The torture floodgates are now open

by Jay McDonough

I warned you.  Brace yourself now for a steady stream of reports on the Bush Administrations descent into the approval and administration of torture.  Here's some of the bigger stories of the day.

  -  The NY Times reported today that Cabinet officials and Republican and Democratic key Congressional committee chairs were provided outlines of the Administrations torture program without objection.  The Times conjectures all approved because no one had ever bothered to research the model for the torture program: the North Korean torture program used against U.S. forces in the Korean War.

  -  Newsweek reported that a recently declassified Senate Armed Services Committee report purports the use to torture may have begun earlier than originally thought (December 2001) and that the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison were a result of high level White House decisions on detainee treatment.

  -  Timothy Noah dispelled the story that the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed resulted in a confession that prevented a "second wave" attack on Los Angeles.  

In a White House press briefing, Bush's counterterrorism chief, Frances Fragos Townsend, told reporters that the cell leader was arrested in February 2002, and "at that point, the other members of the cell" (later arrested) "believed that the West Coast plot has been canceled, was not going forward" [italics mine]. A subsequent fact sheet released by the Bush White House states, "In 2002, we broke up [italics mine] a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast." These two statements make clear that however far the plot to attack the Library Tower ever got—an unnamed senior FBI official would later tell the Los Angeles Times that Bush's characterization of it as a "disrupted plot" was "ludicrous"—that plot was foiled in 2002. But Sheikh Mohammed wasn't captured until March 2003.

  -  McClatchy reported today that Bush Administration officials placed relentless pressure on interrogators to use torture to elicit intelligence that then President Saddam Hussein was cooperating with al Qaeda in Iraq.  Those false confessions were used as one of the rationales for the 2003 U.S. military campaign into Iraq.

  -  Spencer Ackerman wrote in the Washington Independent of a still unreleased Steven Bradbury memo written in 2007 authorizing an "updated" CIA interrogation regimen.  That memo, according to Mr. Ackerman, followed the Supreme Court decision (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld) that ruled Geneva Convention covenants applied to detained "enemy combatants" and President Bush's commitment to amend U.S. interrogation practices to conform to Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

  -  Jane Mayer noted that, despite the claims of Bush Administration officials now arguing they were all operating in panic mode and in agreement immediately following 9/11, FBI agents had identified CIA interrogations as "borderline torture" and FBI Director Robert Mueller commanded all FBI agents stay clear of CIA interrogations of detainees.

This is something like the recent news that the CIA waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times.  Once something like this starts, it's increasing difficult to stop it.

Comments

[Tom Cooze]

"The Times conjectures all approved because no one had ever bothered to research the model for the torture program..."

Do they? I'm shocked. Nothing but a simple oversight, totally unintentional. "Ref, man, I didn't MEAN to foul him... so, no foul, right?"

Personally, I conjecture that it was a combination of summa that secret "insider" "knowledge" about how the Mislamists are about to unleash the AntiChrist (probably not too many of those) and a whole lot of people who don't want the pictures of them buttfucking the dead babies, or dogs, or ten-year-old boys (or girls, or dogs, or whatever) splashed (splurted?) all over the Nooze Middia...

Your mileage may vary.

[anderson]

"The Times conjectures all approved because no one had ever bothered to research the model for the torture program: ..."

This is rich! Not sure who "no one" would be who never "bothered" to research their torture "model." But the notion that there is no "research" into a torture program is absurd. The methods and techniques we have learned to which detainees were subjected are mostly straight out of the CIA's own KUBARK manual on Counterintelligence Interrogation from July 1963.

This current tack, which appears aimed at scrubbing public memory (such as it is) of the CIA's unseemly history of research in and instruction of torture methods that is now decades long.

[Jay McDonough]

For clarification: The Times article asserts the principles that were briefed on the program (Congressional leaders, Cabinet, et al.) were ignorant of the origins of the program.

[Thesaurusmaximus]

Let us not forget .. before the DOJ became involved, it all started in the White House ...lookin' for loopholes to validate loss of our international respect by use of torture... Tim Flanigan. His record of doing so undermined his appointment to the DOJ when Gonzales moved there.

He and Gonzales while still in the WH redefined "torture" for GW, and manufactured the semantics/lingo with his use-of-force resolution & drafted GW's Constitutional abuses to create military tribunals.

It was his word smithing that mfg the Neo-Con Semantics dictionary who also created ''enemy combatant'' to mfg excuses for GW and cabal to avoid being shackled in the Hague. (his post DC job at Tyco and his affiliations of Abramoff aren't forgotten either)

Bush creation of a policy of torture and indefinite detention not merely delegated to over-zealous young lawyers in the Justice Department.....or "rogue" troops in Iraq's prisons.

It was Alberto Gonzales and Timothy Flanigan, ensconsed in a office on the 2nd floor of the West Wing

AND Donald Rumsfeld who personally ordered the identical torture treatment of prisoners at GITMO be used in Iraq...that has soldiers behind bars as we speak.

The GOP do love their collateral damages, especially when they aren't man enough to stand up for their policies....overseas and domestically.

No one bothers to mention, if they didn't think it was illegal torture, they wouldn't have been looking for loopholes to use torture.

[crazyworld]

Thanks for a great post. BTW, a typo note: "McClatchy reported today that Bush Administration officials placed relentless pressure on interrogators to use torture to illicit intelligence..." should be "elicit" not "illicit"

[Jay McDonough]

Thanks for the catch. Fixed now.