with it?"

It has become obvious that left to her own devices Nancy Pelosi WILL let them get away with it....no matter what they do or how horrendous "it" is. She is the only one with the real authority to stop them. And she, apparently, will not. The answer then, seems to be: Yes, they will. And a new administration is not the answer either.

The implications here are truly chilling. If the Democrats won't pursue prosecution....We are faced with a government with NO internal or external checks. A government not subject to the law. A government which can wage aggressive war and torture with complete impunity. That is NOT hyperbole, it is where we stand at this very moment in time.

My colleague at Docudharma describes the situation accurately. He also notes that the inaction of a pivotal figure in this drama -- the ostensibly liberal Democrat Nancy Pelosi -- marks her as a member of this same conspiracy, not least because "she was... partially informed that it was occurring." I made much the same point in an essay last December (also published at Docudharma and Daily Kos, with a vibrant discussion at each). Let's revisit what Pelosi had to say about her "briefings" in the light of today's knowledge:

"On one occasion, in the fall of 2002, I was briefed on interrogation techniques the Administration was considering using in the future. The Administration advised that legal counsel for the both the CIA and the Department of Justice had concluded that the techniques were legal.

"I had no further briefings on the techniques. Several months later, my successor as Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman, was briefed more extensively and advised the techniques had in fact been employed. It was my understanding at that time that Congresswoman Harman filed a letter in early 2003 to the CIA to protest the use of such techniques, a protest with which I concurred."

It may be time to ask both Pelosi and Harman what they knew and when they knew it. But I think we already know the answer to those questions, and it's not a comforting one. The ABC revelations -- that the U.S. leadership, including the president, vice-president, national security officers and secretaries of defense and state, the attorney general and the head of the CIA are all implicated in the specific instructions given to torturers, and not only approving but directing such torture -- represent as stark a confrontation with the truth of the complete corruption and evil that lies at the heart of our government as any we will get. What I wrote back last December seems almost quaint in its naivete in describing a political path out of the wilderness:

Let not those who profess progressive politics and really want to change this country sit back in silence or disbelief and let this kind of betrayal stand. Now is the time to change things. Not tomorrow. Not in November 2008. Not in some other lifetime. If we fail to speak out now, our acquiescence weakens the entire progressive cause, and all the elections in the world will not make such a stain any cleaner, or go away.

We could start by asking for the resignation from the Speakership of Nancy Pelosi, and the resignation from the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairmanship of John D. Rockefeller.

Now I can see that even such elementary statements of justice are insufficient to address the crisis at hand, even when joined with slogans shouting for impeachment of the execrable criminals Bush and Cheney.

(By the way, I called Pelosi's office today, asking for the Speaker's reaction or any statement on the ABC newsstory revelations. I spoke to a couple of staffers in her San Francisco office, and each time was told, after hearing my question, that the person I wished to talk to "was not in right now." This comic episode reminded me of the title of Franz Kafka's first novel, Der Verschollene (The Man Who Disappeared, published, however as Amerika).)

Reading buhdydharma's latest plaintive post about the torture plotters in the White House, and their assault against elementary decency and political sanity, I realized the answer to his question could only be made with some advert to history, and the perspective the latter brings.

Answering the Question

So, will they get away with it?

Answer: in the short-term, yes. If there is no accountability or price the Bush team suffers for their crimes, there is no accountability or price the Democratic leadership suffers for their culpability or failure to act.

In the long-term, we will all pay. But the total bankruptcy -- political, moral, economic -- of the society will leave this entire crew, all the leadership of this society, including the full intelligentsia, inclusive of the blogosphere, as bankrupt. Bankrupt and ignorant of the lessons of history, lessons that were staring them in the face all the time, but they refused to acknowledge, drunk on the belief in their own omnipotency (in the case of the powerful) or in their own essential rightness (the case of the rest of us).

There is a straight line from the American and French revolutions, through the 1848 revolutions, the Paris Commune, the 1905 and 1917 Russian revolutions, the rise of fascism, the slaughters of World Wars I and II, the national liberation movements, the Cold War, the collapse of Soviet Stalinism, to the triumphalism of the "American Century"... this line steers and staggers between its central understandable component: the reality of the division of the world into classes of exploited and exploiter, and the struggles of the former, often blind and contradictory, and poorly led, to throw off the shackles of the latter.

The smug and oh-so-powerful leadership of this country is overreaching, much as Hitler overreached, and a similar catastrophe awaits all of us... unless... unless we can come together, throw off the weight of the bought-off Democratic Party, and make a real struggle for power against those who seek to control the entire world. I, frankly, don't see this happening. And I do not advocate adventurist forays to smash one's head up against a repressive governmental apparatus. All one can do is wait, patiently explain, and hope the lessons are learned before they are foisted upon us in the form of a total collapse of the society, or what is just as likely, another world war.

The real question to ask is: Will YOU (or WE) let them get away with it?

No Moral Compass: Pelosi, Democrats, & the WP Revelations

Notoriously (depending upon your point of view), this past weekend the Washington Post published an article revealing that a number of top Democrats and Republicans were briefed in September 2002 on CIA interrogation methods. They were "given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk." The reported techniques are said to have included waterboarding.

Yesterday, Pelosi released a statement clarifying what happened from her perspective. This must have shocked even a little those Democratic Party stalwarts, but no, as we'll see, their Nancy can make no mistake. She was, you see... helpless.

All of this comes in the wake of recent revelations on the machinations of the Bush/Cheney clique and how they have cozened their favorite torture techniques over the years. There was the revelation of secret memos authorizing torture in 2005. There was last weeks report on the destruction of video tapes of the torture of al-Queda suspect Abu Zubaydah. Before all that, there have been years of exposes on waterboarding, sensory deprivation, secret renditions to foreign torture chambers, training of foreign torturers, a CIA handbook of torture and the history of its development... it goes on and on.

Pelosi Releases a Statement

Now, Spencer Ackerman over at TPMmuckraker has published Pelosi's latest statement on her CIA 2002 briefing. Is it meant to stanch the growing controversy, or a someday prosecution?

"On one occasion, in the fall of 2002, I was briefed on interrogation techniques the Administration was considering using in the future. The Administration advised that legal counsel for the both the CIA and the Department of Justice had concluded that the techniques were legal.

"I had no further briefings on the techniques. Several months later, my successor as Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman, was briefed more extensively and advised the techniques had in fact been employed. It was my understanding at that time that Congresswoman Harman filed a letter in early 2003 to the CIA to protest the use of such techniques, a protest with which I concurred."

Let's summarize: Pelosi admits she was briefed in 2002 on CIA "interrogation techniques" (she doesn't elaborate), and that both CIA and DoJ had concluded they were "legal". Pelosi says nothing about the Washington Post reporting about briefings concerning CIA overseas detention sites -- were these the "secret prisons" not exposed publically until November 2005 by Dana Priest at the (now reviled by Pelosi defenders) Washington Post? (The story first came out via Amnesty International.)

"No further briefings on the techniques"... but what about the program in general, Nancy? Then there is the revelation that it was Harman that was advised the techniques were "employed". Harman's (classified) letter of protest was something with which Pelosi "concurred." How, why, or when Pelosi concurred she saw not fit to elbow into her two paragraph explanation.

The Powerlessness of Power

Meanwhile, the standard apologia for Pelosi, Senate Intelligence Committee chair Jay Rockefeller, and other Democrats made privy to CIA crimes is that they were powerless to protest because their actions were stifled by national security secrecy provisions. This is the thesis of MediaFreeze at Daily Kos, who sees it all as a clever GOP trap, now sprung five years later:

Back in 2002 around the one year anniversary of 9/11, when the nation was being whipped up in a froth of warmongering and hatred, a very very short list of Democrats where given a super secret briefing on the Thug's plans to torture some people. Since it was classified they couldn't tell anyone else about it. Who knows what they were told, but it was enough to make them complicit. That was the intent of the briefing. It was a torture trap. (emphasis in original)

Here's a different take from Phoenix Woman, also at Daily Kos on the general powerlessness of the minority party, which tied Nancy's hands:

Again, this was 2003....

There wasn't much else she could do, especially under the House rules that were in effect then, which essentially stripped the minority party of any power. (The Democrats, either generously or foolishly, undid those rules when they took over this January, which is one reason why the Republicans currently have such blocking power even in the minority.)

Glenn Greenwald, whose blog sits on Kos's own blogroll, questions much of this CHA (cover her ass) bloviating:

I continue to be amazed and disturbed by the number of people willing to defend the actions of Rockefeller and his comrades by claiming that these poor, victimized Congressional members just have no ability to do anything when they learn about outright lawbreaking by the administration. As I asked yesterday, why would they even bother to attend briefings if they believed that they were "powerless" to act even upon learning of serious illegalities? Here is the central purpose of the Select Committee on Intelligence -- the primary reason it exists, as stated by the resolution which created the Committee:

It is further the purpose of this resolution to provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States.

The Intelligence Committees were created as a response to the discovery in the 1970s of illegal conduct by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The core function is to monitor what the intelligence community does and to "assure that such activities" are legal. It is a complete travesty for the senior Democrats on those Committees (and their apologists) to claim that they are powerless to act when learning of lawbreaking.

Reformism and Torture, With a Nod to to the APA

It has not gone unnoticed in some quarters that the Democrats, with some GOP allies (like Chuck Hagel), have a bill currently in Congressional Conference Committee that seeks to ban all "harsh interrogation techniques" in favor of adherence by all U.S. entities, such as the CIA, to the current practices of the Army Field Manual.

When Sharon Brehm, current president of the American Psychological Association wrote a letter to the New York Times supporting the current Congressional bill, some at APA felt that organization had finally made a turn toward seriously opposing U.S. torture policy. I have no link, but my copy shows President Brehm writing:

I applaud this week’s vote of the House and Senate conference committee on the intelligence authorization bill to outlaw harsh interrogation tactics and to require all U.S. interrogators to abide by the Army Field Manual when questioning suspected high-level terrorists (The New York Times, Dec. 6). This requirement would make clear once and for all that “waterboarding” and several other “enhanced” interrogation techniques are illegal.

It is deplorable that the White House is already threatening to veto this measure, should it pass the full House and Senate. Harsh interrogation techniques are not only illegal they are ineffective. Effective interrogations are based on establishing trust and building rapport with the subject, whose human dignity is preserved. As one World War II interrogator recently told the Washington Post, "We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture."

The position of the American Psychological Association is that any and all harsh interrogation tactics, including so-called “no-touch torture” and “torture light,” constitute torture and are always unethical. It is our fervent hope that the conference committee’s proposed prohibition will soon be extended to all interrogators acting on behalf of the United States, whether military or CIA.

But as I wrote to a member of an APA listserv:

In the latest letter, APA says nothing about indefinite detention (and neither does the new bill). Indefinite detention, of course, feed right into the Army Field Manual (AFM) technique of "futility". It is good that APA says that it opposes "torture-lite", but it does so while politically supporting a resolution that would enshrine torture-lite, via the AFM. It is this kind of obfuscation that is precisely why one has learned not to trust practically anything that comes out of Washington these days, whether Congress, or APA HQ.

The problem with attacking so-called "harsh" techniques before stopping psychological types of torture is that it misinforms the public, and feeds into the idea that "torture-lite" kinds of coercive treatment, such as sensory and sleep deprivation, and isolation, are in fact not as bad as the "harsh" kind. The political manifestation of this is the kind of bill now in conference committee, a bill, by the way, certain to face a Bush veto, and, surviving that, the kinds of signing statements Bush has made the hallmark of his regime.

Those complicit in earlier forms of torture and coercive interrogation, e.g., the Democrats and the APA, are trying to insulate themselves against the growing scandal that is U.S. torture, while also preserving CIA-approved forms of earlier coercive interrogation that centers around the old isolation and sensory deprivation paradigm of the KUBARK manual. (Harsher methods can be obtained via secret extraordinary renditions to foreign prisons, which apparently still go on unabated.)

The Compass Points to Moral and Political Degradation

The issue of covering up complicity brings me back to where this article began: the gyrations by Pelosi, Rockefeller, and much of the rest of the Democratic leadership and their supporters around the country, especially among the pro-Democratic "netroots".

I ask the latter: where is your moral compass? If Bush didn't care who he tortured, as long as he maintains power for his administration and the corporations and contractors that prosper from the hogfeed that is the "war on terror", then how are the Democrats any different if in the name of electoral success evidence of complicity in inhumane forms of behavior is ignored. The saliency is only enhanced when one realizes I'm talking about the leader of the Democratic Party, second in line to the Presidency, and the leader of the Senate Intelligence Committee, among others.

Pelosi's admissions over the weekend show that her participation in briefings on torture are not a "CIA smear", or the lies of CIA old-time hack Porter Goss. But not all Democrats are sleeping on this -- though I've heard no outrage from Congressional members themselves, as yet. For instance, there was this excellent piece by Deep Harm over at Daily Kos. And a hat tip to shpilk, also at Daily Kos, for his referencing of Jonathan Turley on the concatenation of scandals around torture, executive power, and Congressional capitulation that have surrounded the revelations around waterboarding (the Mukasey nomination), destruction of CIA torture tapes, and the briefings to Congressional leaders:

The news would serve to explain why the Democrats have repeatedly act to protect the White House from a showdown on torture. The most obvious and distressing example was when Sens. Chuck Schumer and Diane Feinstein saved Attorney General Michael Mukasey from having to admit that waterboarding is torture. The Democrats clearly do not want to have such a moment, which would trigger an investigation (and possible impeachment proceeding) where they own knowledge would be revealed.

Voters are likely to look harshly on the fact that their leaders knew of a criminal act and failed to reveal it — while professing disgust at the notion of torture....

If true, the knowledge of Democratic leaders shows a deep disconnect and possible dishonesty between our representatives and the voters. In many ways, this will be the test of our political system. If the public returns to its prior slumber after this story, there is little hope for a system that seems to replicate this type of conduct.

Over the weekend, I saw the movie The Golden Compass with my young daughter. In the movie, the evil Marisa Coulter (played by Nicole Kidman) explains to her daughter that some of the evil she does to others -- brainwashing and even killing young children -- is defensible because it's done in the name of some (peculiarly defined) good. This is the morality of the Bush Administration, and it appears to be the morality, too, of much of the leadership of their opponents in the Democratic Party. If one crime is one of commission, the other is one of ommission.

Pelosi and Rockefeller Should Step Down

Let not those who profess progressive politics and really want to change this country sit back in silence or disbelief and let this kind of betryal stand. Now is the time to change things. Not tommorrow. Not in November 2008. Not in some other lifetime. If we fail to speak out now, our acquiescence weakens the entire progressive cause, and all the elections in the world will not make such a stain any cleaner, or go away.

We could start by asking for the resignation from the Speakership of Nancy Pelosi, and the resignation from the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairmanship of John D. Rockefeller.

Twilight of the Bushites

Aus des Rheines Gold ist der Reif geglüht.

Watching a DVD of the New York Metropolitan Opera's version of Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung (or Twilight of the Gods [TOG]) the other day, I was struck at how prescient the otherwise reactionary composer was in anticipating the destruction of the voracious classes. (One should not find it odd that in Wagner one finds mixed the most progressive and the most reactionary of views and trends, as in this he is the exemplar of the age, which mixes reason and progress with vile reaction, destruction, and mass murder.)

Dick Cheney, who is Alberich in my analogy with Wagner's opera, was on the stump beating war tom-toms against Iran during a 35-minute talk at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), which The New York Times calls "a research organization". In reality, WINEP is a well-known right-wing pro-Israel lobby. While praised by liberal dreamboat Al Gore as "Washington's most respected center for studies on the Middle East", according to Right Web:

its WINEP's Board of Advisers includes: Warren Christopher, Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Alexander Haig, Max M. Kampelman, [the late] Jeane Kirkpatrick, Samuel W. Lewis, Edward Luttwak, Michael Mandelbaum, Robert McFarlane, Martin Peretz, Richard Perle, James Roche, George P. Shultz, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, and Mortimer Zuckerman. Wolfowitz and Roche resigned from the board when they entered the Bush administration in 2001, although WINEP still proudly lists them....

in April 2004 WINEP published Policy Focus #47, The West Bank Fence: A Vital Component in Israel's Strategy of Defense, written by Maj. Gen. Doron Almog of the Israel Defense Forces.

Okay. I think you kind of get the idea. This crowd will be quite receptive to Cheney's rant, and following Bush's "World War III" warning (and Bush is Hagan, in my TOG comparison), it would have to be quite a speech. And Cheney didn't let us down.

Cheney, the War God

As reported by the NYT, Cheney is definitely threatening war:

“The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences,” Mr. Cheney said, without specifying what those might be. “The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon"....

...Mr. Cheney reserved his harshest language for Iran. Calling it “the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism,” he said, “our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions.”

That language is not radically different from what Mr. Cheney has used in the past. But people at the conference said that, placed in the context of Mr. Bush’s remarks, it represented a significant step toward increasing pressure on Iran. The speech seemed to lay the groundwork for the threat of military action — either because the administration actually intends to use force or because it wants to use the threat of force to prod Europe into action.

The press has been awash in articles noting the build up to war with Iran. Seymour Hersh's article in The New Yorker earlier this month laid out pretty clearly what was up, with Herr Cheney firmly in charge.

This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.

Meanwhile, in the hall of the Gibichungs -- I mean, Congress -- Democratic Congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are doing... what? Pelosi supposedly told Arianna Huffington that she wouldn't let a funding bill on the Iraq War come to a vote unless it carried a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Never mind that she has promised that before. Who believes her now, except kiss-up bloggers and media hounds?

And Harry Reid! According to Congressional Quarterly (via a story at TPM Muckraker), he's plotting to spike the hold Sen. Chris Dodd put on the shameful FISA wiretapping bill/capitulation, which will allow retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies for all its breaches of customer privacy in the years since 9/11 (if not before). Is this how a party leader is supposed to act, knifing one of his own in the back, and furthering the Bush totalitarian agenda?

Democratic supporters seem to be suspended between shocked awe and craven paralysis. Then there are those who are circling the wagons around idiot electoralism, placing all hope that the Ring of Power will be placed into the hand of their standard bearer in 2008.

The Sun Never Sets on Bushland

As Wagner understood, the Ring is cursed, and the power it brings is only destructive. In Götterdämmerung, his last installment of his monumental opera, The Ring of the Niebelung, Wagner portrayed a world where the quest for ultimate power had perverted all relationships, negated all contracts, and turned beauty and truth itself into a distorted mirror of its opposite. And so it is now, with the founding ideals of America -- life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- mutated into death, indefinite detention, and the pursuit of barbarism. Bush and Cheney's dark torture prisons extend like a sinister web even unto the farthest regions of the planet, as the recent stories about Diego Garcia reveal.

From satellite pictures, Diego Garcia looks like paradise.

The small, secluded atoll in the Indian Ocean, with its coral beaches, turquoise waters and vast lagoon in the centre, is 1,600 kilometres from land in any direction....

The little-known British possession, leased to the United States in 1970, was a major military staging post in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It continues to be, in effect, a floating aircraft carrier, housing 1,700 personnel who call it Camp Justice.

But intelligence analysts say Diego Garcia's geographic isolation is now being exploited for other, darker purposes.

They claim it is one in a network of secret detention centres being operated by the Central Intelligence Agency to interrogate high-value terrorist suspects beyond the reach of American or international law.

These prisoners are known as "ghost detainees" or the "new disappeared," and they're being subjected to treatment that makes the abuses at the military-run Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad and Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba look small-time, say intelligence analysts.

Tropical hideaways turned into torture chambers. "Research organizations" become centers of war propaganda. Opposition politicians acting like agents of the party in power. "Democracy" transmuted from ideal into bombing runs on innocent populations.

The Limits of Metaphor, and the Need for Societal Resurrection

As a petit-bourgeois artist of the 19th century, Wagner could see no way out for humanity, unless it consume itself in its inner contradictions, in a fiery twilight of the gods that brings down all civilization with its doomed quest for power, only to (perhaps) rise again and begin the whole process over again, endlessly through time.

Wagner, following some of the Eastern philosophies of his time, may yet prove right. But, the people in his music dramas, the Gibichungs of TOG, were passive bystanders, helpless except to view in horror the destruction that rained upon them. We do not have to be the same. But it will mean a quantum leap in consciousness, especially for the American people, who are tied to the myth of the progressivism of the Democratic Party, like flies to a rotting corpse.

In any healthy party, the clamoring to remove Pelosi and Reid would be deafening by now. But when one of the disgruntled few dared to speak the truth the other day, as Congressman Pete Stark did, the Democrats rushed to denounce him, the better to keep their oath of blood-brotherhood with the Bushites.

Stark told the GOP that Bush was vetoing a $35 billion dollar bill to fund children's health care because he needed the cash "to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement".

For, in my analogy with Wagner's opera, Stark plays the strange role of the Rhinemaidens, who, confronting the hero with a final chance to return the Ring to its primeval owners and destroy once and for all its curse, with all the dangerous questing after power it entails, are met with stony rejection and ridicule... just as Pelosi denounced Stark.

At the end of Götterdämmerung, it is Brunnhilde who renounces the ring out of love, and returns the cursed gold to the forces of nature, from whence it came. I'm afraid there is no redemption via love for our society. And Hillary Clinton is no Brunnhilde (she, like Pelosi, is a Gutrune figure).

But for love and not from fear change may yet come. If we truly love our children, if we truly love this planet and all life upon it, then we must come to terms with our own fears, and take dedicated action to remove those who would promote American imperium from power. And this is not only America's problem, because in each country the people must take the same stand. Or we face the tragic fate of Siegfried in Wagner's opera, destroyed by those we believe we serve, stabbed in the back because we thought we could live for love, for good times, in peace and happiness, while in fact all around us swirled dark clouds of hate and dreams of vengeful conquest.