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New Torture Memos Outline Black Sites, Ghost Prisoners
Three human rights groups released more than a thousand pages of Department of Defense and CIA documents Thursday that outline how closely the two agencies worked in rendering terrorism suspects to black sites, keeping detainees' identities secret, and tempering bad publicity for inmate treatment at Guántanamo Bay.
Most of the documents—obtained after Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice sued under the Freedom of Information Act—simply contain news articles, but the Center for Constitutional Rights scoured the files and found three significant disclosures from the DoD.
One heavily redacted page mentions (PDF, page 34) an "undisclosed detention facility" at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.
Another, dated May 2004, highlights (PDF, page 17) how the Geneva Conventions can be interpreted to allow the CIA and the DoD to ghost detainees' identities so they can be denied a visit from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The [Geneva Conventions] also permit holding a SI (security internee) who participated in activities hostile to security of the occupying power if required by "absolute military security."
This was done, according to a memo from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to "maximize intelligence collection efforts." In other words, give them more time to interrogate inmates.
The most interesting document, though, is a February 2006 email (PDF) to members of the DoD's Transportation Command discussing how to deal with the bad press the US was receiving over its detention facilities.
US Getting Creamed on Human Rights: Coverage of UN Rapporteurs' report on Guantanamo, plus lingering interest in Abu Ghraib photos, adds up to the US taking a big hit on the issues of human rights and respect for the rule of law.
To temper the bad PR, the email suggests delaying the release of prisoners at Gitmo "for 45 days or so until things die down. Otherwise we are likely to have a hero's (sic) welcome awaiting the detainees when they arrive."
It would probably be preferable if we could deliver these detainees in something smaller and more discreet than a T tail (a larger aircraft with a T-shaped tail wing).
The full list of documents can be found here.
To What End?
All this information continues to seep out, but now the Obama Justice Dept. seems to want to protect the Bush Administration by continuing to block lawsuits over torture of detainees, by using "national security" as the explanation. To allow the trials to continue would of course build a case for the criminal investigation of the Bush administration, which would derail much of what Obama wants to achieve as the administration would have to focus on the emerging evidence and growing investigations. Still, if Obama doesn't make a significant break with the self destructive policies of past administrations, the US will continue down the path that will see us sleeping the long sleep, with the Czars and the Hapsburgs. We celebrated the fall of the latin American dictators, forgetting we helped install many of them, and supported them all. The backward ways of Iran's mullahs distracts from the truth that we overthrew Iran's democratically elected government and installed the Shah.
The message is that despite all our money, arms, influence, and support, the people have reversed the best efforts of our government abroad. Where we stood with dictators, the people rose up and triumphed with one form of democracy or another, or a government of their own choosing. We're now spending more than the rest of the world, combined, on a military that could not protect us from the events of Sept 11, 2001, and is helpless against the loose canon that is Russia, and the growing power and influence of China. When robots become a common way to fight wars, will a President even have to notify the public, if no americans are even near the conflict he's started? We're not headed anywhere good for us or the world.
Obama needs to start behaving like the thoughtful leader people expected him to be, and to start talking to the American people about how and why we went astray, and why we're not going to be any safer by continuing the failed policies of the past, let alone the criminal policies of the Bush years. Obama is the best hope for bringing Americans around to seeing what harm we've done to ourselves, but he's not being very encouraging in the way he's conducted himself thus far.
beautifully stated,if we
beautifully stated,if we fail to see what is being done in our name we deserve the consequences. Bush and his crew must be prosecuted if not we are lost.
Secrecy and impunity
Paul is being a bit cryptic. If you do not know what he's talking about, check the ACLU website. If you do know what he's talking about, why aren't you finished with upchucking and started on screaming?
Cheney has proved prescient. Once the Obama administration got their hands on the tools of oppression they changed their tune on abandoning them.
This is torture!
CIA chief wannabe Leon Panetta recently retracted a statement about investigating and prosecuting Americans that tortured. It was a spineless act of complicity. This sort of non-partisianship is not what I had in mind. It's like when the Republican schoolyard bully says jump the weak sister Democrat says "how high?"
I feel I may vomit.
Must Love the Government, Touch the Government.
Honestly, does this kind of article fuel your fire to disregard the work done on behalf of your taxpayer dollars. Your anachist badge of honor would actually polish up pretty nicely with a waterboarding mouth plug. The article is boring and I haven't seen much goverment conspiracy knocking down my door. Choose your battles, Annycrisco.
The Real Axis of Evil Against America
You have to hand it to the GOP, they fooled every republican all the time.
Now we know the “Axis of Evil” were actually:
Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld,
Republicans in Congress, and
Republicans on the Supreme Court (that former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor exposed for overthrowing the Rule of Law)
And they bankrupt America for mere greed because they have no morals, no ethics, no honor and no integrity to stop them from destroying America.
Good thing the Democrats are taking back America at last, otherwise we would have needed another Declaration of Independence to fight the exact same kind of people that the Founders wrote it against in 1776.
We have become them
We no longer hold the moral high road in the world. We have plummeted morally and ethically because of those who claimed to be our moral leaders and guides - the Bush Administration and the ultra-conservative Right at whose feet they prostrated themselves. Because of them, we have lost the respect of the world. We should be ashamed, but I'm sure our arrogance won't allow that.
what could be worse than bipartisanship?
good work by amnesty international, center for constitutional rights, and center for human rights and global justice. this bipartisanship feels like a marriage between royalty of two warring nations. so now they're together, and they still don't care about the peasants. please god, let obama be good for this country in regards to healthcare and unions, but i don't expect much more. already he's giving in to tax cuts, no longer eager to repeal the rich tax cuts he promised to, just doesn't seem willing to investigate for torture, and he's been fine with spying on citizens for a while now. last congress voted on the bailout that americans overwhelmingly were against. they're not ours once they go inside. we need mikes on all the lobbiests. new rule- no secret lobbying. anything you got to say to my representative, you can say to me.
The kind face of torture?
I was disgusted by the lack of protest when Clinton - with the help of Gingrich and company - ruined Serbia and funded Islamic terrorists to undermine a socialist country. BHO will talk nice to Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and other Mid East countries while continuing his predecessor's policies on indefinite detention and our drug war scam. Yes, he will protect Bush's sorry butt. Otherwise he'll be castigated by our media for being "partisan and political". He doesn't have to worry about Amnesty International or Mother Jones. They don't wield much influence in the USA.
get your facts straight
Why is that everyone assumes the president knows and approves of everything that all of his umpteen million federal employees do. Clinton was barely if at all briefed on serbian militant support and if you must know that is a strategy that has been going on since world war 2 and few presidents are ever allowed to know about it for reasons of plausable deniability. We created the taliban, el salvador's death squads but we also were instrumental in the governments renewed control over the pakistani ISI the reduction in slaughter and balancing of power in zimbabwe/rowanda. The survival of the kurdish people (sorry we couldn't save the swamp arabs). Puerto Rico, Haiti, Panama, the list is endless but only some of them go bad the question becomes is the possible result worth the risk. It is all to easy for folks in Virginia to say yes. Ask someone who has q clearance and try not to get killed.
-G