torture

In response to litigation filed by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Justice Department today released four secret memos used by the Bush administration to justify torture. The memos, produced by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), provided the legal framework for the CIA's use of waterboarding and other illegal interrogation methods that violate domestic and international law.

18-page memo, dated August 1, 2002, from Jay Bybee, Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA

46-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counse

20-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counse

40-page memo, dated May 30, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counse

In an e-mail sent to members of the Defense Department's Transportation Command (including Gen. Norton Schwartz, who is now the Air Force Chief of Staff) on February 17, 2006, an anonymous official -- the name was redacted -- wrote:

We may need to definitely think about checking with Southcom to see if we can hold off on return flights for 45 days or so until things die down. Otherwise we are likely to have hero's welcomes awaiting the detainees when they arrive ... It would probably be preferable if we could deliver these detainees in something smaller and more discreet ...

The e-mail chain included a forwarded correspondence that read "US Getting Creamed on Human Rights" and which cited international coverage of the UN Rapporteurs' then-recent report on conditions at Guantanamo. That, "plus lingering interest in Abu Ghraib photos,"read the e-mail, "adds up to the US taking a big hit on the issues of human rughts and respect for the rule of law."

The line fits neatly with the rest of what we know about the Bush administration's philosophy:that perceptions of abuse were worth worrying about; the abuse itself? Not so much.

According to a letter filed by the government in court today, the CIA acknowledged it destroyed 92 tapes of interrogations. The admission comes in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit seeking records of the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad. In December 2007, the ACLU filed a motion to hold the CIA in contempt for its destruction of videotapes recording the harsh interrogation of prisoners in violation of a court order requiring the agency to produce or identify all the requested records. That motion is still pending.

The following can be attributed to Amrit Singh, staff attorney with the ACLU:

"This letter provides further evidence for holding the CIA in contempt of court. The large number of videotapes destroyed confirms that the agency engaged in a systemic attempt to hide evidence of its illegal interrogations and to evade the court's order. Our contempt motion has been pending in court for over a year now -- it is time to hold the CIA accountable for its flagrant disregard for the rule of law."

Sounds like they were trying to hide something.

Britain faces fresh accusations that it colluded in the rendering and alleged torture of a second UK resident now being held at Guantanamo Bay. The new claims bring further pressure on ministers to come clean about the scale of the Government's complicity in the rendition and torture of dozens of terror suspects captured by the Americans after 9/11.

His case comes after that of Binyam Mohamed, 30, released from the US naval base in Cuba last week, and whose claims of UK involvement in his torture are being investigated by the Attorney General. Now allegations made by Shaker Aamer, the final British resident held at Guantanamo Bay, raise concerns that both MI5 and MI6 were widely involved in the US rendition and torture programme operated in Afghanistan and Pakistan after 9/11.

Mr Aamer, 42, says he was rendered from the Pakistan border to Afghanistan where he claims he was tortured. He was passed by Pakistani groups to the Northern Alliance who sold him to the Americans. The CIA arranged for his detention in Afghanistan and final transfer to Guantanamo Bay.

He adds that two MI6 or MI5 officers, a man and a woman, interrogated him after he had been subjected to beatings and sleep deprivation by the Americans while being held at a prison in Kandahar in January 2002. He has told his UK lawyers that the British woman officer called herself "Sally".

Interview with President and Mrs. George W. Bush

Aired January 13, 2009 - 21:00 ET

...

KING: So does it hurt you that Colin, who worked for you, is saying that?

G. BUSH: I don't think he said George Bush has tortured. I can't remember his quote. But I'm comfortable with what we did and know it was necessary to protect the country. KING: So there's nothing you've done in the area of treatment of prisoners that causes you any kind of pause?

G. BUSH: No. No. Everything we did was -- you know, it had legal -- legal opinions behind it. Look, you're sitting there, you've captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He's the guy that ordered the September the 11th attacks. And we want to know what he knows in order to protect the United States of America.

And I got legal opinions that said whatever we're going to do is legal. And my job is to protect you, Larry. And I've given it my all. I've given it my all.

Emphasis mine.

What kills me is he thinks he's done the best job possible, that the war on terror was really what needed to be started, that torture and lack of due process was how to fight it and that everyone else who disagrees with him is not only a traitor, but is crazy.

Oh, and not only has god told him that this is all OK, but he's got legal opinions that let him do whatever he wants.

As the Guantanamo Bay detention center reached its seventh birthday this week, a U.S. veteran said he witnessed cell beatings, forced head shavings and interrogation tactics--including sleep deprivation, floor shackles and loud music--while guarding detainees there.

"It's torture," Chris Arendt, who worked at Guantanamo when he was 19, told the BBC in this video. "It's a means of extracting information that I didn't even believe these people probably had. It's a means of making their lives more miserable."

On Fox News Sunday today, host Chris Wallace asked Vice President Cheney, "if the President, during war, decides to do something to protect the country, is it legal?" "I think as a general proposition, I'd say yes," replied Cheney.

Cheney went on to defend the administration's actions over the past eight years:

CHENEY: There are bound to be debates and arguments from time to time and wrestling back and forth about what kinds of authority is appropriate in any specific circumstances, but I think that what we've done has been totally consistent with what the Constitution provides for.

The outgoing US vice-president, Dick Cheney, last night gave an unapologetic assessment of his eight years in office, defending the invasion of Iraq, the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, secret wiretapping and the extreme interrogation method known as waterboarding.

In his first television interview since the presidential election in November, Cheney displayed no regrets and gave no ground to his many critics within America and around the world. He summed up his record by saying: "I think, given the circumstances we've had to deal with, we've done pretty well."

He told ABC News he stood by the most controversial policies of the Bush administration, and urged president-elect Barack Obama to think hard before undoing them. Asked about the use of torture on terror suspects, he replied: "We don't do torture. We never have. It's not something this administration subscribes to."

Later in the same interview, Cheney was asked whether the use of waterboarding in the interrogation of the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, had been appropriate. He replied: "I do."

The PHR report has since received widespread attention in the media, in Congress, and among policy--makers in U.S. Department of Defense and has humanized the national debate on detainee interrogation and treatment policies, and for that Hashemian, the report's lead author, is pleased. The experience of compiling the report, meanwhile, has left the 30--year--old alumna struggling to understand the darker side of human nature and has reinforced her commitment to prevent it from happening again.

"It was very intense work. You listen while a middle--aged man sobs uncontrollably describing the brutality that became normalized in Abu Ghraib. Others tell you that to this day they suffer from the pain and the shame of sexual humiliations. Their families have been broken and their lives have been shattered," said Hashemian. "You stare at this abyss of unimaginable human cruelty, you witness their agony, immerse yourself in their suffering, and their harrowing stories haunt you at night. We were asking people to go back to dark times. It is really, really hard to hear these stories, but it is grueling to have lived them."

The report, Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact, provides a detailed and graphic account of how 11 former detainees of the United States (seven of whom were held in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison; the other four were arrested in Afghanistan and eventually ended up at Guantánamo Bay) were treated before they were summarily released without being charged.

Today, the majority in a federal Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against Center for Constitutional Rights client Maher Arar's case against U.S. officials for their role in sending him to Syria to be tortured and interrogated for a year under the extraordinary rendition program.

Maher Arar is not available to comment in person, but is issuing the following statement: "The Court's 2-1 ruling is outrageous. It basically legitimizes what was done to me, and permits the government to use immigration law as a disguise to send people to torture without regard for due process."

The majority ruled that Mr. Arar's constitutional claims that it was a violation of due process to lock him up for two weeks, obstruct his access to a lawyer and a court, and then to ship him to Syria for the purpose of having him interrogated under torture could not be heard in federal court for two reasons. It concluded that adjudicating the claims would interfere with sensitive matters of foreign policy and national security, and that Arar, as a foreigner who had not been formally admitted to the U.S., had no constitutional due process rights with respect to the government's interference with his access to a lawyer and the decision to send him to Syria to be tortured.