The Post-Gazette Endorses...RICK SACCONE

Think back to when we were a world-class republic (it was only a little more than one year ago) and then remember that there was this raging election going on for the future of the country. One candidate (the Democrat - a woman) had a great deal of governmental experience (with a resume that included Secretary of State) and the other (the Republican - a man) was an admitted harasser of women who lied/misspoke/got things factually wrong more often than he pumped his orange hair solid with hairspray.

Hundreds of newspapers endorsed the former. Six endorsed the latter. One-two-three-four-five-six.

Showing the first signs of being infected with teh crazie, once left-of-center Post-Gazette published an editorial that went a different route. They went all-neutral and refused to endorse either candidate.

To paraphrase Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

If you are neutral in situations of sexual harassment, you have chosen the side of the harasser. If the elephant has admitted to some non-consensual pussy-grabbing and you say that you are neutral, no one should appreciate your neutrality.

Then there was this lil bit o'racism that was so nasty the Pittsburgh Foundation and Heinz Endowments felt compelled to respond with this:

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has done our community and the cause of justice a grave disservice with its lead editorial, “Reason as Racism,” published of all days on Martin Luther King Day, when we as a nation commemorate the ongoing fight to end racism in our country.

Repeated verbatim from an opinion piece printed Saturday in its sister publication the Toledo Blade, the editorial is a silly mix of deflection and distortion that provides cover for racist rhetoric while masquerading as a defense of decency. It is unworthy of a proud paper and an embarrassment to Pittsburgh.

It is said that nature abhors a vacuum. In Pittsburgh, with the passing of one ultra-rich right-wing nutjob (Richard Mellon Scaife) and the shrinkage of his media outlet - the Tribune-Review - from national to regional importance, I suppose that left open room for another ultra rich right-wing nutjob (John Block) to expand his media outlet - the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - into the political vacuum of thus created.

 And so, we can see today's endorsement of Rick Saccone.

Let's see what the Toledo Block Bugler has to say about Tim Murphy, the guy they want Saccone to replace. If you don't get the reference, that's ok google it. The right wing Tribune-Review editorial board used to taunt the P-G by calling it the "Block Bugler" because John Block owned both the Toledo Blade AND the Post-Gazette. Now back to our story:

It was pragmatic, moderate conservatism — not extremism — that sustained Mr. Murphy for almost 15 years in office. The issues he pursued, such as an overhaul of mental health law and saving the national veterans cemetery in Cecil, had practical benefits for his constituents.

Hmm...they think Murphy was a moderate conservative. I wonder how they'd explain these ratings:

• 100% rating from the National Right To Life Committee (exceptionally ironic considering how and why Murphy was forced to resign) 
• 60% rating from the John Birch Society (60%! - from The BIRCHERS!)
• 100% rating from the Family Resource Council (again, ironic considering the affair and the talk of abortion)
• 93% rating from the NRA

This is a moderate conservative to the Toledo Block Bugler?  Evidence that the frame itself has already silently skewed rightward.

When describing Saccone, they go with:

A former Air Force counterintelligence officer who later worked in North Korea and studied the Middle East in Egypt, Mr. Saccone would bring a valuable resume to Congress. He is also a college professor and a four-term state legislator. Given his time of life, he is 60, and varied background, he is equipped to be a strong and independent voice for the 18th.

Independent voice? Look at what they leave out of Saccone's experience.  A decade ago he wrote:

Our politicians should support coerced interrogations and stop demagoguing the issue. Respectable newspapers should refuse to print stories, such as the one about the three young men and only continue to blur the debate.

And by "coerced interrogations" he meant waterboarding, but only when done by trained professionals and fall "short of those that leave long-lasting or permanent physical harm."

Seven years ago he said:

Basically, torture is an act intentionally intended to inflict severe and long-lasting physical and mental pain, including amputation, scarring, burning, maiming, mutilation. Coercion means a much lower threshold of pain or discomfort such as stress positions, pushing, temperature change, meal manipulation, loud music, exploiting phobias, trickery, yelling, etc. If done skillfully and in the right circumstances, water-boarding or WB is very effective and causes no long-lasting damage. It is used to train our special forces so I don't consider it torture.

Too bad that Rick Saccone doesn't get to define "torture" as it's defined by UN Convention and US Law and it's always a war crime:

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

Then there's this lil bit o'crazie - legislating 2012 as the year of The Bible while at roughly the same time co-sponsoring Anti-Sharia legislation .  So I guess the "good" religion can be lauded while the "bad" religion can be banned.

How is any of that constitutional?

And this is the guy the Toledo Block Bugler thinks would be a better representative than Conor Lamb.

This is not the Post-Gazette we knew.

This is the new right wing Toledo Block Bugler.

HAPPY 10th ANNIVERSARY!

This blog is TEN YEARS OLD TODAY!


Happy Birthday, 2PJ!
The OPJ started this blog on September 6, 2004.  Though to be honest my participation didn't begin until 3 days later.  My first blog post here was on the documents at the AWOL project supporting the assertion that George W. Bush failed to complete his National Guard responsibilities.
At that point that was about the biggest blotch on his otherwise blotchy reputation.  This is before the impeach worthy warrant wiretap story hit and before the waterboarding war crimes story hit.  Up until that point all Dubya had going for him was deserting the National Guard and yet still being able to snag an Honorable Discharge.
Ah, good times.
That being said, I'd like to wish Maria Lupinacci, the OPJ, a happy blogger birthday!

More On Rick Saccone, R-Elizabeth

An astute reader drew my attention this morning to some recently introduced business of super-duper-uber imporance to the Commonwealth, a Resolution declaring 2012 as the "Year of the Bible" in Pennsylvania.

This hypocritical and unconstitutional resolution is from the legislative desk of State Representative Rick Saccone (R-Elizabeth).  Who's a very interesting fellow, indeed.

Another Reason Torture's Immoral

I start today with the P-G's Tony Norman:

Last week, video footage of four U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of three dead Taliban fighters went viral. With the exception of a handful of morally dead ideologues on the right, the reaction to the video was one of revulsion at home and fury abroad.

As Americans, we were reminded that just because we choose not to pay attention to the war in Afghanistan, we share moral complicity for wars fought in our name. The callousness of the four Marines wasn't unprecedented. Relative to the toll on civilian lives in three countries because of American drone attacks, public urination on enemy corpses pales in comparison as a war crime.

In a widely read essay in The Washington Post, war correspondent Sebastian Junger astutely pointed out that a "19-year-old Marine has a very hard time reconciling the fact that it's OK to waterboard a live Taliban fighter but not OK to urinate on a dead one."

While Tony spends more time pointing out this nation's faith-based hypocrisy:

It is a sign of how decadent much of American Christianity has become: A candidate who enthusiastically condones assassination is the same man who 150 "Christian" leaders have decided best exemplifies the Christian values they want to see at work in the White House. Where does Jesus Christ fit in this scenario?

Sebastian Junger, in that essay Tony referenced, touches more on the sociological impacts of two administrations accommodation of torture:

When the war on terror started, the Marines in that video were probably 9 or 10 years old. As children they heard adults — and political leaders — talk about our enemies in the most inhuman terms. The Internet and the news media are filled with self-important men and women referring to our enemies as animals that deserve little legal or moral consideration. We have sent enemy fighters to countries like Syria and Libya to be tortured by the very regimes that we have recently condemned for engaging in war crimes and torture. They have been tortured into confessing their crimes and then locked up indefinitely without trial because their confessions — achieved through torture — will not stand up in court.

For the past 10 years, American children have absorbed these moral contradictions, and now they are fighting our wars. The video doesn’t surprise me, but it makes me incredibly sad — not just for them, but also for us. We may prosecute these men for desecrating the dead while maintaining that it is okay to torture the living.

From The Geneva Conventions, Chapter 2 Article 15 on the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field:

At all times, and particularly after an engagement, Parties to the conflict shall, without delay, take all possible measures to search for and collect the wounded and sick, to protect them against pillage and ill-treatment, to ensure their adequate care, and to search for the dead and prevent their being despoiled.

I'd say pissing on some dead enemy combatants certainly qualifies as "despoiled."

Legality aside (as if that's possible here) I want to emphasize another downside of allowing the Bush-endorsed waterboarding to go unpunished or even unprosecuted (as the Obama Administration is doing): it desensitizes us to all other "paler" war crimes.  War crimes done in our name.  Some with our grudging acquiescence.

To feel like we're protecting our safety, we despoil ourselves.

No longer the city on the hill.  No longer on the high moral ground.  Look at us.  Look at what they make you give.

Why Hasn't Cheney Been Arrested?

From Realclearpolitics:

[NBC's Jamie] Gangel: "A conservative hero the his fans, Darth Vader to his critics, Cheney 's book is an unapologetic defense to his Vice Presidency and the controversial programs he's championed after 9/11. In your view, we should still be using enhanced interrogation?"

Cheney: "Yes."

Gangel: "Should we still be waterboarding terror suspects?

Cheney: "I would strongly support using it again if we had a high-value detainee, that was the only way we could get him to talk."

Gangel: "People call it torture. you think it should still be a tool?"

Cheney: "Yes."

Ok, ok, ok. Let me stop the "unbiased" Gangel right there. People don't call waterboarding torture. The Law calls waterboarding torture. US and International Law:

• United States Code Title 18, §2340(2)
• The UN Conventions Against Torture
• The Geneva Convention Relative To The Treatment of Prisoners Of War

In fact what Cheney said goes directly against the UN Conventions:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. [emphasis added.]

Ah, the joys of an "unbiased" interviewer! By putting it in "People call it..." rather than "The law says..." frame, she gets Cheney is off at least one rhetorical hook. Why couldn't she just say it was illegal (not to mention immoral and counterproductive)?

And that being the case, why isn't Dick Cheney in jail?

For that, I guess, we have our disappointing President to thank.

Doesn't change the fact that waterboarding is torture and torture is a war crime and George Bush and Dick Cheney are war criminals.

More On Bush's Torture (A View From The Outside)

Now that George Bush has admitted to torture and now (it seems) that the Obama administration is just as reluctant to prosecute (or even investigate) those war crimes as ever, the responsibility just now may fall to our overseas allies.

From Rue 89:

A total of 145 other countries, including Canada, are signatories to the U.N. Convention Against Torture. And all signatories have committed to enforcing its provisions, even against offenders residing in other territories.

Therefore, with varying degrees of success, proceedings have been initiated in Spain and Belgium against foreign heads of state, notably the Chilean Pinochet. Water boarding is now considered a form of torture worldwide, and those responsible must be prosecuted.

And:

In fact, a court in Madrid last January opened proceedings against Bush advisors who wrote memos illegally authorizing the use of torture. The case is pending, but the issue was pursued precisely because no American authority took action against the officials responsible.

It's a safe bet that George W. Bush is now in the crosshairs of the Spain tribunal. If it were to condemn him, even in absentia, he would then be subject to the mutual extradition treaty in force among 24 European countries.

In other words, Bush couldn't travel to any of these countries without incurring the risk of being deported to Spain to serve out his sentence.

No one is above the law - not even presidents. That was the case when it came to lying about blowjobs, why isn't it the case when war crimes are involved?

Torture is illegal. Prosecute the torture. It's simple.

More On Bush's Waterboarding War Crime

Of course the rightwing media (and it's enablers in the mainstream) are spreading a false justification.

From Mediamatters.org:

Following the release of former President George W. Bush's book Decision Points, right-wing media are promoting Bush's claim that waterboarding "saved lives." But this claim is disputed by intelligence experts, including former British officials who have "cast doubt" on Bush's waterboarding claims.

And here's one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard the idiotic Brian Kilmeade say (again, from Mediamatters):

"George W. Bush telling his critics who's boss." Later on Fox & Friends, Kilmeade called Bush's comments, "President George W. Bush telling his critics who's boss." After playing Bush's statement that waterboarding "saved lives," Kilmeade said, "That's one of the things he's most proud of."

Then there's the intelligence experts' skepticism. There's this from The Guardian in the UK:

No 10 dismisses George Bush's claim in his memoirs that interrogation technique is legal and helped foil attacks on Heathrow and Canary Wharf

The title of the piece, by the way, is:

Waterboarding is torture, Downing Street confirms

On to the British intelligence expert:

The former chair of the Commons intelligence and security committee, Kim Howells, cast doubt on Bush's claim that it had helped save British lives. "We are not convinced," said the Labour MP.

The piece ends with this from the former shadow Home Secretary David Davis:

Davis told Today that although security information provided from abroad would have to be used regardless of how it was obtained, torture did not work and should be discouraged.

"People under torture tell you what you want to hear," he said. "You'll get the wrong information and ... apart from being immoral, apart from destroying our standing in the world, and apart from undermining the way of life we're trying to defend, it actually doesn't deliver."

There's more from Davis (who's a member of the Conservative party over there in the UK) by way of the BBC:

He said a large part of the false intelligence on WMD that led to the war in Iraq came from torture and illegal rendition.

Which is interesting when the discussion of Iraq's WMD comes up later on in the BBC piece:

Mr Bush said he still had "a sickening feeling" about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But he defended his decision to invade Iraq, saying Iraqi citizens were better off without the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the US was better off without Saddam pursuing biological or chemical weapons.

Mr Bush admits that he was shocked when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

But asked, in an interview with NBC, if he ever considered apologising to Americans for that failure to find WMD, he said: "Apologising would basically say the decision was a wrong decision.

"And I don't believe it was the wrong decision."

Having trouble getting through Dubya's logic here. He was shocked when no WMD were found - but he still thinks the decision (the one based on his mistake about the WMD) to send so many thousands of Americans into battle was incorrect.

Whatever he might believe, he was still wrong about the WMD and he was still wrong about the torture he ordered. And that's still a war crime.

George W. Bush is a war criminal.

George W. Bush, War Criminal

He admitted to giving the order:

In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.

In his book, titled "Decision Points," Bush recounts being asked by the CIA whether it could proceed with waterboarding Mohammed, who Bush said was suspected of knowing about still-pending terrorist plots against the United States. Bush writes that his reply was "Damn right" and states that he would make the same decision again to save lives, according to a someone close to Bush who has read the book.

There's some more:

The 26-year-old United Nations Convention Against Torture requires that all parties to it seek to enforce its provisions, even for acts committed elsewhere. That provision, known as universal jurisdiction, has been cited in the past by prosecutors in Spain and Belgium to justify investigations of acts by foreign officials. But no such trials have occurred in foreign courts.

Here's the United Nations Convention Against Torture. I know we've done this before but sometimes you just have to point out the obvious again and again. Here's how the Convention defines torture as:

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Then there's this, explaining if torture is ever allowable:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

So Bush's about how it was to save lives, doesn't make it not torture.

And War Crimes? Take a look. The US Code defines "torture" as a war crime.

George W. Bush - War Criminal.

When can we see a prosecution from the Obama DOJ? An investigation by the Obama DOJ? A denunciation of the war crimes from Obama himself?

CIA Experimentation on Detainees

A newly released white paper by Physicians for Human Rights reports that there is 'Evidence of Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the “Enhanced” Interrogation Program.'

According to the report:

PHR analyzes three instances of apparent illegal and unethical human subject research for this report:

1. Medical personnel were required to monitor all waterboarding practices and collect detailed medical information that was used to design, develop, and deploy subsequent waterboarding procedures;

2. Information on the effects of simultaneous versus sequential application of the interrogation techniques on detainees was collected and used to establish the policy for using tactics in combination. These data were gathered through an assessment of the presumed “susceptibility” of the subjects to severe pain;

3. Information collected by health professionals on the effects of sleep deprivation on detainees was used to establish the “enhanced” interrogation program’s (EIP) sleep deprivation policy.

The report indicates, that not only were detainees tortured (which we already know), but that the initial torture was heavily monitored by health professionals in order to establish a fake new definition of torture to try to cover their asses legally for subsequent torture sessions.

Of course in experimenting to see just how far they thought they could go while torturing, they actually managed to perpetuate additional crimes as human experimentation without the consent of the subject is, as the report states, illegal:

[It's] a violation of international human rights law to which the United States is subject; federal statutes; the Common Rule, which comprises the federal regulations for research on human subjects and applies to 17 federal agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Department of Defense (DoD); and universally accepted health professional ethics, including the Nuremberg Code. Human experimentation on detainees also can constitute a war crime and a crime against humanity in certain circumstances.

You can download the report here (.PDF)

UPDATE: The New York Times calls for an investigation.
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Bush Admits To War Crimes

While the Trib Editorial Board is huffing and puffing about a special prosecutor for a non-crime, the former president admits to committing one - a big one.

So big it's a war crime.

From CNN:

In some of his most candid comments since leaving the White House, former President George W. Bush said Wednesday he has no regrets about authorizing the controversial waterboarding technique to interrogate terrorist suspects and wouldn't hesitate to do so again.

"Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," the former president said during an appearance at the Economic Club of Grand Rapids, Michigan, according to the Grand Rapids Press.

"I'd do it again to save lives," he added.

Too bad it didn't. Oh, did I mention that IT'S ILLEGAL?

From Dan Froomkin at the Huffingtonpost:

Waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, is "unequivocably torture", said retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years.

"As a nation, we have historically prosecuted it as such, going back to the time of the Spanish-American War," Irvine said. "Moreover, it cannot be demonstrated that any use of waterboarding by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life."

And then:

James P. Cullen, a retired brigadier general in the United States Army Reserve Judge Advocate General's Corps, told HuffPost that the net effect of Bush's remarks -- and former Vice President Cheney's before him -- is "to establish a precedent where it will be permissible to our enemies to use waterboarding on our servicemen in future wars.

Cheney famously once agreed with an interviewer that "a dunk in the water" was "no-brainer" if it saves lives.

"This is not the last war we're going to fight," Cullen said. "Americans not yet born are going to be prisoners of war in those conflicts. And our enemies are going to be able to point back to President Bush and Vice President Cheney saying that waterboarding is OK.

"It's just shocking to me how he can be so flip about something that is so serious," Cullen said.

So in the future, some kid who's now in high school and who'll tonight be doing nothing more dangerous than fumbling around trying to figure out how to unhook his girlfriend's bra, is going to be tortured. His torturers will defend themselves by simply saying, "Yea, we tortured him and we'd do it again to save lives."

And we can have Bush to thank for that. Heckuva job you did there, dubya.

When can we expect a special prosecutor for this?

City Council Hearing Today on Ravenstahl's Honoring of Bush's NSA/CIA Dir. Michael Hayden (Updated 1x)

Michael Hayden seated at the center of the table
Of all the boneheaded moves by Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, this may be the most inexplicable and easily avoidable.

Here's a clue, Lil Mayor Luke: You don't honor a man who has a record of condoning torture, destroying evidence and misleading Congress about Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program which Hayden himself helped to implement.

Pretty simple, huh?

But that's precisely what Ravenstahl has done.

From WDUQ News:

A small nameplate honoring Gen. Michael V. Hayden at the corner of Allegheny Avenue and North Shore Drive will be the subject of what could be a big public hearing today before Pittsburgh Council. Greg Barnhisel of Pittsburgh’s Park Place neighborhood noticed the nameplate while visiting the Carnegie Science Center. Barnhisel says he does not question the debt of gratitude owed to the general for his service in the U.S. Air Force but he does question the wisdom of honoring him for his work after leaving the military. Hayden left the Air Force as a four-star general to become the Director of the National Security Agency and then the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. While in those post Hayden became a lightening rod for the left when he helped to implement the Bush administration’s warrantless-wiretapping program and then helped defined the CIA’s interrogation program that many have equated to torture. Hayden is a native of Pittsburgh and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl honored him with the plaque but did not get it approved by the city council. Something he did not have to do but is customary. Barnhisel Gathered the needed signatures on a petition to get the hearing scheduled. He says the way the mayor posted the nameplate should be part of the debate at today’s public hearing and so should an examination of the appropriateness of honoring Hayden. What he does not want is to have the public hearing devolve into a debate about Bush era policies. The hearing begins at 9:00am in Council Chambers.

And, if you're wondering about the illustration at the top, I created it back in 2006 for a post entitled Bush's Made Men. In that post, I quoted Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University, on Hayden's nomination to CIA Director by George W. Bush:

As these shadowy figures multiply, you can understand why civil libertarians increasingly see the White House like a gathering at Tony Soprano's Bada Bing! club. In Soprano's world, you cannot become a "made man" unless you first earn your bones by "doing" some guy or showing blind loyalty. Only when you have proven unquestioning loyalty does Tony "open the books" for a new guy.

Hayden earned his bones by implementing the NSA operation despite clear federal law declaring such surveillance to be a criminal act. He can now join the rest of the made men of the Bush administration.

Heck of a job, Lukey!

*********************************************************

UPDATE:

WPXI coverage here.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette coverage here.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review coverage here.
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This is so not news: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed says he lied under torture

REPORT: Key Terror Detainee Acknowledged ‘I Make Up Stories’ In Response To Torture

Don't get me wrong. I appreciate any attention paid to this subject. I'm just saying it's something that we've known for years.

Back in 2007 when the Pentagon released the transcript of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession it was widely acknowledged that KSM seemed to have confessed to anything and everything and that it simply defied belief. Everyone from The Onion to Time Magazine ridiculed the confession at the time.

We even made a joke on this very blog that there was a local connection in KSM's confession:

2 Political Junkies has just learned from several unnamed sources that after some additional waterboarding questioning, terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has just confessed to being responsible for putting all those City of Pittsburgh-owned images on the Ravenstahl Campaign website.

And, yes, torture and waterboarding were also mentioned in some of the reports at the time -- maybe because we knew as far back as 2006 that the Bush-Cheney Administration was torturing suspects.

I remind you that we knew this because Dick admitted to it way back then.

So, while this news is important it isn't really new.

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This post has been brought to you by the Department of Things We Already Know But Keep Forgetting.
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After being waterboarded for 6 seconds wingnut shock jock Mancow admits it's "absolutely torture"

While Sean Hannity continues to punk out on his offer to be waterboarded for charity, Mancow took the plunge today:

Erich "Mancow" Muller, a Chicago-based conservative radio host, recently decided to silence critics of waterboarding once and for all. He would undergo the procedure himself, and then he would be able to confidently convince others that it is not, in fact, torture.

Or so he thought. Instead, Muller came out convinced.

"It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that's no joke," Mancow said. "It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back... It was instantaneous... and I don't want to say this: absolutely torture."

"I wanted to prove it wasn't torture," Mancow said. "They cut off our heads, we put water on their face... I got voted to do this but I really thought 'I'm going to laugh this off.' "

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Fact-Checking Cheney's Speech

McClatchy does the honors and it's no surprise what they find:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.

They're being way too diplomatic. Usually these are called lies.

Here's more:

In his address to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy organization in Washington, Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that's considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were "legal" and produced information that "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."

He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a "deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country."

In a statement April 21, however, Blair said the information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general's investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department released last month.

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Vanity Fair magazine in December that he didn't think that the techniques disrupted any attacks.

Another omission/exaggeration/misstatement/whatever by Cheney:

_ Cheney said that only "ruthless enemies of this country" were detained by U.S. operatives overseas and taken to secret U.S. prisons.

A 2008 McClatchy investigation, however, found that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent citizens or low-level fighters of little intelligence value who were turned over to American officials for money or because of personal or political rivalries.

Yea, these guys know intelligence.

Hey! Even The Ghost of Harry Caray Sez So.

About 3:15 in.


Waterboarding is torture. It's like the one thing everyone in Heaven agrees on.

The IG Report On The CIA's Torture

The Washington Post reported yesterday about an Inspecter General's classified report regarding the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques torture.:

According to excerpts included in those memos, the inspector general's report concluded that interrogators initially used harsh techniques against some detainees who were not withholding information. Officials familiar with its contents said it also concluded that some of the techniques appeared to violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified by the United States in 1994.

I know the usual retort: But Admiral Blair said torture worked! Setting aside the obvious fact that whether it worked it's still illegal, the Post reported:

According to excerpts included in those memos, the inspector general's report concluded that interrogators initially used harsh techniques against some detainees who were not withholding information. Officials familiar with its contents said it also concluded that some of the techniques appeared to violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified by the United States in 1994.

Although some useful information was produced, the report concluded that "it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks," according to the Justice Department's declassified summary of it. The threat of such an imminent attack was cited by the department as an element in its 2002 and later written authorization for using harsh techniques.

They tortured who were not withholding information? So either they got all the information they could from them and then tortured them further or there was no information to be had - but tortured them anyway. Nice.

Sam Stein at HuffingtonPost writes:

A CIA inspector general's report from May 2004 that is set to be declassified by the Obama White House will almost certainly disprove claims that waterboarding was only used in controlled circumstances with effective results.

And then:

But there is no need to wait for the report's declassification. Information from its pages was already made public in the footnotes of the Office of Legal Counsel memos written by Steven Bradbury in 2005 and released by the current administration less than one month ago.

And the footnote:

"The difference was in the manner in which the detainee's breathing was obstructed," read the footnote, citing the IG report. "At the SERE school and in the DoJ opinion, the subject's airflow is disrupted by the firm application of a damp cloth over the air passages; the interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth in a controlled manner. By contrast, the Agency interrogator... applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee's mouth and nose."

Medical personnel at the detention facility protested the use of the waterboard in that form, stressing that "there was no a priori reason to believe that applying the waterboard with the frequency and intensity with which it was used by the psychologist/interrogators was either efficacious or medically safe.'"

The interesting part of all this is something Talkingpointsmemo has published.

This goes way beyond strange bedfellows. But it looks like Dick Cheney has emerged as the single most forceful proponent of a full investigation of the Bush administration's torture policies.

In an interview on CBS's Face The Nation yesterday, the ex-veep claimed, as he has before, that the Obama administration's rejection of torture has made us less safe. But he also went further ever in repeatedly arguing -- contra congressional Republicans -- that we need to look back at the details of the torture program before moving forward.

And he wants memos released and:

Cheney even told Schieffer that he'd "talk to" congressional investigators about the program, adding: " I wouldn't be out here today if I didn't feel comfortable talking about what we're doing publicly."

Ok. Fine. Let's have the discussion at least. Or as TPM says:

Listen To Dick Cheney: Investigate Torture.

It has the added bonus of being the law.

Condoleezza Rice: No Torture

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was taped at Stanford University recently in off-the-cuff discussion of torture. The video:


The full text can be found here.

I'd like to start about 4 minutes in to the video. The discussion is swirling around torture and the questioner points out that the US didn't torture any German POW. To which Secretary Rice says:

And we didn't torture anybody here either. Alright?

When it was pointed out that there was torture at Guantanamo Bay, Rice became rather patronizing:

No, no dear, you're wrong. Alright. You're wrong. We did not torture anyone. And Guantanamo Bay, by the way, was considered a model "medium security prison" by representatives of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe who went there to see it.

Dear? Oh, to be called "dear" by an accused war criminal! Anyway, while Rice instructs her interrogator to "do your homework," she evidently hasn't done her own.

Here's the report about how Guantanamo is a "model" prison:

Inmates at Guantanamo Bay prison are treated better than in Belgian jails, an expert for Europe's biggest security organization said on Monday after a visit to the controversial U.S. detention center.

But Alain Grignard, deputy head of Brussels' federal police anti-terrorism unit, said that holding people for many years without telling them what would happen to them is in itself "mental torture."

"At the level of the detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons," said Grignard.

And here's OSCE's "clarification" about Monsier Grignard:

The OSCE Spokesperson said that, in the light of these reports, he wished to make it clear the Organization itself had not sent an expert to Guantanamo: "The person quoted in several of the stories as "an OSCE expert", Professor Alain Grignard, accompanied the delegation despatched by the Parliamentary Assembly, based in Copenhagen, but he was not employed or commissioned by the OSCE."

Without commenting on the views expressed by any members of the delegation at the press conference in Brussels, he added that the statements should therefore not be taken as being made on behalf of the 55-nation body, which is headquartered in Vienna. [emphasis added]

In fact, Anne-Marie Lizin, Special Representative of the President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, issued a report on June 30, 2006 that notes:

...that the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility is continuing to seriously tarnish the reputation of the United States in the world and enabling its enemies to devalue the fight against terrorism by substantiating the idea that it is incompatible with respect for the rule of law and for human rights. (page 18)

And:

In consequence of the foregoing, [Lizin] recommends to the US authorities that they announce as soon as possible the disbandment of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility by publicizing in July 2006 an accurate and detailed timetable for the transfer of the detainees and for the organization of the practical modalities of the closure. (page 19) [emphasis added]

And yet Secretary Rice said the OSCE said it was a "model" prison.

Perhaps, dear, you should do YOUR homework.

Then there's this:

Now, the ICRC also had access to Guantanamo, and they made no allegations about interrogations at Guantanamo.

Interesting, here's what the ICRC DID say about Guantanamo bay:

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 CIA 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.

And finally when asked whether she considered waterboarding torture, she replied:

...by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture.

There you have it. Didn't work for Nixon. It shouldn't work for Bush.

Investigate and prosecute the torture.

Cheney claims to be warm! and lovable!

From Andy Barr at Politico:

Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that his image has gotten a bad rap in the press and that he is in fact “a warm, lovable sort.”

Cheney conceded in an interview with CBS radio that he sometimes expresses himself “rather forcefully toward some of my compatriots, like Pat Leahy from Vermont” but dismissed as a caricature the idea that he is a “Darth Vader-type personality.”

“I think all of that’s been pretty dramatically overdone,” the vice president said. “I’m actually a warm, lovable sort.”

Especially when I'm condoning waterboarding!

.

In Case You Missed It

Yes, there was torture and no, it wasn't just a few "bad apples."

The path leads all the way back to Donald Rumsfeld.

From the NYTimes:

A report released Thursday by leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee said top Bush administration officials, including Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, bore major responsibility for the abuses committed by American troops in interrogations at Abu Ghraib in Iraq; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and other military detention centers.

Here's the report, by the way. The first conclusion (p. 16) says:

On February 7, 2002, President George W. Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. Following the President’s determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions, used in SERE training to simulate tactics used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions, were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody.

Waterboarding, my friends, is torture.

Conclusion 19 (p. 19) says:

The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own. Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions, and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at GTMO. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002 authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody. What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely.

Torture approved by Rumsfeld.

Tell me again how the Bush Administration made everything better?

Gitmo Trials

The P-G editorial today today:

Six men accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks on the United States, held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be put on trial in the near future.

It is appropriate that the accused face trial, as opposed to continuing to be held at Guantanamo without charge, in clear contradiction of the American principles of due process of law. Yet there are some real problems.

Then they rattle off five problems (though I think the first and last are related) they have with the trials. The first is the fact that it's taken more than five years to bring these guys to trial. The second is that one of the accused was waterboarded, though no one in the Bush Government is willing to say that's torture (I wonder why - could it be that it would admitting to a war crime?). The third problem the P-G sees is that the trial won't be in a regular courtroom (like the one that convicted Ramzi Yousef) but in a military courtroom, where the rules are different. The fourth problem is that the military court could ask for the death penalty - something the rest of the civilized world thinks is barbaric and finally the timing of the trial - just in time for the 2008 Presidential Election Season. Just in time to show what the he-men of the God's Own Party do to those evil-doer terrrists! Imagine the coincidence!

But there are other issues at play. Notably from across the pond:

Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said he has "some concerns" over US military tribunals for six men charged with involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

The US government has promised fair trials for the Guantanamo Bay inmates, who could face the death penalty.

But human rights groups say the tribunals make this impossible and that the defendants were tortured.

Mr Miliband told BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show there was "absolutely no question" that torture was illegal.

And these are our biggest allies.

The BBC's Vincent Dowd in Washington says a confession gained from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed may prove problematic as the CIA admitted using "water-boarding" - or simulated drowning - as an interrogation technique.

In answer to a question from a Jeremy Vine show listener, Mr Miliband said the UK defined water-boarding as torture, adding that "we don't... we would never use water-boarding".

Mr Miliband said: "There's absolutely no question about the UK government's commitments in respect of torture, which is illegal, and our definition of what torture is.

No question to our closest allies that waterboarding is torture and that torture is illegal. Here's what's at stake. I'll let the British Foreign Secretary say it:

And I think it's very, very important that we always assert that our system of values is different from those who attacked the US and killed British citizens on 11 September, and that's something we'd always want to stand up for.

One thing, though. Didn't he just end that sentence with a dangling preposition?

I'm just asking - the guy's British, you know.