Excerpt: "The sweeping report issued on Tuesday by an 11-member task force convened by the Constitution Project...provides a valuable, even necessary reckoning."
A detainee interrogation room in Camp V is shown at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. (photo: Haraz Ghanbari/AP)
Indisputable Torture
17 April 13
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dozen years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an independent, nonpartisan panel's examination of the interrogation and detention programs carried out in their aftermath by the Bush administration may seem to be musty old business. But the sweeping report issued on Tuesday by an 11-member task force convened by the Constitution Project, a legal research and advocacy group, provides a valuable, even necessary reckoning.
The work of the task force, led by two former congressmen - Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, who served in the Bush administration as under secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and James Jones, a Democrat, who was an ambassador to Mexico during the Clinton years - is informed by interviews with dozens of former American and foreign officials, as well as with former prisoners.
It is the fullest independent effort so far to assess the treatment of detainees at Guant�namo Bay, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and at the C.I.A.'s secret prisons. Those who sanctioned the use of brutal methods, like former Vice President Dick Cheney, will continue to defend their use. But the report's authoritative conclusion that "the United States engaged in the practice of torture" is impossible to dismiss by a public that needs to know what was committed in the nation's name.
The report found that those methods violated international legal obligations with "no firm or persuasive evidence" that they produced valuable information that could not have been obtained by other means. This blunt language should help end a corrosive debate that has broken down on largely partisan lines.
Reaching a stronger national consensus on the issue of torture is crucial because, as the report says, "as long as the debate continues, so too does the possibility that the United states could again engage in torture." The task force found that using torture - like waterboarding, slamming prisoners into walls, and chaining them in uncomfortable stress position for hours - had "no justification" and "damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive." And in engineering "enforced disappearances" and secret detentions, the United States violated its international treaty obligations. A detailed 22-page appendix cites dozens of legal cases in which the United States prosecuted similar treatment or denounced it as torture when carried out by other countries.
Brutality is not uncommon in warfare. But, as the panel notes, there never was before "the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody."
The panel further details the ethical lapses of government lawyers in the Bush years who served up "acrobatic" advice to justify brutal interrogations, and of medical professionals who helped oversee them. It is also rightly critical of the Obama administration's use of expansive claims of secrecy to keep the details of rendition and torture from becoming public and to block victims' lawsuits.
The report's appearance all these years later is a reminder of the lost opportunity for a full accounting in 2009 when President Obama chose not to support a national commission to investigate the post-9/11 detention and interrogation programs. At that time, Mr. Obama said he wanted to "look forward, not backward." But identifying past mistakes so they can be avoided is central to looking forward. The Constitution Project's effort is a good step in that direction. But the portrait of what happened is still incomplete. For starters, a separate 6,000-page report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, based on Central Intelligence Agency records, has yet to be declassified and made public. The next step should be its release. There is no excuse for further delay.
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"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Jefferson has this to say about the central bank. A private central bank issuing the public currency is a greater menace to the liberties of the people than a standing army... We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws." Mayer Amschel Rothschild/Bank er
The plan has probably been in the works for at least 100 yrs. ("Federal" Reserve centeniary in 2014). We (3rd Estaters) should have some plan for what comes next (after the current "capitalism=mon opolism" 'endgame'), that is if we don't want to get stuck with 'the program's' default margin of still more Marxism (more of the same)... which, as many have noted, is not exactly why our founding fathers toiled & risked their lives. They did so, for the most part, in order to set up a democratic Republic where freedom & logical, orderly enterprise would flourish; and freedom not just from the imperialists of Great Britain, but also from the the less direct, 'corporate' forms of imperialism. Its rather obvious now that they built a better design for the 1st part of this than for the 2nd.
I applaud Kucinich for having the courage & responsibility to admit that "50% of discret. spending goes for the Pentagon." Guess where the other half goes?
I think the other half of it is- answ. my own question above- usurious Interest Payments on servicing the national debt, which (in known history at least) have only been the product of a PRIVATE central bank [i.e. a phony "National" Bank or perhaps even the absence any 'sovereign' fn. institution altogether], controlling the overall quantity of money & credit in circulation, with they in turn mostly controlled (or at least coordinated) by an international cartel (of opaque int'l bank interlocking boards & directors; and yes, too, all the CFRs, RIIAs, Bilderbergers, Trilatt Commissions, & university-cred entialed think-tanks that all the money in the world can 'buy'). 'Buy' is perhaps too strong a word in most cases; 'seducing', 'acquiescing', or perhaps simply 'persuading' most ambitious types with a burning desire to please their parents and/or 'experience the top' by going with the #1 team or winning program (horse-race or 'ad baculum' fallacy) is surely more typical. Most grownups- at least according to Lao Tzu, Rogers, Maslow, and other 'humanists'- are supposed to outgrow this phase, but with so many billions of people on the planet there's never a shortage of exceptions to choose from. Bill Still & Ellen Brown are way ahead of the parade.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/Chapter3.shtml
Having been fed a steady diet of fear of communism and Islam for decades now and spent trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives to "secure" ourselves from these "threats", the American people are ill-prepared for the truth: that the real threats to their security are internal, that their liberty, health, and prosperity have all been jeopardized by their acceptance of the fear-mongering corporate-contr olled media. Any voices raised with viewpoints that vary from the orthodox views of the media are silenced by lack of attention.
REVOLUTION IN THE STREETS!!!!! NOWWW!!!!!
The Eric Holder who successfully defended Chiquita Banana against the charges that they funded right wing paramilitary military groups which killed thousands of civilians(OK - a slap on the wrist $25 million settlement with the Columbia government) - that justice department?
Our justice department is more interested in going after Arizona immigration enforcement bills that a full 70% of the citizens of the US strongly support.
Eric Holder is beholden to nobody but himself.
the rest of the political theater, alongside the theatrics and histrionics of the debt debate, is that of the drama queens trying to gain the attention of the right wing political stage. we have been reduced to cheap theatrics and a script that is getting tired and over-acted..ove r and over and over again.
Cutting the Mil Bud. only 5% is baseless - it is insignificant. Why the anit education and Energy - we need focus there to advance our competitiveness in the world market.
Latest studies show that the southernborder is seeing a net reverse migration - that is not a good sign -somthing must be wrong with the economy!
We are in for a battle and one organization that is putting together the movement for the progressives is MoveOn with the American Dream Movement, also named Rebuild the Dream Movement. Look it up, join it, and work your buns off for the next 15 months! The Tea Party did it and so can we!
If I were to write an essay as he has above, i do not believe I would alter one single word.
Time for me to open my eyes & broaden my views.
The U.S. Supremes decided to give big corporations "person" hood as requested by the Koch brothers in 2010 -- A corporation cannot be sued but now has privilege to "buy" elections.
Impeachment of a Supreme Justice begins in the House - therefore we need a MAJORITY of non TP/GOP --
Thomas has taken $$ and presents and these are published. Scalia has been to some of the Koch brother hosted "meetings" -- before the 2010 decision. These 2 must be impeached. The 5 conservatives have ruled FOR big corporations consistently.
Thank you Dennis for standing up for "we" --- Bernie Sanders and a few others are also "good guys" --
VOTE 2012 and get all old/young you know registered NOW (sooner than later)
Speaking of 911 - this act was done before by Hitler to stir up a frenzy so he could attack Poland. (search Gleiwitz Incident). And if anyone thinks 911 wasn't staged, please explain to me about what happened to Building #7.....
The bottom line is not to win the war - its to be in 1 or 2 or 3... It makes a lot of $$ for General Dynamics, Halliburton, Citigroup, Carlyle Group, etc.. but it sends us into a spiraling vortex of debt.
All of this is moot anyway as we have proven we are the inferior species of this planet. We cant stop poisoning ourselves with our own food, we cant get along with other species of plant & animal life or even each other. We create disastrous things we cant control (Nuclear Reactors) and we destroy the land, air & water we depend on for survival. Its all about the stockholders bottom line - right ?
Forget stupid game of Republicans and Democrats.
We do NOT have a choice - we can NOT continue militarism - that is death to ALL.
Who talks, really, about a government that has lost it's way and the legitimacy of the two party system? We desperately need to create an alternative to this fetid quadmire. I honestly don't see how we can reform the present system.
Perhaps the time has come for serious action with people demanding change. In the 1960's it was only when people took to the streets that we saw sudden changes in civil rights and war policies. Have the people become so blindly docile that they will continue to allow the country to be sapped of every dollar and continue to lose American lives in needless wars?
Hopefully, that is no so.
A large rally is in the planning for October 6 and worth considering. Info can be found at http://october2011.org/frontpage