Psyche, Science, and Society

FBI threatens torture, attempts cover-up

Valtin at Daily Kos provides additional details on the story of the FBI  threatening to have a suspect’s family tortured in Egypt in order to get a confession. The brief documenting the torture was briefly posted online then removed and replaced with a redacted version. The court claimed the redactions were to protect the suspect. Not surprisingly, they were rather to protect the FBI by hiding the accounts of the torture.

Valtin has excerpts from both briefs, illustrating what officials were trying to hide. Go read it.

October 31st, 2007

Psychologists participate in CIA kidnapping of young children

Way back in 2003, the British newspaper the Telegraph reported that the CIA had kidnapped and was holding the two young sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whose torture at CIA hands under the direction of psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen was described last summer by Jane Mayer in “The Black Sites.”

As the Telegraph tells it, psychologists are involved in another aspect of the case. The CIA reported that child psychologists were “on hand at all times.” These child psychologists were thus abettors and accomplices to child abduction.

It is now four years later. I have heard of no protests from the American Psychological Association over this reported psychologist participation in kidnapping. Have you?

Here’s the Telegraph story:

CIA holds young sons of captured al-Qa’eda chief

By Olga Craig
09/03/2003

Two young sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, are being used by the CIA to force their father to talk.

Yousef al-Khalid, nine, and his brother, Abed al-Khalid, seven, were taken into custody in Pakistan last September when intelligence officers raided a flat in Karachi where their father had been hiding.

He fled just hours before the raid but his two young sons, along with another senior al-Qa’eda member, were found cowering behind a wardrobe in the apartment.

The boys have been held by the Pakistani authorities but this weekend they were flown to America where they will be questioned about their father.

Last night CIA interrogators confirmed that the boys were staying at a secret address where they were being encouraged to talk about their father’s activities.

“We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children,” said one official, “but we need to know as much about their father’s recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care.”

Their father, Mohammed, 37, is being interrogated at the Bagram US military base in Afghanistan. He is being held in solitary confinement and subjected to “stress and duress”-style interrogation techniques.

He has been told that his sons are being held and he is being encouraged to divulge future attacks against the West and talk about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

“He has said very little so far,” one CIA official said yesterday. “He sits in a trance-like state and recites verses from the Koran. But while he may claim to be a devout Muslim, we know he is fond of the Western-style fast life.

“His sons are important to him. The promise of their release and their return to Pakistan may be the psychological lever we need to break him.”

The Kuwaiti-born Mohammed named his older son after Ramzi Yousef, his nephew, who was convicted of masterminding the 1993 attack on New York’s World Trade Centre. After the attack, Yousef fled to the Philippines with his uncle.

When bomb-making chemicals set fire to their Manila apartment, Yousef fled to Pakistan where he was captured in an Islamabad hotel room in 1995.

Mohammed was in the next room and, audaciously, gave an eye-witness account of the arrest to a reporter. By the time the Pakistani authorities found out his true identity he had fled the country.

He was eventually arrested last weekend in a flat in Rawalpindi, two miles from the home of Pakistan’s President Musharraf. Among the items found was a photograph of a smiling Mohammed with his arms around his two sons.

Known as “The Engineer”, he is suspected of being the mastermind of the Bali bombings and the man who slashed the throat of Daniel Pearl, the American reporter, in Pakistan in January 2002.

Little is known of his sons’ mother, who is thought to be Pakistani. “We have no evidence that suggests she has anything to do with al-Qa’eda,” a Pakistani intelligence source said yesterday.

“All we know is that she is the sister of an al-Qa’eda member that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed met at a Pakistan college, the University of Dawa al Jihad, in the late 1980s.”

The college, referred to as the “Islamic Sandhurst”, is said to have been a breeding ground for terrorists where bomb-making was among the subjects on its unofficial curriculum.

1 comment October 31st, 2007

US: Waterboarding torture, when others use it

Waterboarding is torture, when others use it. Earlier this month the Washington Post reported that in 1947 the US sentenced a Japanese officer to 15 years hard labor for waterboarding an American in WW II. Yet, when American troops used it “fairly common[ly]” during Vietnam, an investigation was opened. There is no report of a trial, conviction, or punishment.

Waterboarding Historically Controversial

In 1947, the U.S. Called It a War Crime; in 1968, It Reportedly Caused an Investigation

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, October 5, 2006

Key senators say Congress has outlawed one of the most notorious detainee interrogation techniques — “waterboarding,” in which a prisoner feels near drowning. But the White House will not go that far, saying it would be wrong to tell terrorists which practices they might face.

Inside the CIA, waterboarding is cited as the technique that got Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the prime plotter of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to begin to talk and provide information — though “not all of it reliable,” a former senior intelligence official said.

Waterboarding is variously characterized as a powerful tool and a symbol of excess in the nation’s fight against terrorists. But just what is waterboarding, and where does it fit in the arsenal of coercive interrogation techniques?

On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post published a front-page photograph of a U.S. soldier supervising the questioning of a captured North Vietnamese soldier who is being held down as water was poured on his face while his nose and mouth were covered by a cloth. The picture, taken four days earlier near Da Nang, had a caption that said the technique induced “a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk.”

The article said the practice was “fairly common” in part because “those who practice it say it combines the advantages of being unpleasant enough to make people talk while still not causing permanent injury.”

The picture reportedly led to an Army investigation.

Twenty-one years earlier, in 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.

“Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told his colleagues last Thursday during the debate on military commissions legislation. “We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II,” he said.

A CIA interrogation training manual declassified 12 years ago, “KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation — July 1963,” outlined a procedure similar to waterboarding. Subjects were suspended in tanks of water wearing blackout masks that allowed for breathing. Within hours, the subjects felt tension and so-called environmental anxiety. “Providing relief for growing discomfort, the questioner assumes a benevolent role,” the manual states.

The KUBARK manual was the product of more than a decade of research and testing, refining lessons learned from the Korean War, where U.S. airmen were subjected to a new type of “touchless torture” until they confessed to a bogus plan to use biological weapons against the North Koreans.

Used to train new interrogators, the handbook presented “basic information about coercive techniques available for use in the interrogation situation.” When it comes to torture, however, the handbook advised that “the threat to inflict pain . . . can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain.”

In the post-Vietnam period, the Navy SEALs and some Army Special Forces used a form of waterboarding with trainees to prepare them to resist interrogation if captured. The waterboarding proved so successful in breaking their will, says one former Navy captain familiar with the practice, “they stopped using it because it hurt morale.”

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the interrogation world changed. Low-level Taliban and Arab fighters captured in Afghanistan provided little information, the former intelligence official said. When higher-level al-Qaeda operatives were captured, CIA interrogators sought authority to use more coercive methods.

These were cleared not only at the White House but also by the Justice Department and briefed to senior congressional officials, according to a statement released last month by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Waterboarding was one of the approved techniques.

When questions began to be raised last year about the handling of high-level detainees and Congress passed legislation barring torture, the handful of CIA interrogators and senior officials who authorized their actions became concerned that they might lose government support.

Passage last month of military commissions legislation provided retroactive legal protection to those who carried out waterboarding and other coercive interrogation techniques.

October 31st, 2007

Australian Psychological Society takes position on torture

At its September Conference, the Australian Psychological Society debated and passed a resolution on torture. Here is the explanation of its background from APA Executive Director Lyn Littlefield:

New APS declaration condemning the use of torture

The APS Board of Directors has recently passed a resolution declaring the APS’ unequivocal condemnation of the use of torture or other inhumane or degrading procedures in all situations. This resolution was developed in the context of the debate surrounding the invitation of Dr Gerald Koocher as a keynote speaker at the APS National Conference which was held in September this year. Dr Koocher was the President of the American Psychological Association (APA) during a period when the APA was under criticism for its stance on psychologists’ involvement in military and CIA interrogation techniques. When the APS learnt of the controversy, Dr Koocher was invited, in addition to giving a keynote address, to participate in a Public Forum at the APS Conference on ‘Lessons from Guantanamo Bay: Ethical Issues for Psychologists Working in the Military, Intelligence and Detention Facilities’. Dr Koocher willingly participated in the Public Forum, which was very well received and enabled APS members to hear first hand the APA’s position on interrogation and to consider these issues in the Australian context.

Here is the APS Board of Directors statement and the resolution:

25 October 2007

APS Declaration on Torture

The APS Board of Directors passed the following resolution on 24 September 2007:

The Australian Psychological Society, as a member of the International Union of Psychological Science, fully endorses the United Nations Declaration and Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 1997.

The Australian Psychological Society regards all forms of torture, as defined in Article 1 of the United Nations Declaration and Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 1997, as breaches of the Society’s Code of Ethics (2003) General Principle III Propriety.

DECLARATION

Psychologists shall at all times comply with the Society’s Code of Ethics.

Psychologists shall not countenance, condone or participate in the practice of torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading procedures, in any situation, including armed conflict and civil strife.

Psychologists shall not provide any premises, instruments, substances or knowledge to facilitate the practice of torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or to diminish the ability of the victim to resist such treatment.

Psychologists shall not be present during any procedure in which torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is used or threatened.

Psychologists must have complete professional independence in deciding upon the care of a person for whom they are responsible.

October 31st, 2007

Hill & Wilson: Dead bodies don’t count

Arthur Veno from Australia sends this review of a new book disscusing the impact of the Iraq invasion and occupation on Iraqi civilians:

Dead bodies don’t count: Civilian casualties and the forgotten costs of the Iraq Conflict written by Richard Hill and Paul Wilson (Zeus Publications, 2007) is an extraordinary book for many reasons.

It is beautifully written for intelligent audiences and, to date is the only explicated and developed critical analysis of the machinations of the remaining world superpower to justify the holocaust occurring in Afghanistan, Iraq and (soon) Iran.

This book pulls no punches and is a gritty and realistic portrayal of events which reveals a disturbing practice – state terrorism. The actions of the neo conservative Christian Right who is in the ‘driving seat’ in the US and its vassals comprising the “coalition of the willing” are shown to be what and who they are. Motivated by both greed and fundamentalist religion, the leaders of the coalition of the willing have utilized their vast publicity machines to insure that the axiom “The first casualty of war is truth” characterizes the current situation.

 Of course, exposing the underbelly of the American Empire’s expansion into the mid East is not a pleasant topic. However, this book remains alongside Pilger’s film work as essential reading for a complete understanding of just how far the Empire is willing to go to profit from war. The book left me feeling angry and deeply concerned about our fellow human beings… for both the line soldiers and civilians.

 It will, no doubt be one of those classic works which spawns and galvanizes a coherent resistance to the ‘dogs of war’. I believe it to be a ‘must read’ for all those who are and will become resisters to war.

 Arthur Veno, Ph.D.   

More information about the book here. Biography and fascinating interview on the nature of evil with author criminologist Paul Wilson here.

Here, after the fold, is the book’s Introduction:

Introduction

The Politics of Death

The terror and ‘collateral damage’ inflicted by governments on civilians leave them just as injured or dead as a terrorist attack would.

Silence plays a key role in the exercise of power. It creates spaces that are occupied by those who seek to assert their views of the world and establish their place in it. Some people therefore possess voices that are powerful and noisy, while others are rendered voiceless, bereft of an opportunity to speak out about their experiences, and seemingly unable to assert their grievances. They become what John Pilger recently referred to as ‘unpeople’—a shadowy population whose identities are stripped away and, in effect, consigned to the distant footnotes of history. This book is about a group of unpeople who have suffered extreme harm and yet received precious little attention from the Western media and virtually none from military or political elites.

The people of Iraq —men, women and children—have experienced considerable pain and suffering over the past few decades. In addition to having endured well over twenty years of brutal dictatorship under Saddam Hussein, they have also borne the brunt of a prolonged and bitter war against Iran, the 1991 Gulf War, several years of UN-imposed sanctions, repeated bombings by US and British forces during the 1990s, and the US-led invasion in 2003 followed by a bloody and protracted period of occupation. Perhaps the most tragic phase of Iraq ’s recent history is this period of occupation because it has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, more often than not at the hands of their own people. A virtual state of civil war has led to unprecedented acts of random killings and tit-for-tat murders in a country torn apart by ethnic and religious rivalry and bloody resistance to military occupation.

What started out in March 2003 as a war of ‘liberation and freedom’ has ended in years of bloodletting, with the prospects for peace and stability becoming increasingly remote. For the people of Iraq , the war and subsequent occupation have resulted in extensive death and injury as well as significant damage and destruction to the environment, economy and society. There is of course nothing new about this—wars and conflicts have always resulted in significant harm to innocent people.

Our primary concern in this book is with the bodily harm as well as the many other personal, social, economic, political and environmental costs of the conflict from March 2003 to late 2006. Additionally, we discuss how the question of civilian casualties has, or has not, been addressed by the instigators of the war, namely the US -led ‘coalition of the willing’. This is a political story about how the world’s leading superpower, along with its acolytes, sought to prosecute a war which many legal experts regarded as both illegal and unjust, and how it proceeded to ignore or play down the issue of civilian casualties. In shrouding this issue in silence the leaders of the coalition were intent, consciously or otherwise, on presenting their role as the benign guardians of Iraqi interests. Yet as is now clear, this sanguine picture has been repeatedly shattered as events have unfolded since March 2003. This apparent tension between image and reality, representation and actuality, is in part a function of war since the victors are almost always able to present a certain sanitised, self-serving view of events.

In attempting to break the official silence over civilian casualties, we are contributing to a view of events that is somewhat at odds with many of the official claims and justifications made by politicians and military leaders. Our aim is to develop a reading of events relating to the second Gulf War that focuses on the lived experiences of ordinary Iraqi people. In so doing we are adding to the growing and important body of literature—much of it written by journalists on the ground in Iraq —that documents some of the realities of war from the perspective of everyday citizens caught up in this calamitous conflict. We also draw on more formal studies of the conflict—usually conducted by non-government organisations, research institutes and centres—that have attempted (bravely at times) to amass evidence on the Iraqi dead and injured. Although our focus is on civilian casualties we do not forget about the thousands of Iraqi, US and other troops who have died or been injured, nor the police officers, security personnel and reconstruction workers who have suffered severely as a result of the ongoing insurgency.

Dead Bodies Don’t Count comprises five chapters, beginning with The Culture of Official Silence that examines the way in which the governments of the ‘coalition of the willing’ have consistently refused to undertake a count of the Iraqi dead and injured. This is followed by a discussion of the term ‘civilian casualties’ and what this means when we take into account the full consequences of war on civilian populations. In Chapter 2, Counting the Casualties, we discuss the specific context of Iraq and summarise findings from key international studies on the nature and extent of casualties that have resulted from the invasion and subsequent occupation. Chapter 3, Beyond the Body Bags, builds on this account by arguing for a more comprehensive view of the harm done to the Iraqi people. Specifically, we examine the personal, social, environmental, economic and political implications of the conflict and what this means for the present and future challenges faced by those caught up in a bloody battle. Chapter 4, Media Spin, Media Silence, discusses the ways in which the US-led coalition has responded, or not, to the question of civilian harm and how they have represented their own position in relation to the conflict. We examine the implications of the official refusal to conduct a body count and how this has given rise to competing explanatory narratives. In the final chapter, Breaking the Silence, we discuss the political implications stemming from public knowledge about the harm experienced by the Iraqi people as a result of the ongoing conflict.

We argue that the resounding silence over Iraqi victims is in fact symptomatic of various exclusionary processes that underscore relationships between the powerful and the subjugated, and that this relationship is characterised by narratives that emphasise one account over others, and which ultimately seek to legitimate the actions of the victor. However, in the case of Iraq the attempt by the powerful to sanitise the war, to render it ‘clean’ and ‘swift’, have gradually crumbled in the face of evidence of widespread atrocities. Such accounts have brought into sharp relief the gulf between official claims and the lived realities of the Iraqi people. In acknowledging the pain and suffering of ordinary Iraqis we insist on the necessity of taking seriously the consequences of war and recognising fully the rights of non-combatants under provisions contained in the Geneva Convention and Hague protocols.

If this book achieves anything, it is to draw greater attention to the central role that international law, conventions and protocols should play in determining relations between countries, especially during times of tension. These legislative measures have been put into place to ensure the protection of various legal and civil rights of innocent people and that capricious decision-making on the part of the victors is kept to a minimum. In challenging the official silence about death and injury, harm and destruction, we wish to highlight the consequences of war including the deaths and injuries suffered by coalition troops since the time of the invasion.

October 31st, 2007

Waterboarding is Torture… Period

At Small Wars Journal, Malcolm Nance, SERE trainer, counter-terrorism and terrorism intelligence consultant for the U.S. government’s Special Operations, Homeland Security and Intelligence agencies, understands what AG nominee Mukasey doesn’t:

Waterboarding is Torture… Period

I’d like to digress from my usual analysis of insurgent strategy and tactics to speak out on an issue of grave importance to Small Wars Journal readers. We, as a nation, are having a crisis of honor.

Last week the Attorney General nominee Judge Michael Mukasey refused to define waterboarding terror suspects as torture. On the same day MSNBC television pundit and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough quickly spoke out in its favor. On his morning television broadcast, he asserted, without any basis in fact, that the efficacy of the waterboard a viable tool to be used on Al Qaeda suspects.

Scarborough said, “For those who don’t know, waterboarding is what we did to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is the Al Qaeda number two guy that planned 9/11. And he talked …” He then speculated that “If you ask Americans whether they think it’s okay for us to waterboard in a controlled environment … 90% of Americans will say ‘yes.’” Sensing that what he was saying sounded extreme, he then claimed he did not support torture but that waterboarding was debatable as a technique: “You know, that’s the debate. Is waterboarding torture? … I don’t want the United States to engage in the type of torture that [Senator] John McCain had to endure.”

In fact, waterboarding is just the type of torture then Lt. Commander John McCain had to endure at the hands of the North Vietnamese. As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.

The carnival-like he-said, she-said of the legality of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques has become a form of doublespeak worthy of Catch-22. Having been subjected to them all, I know these techniques, if in fact they are actually being used, are not dangerous when applied in training for short periods. However, when performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner – it is torture, without doubt. Couple that with waterboarding and the entire medley not only “shock the conscience” as the statute forbids -it would terrify you. Most people can not stand to watch a high intensity kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American.

We live at a time where Americans, completely uninformed by an incurious media and enthralled by vengeance-based fantasy television shows like “24”, are actually cheering and encouraging such torture as justifiable revenge for the September 11 attacks. Having been a rescuer in one of those incidents and personally affected by both attacks, I am bewildered at how casually we have thrown off the mantle of world-leader in justice and honor. Who we have become? Because at this juncture, after Abu Ghraieb and other undignified exposed incidents of murder and torture, we appear to have become no better than our opponents.

With regards to the waterboard, I want to set the record straight so the apologists can finally embrace the fact that they condone and encourage torture.

History’s Lessons Ignored

Before arriving for my assignment at SERE, I traveled to Cambodia to visit the torture camps of the Khmer Rouge. The country had just opened for tourism and the effect of the genocide was still heavy in the air. I wanted to know how real torturers and terror camp guards would behave and learn how to resist them from survivors of such horrors. I had previously visited the Nazi death camps Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. I had met and interviewed survivors of Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Magdeburg when I visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. However, it was in the S-21 death camp known as Tuol Sleng, in downtown Phnom Penh, where I found a perfectly intact inclined waterboard. Next to it was the painting on how it was used. It was cruder than ours mainly because they used metal shackles to strap the victim down, and a tin flower pot sprinkler to regulate the water flow rate, but it was the same device I would be subjected to a few weeks later.

On a Mekong River trip, I met a 60-year-old man, happy to be alive and a cheerful travel companion, who survived the genocide and torture … he spoke openly about it and gave me a valuable lesson: “If you want to survive, you must learn that ‘walking through a low door means you have to be able to bow.’” He told his interrogators everything they wanted to know including the truth. They rarely stopped. In torture, he confessed to being a hermaphrodite, a CIA spy, a Buddhist Monk, a Catholic Bishop and the son of the king of Cambodia. He was actually just a school teacher whose crime was that he once spoke French. He remembered “the Barrel” version of waterboarding quite well. Head first until the water filled the lungs, then you talk.

Once at SERE and tasked to rewrite the Navy SERE program for the first time since the Vietnam War, we incorporated interrogation and torture techniques from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia into the curriculum. In the process, I studied hundreds of classified written reports, dozens of personal memoirs of American captives from the French-Indian Wars and the American Revolution to the Argentinean ‘Dirty War’ and Bosnia. There were endless hours of videotaped debriefings from World War Two, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War POWs and interrogators. I devoured the hundreds of pages of debriefs and video reports including those of then Commander John McCain, Colonel Nick Rowe, Lt. Dieter Dengler and Admiral James Stockdale, the former Senior Ranking Officer of the Hanoi Hilton. All of them had been tortured by the Vietnamese, Pathet Lao or Cambodians. The minutiae of North Vietnamese torture techniques was discussed with our staff advisor and former Hanoi Hilton POW Doug Hegdahl as well as discussions with Admiral Stockdale himself. The waterboard was clearly one of the tools dictators and totalitarian regimes preferred.

There is No Debate Except for Torture Apologists

1. Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period. There is no way to gloss over it or sugarcoat it. It has no justification outside of its limited role as a training demonstrator. Our service members have to learn that the will to survive requires them accept and understand that they may be subjected to torture, but that America is better than its enemies and it is one’s duty to trust in your nation and God, endure the hardships and return home with honor.

2. Waterboarding is not a simulation. Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.

Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration –usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten with its use again and again.

Call it “Chinese Water Torture,” “the Barrel,” or “the Waterfall,” it is all the same. Whether the victim is allowed to comply or not is usually left up to the interrogator. Many waterboard team members, even in training, enjoy the sadistic power of making the victim suffer and often ask questions as an after thought. These people are dangerous and predictable and when left unshackled, unsupervised or undetected they bring us the murderous abuses seen at Abu Ghraieb, Baghram and Guantanamo. No doubt, to avoid human factors like fear and guilt someone has created a one-button version that probably looks like an MRI machine with high intensity waterjets.

3. If you support the use of waterboarding on enemy captives, you support the use of that torture on any future American captives. The Small Wars Council had a spirited discussion about this earlier in the year, especially when former Marine Generals Krulak and Hoar rejected all arguments for torture.

Evan Wallach wrote a brilliant history of the use of waterboarding as a war crime and the open acceptance of it by the administration in an article for Columbia Journal for Transnational Law. In it he describes how the ideological Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo validated the current dilemma we find ourselves in by asserting that the President had powers above and beyond the Constitution and the Congress:

“Congress doesn’t have the power to tie the President’s hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique….It’s the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can’t prevent the President from ordering torture.”

That is an astounding assertion. It reflects a basic disregard for the law of the United States, the Constitution and basic moral decency.

Another MSNBC commentator defended the administration and stated that waterboarding is “not a new phenomenon” and that it had “been pinned on President Bush … but this has been part of interrogation for years and years and years.” He is correct, but only partially. The Washington Post reported in 2006 that it was mainly America’s enemies that used it as a principal interrogation method. After World War 2, Japanese waterboard team members were tried for war crimes. In Vietnam, service members were placed under investigation when a photo of a field-expedient waterboarding became publicly known.

Torture in captivity simulation training reveals there are ways an enemy can inflict punishment which will render the subject wholly helpless and which will generally overcome his willpower. The torturer will trigger within the subject a survival instinct, in this case the ability to breathe, which makes the victim instantly pliable and ready to comply. It is purely and simply a tool by which to deprive a human being of his ability to resist through physical humiliation. The very concept of an American Torturer is an anathema to our values.

I concur strongly with the opinions of professional interrogators like Colonel Stewart Herrington, and victims of torture like Senator John McCain. If you want consistent, accurate and reliable intelligence, be inquisitive, analytical, patient but most of all professional, amiable and compassionate.

Who will complain about the new world-wide embrace of torture? America has justified it legally at the highest levels of government. Even worse, the administration has selectively leaked supposed successes of the water board such as the alleged Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessions. However, in the same breath the CIA sources for the Washington Post noted that in Mohammed’s case they got information but “not all of it reliable.” Of course, when you waterboard you get all the magic answers you want -because remember, the subject will talk. They all talk! Anyone strapped down will say anything, absolutely anything to get the torture to stop. Torture. Does. Not. Work.

According to the President, this is not a torture, so future torturers in other countries now have an American legal basis to perform the acts. Every hostile intelligence agency and terrorist in the world will consider it a viable tool, which can be used with impunity. It has been turned into perfectly acceptable behavior for information finding.

A torture victim can be made to say anything by an evil nation that does not abide by humanity, morality, treaties or rule of law. Today we are on the verge of becoming that nation. Is it possible that September 11 hurt us so much that we have decided to gladly adopt the tools of KGB, the Khmer Rouge, the Nazi Gestapo, the North Vietnamese, the North Koreans and the Burmese Junta?

What next if the waterboarding on a critical the captive doesn’t work and you have a timetable to stop the “ticking bomb” scenario? Electric shock to the genitals? Taking a pregnant woman and electrocuting the fetus inside her? Executing a captive’s children in front of him? Dropping live people from an airplane over the ocean? It has all been done by governments seeking information. All claimed the same need to stop the ticking bomb. It is not a far leap from torture to murder, especially if the subject is defiant. Are we willing to trade our nation’s soul for tactical intelligence?

Is There a Place for the Waterboard?

Yes. The waterboard must go back to the realm of SERE training our operators, soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. We must now double our efforts to prepare for its inevitable and uncontrolled use of by our future enemies.

Until recently, only a few countries considered it effective. Now American use of the waterboard as an interrogation tool has assuredly guaranteed that our service members and agents who are captured or detained by future enemies will be subject to it as part of the most routine interrogations. Forget threats, poor food, the occasional face slap and sexual assaults. This was not a dignified ‘taking off the gloves’; this was descending to the level of our opposition in an equally brutish and ugly way. Waterboarding will be one our future enemy’s go-to techniques because we took the gloves off to brutal interrogation. Now our enemies will take the gloves off and thank us for it.

There may never again be a chance that Americans will benefit from the shield of outrage and public opinion when our future enemy uses of torture. Brutal interrogation, flash murder and extreme humiliation of American citizens, agents and members of the armed forces may now be guaranteed because we have mindlessly, but happily, broken the seal on the Pandora’s box of indignity, cruelty and hatred in the name of protecting America. To defeat Bin Laden many in this administration have openly embraced the methods of by Hitler, Pinochet, Pol Pot, Galtieri and Saddam Hussein.

Not A Fair Trade for America’s Honor

I have stated publicly and repeatedly that I would personally cut Bin Laden’s heart out with a plastic MRE spoon if we per chance meet on the battlefield. Yet, once captive I believe that the better angels of our nature and our nation’s core values would eventually convince any terrorist that they indeed have erred in their murderous ways. Once convicted in a fair, public tribunal, they would have the rest of their lives, however short the law makes it, to come to terms with their God and their acts.

This is not enough for our President. He apparently secretly ordered the core American values of fairness and justice to be thrown away in the name of security from terrorists. He somehow determined that the honor the military, the CIA and the nation itself was an acceptable trade for the superficial knowledge of the machinations of approximately 2,000 terrorists, most of whom are being decimated in Iraq or martyring themselves in Afghanistan. It is a short sighted and politically motivated trade that is simply disgraceful. There is no honor here.

It is outrageous that American officials, including the Attorney General and a legion of minions of lower rank have not only embraced this torture but have actually justified it, redefined it to a misdemeanor, brought it down to the level of a college prank and then bragged about it. The echo chamber that is the American media now views torture as a heroic and macho.

Torture advocates hide behind the argument that an open discussion about specific American interrogation techniques will aid the enemy. Yet, convicted Al Qaeda members and innocent captives who were released to their host nations have already debriefed the world through hundreds of interviews, movies and documentaries on exactly what methods they were subjected to and how they endured. In essence, our own missteps have created a cadre of highly experienced lecturers for Al Qaeda’s own virtual SERE school for terrorists.

Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle need to stand up for American values and clearly specify that coercive interrogation using the waterboard is torture and, except for limited examples of training our service members and intelligence officers, it should be stopped completely and finally –oh, and this time without a Presidential signing statement reinterpreting the law.

2 comments October 30th, 2007

Waterboarding: Its torture unless it isn’t

Attorney General nominee Mukasey takes a stron moral position on waterboarding. today he reaffirmed that, if waterboarding is torture, it would be illegal. It isn’t clear how many Senators are reassured. Chris Dodd isn’t.  [UPDATE: Other Democratic candidates join in.]For an important lesson in word parsing, Bush admin style, read Mukasey’s Letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, below the fold, which clarifies all.

But first read Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post, who summarizes much of the reaction to this new moral clarity:

The Stench of Torture

By Dan Froomkin

The stench of torture that permeates the White House has spread to Attorney General-designate Michael Mukasey, putting what had been seen as a surefire nomination at risk and reigniting a momentous ethical debate.

By refusing to acknowledge at his confirmation hearing that waterboarding is torture, Mukasey appeared to throw his lot in with those who embrace an authoritarian strain of moral relativism, one that excuses abhorrent and illegal policies as long as the president declares they’re in the national interest.

When longtime Bush loyalist Alberto Gonzales was nominated to succeed John Ashcroft as attorney general, critics expressed what turned out to be eminently justified concern that he would never buck the White House. By all accounts, Mukasey, a federal judge, is much more independent than Gonzales. As I wrote in my Sept. 18 column, Bush evidently realized that the Democratic Congress wouldn’t let him install another complete lickspittle into the nation’s top law-enforcement post.

Nevertheless, Bush and Vice President Cheney desperately need someone in that job who won’t undermine the most radical of their legal positions: Those regarding executive power and the treatment of terrorism suspects. And they seem to have found such a person in Mukasey.

Scott Shane writes in the New York Times: “Six years after the Bush administration embraced harsh physical tactics for interrogating terrorism suspects, and two years after it reportedly dropped the most extreme of those techniques, the taint of torture clings to American counterterrorism efforts.

“The administration has a standard answer to queries about its interrogation practices: 1) We do not torture, and 2) we will not say what we do, for fear of tipping off future prisoners. In effect, officials want Al Qaeda to believe that the United States does torture, while convincing the rest of the world that it does not.

“But that contradictory catechism is not holding up well under the battering that American interrogation policies have received from human rights organizations, European allies and increasingly skeptical members of Congress….

“President Bush has repeatedly defended what the administration calls ‘enhanced’ interrogation methods, saying they have produced invaluable information on Al Qaeda. But the administration’s strategy has exacted an extraordinary political cost.

“The nomination of Michael B. Mukasey as attorney general, once expected to sail through the Senate, has run into trouble as a result of his equivocation about waterboarding, or simulated drowning. Mr. Mukasey has refused to characterize the technique as torture, which would put him at odds with secret Justice Department legal opinions and could put intelligence officers in legal jeopardy.”

Massimo Calabresi writes for Time: “George W. Bush has always wielded moral clarity as a weapon, beating Democrats by declaring his high purpose and principled resolve. But in recent months, as critics have shined new light on domestic spying and harsh interrogation techniques in the morally ambiguous world of counter-terrorism, Bush has had to retreat to gray-area defenses, using tailored definitions and legalisms to dodge questioners. And now, as Democrats raise the pressure on embattled Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey to state his opinion on whether or not waterboarding constitutes torture, it is the president’s opponents who are using moral clarity against him.”

Calabresi writes that if Mukasey “refuses to declare waterboarding expressly illegal, he looks likely to be rejected by the Judiciary committee. On the other hand, if he does declare it illegal, he may be rendering a legal judgment on everyone who authorized waterboarding or used it in interrogation. ‘They are putting him in an almost untenable position on this,’ says White House spokesman Tony Fratto. The White House expects Mukasey’s response will be sent to the committee Tuesday or Wednesday, and Fratto says, ‘He’ll respond in his usual manner, which is thoughtful and thorough, but there are certain things that he will not be able to comment on.’”

Calabresi also offers a peek behind the scenes, where — surprise! — Vice President Cheney’s office is heavily involved: “Harold Kim, a former Specter staffer who works in the White House Counsel’s office, has been negotiating with Judiciary Committee Democrats, trying to find language they can live with. But attempts to compromise with Congress have met resistance from Cheney’s office, and when it comes to interrogation techniques, the Vice President and his chief of staff, David Addington, have notoriously pushed for Presidential authority to go unchecked by the legislative branch.”

Cheney’s position on waterboarding doesn’t take a lot of guesswork. Here he is in an October 24, 2006, interview with right-wing radio host Scott Hennen:

Hennen: “Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?”

Cheney: “It’s a no-brainer for me.”

The Washington Post editorial board writes: “It’s a sad day in America when the nominee for attorney general cannot flatly declare that waterboarding is unconstitutional. The interrogation technique simulates drowning and can cause excruciating mental and physical pain; it has been prosecuted in U.S. courts since the late 1800s and was regarded by every U.S. administration before this one as torture. . . .

“The fault for this evasion lies as much, if not more, with President Bush and Congress as it does with Mr. Mukasey. Mr. Bush authorized waterboarding in the past, most notably against al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. If Mr. Mukasey now condemns the interrogation method as unconstitutional, he would probably be in conflict with Justice Department memoranda that implicitly endorse such techniques and that have been used by CIA interrogators and others to cloak their actions in legal legitimacy. The president could also be legally implicated for approving the method.”

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board writes: “Waterboarding is torture. If he cannot unambiguously define it as such, he should not be confirmed. . . .

“Mukasey, in declining to answer whether the technique that simulates drowning in its victims is constitutional, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he is unfamiliar with it. This is implausible. But he stuck to the story even when the method was explained to him.

“‘If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional,’ he said. But this is very much like the president’s own unsatisfactory answer, which, in a nutshell, is that this country doesn’t torture but that he gets to define what that is. . . .

“The president should have leeway to appoint cabinet members who share his views. But like-mindedness in an appointee on the matter of torture is no virtue. It is difficult to imagine how such a person, taking such an expedient view in the nomination process, could be independent enough to stand up to the president if need be.”

Joan Walsh writes for Salon: ” It’s worth paying attention to what Mukasey said, exactly, during his testimony (thanks to Paul Kiel at TPM for highlighting this):

“‘I don’t think that I can responsibly talk about any technique here because — (pause) — of the very — I’m not going to discuss and I should not — I’m sorry I can’t discuss, and I think it would be irresponsible of me to discuss particular techniques with which I am not familiar when there are people who are using coercive techniques and who are being authorized to use coercive techniques. And for me to say something that is going to put their careers or freedom at risk simply because I want to be congenial, I don’t think it would be responsible of me to do that.’”

“So it seems Mukasey refused to call any particular technique torture, or to say whether it was ‘unconstitutional,’ because he believes someone out there may be using these controversial techniques right now, under orders from above, and he doesn’t want to get them in trouble just to be ‘congenial.’”

Law professor Marty Lederman blogs: “There may well be some ambiguities at the margins about whether and under what circumstances certain interrogation techniques amount to torture, to cruel treatment under Common Article 3, to or conduct that shocks the conscience under the McCain Amendment.”

But, he writes “Waterboarding is a paradigmatic example of torture. It is inconceivable that anyone involved in drafting, negotiating, signing, ratifying or enacting the Torture Act or Common Article 3 would have thought otherwise.”

For the record, here is Mukasey’s full letter to the Judiciary Committee [or in pdf]:

MICHAEL B. MUKASEY
October 30, 2007

The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Joseph R. Biden, Jr. United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
The Honorable Dianne Feinstein United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Charles E. Schumer United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Benjamin L. Cardin United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Edward M. Kennedy United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Herb Kohl United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Russell D. Feingold United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Richard J. Durbin United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Sheldon Whitehouse United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Chairman Leahy, Senator Kennedy, Senator Biden, Senator Kohl, Senator Feinstein, Senator Feingold, Senator Schumer, Senator Durbin, Senator Cardin and Senator Whitehouse:

Thank you for your letter of October 23, 2007. I well understand the concerns of the Senators who signed this letter that this Country remain true to its ideals, and that includes how we treat even the most brutal terrorists in U.S. custody. I understand also the importance of the United States remaining a nation of laws and setting a high standard of respect for human rights. Indeed, I said at the hearing that torture violates the law and the Constitution, and the President may not authorize it as he is no less bound by constitutional restrictions than any other government official.

I was asked at the hearing and in your letter questions about the hypothetical use of certain coercive interrogation techniques. As described in your letter, these techniques seem over the line or, on a personal basis, repugnant to me, and would probably seem the same to many Americans. But hypotheticals are different from real life, and in any legal opinion the actual facts and circumstances are critical. As a judge, I tried to be objective in my decision-making and to put aside even strongly held personal beliefs when assessing a legal question because legal questions must be answered based solely on the actual facts, circumstances, and legal standards presented. A legal opinion based on hypothetical facts and circumstances may be of some limited academic appeal but has scant practical effect or value.

I have said repeatedly, and reiterate here, that no one, including a President, is above the law, and that I would leave office sooner than participate in a violation of law. If confirmed, any legal opinions I offer will reflect that I appreciate the need for the United States to remain a nation of laws and to set the highest standards. I will be mindful also of our shared obligation to ensure that our Nation has the tools it needs, within the law, to protect the American people.

Legal opinions should treat real issues. I have not been briefed on techniques used in any classified interrogation program conducted by any government agency. For me, then, there is a real issue as to whether the techniques presented and discussed at the hearing and in your letter are even part of any program of questioning detainees. Although I have not been cleared into the details of any such program, it is my understanding that some Members of Congress, including those on the intelligence committees, have been so cleared and have been briefed on the specifics of a program run by the Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”). Those Members know the answer to the question of whether the specific techniques presented to me at the hearing and in your letter are part of the CIA’s program. I do not.

I do know, however, that “waterboarding” cannot be used by the United States military because its use by the military would be a clear violation of the Detainee Treatment Act (“DTA”). That is because “waterboarding” and certain other coercive interrogation techniques are expressly prohibited by the Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation, and Congress specifically legislated in the DTA that no person in the custody or control of the Department of Defense (“DOD”) or held in a DOD facility may be subject to any interrogation techniques not authorized and listed in the Manual.

In the absence of legislation expressly banning certain interrogation techniques in all circumstances, one must consider whether a particular technique complies with relevant legal standards. Below, I provide a summary of the type of analysis that I would undertake, were I presented as Attorney General with the question of whether coercive interrogation techniques, including “waterboarding” as described in your letter, would constitute torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, or a violation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
The statutory elements of torture are set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 2340. By the terms of the statute, whether a particular technique is torture would turn principally on whether it is specifically intended to cause (a) severe physical pain or suffering, or (b) prolonged mental harm resulting from certain specified threats or acts. If, after being briefed, I deteimine that a particular technique satisfies the elements of section 2340, I would conclude that the technique violated the law.

I note that the Department of Justice published its interpretation of 18 U.S.C. § 2340 in a December 30, 2004 memorandum to then-Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, which superseded the memorandum of August 1, 2002 that I testified was a “mistake.” I understand that the December 30, 2004 memorandum remains the Department’s prevailing interpretation of section 2340. Although the December 30, 2004 memorandum to Mr. Comey does not discuss any specific techniques, it does state that “[w]hile we have identified various disagreements with the August 2002 Memorandum, we have reviewed this Office’s prior opinions addressing issues involving treatment of detainees and do not believe that any of their conclusions would be different under the standards set forth in this memorandum.”

Even if a particular technique did not constitute torture under 18 U.S.C. § 2340, I would have to consider also whether it nevertheless would be prohibited as “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” as set forth in the DTA and the Military Commissions Act (“MCA”) — enacted after the Department of Justice’s December 30, 2004 memorandum to Mr. Comey — which extended the Convention Against Torture’s prohibition on “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” to individuals in United States custody regardless of location or nationality. Congress specified in those statutes, as the Senate had in consenting to the ratification of the Convention Against Torture, that the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution would control our interpretation of the phrase “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

The Fifth Amendment is likely most relevant to an inquiry under the DTA and MCA into the lawfulness of an interrogation technique used against alien enemy combatants held abroad, and the Supreme Court has established the well-known “shocks the conscience” to determine whether particular government conduct is consistent with the Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantees. See County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 850 (1998); Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 174 (1952). A legal opinion on whether any interrogation technique shocks the conscience such that it constitutes cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment requires an understanding of the relevant facts and circumstances of the technique’s past or proposed use. This is the test mandated by the Supreme Court itself in County of Sacramento v. Lewis in which it wrote that “our concern with preserving the constitutional proportions of substantive due process demands an exact analysis of circumstances before any abuse of power is condemned as conscience shocking.” 523 U.S. 833, 850 (1998) (emphasis added). As the Supreme Court has explained, a court first considers whether the conduct is “arbitrary in the constitutional sense,” a test that asks whether the conduct is proportionate to the governmental interests involved. Id. at 847. In addition, the court must conduct an objective inquiry into whether the conduct at issue is “egregious” or “outrageous” in light of “traditional executive behavior and contemporary practices.” Id. at 847 n.8. This inquiry requires a review of executive practice so as to determine what the United States has traditionally considered to be out of bounds, and it makes clear that there are some acts that would be prohibited regardless of the surrounding circumstances.

I would have to ensure also that any technique complies with our Nation’s obligations under the Geneva Conventions, including those acts, such as murder, mutilation, rape, and cruel or inhuman treatment, that Congress has forbidden as grave breaches of Common Article 3 under the War Crimes Act. With respect to any coercive interrogation technique, the prohibition on “cruel or inhuman treatment” would be of particular relevance. That statute, similar in structure to 18 U.S.C. § 2340, prohibits acts intended (a) to cause serious physical pain or suffering, or (b) serious and non-transitory mental harm resulting from certain specific threats or acts. Also, I would have to consider whether there would be a violation of the additional prohibitions imposed by Executive Order 13440, which includes a prohibition of willful and outrageous personal abuse inflicted for the purpose of humiliating and degrading the detainee.
As I testified, any discussion of coercive interrogation techniques necessarily involves a discussion of and a choice among bad alternatives. I was and remain loath to discuss and opine on any of those alternatives at this stage for the following three principal reasons: First, to repeat, I have not been made aware of the details of any interrogation program to the extent that any such program may be classified, and thus do not know what techniques may be involved in any such program that some may find analogous or comparable to the coercive techniques presented to me at the hearing and in your letter. Second, I would not want any uninformed statement of mine made during a confirmation process to present our own professional interrogators in the field, who must perform their duty under the most stressful conditions, or those charged with reviewing their conduct, with a perceived threat that any conduct of theirs, past or present, that was based on authorizations supported by the Department of Justice could place them in personal legal jeopardy. Third, for the reasons that I believe our intelligence community has explained in detail, I would not want any statement of mine to provide our enemies with a window into the limits or contours of any interrogation program we may have in place and thereby assist them in training to resist the techniques we actually may use.

I emphasize in closing this answer that nothing set forth above, or in my testimony, should be read as an approval of the interrogation techniques presented to me at the hearing or in your letter, or any comparable technique. Some of you told me at the hearing or in private meetings that you hoped and expected that, if confirmed, I would exercise my independent judgment when providing advice to the President, regardless of whether that advice was what the President wanted to hear. I told you that it would be irresponsible for me to do anything less. It would be no less irresponsible for me to seek confirmation by providing an uninformed legal opinion based on hypothetical facts and circumstances.

As I testified, if confirmed I will review any coercive interrogation techniques currently used by the United States Government and the legal analysis authorizing their use to assess whether such techniques comply with the law. If, after such a review, I determine that any technique is unlawful, I will not hesitate to so advise the President and will rescind or correct any legal opinion of the Department of Justice that supports use of the technique. I view this as entirely consistent with my commitment to provide independent judgment on all issues. That is my commitment and pledge to the President, to the Congress, and to the American people. Each and all should expect no less from their Attorney General.

Michael Mukasey

October 30th, 2007

Suicide and spin doctors: A slow death in Camp 6, Guantanamo

Attorney H. Candace Gorman in In These Times tells of her client, Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi, slowly dying in Camp 6 at Guantanamo. He is ill with Hepatitis B and tuberculosis, is untreated and subjected to the cruel “experiment,” as Gorman calls it, of perpetual isolation. The main question regarding his fate is whether he will first lose his body or his mind:

Suicide and Spin Doctors

by H. Candace Gorman

Now that the U.S. military has “cleared” my notes, I can tell you about my July meeting at Guantánamo with my client Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi.

Al-Ghizzawi was visibly shaken when I entered the meeting room and he immediately told me of his despair over the May death of a fellow inmate, a young Saudi man named Abdel Rahman Al Amri. Al-Ghizzawi knew that Amri had been suffering from Hepatitis B and tuberculosis, the same two conditions from which he himself suffers. Like al-Ghizzawi, Amri had not been treated for his illnesses. Al-Ghizzawi, now so sick he can barely walk, told me that Amri, too, had been ill and then, suddenly, he was dead.

Al-Ghizzawi also mentioned that Amri had engaged in hunger strikes in the past but had stopped a long time ago because of his health. I knew about Amri’s death. I also know our military has called it an “apparent suicide.”

As I sat with al-Ghizzawi I found myself thinking about South African anti-apartheid activist Steven Biko. In his book I Write What I Like, Biko declares that “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” There are many ways for the oppressor to force himself into the mind of the oppressed, but one surefire way is through indefinite detention. Never knowing when—or if—you will be released is a cruel form of psychological torture. It allows you to keep hope while simultaneously filling you with fear. South Africa’s apartheid government sharpened this tactic when it passed the Terrorism Act of 1967, which allowed the police to pick up Biko as a “suspect” involved in terrorism (“involvement” under that law was defined as “anything that might endanger the maintenance of law and order”) and detain him for an indefinite period without trial. Biko’s indefinite detention ended after only a month, when he suffered a brutal death at the hands of the South African police. The government claimed that Biko died as the result of a hunger strike. (In U.S. military parlance, that would be an “apparent suicide.”) Autopsy results later showed that Biko died of a head trauma and that his body was badly beaten. Our government officials, clever devils that they are, apparently learned from the “mistake” of South Africa and refuse to release Amri’s autopsy records.

Back in 2005, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld explained in a speech that Guantánamo is a great training ground for our interrogators because they learn what works and what doesn’t. The Pentagon’s little laboratory gathered speed last December when the military moved several hundred men into Camp 6. Included in the randomly selected group was al-Ghizzawi.

Camp 6 is worse than any of America’s supermax prisons because inmates are given little to occupy their minds as they sit in tiny cells with no natural light or air for at least 22 hours every day. The men are allowed one book per week, but it’s the same old books that have been around year after year. Guards also allow the men two hours of “recreation time” in four-foot-by-four-foot cages. As part of the experiment, the military plays with the “rec” times: Sometimes the guards show up at 3 a.m. for al-Ghizzawi’s recreation time. He is too polite to tell the guards what I would feel compelled to say. Instead he shows his dignity by refusing to stand in the dark. Other times, when the Cuban sun is at its hottest, al-Ghizzawi is offered the opportunity to stand in the metal cage under the blistering sun where there is no shade.

Al-Ghizzawi told me in July that he now finds himself talking out loud even though no one is there to talk to. We both know he is in dangerous territory. We talked about ways to help fight the mental deterioration, such as trying to read, exercising his body or focusing on his wife and daughter. Even though his body is already shot to hell with almost six years of physical and psychological abuse and medical neglect, at least he had been maintaining his mind. He was able to put his life in perspective. He had hope, though mingled with fear for the future. But now he can no longer read the books because his eyes too are shot, so he spends his days in tedious boredom. (In September, I requested that military officials provide him reading glasses, but what is the likelihood that they will give him glasses when they will not give him medical treatment?) So al-Ghizzawi spends his days pacing in his cell, washing and rewashing his clothes and preparing for the death he knows is looming.

When I left our September meeting a few days ago, al-Ghizzawi was doubled over in pain and gagging on his own phlegm. Again, I thought about Steven Biko and the young Saudi, Amri. I feared al-Ghizzawi may suffer a cruel, solitary death. I promised him the only things I could: that his death will not go unnoticed and that I will not let him be listed as an apparent suicide. Then I asked al-Ghizzawi to please not let them take his mind.

Until they clear my notes, his response is classified.

H. Candace Gorman is a civil rights attorney in Chicago. She blogs regularly about legal issues surrounding Guantanamo detainees at The Guantanamo Blog.

Gorman updates the situation in a Huffington Post post:

Shhhh, Mr. Al-Ghizzawi’s Torture is “Secret”

During the week of September 24th I went to visit my client Mr. Al-Ghizzawi at Guantanamo again. It is clear to me that our visits are nearing the end… Mr. Al-Ghizzawi won’t be with the living much longer. Mr. Al-Ghizzawi knows his days are limited, not only can he barely walk but he sat at our meeting doubled over in pain. For the first time in our two year attorney-client relationship Mr. Al-Ghizzawi shared with me pictures of his little girl… she is now almost six years old and he has not seen her since she was a few months old. She is a beautiful little girl with big green eyes and a mischievous grin. Mr. Al-Ghizzawi lamented the fact that he will never see his little girl again and that his little girl will not even have a picture of him to remember her father by.

Mr. Al-Ghizzawi wanted to share something else with me before he died. He wanted to share with me some of the torture that he has been subjected to over his now almost six years of captivity. He handed me a letter that he had been working on since July… it was a six page letter… he asked me to mark each page so that when I received it I would know if I was receiving the correct pages. I put my initials on the pages and I handed the letter over to my escort so that the military could send it to me… after “reviewing” it first for “secret information.”

I have only had one letter held over these more than two years because it contained “secret” information. On that occasion I flew to DC, hired an interpreter with the “secret clearance” and went to the “secret place” to read the mysterious letter. As you might have suspected there was nothing mysterious in the letter… the interpreter first read the letter to me and after I expressed my dismay he typed out the translation… I resubmitted the letter in English and it was approved without so much as a mention of the previous “secret” designation… It was an expensive letter.

So now I have had a second letter withheld… well actually only half of a second letter…The government has designated three pages of Mr. Al-Ghizzawi’s six page letter as “secret.” It seems that the three pages that discuss recent issues that Mr. Al-Ghizzawi experienced while at Gitmo are ok …. It is the three pages that talk about what happened at the hands of the US while he was still in Afghanistan and his early days at Guantanamo that needs to be kept secret… and I don’t blame them one bit for trying…it is ugly. … really ugly. So there you have it, the ugliest facts are classified as “secret” to protect… I’m sorry, what is it again that we are protecting here?

Meanwhile, Amnesty International has sent out an urgent plea for Mr. al-Ghizzawi.From that plea:

Amnesty International fears that Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi may not be receiving appropriate medical treatment. The Commander of the Guantánamo hospital and Joint-Task Force surgeon has previously stated that Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi does not want to be treated for his illnesses. However his lawyers have asserted that neither he nor they were informed of the diagnosis until September 2006 and that he has since requested treatment but has received none.

Here is Amnesty’s recommended action:

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in English or your own language:

expressing your serious concern that Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi may not be receiving appropriate medical care for his illnesses;

- urging that Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi be given immediate access to a doctor, and to specialist medical attention if necessary as stipulated in the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, 22 (2), so that he can be properly diagnosed and provided with all the necessary treatment he may require;

- urging that independent medical experts be allowed to visit him regularly in Guantánamo to assess his medical condition and treatment requirements;

- urging that he be removed from Camp 6 immediately and transferred to facilities which will not be further detrimental to his physical and psychological health;

- stating that he should be allowed contact with his family through regular mail, with opportunities for phone calls and visits;

- calling for the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay to be closed and for the detainees held there to be released unless they are to be promptly charged with recognizable criminal offences and brought to trial in ordinary civilian courts in full accordance with international standards, without recourse to the death penalty

APPEALS TO:
Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, Commander Joint Task Force Guantánamo
Department of Defense , Joint Task Force Guantánamo, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, APO AE 09360
Fax: +1 305 437 1241
Salutation: Dear Rear Admiral

J. Alan Liotta, Principal Director, Office of Detainee Affairs
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, 2900 Defense Pentagon, Washington DC 20301-2900, USA
Email via: http://www.defenselink.mil/faq/comment.html
Salutation: Dear Director

COPIES TO:

Member of US Congress
Rep. Jan Schakowsky, 1027 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, USA
Fax: + 1 202 226 6890

and to diplomatic representatives of USA accredited to your country.
PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Check with the International Secretariat, or your section office, if sending appeals after 5 December 2007.

See also the blog post by Valtin at Daily Kos.

October 28th, 2007

Leah Kauffman — Perfected: The Ann Coulter Song

October 28th, 2007

Richard & Mimi Farina: House Un-American Blues Activity Dream

Its Sunday. Time for some music:

1 comment October 28th, 2007