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November 21st, 2011
Posts filed under 'Bush administration'
Cheney’s terrorism failures
As Richard Cheney (F-Felon) romps around the airwaves promoting his new book, Daily Kos reminds us of the perhaps unprecedented failures of the Bush administration, and Cheney himself, to tackle or even take seriously the Al Qaeda threat. This provides a useful summary that should be widely disseminated:
Dick Cheney wants you to forget
By Laurence Lewis
Dick Cheney is back in the news again, as he becomes the latest member of the Bush administration to cash in on what should be cause for criminal investigation and likely prosecution. This is a classic chickenhawk, who himself got five deferments to avoid fighting his generation’s war, and whose idea of recreation is to shoot birds that were raised as hunting fodder and released by the staff of an exclusive club, and who even in such a cruel, controlled environment still somehow managed accidentally to shoot a man in the face. This is a man who as regent and Lord Protector to the Lesser Bush oversaw the destruction of the U.S. economy, the evisceration of the Clinton budget surplus and the creation of the largest budget deficit in U.S. history, and was catastrophically irresponsible with what may have been the last chance to address the most important issue humanity has ever faced. But nothing so defined the Bush-Cheney era as issues of national security. And Cheney doesn’t want you to remember what really happened under his Protectorate on national security. And you can be certain that the traditional media won’t recount what happened under Cheney’s Protectorate on national security. That is up to us.I’ve posted this numerous times in numerous forms and it will need to be posted any time Bush or Cheney returns to the headlines. The facts are clear and the evidence overwhelming. Under Bush and his regent and Lord Protector Cheney, U.S. national security was undermined as it never before had been. Remember this. Bear witness. Don’t let anyone forget.
- Just a month before the 9/11 attacks, while on a month-long vacation, Bush was personally handed a presidential daily briefing titled:
Bin Laden determined to strike in US.
With characteristic intelligence and class, Bush responded with the words:
All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.
And went fishing.
- But Bush wasn’t the only member of his administration to blow off warnings, and ignore the threat of terrorism. Indeed, Attorney General John Ashcroft revealed his own lack of concern just a day before the attacks:
In his final budget request for the fiscal year 2003 submitted on Sept. 10 to the budget director, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the attorney general called for spending increases in 68 programs, none of which directly involved counterterrorism. Upgrading the F.B.I.’s computer system, one of the areas in which he sought an increase, is relevant to combating terrorism, though Mr. Ashcroft did not defend it on that ground.But in his Sept. 10 submission to the budget office, Mr. Ashcroft did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators.
Mr. Ashcroft proposed cuts in 14 programs. One proposed $65 million cut was for a program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants for equipment, including radios and decontamination suits and training to localities for counterterrorism preparedness.
- And Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reacted similarly, less than a week before that:
When Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who was then chairman of the Armed Services Committee, sought to transfer money to counterterrorism from the missile defense program, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sent a letter on Sept. 6, 2001, saying he would urge Mr. Bush to veto the measure. Mr. Levin nonetheless pushed the measure through the next day on a party-line vote.
- And former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke had this to say about National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice:
…I believe it was, George Tenet called me and said, “I don’t think we’re getting the message through. These people aren’t acting the way the Clinton people did under similar circumstances.” And I suggested to Tenet that he come down and personally brief Condi Rice, that he bring his terrorism team with him. And we sat in the national security adviser’s office. And I’ve used the phrase in the book to describe George Tenet’s warnings as “He had his hair on fire.” He was about as excited as I’d ever seen him. And he said, “Something is going to happen.”Now, when he said that in December 1999 to the national security adviser, at the time Sandy Berger, Sandy Berger then held daily meetings throughout December 1999 in the White House Situation Room, with the FBI director, the attorney general, the head of the CIA, the head of the Defense Department, and they shook out of their bureaucracies every last piece of information to prevent the attacks. And we did prevent the attacks in December 1999. Dr. Rice chose not to do that.
- Indeed:
We know, for example, that then National Security Adviser Rice was warned repeatedly in 2001 about an imminent al-Qaeda attack against the U.S., but, along with Cheney and Rumsfeld, she simply didn’t believe that a cave dweller like Osama bin Laden could be that much of a threat. She was warned by the outgoing Clintonite Sandy Berger, in January 2001. She was warned by the White House counterterrorism scold Richard Clarke. And now, with Bob Woodward’s new book, State of Denial, and subsequent Washington Post reports, we’ve been reminded that cia Director George Tenet warned Rice on July 10, 2001, that “the system was blinking red,” meaning that there could be “multiple, simultaneous” al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. interests in the coming weeks or months.
- The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and even Bush himself later made it clear:
The former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Hugh Shelton, said the Bush administration pushed terrorism “farther to the back burner”. And in a sympathetic portrait of the young administration, Bush at War, the president himself told the author, Bob Woodward, that he “didn’t feel that sense of urgency” about going after Osama bin Laden.
- It was clear just a month into the Bush Presidency:
But when it comes to fighting terrorism, administration officials say the United States has no new initiatives to offer. Top antiterrorism officials in the U.S. government tell NEWSWEEK that Bush and his lieutenants have yet to put forth a counterterrorism plan. So far at least, the Bush team has kept on Clinton’s counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke.
- There had been explicit warnings even during the transition:
One such meeting took place in the White House situation room during the first week of January 2001. The session was part of a program designed by Bill Clinton’s National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, who wanted the transition between the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations to run as smoothly as possible. With some bitterness, Berger remembered how little he and his colleagues had been helped by the first Bush Administration in 1992-93. Eager to avoid a repeat of that experience, he had set up a series of 10 briefings by his team for his successor, Condoleezza Rice, and her deputy, Stephen Hadley.Berger attended only one of the briefings—the session that dealt with the threat posed to the U.S. by international terrorism, and especially by al-Qaeda. “I’m coming to this briefing,” he says he told Rice, “to underscore how important I think this subject is.” Later, alone in his office with Rice, Berger says he told her, “I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.”
- But the Bush team was so obliviously sanguine that:
Though Predator drones spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times in late 2000, the Bush administration did not fly the unmanned planes over Afghanistan during its first eight months and was still refining a plan to use one armed with missiles to kill the al-Qaida leader when Sept. 11 unfolded, current and former U.S. officials say.
- And as for Cheney himself:
Bush administration officials told former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H., that they preferred instead to put aside the recommendations issued in the January report by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. Instead, the White House announced in May that it would have Vice President Dick Cheney study the potential problem of domestic terrorism — which the bipartisan group had already spent two and a half years studying — while assigning responsibility for dealing with the issue to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, headed by former Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh.The Hart-Rudman Commission had specifically recommended that the issue of terrorism was such a threat it needed far more than FEMA’s attention.
Before the White House decided to go in its own direction, Congress seemed to be taking the commission’s suggestions seriously, according to Hart and Rudman. “Frankly, the White House shut it down,” Hart says. “The president said ‘Please wait, we’re going to turn this over to the vice president. We believe FEMA is competent to coordinate this effort.’ And so Congress moved on to other things, like tax cuts and the issue of the day.”
“We predicted it,” Hart says of Tuesday’s horrific events. “We said Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers — that’s a quote (from the commission’s Phase One Report) from the fall of 1999.”
Let’s highlight that:
Instead, the White House announced in May that it would have Vice President Dick Cheney study the potential problem of domestic terrorism — which the bipartisan group had already spent two and a half years studying — while assigning responsibility for dealing with the issue to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, headed by former Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh.The Hart-Rudman Commission had specifically recommended that the issue of terrorism was such a threat it needed far more than FEMA’s attention.
- Not only did the entire Bush administration ignore multiple screaming warnings, but Cheney himself was tasked with studying the risk of domestic terrorism! And even though Bush himself said he’d periodically review the issue:
Neither Cheney’s review nor Bush’s took place.
- Bush and Cheney. Both. Both given specific warnings. Both claiming they would study the risks. Neither doing so. Their entire administration failing in every possible way, despite numerous specific and personal warnings. Despite numerous specific and personal warnings that kept coming, right up until the days before the September 11 attacks. And after the attacks we had this:
The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.
- And just half a year later, we had Bush saying this:
And, again, I don’t know where he is. I — I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.
And the Taliban grew stronger. Al Qaeda regrouped and grew stronger. And then the administration made at least 935 false statements to lie the nation into war with Iraq, which undermined the war in Afghanistan, spawned a new generation of terrorists, with terrorism increasing around the globe under their rule.
But that was only the beginning. There was more. Much more. The Bush-Cheney team undermined national security in multiple ways, including abusing and damaging the U.S. military. Click through to see the links. And share. And never forget.
September 5th, 2011
A chink in the armor: Donald Rumsfeld can be sued for torture
So far, the Obama administration has managed to close off virtually every avenue of accountability for torture by US officials. But the courts has refused to join the Obama DOJ in declaring torture of anyone anywhere anytime by US officials totally protected. In two weeks two US courts have ruled that former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld can be sued by US citizens who claim they were tortured on his orders. While not much, this does break a tiny hole into the Obama doctrine of sovereign immunity for torture. Dahlia Lithwick explains:
It’s important to understand that the court makes no judgment on Vance and Ertel’s claims. But for the purposes of Rumsfeld’s motion to dismiss, the court is legally bound to treat their claims as if they are true. That’s hugely consequential because, as Adam Serwer explained last week: “When deciding whether or not these cases are allowed to go forward, judges have to assume that the plaintiff’s version of events is ‘reasonable.’ So part of what Rumsfeld and his team have to argue is that even if the allegations were true, the law doesn’t allow Doe to sue the government for torturing him and detaining him without trial.” Rumsfeld and the Obama administration have taken precisely this position. Even if everything Vance alleges is true, he still loses. They claim, in short, that Rumsfeld should be immune from suit because it was unreasonable to have expected him to know that the abuse he authorized was unconstitutional. They also raise claims about the dangers of judicial intrusions on the executive branch’s war-making powers and—of course—about the danger of disclosing state secrets.
The full article:
Damages
An appeals court allows a suit against Donald Rumsfeld to go forward.By Dahlia Lithwick
Last week, a federal district court judge in Washington, D.C., determined that a lawsuit filed against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by a former military translator who claimed to have been tortured by U.S. forces at Camp Cropper in Iraq could go forward despite claims from Rumsfeld and the Obama administration that he should be immune from suit. After assessing the claims of “John Doe,” Judge James S. Gwin found that American citizens don’t lose their constitutional rights simply because it’s wartime. “The court finds no convincing reason,” wrote Gwin, “that United States citizens in Iraq should or must lose previously-declared substantive due process protections during prolonged detention in a conflict zone abroad.”
On Monday, a three-judge panel from the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals came to pretty much the same conclusion. Reviewing a different lawsuit, filed by two different military contractors, alleging similar forms of abuse at the same camp, the panel determined, with one judge filing a partial dissent, that their suit against Rumsfeld could proceed.
The case of Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel reads like Catch-22, updated for an even sillier war. In a 2006 profile of Vance for the New York Times, Michael Moss laid out the story: Vance was “a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the FBI about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading. But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there [Ertel] were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.”
Vance and Ertel became suspicious about activities at Shield Group Security the Iraqi security firm that employed them—activities that included stockpiling weapons and offering liquor to U.S. soldiers in exchange for bullets and weapon repairs. When he became an informant for the FBI, he was risking his life to protect national security. Shield Group Security began to suspect Vance and Ertel and things got hairy. A military team sent in to rescue them ended up shipping them to Camp Cropper and warehoused them at Compound 5, the maximum-security unit where Saddam Hussein was held.
Overnight, Vance and Ertel went from U.S. contractors to “enemy combatants,” and both were allegedly subjected to sleep deprivation, aggressive interrogation, blindfolding, shackling, hooding, and “walling.” Both were denied access to legal counsel for their appearances before the Detainee Status Board, and neither was allowed to see the evidence against them. Writing for the majority today, Judge David Hamilton doesn’t mince words about this treatment:
After the plaintiffs were taken to Camp Cropper, they experienced a nightmarish scene in which they were detained incommunicado, in solitary confinement, and subjected to physical and psychological torture for the duration of their imprisonment—Vance for three months and Ertel for six weeks. They allege that all of the abuse they endured in those weeks was inflicted by Americans, some military officials and some civilian officials. They allege that the torture they experienced was of the kind “supposedly reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.” If the plaintiffs’ allegations are true, two young American civilians were trying to do the right thing by becoming whistleblowers to the U.S. government, but found themselves detained in prison and tortured by their own government, without notice to their families and with no sign of when the harsh physical and psychological abuse would end.
The two were never charged with any crime. Instead, in a resolution that looks ever more familiar, both were eventually dumped at the airport in Baghdad to make their own way home. They sued Rumsfeld and other “unknown defendants” for “their roles in creating and carrying out policies that caused plaintiffs’ alleged torture.” Rumsfeld moved to dismiss all claims. The district court agreed to dismiss some claims but allowed the case to proceed on others, including the claim that their treatment amounted to unconstitutional cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
It’s important to understand that the court makes no judgment on Vance and Ertel’s claims. But for the purposes of Rumsfeld’s motion to dismiss, the court is legally bound to treat their claims as if they are true. That’s hugely consequential because, as Adam Serwer explained last week: “When deciding whether or not these cases are allowed to go forward, judges have to assume that the plaintiff’s version of events is ‘reasonable.’ So part of what Rumsfeld and his team have to argue is that even if the allegations were true, the law doesn’t allow Doe to sue the government for torturing him and detaining him without trial.” Rumsfeld and the Obama administration have taken precisely this position. Even if everything Vance alleges is true, he still loses. They claim, in short, that Rumsfeld should be immune from suit because it was unreasonable to have expected him to know that the abuse he authorized was unconstitutional. They also raise claims about the dangers of judicial intrusions on the executive branch’s war-making powers and—of course—about the danger of disclosing state secrets.
It’s a pretty high standard for the plaintiffs to meet. As the court explains it, “the inquiry before us is whether the plaintiffs have pled sufficiently that defendant Secretary Rumsfeld personally established the relevant policies that authorized the unconstitutional torture they allege they suffered.” But the majority finds that Vance and Ertel did plead sufficient facts to show that Rumsfeld had personal responsibility for their mistreatment.
Turning to the question of Rumsfeld’s qualified immunity from suit, the majority finds that “plaintiffs have articulated facts that, if true, would show the violation of a clearly established constitutional right.” Judge Hamilton reminds us that the questions about the legality of torture are not really “questions” at all, asking: “On what conceivable basis could a U.S. public official possibly conclude that it was constitutional to torture U.S. citizens?” He then quotes 18 USC, Section 2340A (the statute criminalizing overseas torture); the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; and Siderman de Blake v. Republic of Argentina (a 9th Circuit decision finding that “it would be unthinkable to conclude other than that acts of official torture violate customary international law”). Hamilton writes that “The wrongdoing alleged here violates the most basic terms of the constitutional compact between our government and the citizens of this country. … There can be no doubt that the deliberate infliction of such treatment on U.S. citizens, even in a war zone, is unconstitutional.”
The majority addresses and dismisses the national-security and state-secrets claims. It’s clear that for the majority, the fact that the victims here were American citizens abroad makes an enormous difference to the outcome of the case. When reached for comment today, Michael Kanovitz, who represents Vance and Ertel, reiterated that critical fact: “This court was faced with a choice between protecting the most fundamental rights of American citizens in the difficult context of a war or leaving those rights solely in the hands of politicians and the military. The court sided with the rights of the citizens. It was not an easy choice for the court to make, but it was the brave and right choice.”
That it was a brave and right choice may not be enough to rescue this case if and when it ever comes to a trial. (The case may still be appealed to the full Seventh Circuit or to the Supreme Court.) It will be a challenge for the plaintiffs to show what they say they can prove. But the case, even as it stands today, should suffice to remind the rest of us that this isn’t a case about foreigners at Guantanamo but a case about a Navy veteran caught up in a series of errors in the field. This case isn’t about the rights of an enemy soldier detained on a battlefield with a weapon in his hand. It’s about the rights of brave whistle-blowers who were tortured by bureaucratic mistake.
If you don’t believe the war on terror is migrating into your backyard, this case is confirmation. If you don’t think the state-secrets doctrine will be trotted out to protect the government’s abuse of innocent Americans as well as foreign prisoners, this case proves it. If you worry that “turning the page” means always finding more of the same, this case makes that plain. A country in which nobody is ever really responsible is a country in which nobody is ever truly safe.
Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor. Follow her on Twitter.
1 comment August 9th, 2011
Larry Wilkerson on US torture
The Real News has a series of interviews, War is Not About Truth, Justice and the American Way with Col. Larry Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell at the State Department.
Here is the most recent interview in which Col. Wilkerson explains how torture was the final straw that drove him from military officer to critic:
June 14th, 2011
Torture Accountability After All?
Those of us who opposed the Bush administration torture program have been demoralized by the lack of accountability for the numerous abuses committed as part of that program. President Obama decried torture, and said he would end it, but he also said he wanted to “look forward, not back,” apparently precluding investigations of the abuses committed by the previous administration.
The Obama administration has not merely refused to initiate criminal investigations of those who approved and ordered the Bush-Cheney torture program. They have declined even to support a Commission of Inquiry to explore what happened in a non-judicial forum. Further, the administration used every legal tool available – including spurious arguments about national security in US courts and diplomatic pressure on foreign governments – to stymie efforts at accountability through ethics complaints, domestic civil trials, and foreign criminal cases for the crimes committed by predecessors.
Over the last few years, as one avenue of accountability after another was closed, it looked as if the torture program would be protected as carefully by the Obama administration as it was by the Bush administration. The result, many feared, was that torture would remain an available tool of the state, to be dragged out by future administrations who could cite the lack of accountability for Bush torture by a Democratic administration as evidence of a bipartisan consensus that torture really isn’t that bad. Many human rights experts have argued that future courts, too, could view the current lack of accountability as a legal precedent, potentially further shielding future torturers.
The one avenue for accountability that wasn’t closed by the Obama administration was the investigation by Department of Justice prosecutor John Durham. Durham, readers may recall, was the Federal prosecutor originally tasked to investigate the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes in apparent violation of a court order. In 2009 Attorney General Eric Holder expanded Durham’s mandate to include investigating incidents of detainee treatment that went beyond even those actions approved under the so-called “torture memos” of the Bush Justice Department.
Durham’s expanded investigation has dragged on for two years with little visibility, except for his declaration in January that he would not indict anyone for the destruction of the interrogation videotapes. Many in the human rights community took the lack of indictments in the tapes case as an indication that Durham would ultimately decline to prosecute anyone, thus closing yet another avenue for possible accountability.
The pro-torture party of former Bush officials and right-wing pundits who defended the “enhanced interrogation” torture program at every opportunity did not appear as convinced as human rights advocates that Durham’s investigation would ultimately turn into a paper tiger. In the aftermath of the Bin Laden raid, they repeatedly harped on two issues. First, they vociferously claimed, using patently absurd arguments, that Bin Laden’s death showed that torture “worked.” Second, they frantically demanded that Durham’s investigation be called off.
It now appears that the pro-torture party may have recognized the implications of Durham’s investigation better than did most human rights advocates. On Monday, Adam Zagorin reported in TIME that Durham was in the process of actively investigating the murder of Manadel al-Jamadi, the Iraqi general whose frozen, brutally abused body appeared in the Abu Ghraib photographs. While al-Jamadi’s death had earlier been ruled a homicide, the Justice Department had taken no action. But Zagorin reports that Durham is now presenting evidence to a grand jury on the Jamadi case. And he apparently has his eyes on a possible perpetrator:
Perhaps most important, according to someone familiar with the investigation, Durham and FBI agents have said the probe’s focus involves “a specific civilian person.” Durham didn’t name names, but those close to the case believe that person is Mark Swanner, a non-covert CIA interrogator and polygraph expert who questioned al-Jamadi immediately before his death.
Also important is that Zagorin has a copy of a subpoena from the investigation that suggests that Durham may be looking beyond al-Jamadi:
TIME has obtained a copy of a subpoena signed by Durham that points to his grand jury’s broader mandate, which could involve charging additional CIA officers and contract employees in other cases. The subpoena says “the grand jury is conducting an investigation of possible violations of federal criminal laws involving War Crimes (18 USC/2441), Torture (18 USC 243OA) and related federal offenses.”
Thus, this investigation may be the beginning of a broader investigation of “CIA officers and contract employees.” One wonders if the CIA’s torture psychologist contractors James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen may be among Durham’s targets. This seems plausible since — based on later torture memos — their waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation” tactics went, well beyond those authorized at the time in their intensity and longevity, providing potential liability under Durham’s mandate.
If Mitchell and Jessen are indeed targets, that could well explain the near panic of the torture defenders when they refer to the Durham investigation. These former officials and their apologists may be worried that an investigation into the actions of Mitchell and Jessen will go higher up the chain of command. Reportedly, everything done in the secret CIA prisons was approved in Washington, sometimes even in the White House. And, as Watergate demonstrated, investigations, once started, can sometimes climb the command chain to the very top.
There are no certainties in human rights work. But this latest news about Durham’s investigation is a rare bright spot in an otherwise bleak picture of continued abuses and absent accountability. It now appears possible that we might have some torture accountability after all.
June 13th, 2011
Matthew Alexander on torture and the bin Laden capture
As the torture team uses the capture of bin Laden to defend their crimes, military interrogator Matthew Alexander demonstrates the falsity of their claims and points out that torture led to the “deaths of hundreds or thousands of American soldiers” in this interview on Democracy Now!
May 5th, 2011
Alexander: Rumsfeld’s memoir, “selective memory”
Former Iraq interrogator, and torture opponent, Matthew Alexander discusses Donald Rumsfeld’s recent “memoir”:
Known and Forgotten: Rumsfeld’s Memoir
By Matthew Alexander, Former Senior Military Interrogator and Amnesty Volunteer
It would have been a better title for former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s recently released memoir. There are things Rumsfeld remembers and things he has conveniently forgotten. What we called in the interrogation room “selective memory.” What’s most striking about the memoir, however, is the blatant hypocrisy.
Take for instance, his assertion in Chapter 39 (page 582) that “None of the authorized interrogation methods…involved physical or mental pain. None were inhumane.” What planet are we on? The Category I techniques he approved include stress positions for up to four hours. Anyone who’s been through basic training knows that maintaining a stress position for four hours would be the very definition of pain. But apparently, for Mr Rumsfeld, there’s no difference between standing at your work podium in your cushy Pentagon office and squatting for four hours straight. No pain, indeed.
Rumsfeld also doesn’t consider it painful to be confronted with one’s phobias, for instance to have aggressive dogs placed inches from one’s face. To Rumsfeld, that’s probably just a fun way to spend a Saturday. Of course, this is from a guy who’s made a career out of Washington’s steak rooms.
He also approved, in Category II, forced grooming and forced nudity. Rumsfeld would like us all to forget that the prohibition per military regulations is not against torture. It’s against Cruel, Inhumane, and Degrading treatment. So Mr Rumsfeld, how about strolling once around the halls of the Pentagon in your birthday suit? Then you can explain to us how forced nudity is not humiliating. Not all of us share your selective memory.
But the most appalling part of Rumsfeld’s memoir is the twisted logic and McNamara-like pompousness that led to the tragedy of Abu Ghraib. The logic goes like this. He says he rejected waterboarding for military use because the technique might be appropriate if used by a few, highly trained CIA agents, but “Tight limits on interrogation, such as those contained in the Army Field Manual, are appropriate for the U.S. military. Tens of thousands of detainees passed through U.S. military custody in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
So according to the former SecDef, if he had allowed waterboarding, it would have corrupted the forces and led to the widespread torture and abuse of detainees. But the same logic doesn’t apply to the torture and abuse techniques that he approved.
Worse, in the same chapter (again page 582) he admits that the interrogation of Muhammed al-Qahtani did go beyond the interrogation techniques he approved. Why? Precisely because he set the precedent that breaking the rules once in a while is okay, as long as it keeps us safe. It’s a point he makes over and over again. So if the Secretary of Defense, the highest ranking official in the Department of Defense, approves rule-breaking in limited cases and people then exceed those limits, it’s not the same logic that he used to reject waterboarding. It’s insanity. And then it gets more insane.
Indulge me for a moment. Do a search for in this chapter on interrogations for the word “future” or the words “long-term.” You won’t find them because not once does Donald Rumsfeld, with his many years of experience in strategic decision-making, ever consider the long-term future ramifications of approving the torture and abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody. You won’t find any discussion of the fact that it became Al Qaeda’s number one recruiting tool (a fact I witnessed, and my Task Force tracked, while I oversaw interrogation of foreign fighters in Iraq).
You won’t hear Rumsfeld discuss how future adversaries will think twice about surrendering to U.S. troops as they have in past conflicts like World War II and the first Gulf War. That will have a real cost in U.S. lives. And you want read any discussion about how some of our allies have hesitated to work with us because they don’t want to be involved in U.S. policies on detention. You certainly won’t hear what I heard in Iraq. That is, detainees saying from the very start of the interrogation that we were all torturers, an obstacle that made all of our jobs much more difficult. Who knows how much intelligence information we never received because of Rumsfeld’s decision to make torture and abuse official policy? That certainly had a cost in lives too.
What you also won’t read in Chapter 39 is the term “World War II.” Because what Rumsfeld and the other torture supporters consistently fail to acknowledge is that we made it through that war, facing much graver threats to our national security, without using Category I or II techniques.
Rumsfeld’s final grave sin, however, is to cite retired General Michael Hayden, the former Director of the CIA, in saying that the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was justified because he provided half of all we know about Al Qaeda, a claim that has been thoroughly debunked. Ninety percent of what Hayden and Rumsfeld claim KSM gave us was the same information he gave to an Al Jazeera reporter two years earlier in Pakistan. What an amazing revelation. And absent from this discussion is the glaring failure of 183 waterboarding sessions. KSM never gave up the one thing that any good interrogator would have said was the key objective of those interrogations – the location of Osama bin Laden.
There are actions that former Secretary Rumsfeld accomplished that have had significant positive impact on the U.S. military’s ability to fight future conflicts, such as ridding us of obsolete weapon systems and preparing us for future small scale wars. But along with this kudos, we must place the blame for one of the worst stains in the history of the United States Military – the torture and abuse of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of prisoners, precisely where it belongs. This was a complete selling out of the very principles so many Americans have died defending. And the blame belongs squarely on the former Secretary’s shoulders.
Amnesty International continues to campaign for Donald Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration who authorized the use of torture to be held to account for their actions and to gain justice for those wrongly detained and abused. Take action and add your voice to those demanding that President Obama follow through on his campaign commitment to make this the anti-torture Presidency.
March 9th, 2011
Rumsfeld to Feith: Fix the world now!
If you want a good laugh, go look at this memo from our former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to Douglas Feith.
April 7, 2003 11:46 AM
TO: Doug Feith
FROM: Donald Rumsfeld
SUBJECT: Issues w/Various Countries
We need more coercive diplomacy with respect to Syria and Libya, and we need it fast. If they mess up Iraq, it will delay bringing our troops home.
We also need to solve the Pakistan problem.
And Korea doesn’t seem to be going well.
Are you coming up with proposals for me to send around?
Thanks.
It is terrifying to realize that he was among the most powerful people in our country, indeed the world.
February 22nd, 2011
Bush torture indictment
Former President Bush recently canceled a trip to Switzerland out of fear he would be indicted for torture. This was not an unfounded fear. The Center for Constitutional Rights had prepared an indictment with 2,500 pages of supporting documentation. While it cannot be used in Switzerland unless Bush changes his mind, it stands ready if he should ever travel elsewhere. Here is a discussion of CCR accountability efforts in Spain from Democracy Now! and the CCR press release:
And here is George W. Bush discussing the “legality” of waterboarding:
CCR Announces Bush Indictment for Convention Against Torture Signatory States
No Immunity for Former Presidents Under LawContact: press@ccrjustice.org
“Waterboarding is torture, and Bush has admitted, without any sign of remorse, that he approved its use,” said Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at CCR and Vice President of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). “The reach of the Convention Against Torture is wide – this case is prepared and will be waiting for him wherever he travels next. Torturers – even if they are former presidents of the United States – must be held to account and prosecuted. Impunity for Bush must end.”While the U.S. has thus far failed to comply with its obligations under the Convention Against Torture to prosecute and punish those who commit torture, all other signatories, too, are obligated to prosecute or extradite for prosecution anyone present in their territory they have a reasonable basis for believing has committed torture. If the evidence warrants, as the Bush Torture Indictment contends it does, and the U.S. fails to request the extradition of Bush and others to face charges of torture there, CAT signatories must, under law, prosecute them for torture.In a statement this weekend, the groups who organized the complaints said, “Whatever Bush or his hosts say, we have no doubt he cancelled his trip to avoid our case. The message from civil society is clear – If you’re a torturer, be careful in your travel plans.”The complaints that had been scheduled to be filed on Monday asked that the General Prosecutor of the Canton of Geneva investigate allegations that men were tortured as part of the Bush administration’s well-documented torture program. Bush proudly recounted in his recently published memoir that when asked in 2002 to if it was permissible to waterboard a detainee – a recognized act of torture – he replied “damn right.”Monday, February 7, is the ninth anniversary of the day Bush decided the Geneva Conventions did not apply to ‘enemy combatants.’According to the Bush Indictment, which was written on behalf of torture victims by CCR and ECCHR, former President Bush bears individual and command responsibility for the acts of his subordinates which he ordered, authorized, condoned or otherwise aided and abetted, as well as for the violations committed by his subordinates which he failed to prevent or punish.“Bush is a torturer and deserves to be remembered as such,” said Gavin Sullivan, Solicitor and Counterterrorism Program Manager, ECCHR. “He bears ultimate responsibility for authorizing the torture of thousands of individuals at places like Guantánamo and secret CIA ‘black sites’ around the world. As all states are obliged to prosecute such torturers, Bush has good reason to be very worried.”CCR, ECCHR and FIDH were joined by more than 60 human rights organizations and prominent individuals who signed on to support the call for George W. Bush’s prosecution, including former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Theo van Boven, former UN Special Rapporteur on Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Leandro Despouy, and Nobel Peace Prize recipients Shirin Ebadi and Pérez Esquivel. A number of the human rights organizations which signed on are facing the on-going harms of the “counterterrorism” policies advanced under the Bush administration and then adopted or employed in their own countries.. The complaint included 2500 pages of supporting materials.Manfred Nowak, former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (2004-2010), was to submit an expert opinion on the complaints concluding that the conduct to which both plaintiffs were subjected constitutes torture, that Switzerland had an obligation to open a preliminary investigation, and that George W. Bush enjoys no immunity.The Bush Torture Indictment, the official “letter of denunciation” summarizing the case and other materials are available here:http://ccrjustice.org/ourcases/current-cases/bush-torture-indictment.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, in addition to filing the first cases representing men detained at Guantánamo, has filed universal jurisdiction cases seeking accountability for torture by Bush administration officials in Germany, France and submitted expert opinions and other documentation to ongoing cases in Spain in collaboration with ECCHR. The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change. Visit www.ccrjustice.org. Follow @theCCR.
The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) is an independent, non-profit legal organization that enforces human rights by holding state and non-state actors to account for egregious abuses through innovative strategic litigation. For more information visit www.ecchr.eu
The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) is a non-governmental federation for 164 human rights organizations. FIDH’s core mandate is to promote respect for all the rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Its priority areas include protecting human rights defenders and fighting impunity. For more information on FIDH, see www.fidh.org.
February 7th, 2011
London Lord Mayor tells Bush to stay away or face arrest
Unlike the US, where “real men” brag about supporting torture, and their “critics” look the other way, to the “future,” Britain seems to be reaching a consensus that torture is wrong, always wrong, vile and wrong. The Tory Lord Mayor of London advises George W. Bush not to visit as he may face arrest for torture:
George W. Bush Can’t Fight for Freedom and Authorise Torture
If the West’s aim is to spread the rule of law, it cannot be achieved by vile means, argues Boris Johnson.By Boris Johnson
It is not yet clear whether George W Bush is planning to cross the Atlantic to flog us his memoirs, but if I were his PR people I would urge caution. As book tours go, this one would be an absolute corker. It is not just that every European capital would be brought to a standstill, as book-signings turned into anti-war riots. The real trouble — from the Bush point of view — is that he might never see Texas again.
One moment he might be holding forth to a great perspiring tent at Hay-on-Wye. The next moment, click, some embarrassed member of the Welsh constabulary could walk on stage, place some handcuffs on the former leader of the Free World, and take him away to be charged. Of course, we are told this scenario is unlikely. Dubya is the former leader of a friendly power, with whom this country is determined to have good relations. But that is what torture-authorising Augusto Pinochet thought. And unlike Pinochet, Mr Bush is making no bones about what he has done.
Unless the 43rd president of the United States has been grievously misrepresented, he has admitted to authorising and sponsoring the use of torture. Asked whether he approved of “waterboarding” in three specific cases, he told his interviewer that “damn right” he did, and that this practice had saved lives in America and Britain. It is hard to overstate the enormity of this admission.
“Waterboarding” is a disgusting practice by which the victim is deliberately made to think that he is drowning. It is not some cunning new psych-ops technique conceived by the CIA. It has been used in the dungeons of dictators for centuries. It is not compatible either with the US constitution or the UN convention against torture. It is deemed to be torture in this country, and above all there is no evidence whatever that it has ever succeeded in doing what Mr Bush claimed. It does not work.
It does not produce much valuable information — and therefore it does not save lives. Of course we are all tempted, from time to time, by the utilitarian argument. We might become reluctant supporters of “extreme interrogation techniques” if we could really persuade ourselves that half an hour of waterboarding could really save a hundred lives — or indeed a single life. In reality, no such calculus is possible. When people are tortured, they will generally say anything to bring the agony to an end — which is why any such evidence is inadmissible in court.
In the case of the three men waterboarded on Bush’s orders, British ministers are not aware of any valuable information they gave about plots against Heathrow, Canary Wharf or anywhere else. All the policy has achieved is to degrade America in the eyes of the world, and to allow America’s enemies to utter great whoops of vindication. It is not good enough for Dubya now to claim that what he did was OK, because “the lawyers said it was legal”. The lawyers in question were Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee and his deputy, John Yoo, and after a good deal of political cattle-prodding from Rumsfeld et al, they produced a totally barmy attempt to redefine torture so as to allow waterboarding.
Pain was only torture, they determined, when it was “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily functions, or even death”. If that is right, it would seem that most of the techniques of the Spanish Inquisition would be acceptable to the American government. You could beat the soles of someone’s feet; you could pour molten candle wax on their extremities; you could even pull their finger nails out without infringing those conditions.
How is some tired and frightened American officer supposed to make head or tail of this sophistry, late at night in some bleak Iraqi jail? How is he supposed to calibrate the pain that comes from an organ failure or death? It is no wonder, with orders like that coming from the top, that the troopers misbehaved so tragically in Abu Ghraib. They failed to see any moral difference between waterboarding their suspects and putting hoods over their heads. They failed to see any moral difference between waterboarding them and terrifying them with alsatian dogs or attaching electrodes to their genitals. They failed to see any moral difference, that is, because there isn’t any moral difference.
That is the real disaster of the waterboarding policy — that we are left with the impression that the entire US military are skidding their heels on the slippery slope towards barbarism. And that is emphatically not the case. Yesterday at the Cenotaph we remembered the sacrifice of men and women not just in two world wars, but also in Iraq and Afghanistan. The purpose of these conflicts is not so much to defeat “the enemy”, but to defend things we believe to be inalienable goods — freedom, democracy and, above all, the rule of law.
I believe that, of all nations, America still best upholds and guarantees those things. It would be ludicrous to suggest that the waterboarding disaster, or the evils of Abu Ghraib, have set up some kind of moral equivalence between America and – say – the murderous Taliban regime, let alone Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. If you want to appreciate the difference, remember that the perpetrators of Abu Ghraib were court-martialled, and we know about US interrogation techniques because of rules on freedom of information. But if your end is the spread of freedom and the rule of law, you cannot hope to achieve that end by means that are patently vile and illegal.
How could America complain to the Burmese generals about the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, when a president authorised torture? How can we talk about human rights in Beijing, when our number one ally and friend seems to be defending this kind of behaviour? I can’t think of any other American president, in my lifetime, who would have spoken in this way. Mr Bush should have remembered the words of the great Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who said in 1863 that “military necessity does not admit of cruelty”. Damn right.
November 18th, 2010