Value-added analysis and commentary on economic and social affairs. The blog name is my handle; G D A E are the four notes on a violin or mandolin; music is one of my diversions.
Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor (ideally Patrick Fitzgerald) to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?
According to the July/August 2010 Mother Jones magazine, Fitzgerald has been assigned to investigate the CIA and torture. Unfortunately, the investigation is targeted not at the torturers, but at human rights investigators whose trails led them to CIA operatives.
You see, if, as a human rights attorney, your trail leads you to CIA personnel, and you put pictures of them in photo line-ups for your torture-victim clients to identify... then maybe you're exposing the identity CIA personnel even if you don't expose the person's name. Yes, as predicted by George Orwell and others, it's a wicked web that has been woven by the powers-that-be.
But it strikes me... is this simply irony that Fitzgerald would be given this assignment, or is it a poke-in-the-eye of the people calling for a full investigation of the US torture activities?
Those familiar with GDAE Podcast know that recent Episodes, 18, 19 & 20, have dealt with the topic of American Exceptionalism. The notion is described in the upcoming GDAE Podcast Episode 21 as follows:
... ingrained in almost all Americans is the belief that OUR democracy, the FIRST, is genius in its creation, unsurpassable, a break with all of human history. American leadership is therefore a gift to the world, unassailable. We can do no wrong because America is a beacon of truth, justice and... well, you get the idea.
The Episode 21 segment on "Echoes of American Exceptionalism" features Thomas A. Bass on American Exceptionalism and Torture. Here's an excerpt.
Torture produces an avalanche of disinformation. The Iraq war proves this handily. The war ranks among the most significant intelligence failures in American history. Everything the United States thought it knew about Iraq before the invasion was wrong. The supposed intelligence from "Curveball" in Germany and al-Libi in Egypt was nothing but red herrings and Al Qaeda disinformation.
The United States suffers from a kind of imperial amnesia, which presumes that U.S. power -- no matter how it projects itself in the world -- is always just and right. The strutting Bush in his flight suit and snarling Cheney were also channeling the myth of the American frontier and the redemptive value of violence. In this case, one employs torture not as a necessary evil, but as a social good -- a kind of refining fire, an apocalyptic strategy for separating believers from apostates.
Torture also separates Western from non-Western people, who tend to be red-, yellow-, brown-, or black-skinned. Targets of torture are reduced to the status of "other," and racial stereotypes further reduce them to being "inferior." Torture in this case is used to confirm what skin color and race have already implied about somebody's disloyalty to Western values. The treacherous redskin in his feathered headdress has been replaced by the new symbology of keffiyehs and hihabs.
As we shake ourselves awake from this terror-filled dream, it is time to remember America's long history of torture. The country may have been founded on witch trials, but torture is illegal.
Not to mention immoral and degrades any future hope that the United States can achieve true exceptionalism.
It's encouraging to see Antemedus beating the drum on seeking the investigation and criminal prosecution of Bush administration officials. I feel strongly about this because failure to prosecute the crimes of high officials creates a sense of impunity that unravels the fabric of civil society.
For that reason, I beat the drum on the prosecution of Bush administration officials in every episode of my GDAE Podcast. As I've done so, I've noticed a growing level of activity on the subject. This is a hopeful sign, because there truly is power in numbers.
The increase in the volume of emails the I'm receiving on the prosecution of Bush and other for serious crimes is increasing, with titles like "Criminal Prosecution and Accountability," "Bush Tortured," "50 Top war criminals who need to be prosecuted," and "Holder Warned that Limited Investigation and Selective Prosecution would Violate the Law."
This last email explains that the Convention Against Torture (CAT), signed by President Reagan, requires him to investigate and hold accountable all those involved in torture. A letter signed by 150 organizations has been sent to Attorney General Holder. The Justice Department's credibility, and thus its legitimacy, is on the line. The list goes on, and the momentum builds....
Impunity of high officials from prosecution leads to the erosion of civil society. It appears that the impunity of Bush administration officials for their role in a policy of torture is being challenged... (fingers crossed). John Yoo, author of some of the torture memos as a Bush Justice Department official, is being pursued in civil court by torture victim Jose Padilla:
Mr. Padilla “has alleged sufficient facts to satisfy the requirement that Yoo set in motion a series of events that resulted in the deprivation of Padilla’s constitutional rights.” -- Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco
The walls are starting to close in on Bush administration officials.
Sources:
New York Times, Judge Allows Civil Lawsuit Over Claims of Torture, John Schwartz, June 13, 2009.
Libhom's post of a couple days ago inspired me to amplify his message, and contact the media, which I urge you to do with the handy link below. Here's the message with my revamping:
[Think "Dear Corporate Media Outlet"]
There are a lot of "the people" wondering why corporate media is taking Dick Cheney so seriously on his Torture Justification Tour.
Never mind that interrogation experts agree that torture is an ineffective means of gathering reliable intelligence and counter-productive in the way it undermines our moral high ground.
Never mind that Dick Cheney got himself put in charge of the Bush administration's terrorism task force and was so inept that he didn't hold a meeting until October 2001.
Never mind that Cheney sent our Air Force on highly distracting exercises at the same time when the Bush administration had numerous credible warnings from a variety of countries that Al Qaeda was going to stage terrorist attacks using commercial airplanes.
Sure, we understand "he was the vice president." We understand, controversy helps generate ratings, and corporate media needs to profit to survive. But, we also understand Cheney's credibility on this matter is questionable and his ulterior motives are palpable.
Cheney has had his say on torture. It's no longer news, a phrase we hear from the corporate media when explaining why historical context is often left out when nightly news headlines are broadcast.
Czarist Prince Peter Kropotkin: On Revolutionary Moments
History: The "Long Depression"
History Humor
Correspondence with Rachel Maddow: Torture as a Tool to Suppress Dissent(The US wouldn't do that, would it?)
Prosecution of Bush Officials: Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility report on Authors of Torture Memos
Einstein's Relativity: Part 2, Simultaneity and Time Dilation
MUSIC: Sam Bush and David Grisman, Mandolin Duet on Wayfaring Stranger
You can take ACTION: Urge your member ofthe House of Representatives to support impeachment hearings for judgeJay Bybee, signator of the torture memos. Write Your Rep Today.
I'm hoping that Obama is being advised to withhold the torture photos to preserve evidence for prosecutions. E.g., a low ranking person is implicated, who has not yet been exposed publicly. The Gov't says, "Turn states evidence and we'll go lighter on you AND spare you the public humiliation."
"We tortured Qahtani," Susan Crawford said in an interview with the Washington Post published on Wednesday. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.
Crawford, a retired judge who also worked in the Reagan administration, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.
Go to Change.gov and send a note to Team Obama. They really need to hear our collective voices. If the Bush people have impunity, the fabric of civilization will unravel.
Maher Arar, a Syrian-born software engineer, was taken into custody by U.S. officials during a 2002 stopover in New York while on his way home to Canada and then rendered without any due process to Syria. There he was imprisoned for a year and tortured.
Canada has found him innocent and paid $10 million in compensation. The United States, as represented by the Bush administration, remains in denial.
The latest form of denial comes from U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey who rejected a request from lawmakers that an outside special counsel investigate the case. I say, lets wait until Obama wins the election and nominates John Edwards to be U.S. Attorney General. Then we'll find out the details of the criminal acts committed by the Bush administration in this case.
George Bush gave CIA Director Michael Hayden permission to tell the 'truth' to Congress. The Bush administration only used waterboarding on three people whom they believed had high-value information.
Do you believe Hayden? Only three people? Suppose there were an international tribunal to investigate aggressive, lawless acts by the United States. Would it be OK for this tribunal to snatch Hayden from US soil if he refused to submit to interviews? Would it be OK to snatch him from foreign soil if he were traveling abroad?
Hayden had to ask permission from President Bush to tell Congress about the CIA's waterboarding. Suppose the President did not give Hayden permission to talk to the international tribunal. Would it be OK for the tribunal to waterboard Hayden to get that information? Would it be OK for the tribunal to do so to send a message to future US officials that aggressive, lawless acts will not be tolerated by the international community?
The answers to these questions are "no." Just as it is not acceptable for the US to use torture and kidnap people. The world is on the brink of descending into a dark chaos. If we slip into that horror, the US government, including the weak Congress under the so-called leadership of Nancy Pelosi, will share the blame.
PS Why do we have a guy in a military uniform heading the CIA. Shouldn't the CIA be led by a civilian?
Some proponents of torture prefer to call it harsh or enhanced interrogation. Some of these proponents actually believe that torture is inextricably linked to getting information. They're either not insiders or are hiding the truth about torture.
Proponents of torture who are insiders know that torture is not necessarily about extracting "actionable intelligence." Torture is part of psychological warfare.
This becomes evident when we hear people say, "we shouldn't let our enemies know what we define to be torture." Assume, for the sake of argument, that "our enemies" don't know far more about what "our government" is thinking and doing than most Americans know. Then, this "keep them guessing" argument falls squarely in the realm of psychological warefare. The "secret" bombings of Cambodia were not a secret to the North Vietnamese; the secret was foisted on the American public by the government. Similarly, the torture used by the US during Reagan's dirty wars in Central America was not a secret to the people resisting US-supported oligarchies. Furthermore, the torture wasn't about "getting information." It was about a small wealthy minority suppressing the desires of a majority of the people (that is, suppressing 'democracy').
Tens of thousands of people were "tortured and killed" in Central America by US trained death squads often acting on US intelligence (the method was openly used in Iraq: See the Salvadoran Option). Why "tortured and killed"? Because, we all know it's bad enough to die for a cause, but if you want to suppress dissent, let it be known that there is something worse than death... to be raped, to have acid poured on you, to be forced to watch this done to a friend, your wife, your child. Fear of being tortured will make you think three times before getting involved in a social cause, no matter how just.
Torture isn't about a few errant sickos. US use of torture to suppress popular opinion operates at the highest levels.
In January 2006, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld our $54.6 million jury verdict against Generals Jose Guillermo Garcia and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, two former Ministers of Defense who oversaw the worst period of human rights abuses in El Salvador's history. [and with whom the US worked closely][1]
Two architects of the torture/death squads in Central America, John Negroponte and James Steele, were both sent to Iraq. Soon thereafter we begin hearing stories of death squads and the Salvadoran Option being used in Iraq. Coincidence?
In a second case, a brigadier-general in the Iraqi interior ministry related that his brother had been detained during a raid on May 14 [2005], in a working class Sunni suburb in Baghdad’s west. His body was found the next day bearing signs of torture. Witnesses told the general that the abductors “came in white police Toyota Land Cruisers, wore police commando uniforms, flak vests and helmets” and were armed with 9mm Glock pistols.
Glock sidearms are used by many US law enforcement agencies and have been supplied to Iraqi security forces by the US military. [2]
The same stories were told countless times during Ronald Reagan's dirty war in El Slavador. (See video of one example below).
That's the dirty secret. Torture is about sending a message to anyone who seeks to challenge US imperial rule, "Step out of line and you might be tortured." Interrogation is just a cover that the establishment media helps disseminate.
So, the debate on torture shouldn't be about whether torture produces good information or not. It shouldn't be about the ticking time bomb scenario. The debate shouldn't be about whether the use of harsh interrogation (torture) by the US will justify our "enemy's" use of torture US soldiers (though it's a logical argument). The debate needs to center on the US use of torture to suppress legitimate popular movements that challenge US foreign expansion (like the use of US military force to secure America's "vital oil interests" despite the inconvenient fact that the oil does not belong to the US). I like cheap gasoline, but torturing people for it just ain't right.
Testimony of El Salvadoran Torture Victim who Survived
Associated Press writer PAMELA HESS reports that at least one of the CIA torture tapes showed the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah, a detainee taken by the CIA in 2002. She continues to report that,
Zubaydah, under harsh questioning, told CIA interrogators about alleged 9/11 accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh.
Then she reports that,
The two men's confessions also led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom the U.S. government said was the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
August 1, 2002: A Justice Department memo asserts that Bush's wartime powers supersede international anti-torture laws and treaties, defines torture as only that which is "equivalent in intensity to teh pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failur, impairment of bodily function, or even death."
The public only became aware of this memo on June 8, 2004.
Sources:
Mother Jones Magazine, Lie by Lie, How Our Leaders Used Fear and Falsehood to Dupe us Into a Mideast Quagmire: A Timeline.
Now, a group of former Black Panther Party members have been arrested for alleged crimes commited in 1971, including the killing of a San Fransisco police officer. I've not delved into all the details, but the whole thing reeks of a police state tactic to send us all a message:
If you ever get on the wrong side of the police state, you will never be free from fear of a clamp down.
The breif background is that some of those recently arrested [1] were once charged and released after the court found that their confessions were coerced by torture.
And people have to understand this is actual torture with cattle prods by New Orleans policemen, where San Francisco policemen were sitting outside the room, obviously knowing what was going on to get information. [2]
The New Orleans police would torture the suspects, and then the San Fransisco police would seek a confession. The process was repeated over and over. Eventually, they got their confession.
A recent interview of Richard Brown by The Minister of Information JR is sobering (Hear the full interview)
First, I want to share the thing that prompted me to transcribe this interview:
JR: I understand that the same [San Francisco police] officers that interrogated and terroized you over thirty four years ago are the same ones who came to pick up you and your co-defendant and are the ones working on your case currently.
Richard Brown: That's correct. Franklin (Frank) McCoy and Ed Erdelatz, these were the two San Fransisco police officers who left San Francisco, went to New Orleans and conducted and participated in the torturous treatment of my friends.
They would come into the room, ask questions. If they weren't answered in the manner that they wanted them answered, if they couldn't get the information, they would leave out the room, New Orleans police would come in and go through their brutal tactics and when they left the [San Fransisco] officers would come back in. This was repeated over and over for days until the men cooperated.
These same men, Frank and Ed, who had retired, but came out of retirement, joined Homland Security and were the same officers that knocked on our door and served the subpoenas for the secret grand jury investigation [that led to recent arrests].
The first words out of their mouths were, "Do you remember me?" So, yea, it's the same people all over again.
Now we have the same people who were in COINTELPRO coming out of retirement and assisting Homeland Security to do the same thing to us all over again.
This suggests a level of domestic psychological warfare that we cannot let go unanswered (confirming source - p.2) [3]. Maybe there's nothing illegal about having Frank and Ed make visits like that, but it could be a huge political mistake on the side of the police state. IF we raise our voices and expose this for what it is, base intimidatio, which is un-American.
Richard Brown closed with a message to Americans:
What I would like to get out to the American people, you have to open your eyes and understand what's going on in America today. I believe the majority of Americans are decent people who believe in justice and equality. We're divided by all kinds of barriers, it's the divide and conquer game. I want the people to understand what Bush is doing when he asks for unlimited power, when he asks for the PATRIOT Act to be reinstalled, when he wants the ability to do anything and everything whenever he gets ready, however he gets ready, and doesn't have to be held accountable to Congress or the American people, we no longer have democracy or a president, we have a dictator. and that's what I want to get out.
Notes:
[1] Police in California, New York and Florida arrested eight former Black Panthers earlier this week on charges related to the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer. Richard Brown, Richard O’Neal, Ray Boudreaux and Henry Watson Jones were arrested in California. Francisco Torres was arrested in Queens New York. Harold Taylor was arrested in Florida. Two men already in jail-- Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim -- were also charged. A ninth man -- Ronald Stanley Bridgeforth – is still being sought. DemocracyNow! January 26, 2007.
[2] Stuart Hanlon. California-based attorney representing Herman Bell. He also worked for 25 years on the case of Black Panther leader Geronimo Pratt. DemocracyNow! January 26, 2007.
[3]Echoes of the Revolution: The struggle between Bay Area law enforcement and the Black Panthers is still going on after 35 years, ByMartin Kuz. Article Published Nov 15, 2006. Excerpts Below:
In early 2003, three men appeared on the doorstep of John Bowman's house in Oklahoma City. Two of them he had never seen before. The third he had hoped to never see again.
"Do you remember me?" Frank McCoy asked.
Within a few weeks of McCoy accosting him, he received a summons to appear at a federal grand jury hearing in San Francisco. Authorities delivered subpoenas to more than 20 people in all, including at least four of Bowman's ex-Panther cohorts: Richard Brown, Ray Boudreaux, Hank Jones, and Harold Taylor. Each endured drop-ins from McCoy or his old police partner, Ed Erdelatz, the detectives who originally probed [S.F. Police Officer] Young's killing.
FBI officials tapped Erdelatz and McCoy to resume digging into the Young case. Since neither still held a police badge, the agency in effect deputized them for the job. At the time, Erdelatz worked as an investigator for the District Attorney's Office in Alameda County, a job he quit last year. McCoy apparently had settled into retirement. (Erdelatz did not respond to SF Weekly's interview requests; McCoy could not be reached for comment.) Their surprise visits exhumed dark memories for Bowman and his one-time Panther brethren.
Yet [Harold] Taylor, 58, admitted the trauma of New Orleans lingers, afflicting body and psyche alike. He blames the jailhouse beatings for the chronic neck and back pain that forced him to retire early, and his ears still ring from the head blows he absorbed. A sense of peace eludes him. Early last year [2005], he received a subpoena to appear before a grand jury in San Francisco. Erdelatz and McCoy delivered it.
Back in late 2008, the most popular question posed on President-Elect Obama's Change-dot-Gov web-Question Box, in 'round 2, came from Bob Fertik, of New York City, which read:
American Exceptionalism
