My usual question is: When are people going to get so fed up that the finally pursue impeachment and a return to the RULE OF LAW?
The United States and Canada have gone too far and nothing seems to be bringing them back to the reality of conducting themselves as civilized societies.
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Uncovering the truth about CIA torture tapes
Congress must remedy its abysmal record of investigating the Bush administration on prisoner abuse and torture.
By Anthony D. Romero
Feb. 15, 2008 | It's now a matter of public record: the Central Intelligence Agency has tortured detainees held in U.S. custody.
In the past week, the Bush administration announced that it is seeking the death penalty for six men allegedly involved with the 9/11 terrorist attacks; evidence against them was gathered through coercive, brutal interrogation tactics -- including waterboarding. Only days earlier, CIA director Michael Hayden publicly defended the government's use of this abhorrent practice, while both the White House and the director of national intelligence agreed that further use of waterboarding is acceptable if the president and attorney general approve.
It has been known for months that the CIA destroyed videotapes depicting its so-called enhanced interrogations of two al-Qaida suspects. With the government's latest disclosures, we now know that those two detainees were waterboarded, as the tapes might have revealed. The tapes' destruction potentially constitutes the crime of obstruction. By destroying them the CIA also disregarded a request from the 9/11 Commission for documentation that could provide information about the 9/11 attacks, and it appears to have flouted court orders -- one of which was issued in response to the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit demanding information about the United States' treatment of detainees overseas. The ACLU has asked that the CIA be held in contempt for violating the judge's order by destroying the tapes.
Both Congress and the Justice Department have taken on the necessary task of investigating the tapes' destruction. Unfortunately, Congress' oversight record concerning the Bush administration's abuses of power has been abysmal. The Justice Department's investigation is also problematic. It is neither independent nor objective, and its scope, which fails to include the potential criminality of the underlying acts depicted on the tapes, is too narrow. A special counsel is urgently needed, now more than ever.
Not just activists and pundits feel that way. According to a recent Mellman Group survey commissioned by the ACLU, Americans of all political stripes overwhelmingly support the appointment of an independent prosecutor to investigate both the destruction of the CIA's interrogation tapes and the possible use of torture by the agency. Every segment of the electorate -- including clear majorities of Democrats (82 percent), independents (62 percent), and Republicans (51 percent) -- want to hold this administration accountable for its role in the destruction of the torture tapes. It seems that human rights is still, thankfully, a nonpartisan concern.
Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey's choice to head up the investigation of the tape destruction is a veteran federal prosecutor from Connecticut, John H. Durham. By all accounts, Durham has a respectable reputation. Nevertheless, he ultimately reports to Mukasey, who to this day refuses to acknowledge that waterboarding is torture and has told Congress that the use of waterboarding by CIA interrogators "cannot possibly be the subject of a criminal" investigation
What is needed is a special counsel who is granted the same authority as the attorney general in matters pertaining to the investigation -- like Patrick J. Fitzgerald on the disclosure of a CIA officer's identity. Considering what we already know of the Bush administration's record on torture and prisoner abuse, investigative independence is essential.
The special counsel must also focus on the core issue of whether or not the interrogation techniques depicted on the tapes were illegal. What can't get lost in the controversy surrounding the tapes' destruction is the underlying issue of our government's use of abusive and unlawful interrogation techniques -- including waterboarding. The tapes are gone forever, but what must not disappear along with them is accountability for what they most surely would have revealed.
The widespread international belief that the United States government is systematically and willfully breaking the law, violating international treaties, and ignoring American values by engaging in torture is a deep stain on our country's reputation. Americans want to know the facts and the extent to which their government acted with brazen disregard for basic human rights. Naming a special counsel would be a good and necessary start.
over-up
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That's really what this is about, however much the Bush administration might want to invoke 9/11 and justice (??) in its execution of the six prisoners. It's an extension of the cover-up, under pretense of seeking justice. Kill the witnesses to the torture, so there's nobody to contravene the non-disclosure of the administration, or in the unlikely event that the light of day is ever really shown on this. Maybe Bush is hedging his bets that a Democrat might win in November, and wants these prisoners dead before there's an administration change.
I put exactly nothing past this administration, what they'll do to serve their own political interests. It's the cold logic of the gulag and the concentration camp: the only way out is in a body bag. As Stalin (clearly an organizational model for the neoconservatives) put it: "Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem."
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A step further
I would posit that Slackie (for whom I have the utmost respect) has not gone far enough here in questioning the motives of the Bush Administration. I doubt that it's just the torture of these individuals that is being covered up, but rather knowledge concerning 9/11 and backdoor dealings that's being erased. Saddam as well ... too many messy pictures with Reagan-era officials and corresponding files, money, etc. OBL, given his CIA and Saudi ties may be a murkier story, however, and for now he's a good boogeyman. (See, i.e., the other Salon article concerning high-tech drone warfare if OBL's continued survival doesn't yet seem suspect to you.)
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An Options Pricing Case Against State-Sponsored Torture
The oft-cited ticking time bomb scenario as justification for state-sponsored torture is flawed. Just as the value of a call options contract generally increases the closer to expiration date, might the motivated terrorist believe it more valuable to resist torture, no matter what, as long as he believes there is a good chance of success, i.e., a low mission risk? All he has to do is hang in there for a little longer and its mission-accomplished!
It could be that the very act of his torture reveals more about the motivations and fears of his torturers than they might like. After all, torturing is an act of desperation (and depravity). Far better for interrogators to reveal little about their motivations in the interest of trying to elicit from their suspect his motivations.
On the other hand, the best time for state sponsored torture is when the suspect has been detained well in advance of the big event. There is a higher risk of mission failure and the value of the mission is lower simply because of the comparatively lengthy duration between capture and detonation. In fact, simply the threat of torture might be enough to break the suspect. Of course, the torturer has to convince his detainee that the value of the mission is low or that the risk is too high and that there is little chance of mission completion. This is information that the torturer likely does not have, otherwise why torture in the first place?
So, from the options valuation model, state-sponsored torture is unlikely to yield the results necessary to stop the ticking time bomb.
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