A real world question about torture

People who defend torture always seem to come around to the ticking time bomb question (in fact, the Bush administration thought a nuke had been smuggled into NY City). The idea that we should shape our policy around a on in a billion happenstance doesn’t seem to bother them (if a person saved New York [...]

More on Binyam Mohamed

Back in February, the Obama administration had argued that a case against Boeing should be dropped because it might reveal state secrets. They lost that argument with an appropriate judicial rebuke:
The court said the government could ask judges to conduct a case-by-case review of whether the disclosure of specific documents would jeopardize national security. But [...]

Now Obama is against release of photos

President Obama is now against the release of photos that show the abuse of prisoners:

President Obama declared yesterday that he would try to block the court-ordered release of photos showing US troops abusing prisoners, abruptly reversing his position out of concern the pictures would “further inflame anti-American opinion” and endanger American forces in Iraq and [...]

More on torture

Via Tom Tomorrow, Mark Danner has two long reports on torture based on the Red Cross’ report. Together they make it obvious that there was torture (and show how simple things become torture: standing, sitting, being in a box, …) and how the Bush administration used the debate on torture to to turn the discussion [...]

Why did the US torture?

As more information comes out, it becomes more and more difficult to know why the Bush administration turned to torture. This op-ed by an FBI interrogator notes that they got information without using torture:
It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers [...]

183 times in a month?

I have always thought that someone should go to jail for the torture by US agents, but I used to think it should only be the people who set it up. Now, I’m not so sure:
The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice [...]

Bush Justice Department memos released

The memos written by the the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Council have been released by President Obama. This is a good thing, but Obama is still holding to this:
This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and [...]

Torture memos to come out?

This (via Kevin Drum) would be a good thing:
Over objections from the U.S. intelligence community, the White House is moving to declassify—and publicly release—three internal memos that will lay out, for the first time, details of the “enhanced” interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration for use against “high value” Qaeda detainees. The memos, written by [...]

Another reason why arbitrary detention is so bad

I would have liked this article by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell, a lot better if it had come out when this was all happening. Many of the things he mentions are now widely known, but this really shows what can happen when you don’t follow the rules:
The fourth unknown is the [...]

Bush vs. Obama on State secrets

The Justice Department has now released some of the memos written after 9/11 by the Bush administration. Some of it is simply stunning:
The legal memos written by the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel show a government grappling with how to wage war on terrorism in a fast-changing world. The conclusion, reiterated in page after [...]

More on ‘State Secrets’

I talked about the Binyam Mohamed yesterday. Since then, the NY Times has put out an article with this important bit (bold added):
“Is there anything material that has happened” that might have caused the Justice Department to shift its views, asked Judge Mary M. Schroeder, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, coyly referring to the recent [...]

Obama and State Secrets

Last Thursday, I said that I was a little worried because the Obama administration had continued a Bush administration policy of using a ’state secrets’ argument to dismiss cases. Then I said that we would see more with their arguments in the Binyam Mohamed case. That happened today and now I’m definitely worried:
A year ago the [...]

Torture and State Secrets

This makes me a little worried that President Obama might not be for open government as much as he said:
Two British High Court judges ruled against releasing documents describing the treatment of a British detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison, but made clear their reluctance, saying that the United States had threatened to withhold intelligence cooperation [...]

Torture at Guantanamo

I know this isn’t a surprise to anyone who’s followed the news at all, but Susan Crawford gave that the reason for not trying to prosecute a prisoner:
“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February [...]

Torture at Guantanamo Straight From China

it turns out that:
The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart [...]

Abu Ghraib and the Congo, Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad

It’s always interesting to follow links and ideas to see where they lead. I started here where Philip Gourevitch talks about his book about torture and Abu Ghraib, noticing that Mark Twain had noticed 100 years ago that photographs could make the difference when talking about atrocities.
Thus linking Iraq and the Congo under King Leopold II [...]

More McClatchy

The fourth day of McClatchy’s series on Guantanamo and other detention facilities looks at how the framework was decided:
It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who, following the orders of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern [...]

Torture and Terrorists

Via here, McClatchy’s has a week long series on the capture, detention, and running of camps for Afghanistan prisoners.

The first shows why Habeas Corpus is such an important legal concept:

In 2002, a CIA analyst interviewed several dozen detainees at Guantanamo and reported to senior National Security Council officials that many of them didn’t belong there, a [...]

Mukasey Supports Yoo

In an address to BC law graduates, Attorney General Mukasey basically said that no one should be punished for torture:
One memo defined torture, as recognized by U.S. law, as covering “only extreme acts” causing pain similar in intensity to that caused by organ failure or accompanying death.
An internal Justice Department investigation is now considering whether [...]

I Don’t Think It’s Terrible, So It’s Ok

Via TPM, not this bit from the NY Times article:
“The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act,” said Brian A. Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, in [...]