Chinese water torture

If the U.S. government waterboards suspected terrorists - or someone unlucky enough to have alienated the wrong people in Pakistan's ISS - the New York Times won't call it torture. There are memos defending it!

If the Chinese government waterboards suspected grafters, suddenly the Times finds the word torture in its vocabulary - and not just the lawyered up extreme definition that the Bushists put forward in John Yoo's bullshit memos. (Those memos alone are war crimes.)

When party members are caught breaking the rules — or even when they merely displease a superior — they can be dragged into the maw of an opaque Soviet-style disciplinary machine, known as “shuanggui,” that features physical torture and brutal, sleep-deprived interrogations.

Sex rated R, violence a lovely PG-13

Think of the graphic, frightening violence we permit in our entertainment and our foreign policy. But a penis is out of bounds. That's the wrong kind of first person shooter.

Again, I'm not defending what Anthony Weiner did or the complete foolish narcissism of the way he did it. I just think, as Glenn Greenwald does, that our response to Weiner's peckerdilloes should have been derisive laughter and an immediate move to the next topic. Instead, moving on is what we did on behalf of Bushists who openly admitted doing things that in all previous circumstances had been war crimes. Ho hum, we said.

None dare speak its name

Well, none in the big media, anyway:

The breach of "journalistic objectivity" comes not from calling this conduct what it is, but from refusing to do so -- from obfuscating what took place by using soothing euphemisms and according equal deference to the plainly false denials of those who did it...

Torture, war crimes, atrocities. The Bushists did them all in our name. The national media refuse to hold them criminally accountable. The Democrats refuse too.

A culture that cannot stomach calling acts by their well-known names is in deep trouble.

Kicking the can

I'm with Glenn Greenwald on war crimes. Punishing them deserves a lot more than lip service, which is all we're getting from President Obama.

My guess is that Obama decided he could have his political agenda or he could have legal accountability for the prolific crimes of Duhbya's administration, and he decided to work his agenda. Unfortunately, he seems to be getting neither.

For me, the rule of law is what the United States is about. We've tried before to welcome Republicans back to the straight and narrow, but they've repeatedly interpreted the lack of prison time as exoneration - Watergate and its associated abuses, Iran-Contra, and now all the megalomaniacal abuses of the Constitution of the Cheney years. If some of these people don't do hard time, they'll be back the next time the Republicans hold power.

Meanwhile, Democratic abuses that aren't even close to official crimes, even low ones, bring impeachment. Yet any attempt to investigate, try, and hopefully convict and punish Republican abscesses in the core of our legal system is roundly decried by media and Republicans alike as "criminalizing policy disputes." The absurdity of that claim is breath-taking.

(h/t Jay Ackroyd at Atrios)

Torture for politics

Not national security. To provide political cover for the Iraq war, which the Bushists wanted from the beginning, the entire military and foreign policy apparatus of Duhbya's maladministration sought torture to justify assertions they knew were bullshit.

Repeated torture of bad men sought a predetermined answer, not even intelligence. It was a series of war crimes in either case, but it is much more awful that it had no practical national purpose, only the craven goal of staying in power. It was about breaking the prisoners, not about learning what they knew.

The Bushists knew what they were doing. That's why they were so careful to put in place their bullshit get out of jail free cards from the Office of Legal Counsel.

There have to be consequences for these despicable people.

Opinions that don't matter

When Darth Cheney's opinions mattered, he was silent. Now, he's sowing the propaganda for the base of Republican Party who still miss him. Yes, unbelievable as it is to sane people, there are still people who long for Cheney's brand of unconstitutional, robustly torturing, militaristic fascism that made piles of money for the right people.

My question is why CNN is pimping Fox propaganda. Are they hoping to deliver more of the same as Darth takes his non-victory lap? For an alleged conservative, Cheney sure is willing to dispense with any tradition that's not codified into law - and lots of them that are.

I really hope this guy is on his way to the Federal penitentiary for his crimes, though I know that's an unlikely hope.

Blood from a coprolite

The best aspect of the torture of Abu Zubayda is that he is actually an enemy of America. After that, there's not much that's good.

Before torture, he gave up many names in al Qaeda. After he ran out, the Bushists began to hurt him, and all they got was blood from a coprolite.

Once they tortured this jerk, he sent them around the world at a cost of millions chasing bullshit.

Once they tortured him, they lost any valid use of his testimony against others.

The Bushists hurt him because they had him and they could. They broke him - everyone breaks. They got nothing out of him through torture.

Duhbya and Darth are enemies of the Constitution and the rule of law and thus also enemies of America. You don't see me advocating torture for them. But justice? Yes!

Oldie but goodie

Strangelovian! How did I miss this when it was published?

Click image for full Dan Wasserman/Boston Globe cartoon.

Well, duh

News flash: Don Rumsfeld responsible for prisoner abuses. Abuse and torture of prisoners, both the ones who are bad people and those who are not, was American policy, not some accident or excess. It came from the top. Rumsfeld had a definitive role approving each iota of policy, but of course "taking the gloves off" came from Cheney via his dauphin, Duhbya.

Can't keep it all in our silly little heads

Incredibly, CNN retypes the Pentagon press release about five prisoners at Guantánamo who say they want to confess. Our media can't seem to find its brain today, or they would notice that the hard cases among the Guantánamo population - not to mention those isolated into mental illness - are looking forward to martyrdom, where they expect virgins instead of the panties of menstrual female interrogators.

Oh, hell, underwear, no matter its state of laundry, is not torture. But some of these guys may be ready to martyr themselves because they have truly been tortured or at least threatened with torture:

The White House has consistently denied that the United States practices torture, but CIA officials have admitted to using "waterboarding." The technique, which is said to simulate drowning, has been considered a war crime in the past.

Again, CNN can't come right out with the obvious and incontrovertible truth: Waterboarding has always been torture when someone else did it to us. Here's the truth:

The White House has persistently bullshitted the media and the people about the Bushist Republicans' consciously pro-torture policy, but CIA officials have admitted use of "waterboarding", which is well-known to be a war crime.

Does all of the media have to go broke before they understand that their job is to penetrate the bullshit, not simply to repeat whatever comes out of the flatulent anuses of official sources?

Making a get out of jail free card from bullshit

In this case, Mukasey is trying to create the presumption of good faith on the part of John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, Jay Bybee, William J. Haynes, et al. They were just advocating what they thought was legal for their client, the quivering cowardly mass of abject Bushists.

Yeah, sure.

They were rationalizing torture with creative legalisms that they knew were wrong.

Savagery

The Mumbai terrorists tortured their victims, especially the Israelis.

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.

Yes, these animals are (were, actually) vile, nasty, bigoted, vicious war criminals. It's hard to feel bad about the response of Indian security forces:

The doctors who conducted the post mortem said ..., "Their faces were beyond recognition."

There was no way of identifying them," he said. Asked how, if this is the case, they knew the bodies were indeed those of the terrorists, he said: "The security forces that brought the bodies told us that those were the bodies of the terrorists," he said, adding there was no other way they could have identified the bodies.

An intelligence agency source added: "One of the terrorists was shot through either eye."

It's a sad and mirthless irony that the Islamist terrorists were defaced like the Buddhas at Bamiyan and many other ancient statues.

Savagery begat more savagery in Mumbai. Nor are our hands clean.

In Afghanistan, we did not pick out civilians for torture the way the Islamists in Mumbai did. What we did, however, was to outsource that to our surrogates on the ground, and they chose whoever they wanted for internment at Bagram or Guantánamo. But, other than by hopeless and indefinite confinement, we (probably) didn't torture the low value sources. We can be so proud that we picked our torture victims for cause, rather than randomly - or racistly (right, no anti-Muslim bigotry here!).

Then again, at Abu Ghraib, we tortured widely, including some who were obviously guilty of nothing more than petty crime. Including some for whom no guilt could be established to even a low standard. The Bushist myth is that this torture was not a matter of policy, but it's clear from the spread of techniques that the violated policy was the policy against photography. A few bad apples, my ass. But that's our rationalization.

Of course, at Guantánamo, Don Rumsfeld specifically approved escalating tortures to be used against individual prisoners. But at least he unleashed them narrowly.

Those who required more torture than that we outsourced again, bagging them and tagging them for rendition. We didn't know for sure what would happen to them. Of course, we're such innocents of the evil men can devise to break other men that we can't be held accountable for that. Which is why we had to render them to the torturers.

Our claims of national virtue in the Bushist age are very small and hang by very thin reeds of rationalization. In other more dangerous times, this was not always so. I'm not urging that all these acts have moral equivalence, but they're much closer to each other than I'm used to having to own up to.

Human beings are capable of savagery, not just some of us, but most, maybe all. I believe that I am, too. Deep inside there's a place of pain and fear that overrides sweet reason and sympathy and the morals we've been taught. That's why we have laws. Had.

That's why the least Obama can do is close Guantánamo.

Too hot for CNN

On Duhbya's gratitude, there's a single (illiterate) reader comment. Mine, among I'm sure a thousand others, didn't get past the moderator:

Duhbya: "No matter how badly I went astray, you loyal Republicans followed me off the cliff like lemmings. And I thank you for that. When I'm in the dock at the Hague, I know you'll be there with me."

Pretty tepid stuff.

Not news, but still an outrage

Dick Cheney lies about torture:

"No nation in the world takes human rights more seriously than the United States," Cheney said at the American Legion's annual convention.

Ya, we take rights so seriously that we write tissues of lies and call them legal memos. We redefine words and then do things to prisoners that were war crimes when the Nazis and the Japanese did them in WWII. We punish underlings for crimes but not their bosses.

Yeah, we take rights seriously.

And what's with the American Legion giving Darth a platform? Do they agree with him?

Good faith torture

There is no end to the base corruption of our American ideals by the Bushist war criminals. CNN unhelpfully fails to link to the documents obtained by the ACLU, which are comically redacted almost to nothingness. Given what the Bushists admitted, it's hard to imagine what they censored.

The interrogator's "good faith" and "honest belief" that the interrogation will not cause such suffering protects the interrogator, the memo adds.

Jay Bybee thinks lack of specific intent to cause severe pain is exculpatory. Even if so, what about the second use? The torturers can hardly claim ignorance of the pain they're causing.

"Your honor, even though he screamed the first thirty-nine times I waterboarded him, I was sure it wouldn't hurt him the fortieth time."

Insane. Like the reasoning of a Soviet lawyer. Or a press release from Kim Il Sung.

And specific intent is inextricably a part of the first torture, too. The torturers specifically intended to use torture to force a prisoner to answer a question. For those of us who understand cause and effect normally, there's no separate proof: They chose these methods to elicit a response. It's not as though they just happened to waterboard prisoners because they didn't have anything else to do that day.

For this service to the Bushists, Bybee received a Federal Appeals Court judgeship. The least we can do is impeach the SOB for his crimes. And I don't care a whit if the Judiciary Committee glossed over them in 2004.

The truth about 'The Truth About Torture'

Almost every line Stuart Taylor Jr. writes about torture is utter, complete, total bullshit.

It would be unseemly for Bush to pardon Vice President Dick Cheney or himself

Duhbya might pause before pardoning Darth and himself because it's unseemly? What planet does Taylor live on? Unseemly! As if.

the next president wouldn't allow them to be prosecuted anyway

And Taylor knows this how?

what this country needs most is a full and true accounting of what took place.

What the country needs is a return to the rule of law, and that can't happen without prison.

The incoming president should convene a truth commission

A truth commission? Don't we claim to have the rule of law for that? (Oh, my own bullshit - my bad.) But Taylor's had canapés with some of the criminals, so they just can't be criminals.

with subpoena power

How has that subpoena power been working out so far? Knock, knock, earth to Stuart. Pull your head out of there and take a look around once in a while.

Pardons would further a truth commission's most important goals: to uncover all important facts, identify innocent victims to be compensated, foster a serious conversation about what U.S. interrogation rules should be, recommend legal reforms, pave the way for appropriate apologies and restore America's good name.

Yeah, let's suspend the rules so that we can make more rules that no one - well, no Republicans - will follow.

The goals should not include wrecking the lives of men and women who made grievous mistakes while doing dirty work—work they had been advised by administration lawyers was legal, and which they believed was necessary to prevent terrorist mass murder.

After all, we don't want to discourage idiots who can't tell the difference between waterboarding and needlepoint from their right to govern us! The Bushists asked the OLC for get out of jail free cards, which are a tissue of transparent legalistic bullshit, and Taylor is going to play along as if they were sincere about anything more than covering their well-fed asses.

A criminal investigation would only hinder efforts to determine the truth, and preclude any apologies. It would spur those who know the most to take the Fifth.

Continuing the cover-up with pardons would help us learn the truth? So all the prosecutors who turn minor conspirators by threatening them with jail have it all wrong. What an idiot.

Any prosecutions would also touch off years of partisan warfare.

Stu, baby, wake up. Have you missed the last two decades? Oh, it's partisan warfare where the Democrats show up ready to fight that you want to avoid.

Any hope of a civil conversation about lessons we need to learn would be dead.

Oh, Christ, this is the be-all and end-all of Washington punditry, a fucking civil conversation. What we had and no longer have but still need is the rule of law!

there is no evidence that any high-level official acted with criminal intent.

Uh, Stuart, there's intent everywhere. These people wrote memos about what they were going to do, and then they did it. They knew the meanings of the words ('torture' for one) they were dishonestly redefining. It doesn't take a genius to see this, though apparently it takes more IQ points than you have at your disposal.

The officials involved appear to have approved only interrogation methods found legal by administration lawyers, and in particular by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). According to long tradition, the OLC is considered a sort of Supreme Court of the executive branch.

God, you think we're all dunces, don't you? A precedent by which hand-picked legal bullshitters can write any goddamn thing they want and have it be relied on as law is a prescription for lawless, authoritarian rule by the President.

But Congress has defined torture very narrowly.

Huh? Where's your evidence? It certainly isn't in your column. In any case, the international case law and the consensus of everyone prior to the rise of Bushism is that the Bushists didn't go just a little over the line. Belly slaps, menstrual blood, panties, nudity, and even Koran defacement might have been that. Waterboarding, beatings (sometimes to death), severe sleep deprivation, stress positions (such a delicate euphemism for non-maiming successors of the rack), and hypothermia? Anyone who claims not to know that these are torture is lying to you.

The OLC has advised officials since 2002 that some highly coercive methods—including waterboarding, which is assailed by most of the world as torture—do not violate the federal anti-torture law.

And you find the rationales they provided to the White House on demand credible as if they were a dispassionate, even-handed, responsible finding of a court, not the partisan bullshit of John Yoo and company. Un-fucking-believable!

Then five Supreme Court justices gave the administration a nasty surprise. Rejecting the views of a federal appeals court, President Bush, the OLC and four other Supreme Court justices, the majority held that Geneva does protect Qaeda members and other Guantánamo detainees. (emphasis added)

I guess it's clear where your sympathies lie.

But any such prosecutions would probably fail.

There's that Beltway pundit's crystal ball again.

Congress has retroactively amended the War Crimes Act to block any prosecutions for brutal interrogation methods short of torture.

We're not talking about short of torture. We're talking about torture. Get it?

And officials could raise a nearly airtight defense of good-faith reliance on advice of counsel—OLC memos on approved methods would be like "get out of jail free" cards.

Sorry, no. Those memos implicate their authors, who are also criminally culpable. They are evidence, all right, but it ain't exculpatory.

pressure to go after GOP "war criminals" would make it very hard to unite Americans of all stripes behind solutions to the many economic and social challenges facing the country.

Hey, look over there. The Bushists screwed up a lot of other things, too.

For blithe witless Broderists like Taylor whose highest goal is to have a serious, civil conversation about the lessons of the Bushist slow-motion coup d'etat, here's the history of immunizing Republican counter-Constitutional crime:

• Watergate - the now relatively minor matter of using the power of the government against Nixon's political opposition - Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon to the polite opera house applause of the creeping Broderists. As a consequence, only a few wingnut factotums did any time. Prominent Nixon alumni now Bushists: Darth Cheney, Rummy, Fred Fielding, the Bushes themselves, not to mention Chuck Colson and G. Gordon Liddy carrying the message in the media.
  
• Iran-Contra - broke the law in the manner of putschists - There were no lasting consequences for anyone, as Bush père wielded the pardon to protect Republican criminality. Prominent Reagan alumni, tainted by scandal, now Bushists: Elliot Abrams? Back. John Poindexter? Back. Ollie North? On the radio flogging the hatred of liberals.
  

What have authoritarian Republican Bushists learned from ever-decreasing consequences for their impeachable crimes? Go for it! The next Republican President will take care of you.

There's another lesson in this: Don't listen to nicey-nice Washington pundits. They're repeatedly, irremediably full of themselves, which means they're full of shit.

Stuart Taylor (and, yes, the Democrats in Congress) have surrendered in the fight to keep our democracy. But, hey, they're civil dipshits.

(h/t LGM)

Not torture if they change the dictionary

Shorter Douglas Feith: We moved all these tortures into the harsh treatment category, hence we don't torture.

Think of the shit Bill Clinton got for classifying oral as not sex (when that's the definition he was presented with by Paula Jones's lawyers). Yet the Bushists can still expect lock-step Republican defense of classifying waterboarding and forcible stress positions as not torture.

The subcommittee's Republicans criticized the inquiry. The panel's ranking Republican member, Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, accused the majority Democrats of holding hearings "dedicated primarily to making sure we are protecting the rights of terrorists."

It's enough to make you think that the values of the American press are thoroughly self-fellating. Or Republican-fellating (see Ron Fournier kissing some part of Karl Rove's anatomy).

Some people have the courage to speak the truth:

In June, retired U.S. Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the Army's investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in 2003, wrote there "is no longer any doubt" that the Bush administration committed war crimes in its treatment of suspected terrorists.

"The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account," Taguba wrote in the preface to a June report by a Massachusetts-based human rights group.

Things we already knew

Dan Froomkin notes Andrew Bacevich's review of Jane Mayer's book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. The Bushists don't care, and the rest of us already know that we live under an outlaw regime.

Conscience-free

Duhbya can sleep at night because he lacks any conscience. He can't find any humanity in his enemies. They aren't people. He doesn't just despise them, he thoroughly hates them. He is, like so many others, a Christian in name only.

Duhbya and Darth Cheney and David Addington and John Yoo and Donald Rumsfeld have loosed on our enemies torture. That word is its due and the least we can offer to describe waterboarding. Christopher Hitchens may be easily despised in other venues, but this is how he puts it:

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning...

Many times before we have described this as torture, as we were learning it from Communist enemies practicing it on us in Korea and Vietnam. At the time, we universally abhorred it. Now many Americans defend it as a necessity, the failed Nuremberg defense, a defense we never accepted when the Chinese did it any more than when the Nazis did.

We said it was a war crime, a crime against humanity. It still is.

Off the reservation

Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba (ret.) tells the truth, and you know how much the Bushists hate that:

"There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes," Taguba says. "The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account."

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.