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Topic: US Justice; These Interesting Times (Read 2399 times) |
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
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Re:US Justice; These Interesting Times
« Reply #30 on: 2009-05-07 09:30:42 » |
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Quote from: Hermit on 2009-04-24 11:56:58
It is also worth mentioning that despite US government attempts to suppress all related information, we know that a number of people have been tortured to death by agents of the US administration and that many others are still disappeared. So what we are seeing is a discussion limited to the nice "official torture policies", not the result of what those policies instigated and enabled. Which was premeditated unlawful killing, for which the applicable English and legal description is "murder".
For example, General Abed Hamed Mowhoush, beaten over days by U.S. Army, CIA and other non-military forces, stuffed into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord, and suffocated to death after his surrender to US forces, Manadel al-Jamadi, whose death became public during the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal when photographs depicting prison guards giving the thumbs-up over his body were released and Nagem Sadoon Hatab strangled while in US custody.
Which means that the current, so civilized, discussions about torture completely omit the vilest aspects of it.
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[Blunderov] The evidence continues to mount up. Will it reach that critical mass which makes prosecutions inevitable? Would this even be desirable? (I think it is, but then torture tends to get me very hot under the collar.) Realistically speaking, the situation is not dissimilar to the situation that pertained in South Africa after the fall of the apartheid state. There were persons on both sides that had committed crimes in the service of politics and the various partisan recriminations were (largely) dispelled by the truth commission. Something has got to happen. The torture scandal cannot be allowed to fester indefinitely. If prosecutions are politically unacceptable then so is inaction - both will tear apart the body politic and divert time, attention and resources away from other more immediate, and very pressing, matters.
Something's got to change.
rawstory.com
US interrogators may have killed dozens, human rights researcher and rights group say
Published: May 6, 2009
Updated 3 hours ago
United States interrogators killed nearly four dozen detainees during or after their interrogations, according a report published by a human rights researcher based on a Human Rights First report and followup investigations.
In all, 98 detainees have died while in US hands. Thirty-four homicides have been identified, with at least eight detainees — and as many as 12 — having been tortured to death, according to a 2006 Human Rights First report that underwrites the researcher’s posting. The causes of 48 more deaths remain uncertain.
The researcher, John Sifton, worked for five years for Human Rights Watch. In a posting Tuesday, he documents myriad cases of detainees who died at the hands of their US interrogators. Some of the instances he cites are graphic.
Most of those taken captive were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They include at least one Afghani soldier, Jamal Naseer, who was mistakenly arrested in 2004. “Those arrested with Naseer later said that during interrogations U.S. personnel punched and kicked them, hung them upside down, and hit them with sticks or cables,” Sifton writes. “Some said they were doused with cold water and forced to lie in the snow. Nasser collapsed about two weeks after the arrest, complaining of stomach pain, probably an internal hemorrhage.”
Another Afghan killing occurred in 2002. Mohammad Sayari was killed by four U.S. servicemembers after being detained for allegedly “following their movements.” A Pentagon document obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2005 said that the Defense Department found a captain and three sergeants had “murdered” Sayari, but the section dealing with the department’s probe was redacted.
Perhaps the most macabre case occurred in Iraq, which was documented in a Human Rights First report in 2006.
“Nagem Sadoon Hatab… a 52-year-old Iraqi, was killed while in U.S. custody at a holding camp close to Nasiriyah,” the group wrote. “Although a U.S. Army medical examiner found that Hatab had died of strangulation, the evidence that would have been required to secure accountability for his death – Hatab’s body – was rendered unusable in court. Hatab’s internal organs were left exposed on an airport tarmac for hours; in the blistering Baghdad heat, the organs were destroyed; the throat bone that would have supported the Army medical examiner’s findings of strangulation was never found.”
In another graphic instance, a former Iraqi general was beaten by US forces and suffocated to death. The military officer charged in the death was given just 60 days house arrest.
“Abed Hamed Mowhoush [was] a former Iraqi general beaten over days by U.S. Army, CIA and other non-military forces, stuffed into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord, and suffocated to death,” Human Rights First writes. “In the recently concluded trial of a low-level military officer charged in Mowhoush’s death, the officer received a written reprimand, a fine, and 60 days with his movements limited to his work, home, and church.”
Another Iraqi man was killed in a US detention facility on Mosul in 2003.
“U.S. military personnel who examined Kenami when he first arrived at the facility determined that he had no preexisting medical conditions,” the rights group writes. “Once in custody, as a disciplinary measure for talking, Kenami was forced to perform extreme amounts of exercise—a technique used across Afghanistan and Iraq. Then his hands were bound behind his back with plastic handcuffs, he was hooded, and forced to lie in an overcrowded cell. Kenami was found dead the morning after his arrest, still bound and hooded. No autopsy was conducted; no official cause of death was determined. After the Abu Ghraib scandal, a review of Kenami’s death was launched, and Army reviewers criticized the initial criminal investigation for failing to conduct an autopsy; interview interrogators, medics, or detainees present at the scene of the death; and collect physical evidence. To date, however, the Army has taken no known action in the case.”
Death from interrogation is hard to separate from simple detainee death while in US custody. But one particular case stands out that seems to have fallen by the wayside — the murder of CIA “ghost” detainee named Manadel al-Jamadi, who was tortured to death by a CIA team at Abu Ghraib in 2003.
“Pictures of Abu Ghraib guards Charles Graner and Sabrina Harman posing with al-Jamadi’s dead body, the so-called Ice Man, were among the most notorious of the Abu Ghraib photographs published in April 2004,” Sifton notes. “A CIA officer named Mark Swanner and an interpreter led the team that interrogated al-Jamadi. Nine Navy personnel were also implicated. An autopsy conducted by the U.S. military five days after al-Jamadi’s death found that the cause: “blunt force injuries complicated by compromised respiration.”
“Reporting by The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer and NPR’s John McChesney revealed that al-Jamadi was strung up from handcuffs behind his back, a torture tactic sometimes called a ‘Palestinian hanging,’” he adds. “After an investigation, the CIA referred the case to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution of the CIA personnel involved, but no charges were ever brought. Prosecutors accused 10 Navy personnel of the crime; nine were given nonjudicial punishments, such as rank reductions and letters of reprimand, and a 10th was acquitted.”
Additionally, Sifton notes the CIA may have had some close calls with detainees nearly dying during interrogations: the May 10, 2005, Bush Administration torture memo by Stephen Bradbury notes that doctors were nearby to perform a tracheotomy if during waterboarding the suspect is approaching death.
“Most seriously, for reasons of physical fatigue of psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways and loss of consciousness,” Bradbury wrote. “An unresponsive subject should be righted immediately, and the integrator should deliver a sub-xyphoid thrust to expel the water. If this fails to restore normal breathing, aggressive medical intervention is required….’”
The says CIA doctors were on hand with necessary equipment to perform a tracheotomy if necessary during waterboarding sessions: “[W]e are informed that the necessary emergency medical equipment is always present—although not visible to the detainee—during any application of the waterboard.”
[Bl.] This from Lenin's Tomb
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Rhetorical question posted by lenin
"How much moral moxie does it really take to come out, guns blazing, against torture? I mean, you don’t have to be a saint or anything to enlist in a campaign to ban pulling off the fingernails of defenseless prisoners, you just have to be halfway normal."
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MoEnzyme
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infidel lab animal
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Re:US Justice; These Interesting Times
« Reply #31 on: 2009-05-07 10:19:04 » |
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[Mo] More damning. Whoever was responsible for deep-sixing this memo is probably the most culpable actor in the creation of US torture policies. Hmmm I wonder who dunit? . . .
Is a Cheney Cover-Up Scandal Brewing?
full article: http://www.alternet.org/rights/139878/is_a_cheney_cover-up_scandal_brewing/
excerpt:
Quote:| On April 21, Philip Zelikow, who was counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the Bush administration, revealed on Foreign Policy's "Shadow Government" blog that he wrote a memo in 2005 disputing the conclusions of Bush Justice Department lawyers that torture was legal. The existence of such a memo was a surprise. But Zelikow also disclosed that the "White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo." |
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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Re:US Justice; These Interesting Times
« Reply #32 on: 2009-05-08 04:31:59 » |
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http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/07/hannity-waterboarding-update/
Hannity’s Two-Week Silence: Is He Ready To Admit Waterboarding Is Torture?
By Ali Frick on May 7th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
On April 22, Fox News’ Sean Hannity volunteered to be waterboarded after ardently defending the practice and excoriating President Obama for ending the technique. “Clearly this president has not done his homework, and it is putting each and every American at risk,” Hannity said about ending torture. Declaring he is “for enhanced interrogation,” Hannity said he would happily consent to being waterboarded as a fundraiser “for the troops’ families.”
However, two weeks later, Hannity has yet to mention the promise again — despite the offer from MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann to help Hannity raise funds by donating $1,000 for every second Hannity is waterboarded.
As Olbermann has explained, the point would not be to watch Hannity suffer. Rather, it would be to prove to him — and perhaps his viewers — that waterboarding is in fact “cruel, inhuman” torture — that it is what an adviser on terrorism to the departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations, and Intelligence called “slow-motion suffocation.”
Indeed, the 2005 torture memo written by Steven Bradbury required the CIA to have a tracheotomy kit on hand to revive a detainee who had effectively drowned:
[A] detainee could suffer spasms of the larynx that would prevent him from breathing even when the application of water is stopped and the detainee is returned to an upright position. In the event of such spasms, a qualified physician would immediately intervene to address the problem, and, if necessary, the intervening physician would perform a tracheotomy. …we are informed that the necessary emergency medical equipment is always present* - although not visible to the detainee — during any application of the waterboard.
A footnote to the memo warns, “for reasons of physical fatigue or psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways,” and “aggressive medical intervention” may be required to restore breathing. And yet Hannity continues to insist, “It’s not drowning.”
*[Blunderov] (My emphasis) An interesting elision. This sentence could also be written " "It is always necessary to have emergency equipment present during waterboarding . Eo ipso - By that very act - the admission is tacit that waterboarding is torture. What reasonable man could conclude otherwise than that the practice might lead to "organ failure" and death ? Excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta - He who excuses himself, accuses himself (qui s'excuse, s'accuse).
(I should add that I have not suddenly acquired a previously unsuspected fluency in Latin or, for that matter, French. Lawyers are fond of Latin though...  )
http://www.yuni.com/library/latin_2.html
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