More light on torture

The ACLU has successfully extracted some interesting tidbits by way of Freedom of Information Act filings and a lawsuit to get the Government to comply with the filing.

Press Release
Released information

The two-page e-mail that references an Executive Order states that the President directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc."
-- ACLU Press Release

This isn't the actual Executive Order, it just referrs to one. You can trust that the ACLU is attempting to extract this Executive Order. And if it exists, you can trust that the White House will block all attempts to do just that. The actual released document goes into what the Executive Order set out as approved.

Although we have no reason to believe any of our personnel disobeyed our instructions and participated in interrogations that utilized techniques beyound the bounds of FBI practice but within the parameters of the Executive Order (e g , sleep deprivation, stress positions, loud music, etc), some of our personnel were in the general vicinity of interrogations in which such tactics were being used, and because of their proximity to the sites of these interrogations, heard of saw things which would be indicative of interrogations utilizing the techniques authorized by the Executive Order Examples are loud music, interrogators yelling at subjects, prisoners with hoods on their heads, etc.

While a far cry from 12v electrodes attached to sensitive bits, it is still interesting to find. It would seem to me that there was enough doubt on the permissiveness of torture that an Executive Order was drafted to make it more legal than it was before. A friend of mine who went through a tour of duty with the military in the 1980's had some comments regarding the information coming out of Iraq regarding the Abu Ghraib torture.

What he said was that the things being used, such as stress positions, and sleep deprivation, were included in a class he was sent through on being a POW. Veitnam was still pretty fresh on the minds of the military, and thats where lessons were drawn from. As they went through the training they were subjected to some of these things for short durations. The fact that some of the detainees were kept in these positions by US forces for hours at a time was abhorrent to him. This friend is the only person I know who has been subjected to torture-like conditions, so is my best resource for comparisons.

Stress positions are in the grey-area between torture and pressure-tactics, and that's an area the Government is actively attempting to broaden. It is logical that working in such a grey area would require approvals from Somone Higher Than Me before I'd stick my neck out. Ultimate authority derives from the President in this case, even if he himself wasn't aware his authority provided such permissions.

Recall a certain leaked DoD legal opinion that described Geneva as out of date, or outright not applicable to our detainees. The opinion authored by the man who is up for confirmation as the head of the Department of Justice. That opinion supports what is supposedly laid out in this Executive Order, and might have been the legal justification for its issuance. Should the presence of this EO be confirmed, it would be the first real evidence that the President was aware of the types of tactics in use by US forces in intelligence gathering.

Does this tie him to Abu Ghraib? No. The e-mails recovered by the ACLU are pretty clear in tone that what was going on at Abu Ghraib was contrarty to the supposed EO.

Something different

In a break from the heady political commontary usually on display here, I bring up a topic near to my heart in recent days.

Christmas Music.

For some reason I don't exactly know the reason of, I can't stand old Christmas music. And sadly, old Christmas music means that it is classic christmas music. You know what I'm talking about.

"....I'm.... dreaming... of a white.... Christmas"

You have to not be from around here to NOT hear a certain famous male singer in your head on reading that. A certain singer who shares a name with a rather famous cherry. It's that very singer that causes me to twitch. Perhaps it was my youth where every year (usually in October, though near the end it was in September) a certain album was hawked on TV for just $15.99 that contained nothing but Christmas songs from the 1950's and prominantly hawked the works of one Bing Crosby.

Not that Bing is a bad singer. I've heard some of his non-Holiday stuff and it is downright good. I'm just overdosed for a lifetime on his most famous and enduring works.

Other Christmas music does not drive me batty. Rockapella has three christmas albums out, and I like them all. I guess I have a Thing against crooners. Which is sad, since that album I mentioned above is all they play in some stores. Heck, some whole Radio stations have gone all-Bing, all the time. Such sound-tracks are far more listenable when they throw in contemporary tracks. Really.

I did some shopping today and had the chance to compare sound-tracks. The shops that played music recorded in the last 20 years had me singing along and happy. The shops that played nothing newer than 30 years old had me tuning out the soundtrack. Not what they had in mind.

So... please. New stuff exists out there, and some of us like it a lot better than ole Bing.

Detainees and torture

A pair of recent articles further underlines this administration's willingness to use torture on detainees, as well as a very broad definition of who can be detained in the first place.

Concord Monitor

WASHINGTON - U.S. military panels reviewing the detention of foreigners as enemy combatants are allowed to use evidence gained by torture in deciding whether to keep them imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the government conceded in court yesterday.

In the face of Supreme Court cases to the contrary, the military will accept information discovered through torture (presumably by foreign intelligence agencies, since we "don't do" that sort of thing) so long as it can be deemed reliable.

"About 70 years ago, the Supreme Court stopped the use of evidence produced by third-degree tactics largely on the theory that it was totally unreliable," Harvard Law Professor Philip Heymann said in an interview.

It is clear to me that the military desires to use torture itself, but can't because of laws. The fact that Abu Ghraib happened, and the sadly unclear state of affairs in Gitmo, shows that they are willing to go right up to the line between firm questioning and torture, and will do what they can to make that line a fuzzy one. The use of Gitmo as a place to hold detainees grants them some latitude since it isn't actually US soil they're on and certain restrictive legislation doesn't apply there.

Marine Corp Times

Under detailed questioning by a federal judge, government lawyers asserted Wednesday the U.S. military can hold foreigners indefinitely as enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba, even if they aided terrorists unintentionally and never fought the United States.

This is a particularly nice bit of legal questioning. The Military asserted that it has the right to detain anyone who provided support to enemy combatants, even if they were unaware of the nature of their support. Even if 'unaware' means deliberate misdirection on the part of the receiver of funds.

Could a “little old lady in Switzerland” who sent a check to an orphanage in Afghanistan be taken into custody if unbeknownst to her some of her donation was passed to al-Qaida terrorists? asked U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green.

“She could,” replied Deputy Associate Attorney General Brian Boyle. “Someone’s intention is clearly not a factor that would disable detention.” It would be up to a newly established military review panel to decide whether to believe her and release her.

As you can see, they're asking for the stars here and hoping they get low earth orbit. A side effect of reasoning like this one plagued legitimate Islamic charities during the last Ramadan. There is a requirement of Islam that a minimum percentage of your income be donated to charity. To meet this need, Islamic charities sprout up to better enable people to donate to good causes. Since recent crackdowns on these same charities have revealed connections to terrorist financing completely unbeknownst to the givers, this is causing people problems. Givers don't know if donating to their usual charity will get them detained, charities have to handle the greatly reduced donation flow, and givers have to find a new place to put their donations that they can trust.

What is also clear is that once you are in the detainee system, it is devilishly hard to get out of it. Both articles mention this:

“The world is waiting to see if American justice will work ... whether these men will see their day in court,” Wilner told Green. He said that 440 of the 550 detainees have been through the process and only one has been declared a noncombatant and released even though the government has charged only a few with crimes.
--Marine Corp Times

They have finished reviewing the status of 440 of the prisoners but have released only one.
--Concord Monitor

440 status reviews, and only one released. Hardly an encouraging number if you are unlucky enough to find yourself being shipped to Guantanamo. US citizens are entitled to much improved due-process, but them ferriners.... nope.

To close, another little tidbit regarding torture and the US intelligence agencies. It would seem that there is a privately owned (but US government leased) jet that has been used a number of times to bring suspects from torture-banning countries to torture-permissive countries for the purpose of questioning. The incident given details here is from 2001, but there are rumors of sightings of the thing that are much more recent. Information gathered during these sessions was allegedly useful in cracking Afghanistan and certain anti-Al-queda operations, so the temptation to use such information against detainees is definitely strong.

Guantánamo abuse continues

The New York Times has discovered that the Red Cross has found "that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion 'tantamount to torture' on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba."

What is more worrying than their 2003 findings of essentially the same thing is that medical personnel are being used to better facilitate these coercive sessions. Medical professionals who have sworn their oaths to do no harm. The technicality being used here is that the professionals themselves aren't performing the harming tasks, only their data is being used. This has the side-effect of having detainees not trust their sole source of medical care.

In the words of the article:

The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo.

As in, well after Abu Ghraib had hit the American media, and during the loudest of the firestorm that followed. My theory is that the Red Cross started pressing the US for access as soon as the story hit a certain threshold in the media, and the US consented to the access as part of a damage-control process. My theory, not substantiated.

The fact that this activity continues to this day is just more fuel for the fire. I'm ashamed this hasn't caught more attention in the media, because this is exactly the sort of thing that is harming us internationally. We do need to address this. This administration has placed the rights of the United States above those of Human Rights and that is one of the bigger steps towards tyranny.

The Administration claims that these are 'enemy combatants' and are being kept off of US soil. Because of this, the rules for their handling and rights are very minimal to non-existent. Furthermore, they claim that we are either in technical compliance with Geneva, or that Geneva doesn't apply to these detainees. What is abundantly clear is that the US finds Geneva restrictive and a road-block to what it would really like to do.

And that is one of the scarriest things I've read in a while. Things are beginning to devolve back to the 'bad old days' on the ole civil liberties front. We have the US informally wishing to change Geneva to be something more permissive of coercion, and we have an amendment slip into an appropriations bill that would allow a specific Congressional Committee to review any tax-return. The latter was outlawed in the wake of Watergate as Nixon had used just that right to target his 'enemies list'.

The fact that the Republicans control both houses and the White House means that there isn't going to be much stopping an increase in Executive power short of filibusters. Right now my best hope is that the hubris the Bushies are experiencing now gets out of hand far enough to scare the populace into a mid-term 'regime change' in Congress. Hopes for an impeachment process hinge soley on a very big smoking gun that includes both Bush AND Cheney; and considering who controls congress right now that hope is about as remote as detecting alien radio signals in the next four years.