Tag Archives: terror

The truth about torture

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gitmo-prisoners01

After President Bush acknowledged that he had ordered certain detainees to be held outside Gitmo and under the control of the CIA in a secret locations and interrogated using an “alternative set of procedures,” no one could doubt that torture had occured. After these prisoners were transferred to Gitmo, they were interviewed by the International Red Cross. Their stories are horrifyingly consistent, and therefore likely to be true.  A confidential report prepared by the Red Cross reaches this conclusion.

Indeed, since the detainees were kept strictly apart and isolated, both at the black sites and at Guantánamo, the striking similarity in their stories would seem to make fabrication extremely unlikely. As its authors state in their introduction, “The I.C.R.C. wishes to underscore that the consistency of the detailed allegations provided separately by each of the 14 adds particular weight to the information provided below.”

Beginning with the chapter headings on its contents page — “suffocation by water,” “prolonged stress standing,” “beatings by use of a collar,” “confinement in a box” — the document makes compelling and chilling reading. The stories recounted in its fewer than 50 pages lead inexorably to this unequivocal conclusion, which, given its source, has the power of a legal determination: “The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A. program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

The hard cases

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Jane Meyer (author of The Dark Side, which I highly recommend) writes in the current issue of The New Yorker about the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. Marri has been held in a brig, in isolation, since June, 2003, after being arrested in Decmeber 2001 as a material witness. A Supreme Court hearing on his case is scheduled for April, 2009, with briefs due March 23.  This will be a very difficult case, in that Marri may be a dangerous terrorist, in fact. Or maybe not.  The question is what the Obama administration will do.

The Obama Administration’s strategy in the Marri case will almost certainly establish legal principles that will have ramifications for future cases, as well as for the two hundred and forty or so similarly designated “unlawful enemy combatants” held in the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. During the Bush years, the designation encompassed not just members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban but also anyone who associated with them, supported them, or supported organizations associated with them, even if unwittingly. In 2004, a Bush Administration lawyer told a judge that, in theory, an enemy combatant could even be “a little old lady in Switzerland” whose charitable donations had been channelled, without her awareness, to Al Qaeda front groups.

If the Marri case reaches the Supreme Court, it will test the limits of such theories. The case is therefore being closely watched by civil libertarians on both the left and the right. The Center for Constitutional Rights, a liberal advocacy organization, and the Cato and Rutherford Institutes, which lean to the right, are among the many legal groups that have signed eighteen amicus briefs on Marri’s behalf. Individual lawyers who have taken up his cause include Nicholas Katzenbach, the Attorney General in the Johnson Administration, and William Sessions, who was appointed director of the F.B.I. by President Reagan. The editorial page of the Times has written repeatedly about the case, demanding that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals’ affirmation of Marri’s military detention be reversed: “People accused of bad deeds should be tried in court—not in sham proceedings. They should be put in jail—not secret detention.”

Same old song and dance

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queenelizabethdickcheneyDick Cheney may be gone from office. But he continues his scare tactics and even claims that President Obama’s policies are increasing the risk of a catestrophic attack.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.

In an interview Tuesday with Politico, Cheney unyieldingly defended the Bush administration’s support for the Guantanamo Bay prison and coercive interrogation of terrorism suspects.

And he asserted that President Obama will either backtrack on his stated intentions to end those policies or put the country at risk in ways more severe than most Americans — and, he charged, many members of Obama’s own team — understand.

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said.

When reading his views, try to recall his past record of prognostication:

“My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” –March 16, 2003

“We know he’s [Saddam Hussein] been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” –March 16, 2003

“In Iraq, a ruthless dictator cultivated weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. He gave support to terrorists, had an established relationship with al Qaeda, and his regime is no more.” –Nov. 7, 2003

“I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” — on the Iraq insurgency, June 20, 2005

Andrew Sullivan quite properly labels this effort by Cheney as a violation of civil norms of government.

It seems to me that regardless of the merits or demerits of his view, it’s a remarkable violation of civil norms for a vice-president just out of power to assault his successors and all-but declare them indifferent to public safety. It’s deeply divisive, deeply partisan and utterly self-serving. In other words: as cheap as one would expect.

Obama already tormenting al-Qaeda

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The Washington Post notes the increasingly nasty and over-the-top verbal attacks on Obama by al-Qaeda.  This may be based at least in part on desperation by the terrorist organization.

The torrent of hateful words is part of what terrorism experts now believe is a deliberate, even desperate, propaganda campaign against a president who appears to have gotten under al-Qaeda’s skin. The departure of George W. Bush deprived al-Qaeda of a polarizing American leader who reliably drove recruits and donations to the terrorist group.

With Obama, al-Qaeda faces an entirely new challenge, experts say: a U.S. president who campaigned to end the Iraq war and to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and who polls show is well liked throughout the Muslim world.