Re-post of 3-8-2011:

The placement of human beings in solitary confinement is not a measure of their depravity. It is a measure of our own. Lynn Parramore

Bradley Manning is being tortured for our sins.

For the sins of us American citizens, many of us of limited courage, conscience and/or consciousness.

He is also being tortured -- the torturous “killing of the messenger” -- for the appalling and vast sins of the amoral rulers of this country, who are responsible for gratuitous (although they don’t consider them gratuitous if there are corporate profits involved) massive deaths and massive suffering of human beings around the globe.

Thomas Hammarberg: we have evidence on Polish CIA prison

From Booman of all people:

When I think of an ideal Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib scandal doesn't immediately leap to mind. But it looks like that is who DSCC Chairwoman Patty Murray has recruited to run for the open Senate seat in Texas.

It is not enough that we don't put this crowd on trial for war crimes; we are actually going to put them up for office.

Why not just leave this to Texas Democrats? Could they possibly do worse then a war criminal?

The placement of human beings in solitary confinement is not a measure of their depravity. It is a measure of our own. Lynn Parramore

Bradley Manning is being tortured for our sins.

For the sins of us American citizens, many of us of limited courage, conscience and/or consciousness.

He is also being tortured -- the torturous “killing of the messenger” -- for the appalling and vast sins of the amoral rulers of this country, who are responsible for gratuitous (although they don’t consider them gratuitous if there are corporate profits involved) massive deaths and massive suffering of human beings around the globe.

Please read this article and ask yourself if you wouldn't be outraged if Bush and Cheney were supporting Suleiman today? Don't you think the left blogosphere would be on fire right now if the same scenario were occurring under a Bush Cheney regime? These are important moments on so many levels. Perhaps most important for us to watch and learn who will demand sanity, human rights, liberty, and who will avoid it in silence, denial or spin themselves into dizzying new lows trying to avoid the crux of the matter at all costs.

Marjorie Cohn in her article "U.S. Chickens Come Home to Roost in Egypt" points out that the US has supported Egyptian Prez Mubarak with $1.3 billion annually, most of it in military aid. Egypt in return collaborates with Israel to blockade Gaza and offers “logistical support” to America for its wars.

2 million Egyptians are now revolting against Mubarak and the US is being called out internationally for its own corruption and war criminality and war criminality enabling. We all know the US is eager to have a pro-US replacement for Mubarak, the best replacement US money (that US citizens desperately need) and weaponry (that humanity in general does not need) can buy.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

In 2002 CIA agents - Americans - tortured prisoners and were videotaped doing so. In 2005 those videotapes were destroyed, and on Tuesday the five year statute of limitations for filing criminal charges in the matter expired. For a little background, here are Mark Mazzetti and Charlie Savage in the New York Times:

(Another golden oldie, this time from the mid '00s, published just after the '06 midterm elections which, as any Democrat would've told you, was a really really super-duper important election -- in fact, The Most Important Election Since The Last Mass Extinction Event.

Most of you here already know the story on this one, so I'm posting it for the benefit of all you new readers here who might have just now summoned up the courage to detach from the Democrats and stay home today, or any of you new readers who might still be wavering on the idea of withholding support for the Democrats and who could use a quick history lesson before the polls close on the East Coast.

So, now then, kiddies, let's just take a little walk down Mid-Term Memory Lane...)

Well, fan-damn tastic! The Armani Democrats are in the house! Let's find out what new, exciting changes we'll see on these major issues...

Finally, a judge who remembers the Constitution. I really hope this works for Ghailani and his defense.

NEW YORK – The first civilian trial for a Guantanamo Bay detainee has been delayed after a judge ruled the government cannot call its most important witness.
The delay was granted while the government appeals Wednesday's ruling by federal Judge Lewis Kaplan.
Kaplan blocked the government from calling the man who authorities said sold explosives to defendant Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (AH'-mehd KAL'fahn guh-LAHN'-ee). Defense lawyers say investigators only learned about the witness after Ghailani underwent harsh interrogation at a CIA-run camp overseas.
Ghailani is charged with conspiring in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. The attacks killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Washington has generally been an accountability-free zone, most glaringly in the case of war crimes. George Bush, Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Yoo, and all the other high level architects of our torture program have been allowed to freely violate international law, our treaty obligations and the most basic human rights - all without having to face a single consequence.

Clock winds down for '24'

"24" helped usher in Fox's ratings surge in the 2000s, as the franchise -- along with "American Idol" and "House," among other series -- led the network to the No. 1 spot in the adults 18-49 demo.

But the cost of producing "24" has continued to increase, while ratings have dipped. A one-time critical darling, "24" has also received its share of knocks from critics this season.

The studio is said to be considering shopping "24" to other nets -- but given the thriller's age and pricetag, it's believed interest from other outlets will be limited.

Not since Birth of a Nation has there been so damaging a work of entertainment.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

The Department of Justice's (DOJ) Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) report on its ethics investigation for torture-approving lawyers has already generated some remarkable reactions. One of the few defenses came from former deputy counsel to George W. Bush Bill Burck and Bush's former press secretary Dana Perino; it is an amazingly weak effort. For instance, they cite the counsel of one of the lawyers under investigation as an analyst, quote her defense of her client, and conclude she is "someone whose credentials and experience as a top-flight lawyer cannot be seriously doubted." To which I can only respond, clownish is as clownish does.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

One of my favorite blog posts is L33T Justice by Kung Fu Monkey. Aside from being very funny and concisely getting at an important truth, it seems to represent a tipping point - one that mirrored my own. Prior to that things had been bad; we were lied into a war of aggression that was being planned well before 9/11, intelligence agencies engaged in 4th Amendment-destroying activities that major journalists appeared committed to reporting incorrectly, and of course we had already set up our modern gulags.

[cross posted at NPR Check]

Remember back in June of 2006 when three Guantanamo detainees allegedly killed themselves? At the time I opined that "reports should say 'the alleged suicides' of three captives with no access to due process." And a few days later when Dan Schorr allowed John Ydstie to report the deaths as suicides, I noted that "it is essential that when prisoners are seized and held extrajudicially and die in custody, one must be skeptical about the conditions of the deaths..."

AP:

The government on Friday released a long-secret list of some 645 detainees held at a military base in Afghanistan, providing the information as part of a lawsuit seeking details of the treatment of terror suspects.

The list was just a small part of roughly 2,000 pages of documents that were released related to various lawsuits seeking government papers about detainees.

The identities of the detainees at Bagram air base had been sought by the American Civil Liberties Union. The list is dated Sept. 22, 2009.

ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said the government should also provide the details of how the inmates were captured and why they are being held.

Glenn Greenwald:

And why did all this happen? Because four Blackwater military contractors were killed. Not only that, but the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (yes, it's a government committee) "fault Blackwater in Fallujah ambush." (Unfortunately, this report came out 3 years after the fact. We never seem to know these things at the time, or our 'leaders' don't.) So, because four contractors were killed, we basically go into a city use depleted uranium and other toxic weapons and destroy the entire city, killing thousands. This is clearly a war crime, and people need to be taken to task for it.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

[cross-posted at NPR Check]

Scott Simon really oozed about Corazon Aquino this morning:

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Last week Andy McCarthy prompted the latest change in my understanding in how the right thinks about torture. Initially I believed they were unwilling to accept their leaders were engaging in it, and that if it turned out they were they would recoil as sharply as the rest of us. That changed when I read a Los Angeles Times piece by Jonah Goldberg that basically stipulated we tortured but was fine with it anyway. It may have been this one, where he writes:

the meatier part of the argument is in the more nuanced area of "coercive measures," "stress positions" and what one unnamed official once described to the Wall Street Journal as "a little bit of smacky-face." [Since elaborated as "wrapp[ing] a collar around [a detainee's] neck and smash[ing] him over and over against a wall."]...The way [Andrew] Sullivan and those who agree with him see it, torture is torture is torture -- and torture is always wrong, even when defined as intimidation and "smacky-face." "Not in my name" is their rallying cry, often with the sort of self-righteousness that suggests that those who disagree must admire cruelty.

Reading that, it became clear that Bush's supporters were willing to uncritically accept the administration's positions. Techniques were given cute euphemisms (see also) and those who objected to it on principle were dismissed as moral divas. Moreover, their reflexive support meant ignoring torture's history. Engaging in practices with a gruesome past or lifting terminology from the Gestapo was never examined.

[cross posted at NPR Check]

Je répète, re: "...Pelosi today said her top security adviser was part of a briefing in February 2003 in which he learned interrogators were waterboarding terrorists."

It's handy that those who were waterboarded are "terrorists," not "accused/suspected/purported" terrorists, etc. Illegal, inhuman, whatever -- a technique that is magically used only on guilty people is pretty impressive.

Arthur finds that Nancy's Senate counterpart is similarly aware of waterboarding's inerrant targeting. C'mon, if they weren't guilty of terrorism, why would they have been waterboarded? Case closed!

Also, it seems that Harry has a rather curious concept of how ordinary rendition works....

[cross posted at NPR Check]

On Monday's ME, Tom Bowman and Renee Montagne assess the Obama War switch of commanders in Afghanistan from General McKiernan to General McChrystal and - boy - is Bowman juiced by McChrystal's Green Beret credentials.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

This week may have foreshadowed the kind of twists and turns we can look forward to as more information about the US torture program becomes public. Jeff Kaye took note of a Washington Times story about how Jonathan Fredman, the top CIA lawyer for the agency's interrogation program, disputes the record of an October 2002 interrogation meeting. According to the minutes this is where Fredman uttered the immortal words about interrogation, "If the detainee dies you're doing it wrong." It seems he or an ally does not wish for that to be the lasting impression of him because the Times article rather remarkably disputes the notes themselves.

Meeting notes seem to me to be fairly uncontroversial things. It certainly is rare for contemporaneous notes of one to spark debate. The usual procedure is basically: Have someone scribble down the main points people are making during the meeting, then afterwards type them up and send them out. Maybe something needs to be sharpened or modified in some way, but according to the Times "Mr. Fredman says the writer of the 2002 memo misconstrued enough of his points that the memo is unreliable." That gets my antenna up. While I suppose it is possible for someone to get huge swaths of a meeting fundamentally wrong it does not seem very likely. It sounds more like a somewhat desperate and implausible attempt to rewrite history.

Fredman's efforts to reshape an already-settling record is not what really interested me in Kaye's post, though. It was his description of how the Army Field Manual (AFM) was lurking below the surface of the torture debate and will sooner or later emerge as yet another large knot to untangle. I had been under the impression that the military had a much stricter standard for interrogations, and once president Obama put the CIA under the AFM we had at least ensured torture would not be an issue going forward. It will not be quite so simple. Kaye pointed out in another post that in September 2006 Donald Rumsfeld ordered the overhaul of the AFM. The revised edition contained a section, Appendix M, which may have been initially intended to be classified. (Given what it contains this is yet another reason to be extremely skeptical of classification claims, for national security or other reasons.) It authorizes a set of interrogation procedures that go by the euphemism Separation. Kaye analyzes them, then arrives at the following commonsense formulation: "The inclusion of a procedure that so obviously needs medical monitoring should be a red flag that it violates basic humane treatment."