OMNI US TORTURE AWARENESS MONTH NEWSLETTER JUNE 2013. COMPILED BY DICK BENNETT FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE AND JUSTICE.
My blog:
War Department/Peace Department
War Department/Peace Department
Newsletters
Index:
Four online Newsletters were published on torture during June.2012. Three are planned during June 2013. Planned also are a public demonstration,
“Crime Scene,” at the Federal
Building
2012 Newsletters:
1. June Torture Awareness Month.
2. US Torture, War Crimes, Lawlessness
3. June 26, UN International Support for Victims
of Torture Day
4. Dick Cheney
Contact me if you will prepare one or more of these in
2014. --Dick
CARTOON
in Z Magazine (May 2013) p. 11.
Two
characters on a barren landscape:
“Finally
someone’s going to prison over the torture our government practiced over the
last decade.
Yeah,
the CIA whistleblower who pointed it out.”
Rob Gulliver, Big
Bend Sentinel.
Contents
#1 2012
NRCAT 2012
Tassc 2011
Human Rights News
UN Conventions vs. Torture
ACLU
IBJ Legal Training and Resources
NRCAT Against Torture
Presbyterian Church
ACLU Torture Report
Contents
#2 2013 Torture Awareness Month June 2013
Crime Scene Demonstration Saturday June 22, 10 a.m., Torture Awareness Day,
Fayetteville, Saturday, June 22 (for June 26 UN Day for Victims of
Torture)
Torture Awareness Month June 2013
Methodist Church: Torture Awareness
Month June 2013
National Religious Campaign Against
Torture 2013 (NRCAT)
Episcopal Church
Google Search for Torture Awareness Month 2013
Related
Center for Victims of Torture Gitmo Review Urged
Freedom from Torture (UK)
TASSC: Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition
Empathy and Torture, from The Economist
International Criminal Court
Chicago Police
US
TORTURE REGIME
Scheer , US
A FEW OF THE BOOKS ON US TORTURE REGIME
McCoy,(2006)
Grey (2006)
Begg (2006)
Mayer 2008
Ratner, Prosecute Rumsfeld and Other High Officials
(2008)
Sands (2008)
Brecher (2008)
Matthews (2008)
Perry (2009)
Related
Peters (1996)
Hersh (2004)
Levinson (2004)
Ginger (2005)
Roth (2005)
CRIME
SCENE:
PROTEST
TORTURE AND DRONE MURDER
SATURDAY,
JUNE 22, 2013, AT THE FEDERAL
BUILDING
10
A.M. TO 11.
INTERSECTION
OF COLLEGE AND MOUNTAIN AND SIDEWALK SURROUNDING THE BUILDING.
JOIN
IN RINGING THE BUILDING ON THE SIDEWALK WITH “CRIME SCENE” TAPE TO SYMBOLIZE
OUR DISAPPROVAL OF OUR GOVERNMENT’S VIOLATIONS OF LAW AND MORALITY BY TORTURE
AND MURDER.
JUNE
IS UN MONTH OF EMPATHY WITH VICTIMS OF TORTURE and STATE MURDER. LET THIS MONTH CONFIRM YOUR
OPPOSITION TO US
UNITED
NATIONS Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading behavior.
1.
Special Rapporteur
on torture and other cruel, inhuman or ...
www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/torture/rapporteur/
Mr. Juan Mendez, Special Rapporteur on
torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading.
The United Nations Commission on Human
Rights, in resolution ...
2.
Government
effectively cancels UN Special Rapporteur on torture's ...
3.
United Nations
Special Rapporteur - Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Special_Rapporteur
Special Rapporteur, Special Representative of the
Secretary-General and ... The mandate by the United Nations has been to
"examine, monitor, advise and .... Torture- Juan E. Méndez (2008–
); Trafficking in Persons - Joy Ngozi Ezeilo ...
4.
Government
effectively cancels UN Special Rapporteur ... -
ReliefWeb
reliefweb.int/.../bahrain-human-rights-government-effectively-cancels-u...
Apr 24, 2013 – Bahrain
5.
BBC News - UN torture investigator
'deeply disappointed' with Bahrain
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22280381
Apr 24, 2013 – The UN special rapporteur
on torture has expressed his "deep
disappointment" over Bahrain
6.
UN Special
Rapporteur on Torture Releases Report on Torture and ...
reproductiverights.org/.../un-special-rapporteur-on-torture-releases-repor...
03.07.13 - This week, Juan Mendez, the United Nations
Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment, ...
www.freedom-now.org/.../Chen-Kegui-China-Urgent-Appeal-to-Special-...
Apr 29, 2013 – Special Rapporteur on
Torture c/o Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights. United Nations Office at Geneva Geneva
7.
In Third
Committee, Special Rapporteur
on Torture Calls on States ...
www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2012/gashc4046.doc.htm
Oct 23, 2012 – In Third Committee, Special Rapporteur on
Torture Calls on States to Seriously Reconsider
Whether Death Penalty Amounts to Cruel, Inhuman ...
8.
UN Special
Rapporteur Addresses Possible Torture in
Healthcare
www.ijrcenter.org/.../un-special-rapporteur-addresses-possible-toture-in-...
Mar 11, 2013 – UN Special Rapporteur
on Torture, Mr. Juan Méndez, presented last week a controversial report to
the UN Human Rights Council asserting that ...
9.
United Nations
Special Rapporteur on torture warns
about abuse of ...
www.ushrnetwork.org/.../united-nations-special-rapporteur-torture-warns...
Mar 13, 2013 – WASHINGTON D.C.
UN Conventions
CHURCHES UNITED AGAINST TORTURE
Churches unite against U.S.
torture
Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on google_plusone_shareShare on redditShare on linkedinShare on stumbleuponShare
on emailMore Sharing Services
By Julia Duin. The Washington
Almost 300 congregations across the country have
combined forces this month to try to shame the U.S.
From Anchorage Unitarian
Universalist Fellowship in Alaska to Augustana Lutheran Church
“It’s to give physical and visible voice to religious
opposition to torture,” said Linda Gustitis, a
Unitarian who is president of the National
Religious Campaign to Abolish Torture (NRCAT), which is providing banners
to churches.
“Torture is not a political issue,” she said. “It does
not depend on whether or not you support the president or not, or a political
party or not. We believe it is obligatory for people of faith to speak out
against torture. Their silence condones it.”
Staff at NRCAT, founded in 2006, worked hard to find
houses of worship in all 50 states that would post the banners. In six states ” Mississippi, West Virginia , North Dakota ,
Georgia , Idaho
and Nebraska
“In Mississippi
The overwhelming
majority are Catholic or mainline Protestant churches along with 27 synagogues.
The list includes three mosques or Islamic centers, and one Buddhist temple. Twenty-one of the participating
congregations are in the Washington area,
including St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Washington
“This is an important issue for Muslims in North America ,” said Mohamed Elsanousi, an NRCAT board
member. “Islam values the dignity of human beings and considers that the
essence of humanity. That dignity is impacted by torture.”
“There were some areas of the country where people were
fearful about posting a banner,” he said, adding a banner was stolen this week
from a church in Illinois
NRCAT officials said
they were inspired to launch the awareness campaign after President Bush in
March vetoed a bill passed by Congress that would have prohibited the CIA from
using “waterboarding” and other harsh interrogation tactics. The administration
also has consistently stated that the United States does not engage in torture.
“As a community, Jews have been victims of torture,”
said Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster of Rabbis for Human Rights. “In the book of
Genesis, we learn people are created in the image of God and there is a divine
spark in everyone. Torture denies that spark.”
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jun/06/churches-unite-against-us-torture/#ixzz2T6LdBSc8
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
TORTURE
AWARENESS MONTH 2013
·
‘Healing Culture of Torture’
‘Healing Culture of Torture’
Resources for Torture Awareness Month (June)
April 10,
2013
The National Religious Campaign
Against Torture (NRCAT) is preparing a toolkit for congregations to use during
Torture Awareness Month (June).
In 1997, the
United Nations decided to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the enactment of
the Convention Against Torture & Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment by declaring June 26 the International Day of Support
of Victims of Torture.
This year’s theme
is “Healing the Culture of Torture,” encompassing the need to reflect, pray
and act in light of the deep physical and spiritual harm done by torture, and
the need to create opportunities for torture victims and society to begin to
heal the wounds that torture inflicts.
NRCAT’s Congregational Toolkit will
include bulletin inserts, prayers, litanies and a downloadable poster. The
toolkit will be available beginning April 22 on NRCAT’swebsite.
The toolkit will be sent to people
who pre-register at Torture Awareness Month.
Truth about torture
Healing can take place when the truth about torture is
known, emphasized Paz Artaza-Regan NRCAT director for Program & Outreach.
During Torture Awareness Month, NRCAT will highlight the
need to:
- Urge the Senate Intelligence Committee to release its 6,000 page report on CIA torture.
- Share the report of the Task Force on Detainee Treatment of the Constitution Project, a high level bipartisan report on U.S.-sponsored torture.
- Encourage people of faith
to learn the facts about prolonged solitary confinement in
- Urge people of faith and religious institutions to participate in NRCAT’s efforts to end the use of prolonged solitary confinement.
In addition to promoting these activities for
congregations, NRCAT is helping coordinate planning with other religious and
human-rights organizations for coalition events in June. A DC-based educational
event is being planned for the evening of June 25 and local events in several
cities are also being organized, according to Artaza-Regan.
Torture Awareness Month
NRCAT encourages you to tell your
congregations, regional bodies and other key leaders of your denomination or
religious organization to go to Torture
Awareness Month for
materials to mark the month.
NRCAT has prepared a sample newsletter blurb:
The National Religious Campaign
Against Torture (NRCAT) invites congregations to mark June as Torture Awareness
Month. In 1997, the United Nations decided to commemorate the 10th anniversary
of the enactment of the Convention Against Torture & Other Cruel, Inhuman
or Degrading Treatment or Punishment by declaring June 26 the International Day
of Support of Victims of Torture. "[NAME OF ORGANIZATION] is pleased to be
a member of NRCAT and join people of faith across the country to end torture in
U.S.
policy, practice and culture.
NRCAT will distribute a Torture
Awareness Month Toolkit on April 22 to people who pre-register now at Toolkit. It is free and you will receive it by
email. The toolkit will include bulletin inserts, prayers, litanies, and a downloadable
poster. For more information, visitNRCAT.
Action alerts
“Besides the materials for congregations for Torture
Awareness Month, NRCAT will have available action alerts aimed at Congress and
the president,” Artaza-Regan said. “We’ll also have sample Tweets and Facebook
posts for use during the month. I am happy to help prepare custom announcements
or answer any questions.”
Editor's note: The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) is a membership organization
of religious organizations committed to ending torture that is sponsored or
enabled by the United States .
Since its formation on January 16, 2006, more than 320
religious organizations have joined and over 67,000 individual people of faith
have participated in its activities. Members include representatives from the
Baha’i, Buddhist, Catholic, evangelical Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim,
Orthodox Christian, mainline Protestant, Quaker, Sikh and Unitarian
Universalist communities. Members include national denominations and faith
groups, regional organizations and congregations.
The United Methodist
General Board of Church & Society is a member. Click here for a
complete list of NRCAT members.
Related
·
Related Resolutions
On standing up for justice
We need to stand up when others tell us to sit down, and we
need to speak out when others tell us to be silent. – the Rev. Bob Edgar (1943-2013)
General Board of Church and Society
United Nations
Office
Church Center
for the United Nations
777 United Nations Plaza,Suite
8G
New York , NY 10017
Main : 212.973.1702
777 United Nations Plaza,
© 2013 The General Board of Church and Society
GOOGLE SEARCH FOR EPISCOPAL CHURCH AGAINST
TORTURE
|
First page.
1.
Member
organizations - National Religious Campaign Against Torture
www.nrcat.org/member-organizations
310+ items – NRCAT Members
Participating & Endorsing Members Adjunct ...
2.
Torture as a Moral Issue - Christ Episcopal Church, Portsmouth, NH
www.christepiscopalchurch.us/churchministries/tortureasamoralissue.html
Christ Episcopal Church Joins National Campaign Against Torture. The National Religious
Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), an interfaith
coalition of more ...
3.
Email after the 2009 Episcopal Convention | Katrina's Dream
www.katrinasdream.org/email-after-the-2009-episcopal-convention/
Jul 26, 2009 – Finally, in response to
the National Religious Campaign Against Torturethe Episcopal Church calls “upon the
President and Congress to ...
4.
News From St. Mary's Episcopal Church | The Episcopal Diocese of ...
stmaryslb.ladiocese.org/digital_faith/news/3157993
News From St. Mary's Episcopal Church. ... Event for witness against torture planned for Sunday. by
EN staff. published: February 13, 2013. The National ...
5.
[PDF]
Resolution Against Torture - UU District of Metro New York
uumetrony.org/misc/Resolution_Against_Torture.pdf
(http://www.episcopalchurch.org/1866_85628_ENG_HTM.htm).
Presbyterian Church USA
6.
Anti-torture fight unites faiths on treatment of - Episcopal Church
Sep 18, 2006 – The Episcopal Church Welcomes You ... the statement of the
National Religious Campaign Against Torture, proclaiming that
torture violates the ...
7.
Episcopal congregations join anti-torture effort - Episcopal Church
www.episcopalchurch.org/79425_97609_ENG_HTM.htm
Jun 4, 2008 – The Episcopal Church Welcomes You ... In an effort organized
by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), most of the ...
8.
National Religious Campaign Against Torture | PAX CHRISTI USA
paxchristiusa.org/tag/national-religious-campaign-against-torture/
Feb 14, 2013 – Posts about National
Religious Campaign Against Torture written by ...NRCAT members include
the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church ...
9.
Ending Torture - All Saints Church - All Saints Episcopal Church
www.allsaints-pas.org/take-action/ending-torture/
All Saints Church stands firmly against torture. We have joined forces
with the National Religious Campaign Against Torture to urge Congress to.
GOOGLE
SEARCH, first page April 28, 2013
1.
Torture Awareness
Month -
June - National Religious Campaign ...
www.nrcat.org/torture-awareness-month-june
FREE sign-up for Torture Awareness
Month 2013 Toolkit. The National Religious
Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) invites congregations to mark June as ...
2.
Torture Awareness
Month - 2013 Survey
www.surveymonkey.com/s/tam2013report
Thank you for sharing with the National
Religious Campaign Against Torture how you and your congregation/organization
will participate in Torture Awareness ...
3.
Sign
Up for Torture Awareness
Month Toolkit
- Pennsylvania ...
pachurchesadvocacy.org/weblog/?p=14474
Sign Up for Torture Awareness
Month Toolkit. Posted on April 19, 2013 by s_strauss. From the
National Religious Campaign Against Torture ...
4.
Save the Date: ISNA Announces Torture Awareness
Month in
June ...
www.isna.net/save-the-date-isna-announces-torture-awareness-month-in-...
Save the Date: ISNA Announces Torture Awareness
Month in June. (April 2, 2013) Each June, the Islamic
Society of North America joins the National Religious ...
5.
June is Torture Awareness Month | Maryknoll Office for Global ...
www.maryknollogc.org/calendar/june-torture-awareness-month
Resources for Torture Awareness
Month (June). April 10, 2013. The National Religious
Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) is preparing a toolkit for ...
6.
Torture Awareness
Month June
| gbcs
Apr 17, 2012 – Home · Faith in Action; Torture Awareness
Month June ... across the country in
marking Torture Awareness Month in June. .... April 24, 2013; 'Faith & Mental
Health' — Bulletin insert for Mental Health Awareness Month (May) ...
7.
Torture Awareness
Month 2012
- Maryknoll Affiliates
June is Torture Awareness
Month - We've received an invitation from Kathy ...Maryknoll Affiliate
Board and Regional Coordinators Meeting; May 04, 2013 ...
8.
Torture Awareness
Month -
Huffington Post
www.huffingtonpost.com/news/torture-awareness-month
February 6, 2013 .... forever, I look forward
to the day when observances of Torture Awareness
Month can speak of U.S.-sponsored torture as a relic of the
past.
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What's new
·
Congratulations to CVT nurse Erin Mehta. Mpls St. Paul Magazine named
Erin a finalist for this year’s Outstanding
Nurses Awards.
·
Executive Director Curt Goering
urgesPresident Obama to support release of Senate report on CIA torture.
·
In our St. Paul
Healing Center
·
Our 2012 annual report is now online for review.
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·
Send your message to the world on June 26. Learn how here.
·
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April 22, 2013
On Saturday, April
20, survivors from TASSC and their families joined together at our monthly
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End Torture – Welcome Survivors: TASSC June Survivor Week: June 20
– 26, 2013
April 4, 2013
This June will
mark the 16th anniversary of TASSC International’s June Survivor Week. We
invite you to participate in our activities during the...
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To our shock
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from Africa, most of them from Ethiopia
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and crossing the U.S. – Mexico
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Interrogation
techniques
Empathy and torture, The Economist
Apr 14th 2011, by R.M. | WASHINGTON , DC
·
·
EMPATHY is often
confused with sympathy in
Study after study has shown what has come to
be known as an "empathy
gap" in
people. In its simplest form, this means that when we are happy we have trouble
identifying with someone who is sad, or when we're angry we have difficulty
understanding why someone is content. Basically, our ability to empathise with
another person is dependent on the state we ourselves are in, and this has some
interesting implications for public policy.
A
recent study (published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science) by Loran Nordgren of
Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, Mary-Hunter Morris of Harvard Law School , and George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon
University
The authors note that nearly all countries
condemn torture and that most laws define torturous acts based on the severity
of the pain inflicted. For example, the UN
Convention Against Torture, of which America
The study shows, once again, that humans
aren't good at this. Participants were asked to evaluate the pain resulting
from three interrogation techniques—exposure to cold temperatures, sleep
deprivation, and solitary confinement. Some of the participants made their
judgments while experiencing a mild version of the pain associated with those
techniques, while others were placed in normal conditions. The results turned
out as expected. Those who experienced some of the same discomfort and pain as
the interrogation technique were more likely to classify that technique as
torture.
Conclusion: policymakers should be
waterboarded before debating new interrogation techniques. Or, as the authors
put it, "judgments made in a state of pain are more fully informed, and
hence more valid, than those made in the absence of pain." Perhaps, then,
it was Jay Bybee's lack of
near-death experiences that explains his memo from 2002, which concluded
that "pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the
pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of
bodily function, or death." As with Mr Bybee, our inability to appreciate
the pain caused by certain techniques means we are more likely to authorise
acts that we'd probably consider torture if they were ever performed on us.
Therefore, the study's authors suggest more restrictive legal standards be
adopted.
Might
this also hold for other policies? Certainly most politicians cannot appreciate
the pain caused by the government's alienation of homosexuals, or the distress
caused by cuts to unemployment insurance. Defunding Planned Parenthood is less
likely to trouble the rich old pols who have never had to visit one of its
clinics. Obviously lawmakers cannot experience all of the hardship that their
policies cause. And many of these measures are worthy in spite of their harsh
consequences. But having some knowledge of our own empathy gap could lead to
more balanced decisions in all areas of public policy.
INTERNATIONAL
CRIMINAL COURT
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Commentary on the Rome
Observers'
Notes, Article by Article
Otto Triffterer, Kai Ambos
On July 1, 2008, the Rome Statute of
the International Criminal Court (ICC) entered into force, enabling the ICC -
as laid down in the Preamble to the Statute - to affirm "that the most
serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go
unpunished and that their effective prosecution must be ensured by taking
measures at national level and by enhancing international cooperation." In
this second edition commentary, Otto
Triffterer and a number of eminent legal practitioners and scholars in the
field of international criminal law give a detailed article-by-article analysis
of both the Statute as well as the "Elements of Crime" and the
"Rules of Procedure and Evidence," adopted by the Assembly of States
Parties in 2002, and the "Regulations of the Court", adopted by the
Judges of the ICC in 2004. This substantially revised and significantly amended
version considers the jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunal for
the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
(ICTR); other international, "semi-international," or national
courts; and the relevant literature since the publication of the first edition in 1999. This book has
been selected in 2009 to receive the prestigious ASIL Certificate of Merit for
High Technical Craftsmanship and Utility to Practicing Lawyers and Scholars.
Flint
Taylor (People’s Law Office), Torture by Chicago Police
Global
Torture Network
Racism, Torture and Impunity in Chicago
“Jon Burge’s Racist Legacy” by Flint Taylor
In Chicago
About
the Author
Flint Taylor
Flint Taylor is one of
the lawyers for a number of men tortured by Chicago
Also by
the Author
Police Torture and the Death Penalty in Illinois: Ten Years
Later(Death
Penalty, Anti-Death Penalty Movement)
A
decade after Illinois Governor George Ryan emptied death row and pardoned four
innocent men who were tortured by police under Commander Jon Burge, the city of
Chicago
Forty
years ago, a rookie Chicago
This
blatant racism is underscored by two pending civil rights damages lawsuits,
brought under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, in which two wrongfully convicted
black men allege that their torture was the result of a racially motivated
police conspiracy. The accusations are disturbing: in Darrell Cannon’s case,
Byrne and Dignan informed him that they had “a scientific way of interrogating
niggers,” then took him to a remote area and repeatedly shocked him on the
genitals while using the racial slur so frequently, Cannon recalls thinking
“that was my name.” In Ronald Kitchen’s case, Burge and Detective Michael Kill
beat him and kicked him in the genitals while racially taunting him. When later
asked, under oath, how often he used the “n-word,” Kill proudly replied, “More
than a million times.”
Local
historians, including African-American history professor Adam Green at the University of Chicago Indiana
The
Cook County
Richard
Daley’s long-term complicity in the torture scandal is now well known. As
mayor, he scorned all opportunities to apologize and paid millions in taxpayer
dollars to continue to defend this undeniable record of racism. In 2006,
special prosecutors given $7 million in public funds to investigate Burge and
his men somehow managed never to mention the racist nature of the torture in
their 192-page report. And when Burge was finally put on trial in 2010—not for
the torture itself, but for lying about it—his lawyers kept any mention of
racism out of the record. While waiting for the jury to deliver a verdict,
Burge asked one courtroom observer whether the jury would really “believe that
bunch of niggers,” apparently referring to the courageous men who had testified
against him. One of those men was Melvin Jones, to whom Burge rhetorically
posed a similar question while torturing him with electric shocks thirty years
earlier.
Last
summer, the Chicago City Council and Mayor Rahm Emanuel signed off on a
settlement for another torture survivor, Michael Tillman, who was exonerated in
2010. It was the perfect chance for the mayor to apologize on behalf of the
city to the African-American community that helped elect him. He chose not to
do so. Instead, picking up where the Daley administration left off, the mayor
has continued to fund Burge’s defense, paying private lawyers a total of $3.8
million to date in the Cannon and Kitchen cases alone. Incredibly, in the
Kitchen case, the attorneys the Emanuel administration has chosen to represent
Burge are the very same lawyers a federal judge found to have practiced
“deliberate,” “purposeful” and “invidious,” “racially based” discrimination
during jury selection in another wrongful conviction case.
Burge
is now serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence in federal prison, where he
continues to receive his pension on the taxpayers’ dime. None of his
co-conspirators have been held accountable. At the same time, scores of torture
survivors remain locked behind bars, serving significantly longer sentences for
crimes to which they confessed while being brutalized. If Black History Month
is to mean anything in a city like Chicago
In “Chicago's Dark Legacy of Police Torture” (July
19, 2012), Liliana Segura reported that a play by the journalist who broke the
story of the abuse under Police Commander Jon Burge will not let us forget,
despite the state’s shutdown of an investigatory commission.
US TORTURE REGIME
Tue Mar 12, 2013 12:14 pm
(PDT) . Posted by:
"Dave Culver"
mplsstreetrwy, VETERANS FOR PEACE
- When it comes
to torture in the post 9/11 era, the record of the United
States is so appalling that one must question our claimed abhorrence of the
barbarism of other nations.
* Extraordinary Rendition Report Finds More Than 50 Nations Involved In Global Torture Scheme
Robert Scheer, Truthdig
Feb 7, 2013 | The title, ³Globalizing Torture,² says it all. This meticulous
accounting of the network of torture chambers that the
The report is a product of the Open Society Foundations, funded by
international financier and philanthropist George Soros, who, as a young Jew, suffered through the Nazi occupation of
Full story... http://evergreenedigest.org/america¹s-global-torture-network
Related:
Extraordinary Rendition Report Finds More Than 50 Nations Involved In Global Torture Scheme, Joshua Hersh, Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/extraordinary-rendition-torture-report_n_2617809.html?1360037654?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=020513&utm_medium=email&utm_content=FeatureTitle&;utm_term=Daily%20Brief02/04/2013 | The U.S. counterterrorism practice known as extraordinary rendition, in which suspects were quietly moved to secret prisons abroad and often tortured, involved the participation of more than 50 nations, according to a new report released Tuesday by the Open Society Foundations.
BOOKS ON US
These books are wholly about US state torture. *Asterisk indicates books I own and are
available for loan.
Levinson (2004)
Greenberg (2005)
McCoy (2006)
*Grey (2006)
*Begg (2006)
*Sands (2008)
*Ratner (2008)
*Mayer (2008)
Matthews (2008)
Phillips (2011)
Levinson, Torture : A Collection
A Collection (Google
eBook)
Oxford University Press, Oct 28, 2004 - Political Science - 328
pages
Torture is
perhaps the most unequivocally banned practice in the world today. Yet within
six weeks after September 11, articles began appearing suggesting that torture
might be "required" in order to interrogate suspected terrorists
about future possibilities of violence. The United States United States United States
THE TORTURE DEBATE IN
AMERICA
Edited by Karen J. Greenberg.
414 pp.Cambridge
Edited by Karen J. Greenberg.
414 pp.
A
QUESTION OF TORTURE
CIA
Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror by Alfred McCoy. American Empire Project.
AMetropolitan/Holt, 2006.
“An indispensable and riveting account”
of the CIA’s development and use of torture, from the cold war to Abu Ghraib
and beyond (Naomi Klein, The
Nation)
In this revelatory account of the CIA’s fifty-year effort to develop new forms of torture, historian Alfred W. McCoy locates the deep roots of recent scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo in a long-standing, covert program of interrogation. A Question of Torture investigates the CIA’s practice of “sensory deprivation” and “self-inflicted pain,” in which techniques including isolation, hooding, hours of standing, and manipulation of time assault the victim’s senses and destroy the basis of personal identity. McCoy traces the spread of these practices across the globe, from
Scrupulously documented and grippingly
told, A Question of Torture is a devastating indictment of inhumane practices that have damaged America
CONNECT WITH THE
AUTHOR
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Chapter One
Two Thousand Years of Torture
In April 2004, the American public was stunned when CBS Television broadcast photographs from Abu Ghraib prison, showing Iraqis naked, hooded, and contorted in humiliating positions while U.S. soldiers stood over them, smiling.1 As the scandal grabbed headlines around the globe, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld assured Congress that the abuse was “perpetrated by a small number of U.S. military,” whom columnist William Safire branded as “creeps.”2 Other commentators—citing the famous Stanford prison experiment in which ordinary students
Two Thousand Years of Torture
In April 2004, the American public was stunned when CBS Television broadcast photographs from Abu Ghraib prison, showing Iraqis naked, hooded, and contorted in humiliating positions while U.S. soldiers stood over them, smiling.1 As the scandal grabbed headlines around the globe, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld assured Congress that the abuse was “perpetrated by a small number of U.S. military,” whom columnist William Safire branded as “creeps.”2 Other commentators—citing the famous Stanford prison experiment in which ordinary students
This book really
spells it all out for ya. I just read it over the past two days and it's
informative and enraging, but also somewhat graphic. I suppose that's to be
expected though.
I didn't realize that the brand of torture used today that's so invasive and so crippling was developed 50 years ag... ...more
I didn't realize that the brand of torture used today that's so invasive and so crippling was developed 50 years ag... ...more
Here is one good
reason to read this book:
[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20357580/]
I do not think that Colonel Jacobs intended to make any kind of a comment on torture. But the paranoia he claims is helpful for our national defense is the same paranoia that allowed for the creation of torture progr... ...more
[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20357580/]
I do not think that Colonel Jacobs intended to make any kind of a comment on torture. But the paranoia he claims is helpful for our national defense is the same paranoia that allowed for the creation of torture progr... ...more
I knew bad things
were happening in our name....McCoy does not let the reader down by leaving out
details. I had to put the book down a few times in order to recollect myself.
And I was JUST READING what was done during torture interrogations. McCoy
brings up the great point about top-bottom resp... ...more
This documents how
the U.S. and the American Psychological Association conspired to invent the
first new form of torture known to mankind in the past 1000 years, and how any
other "political view" is either tacitly irrational at best or
maliciously culpable at worst. ...more
GHOST
PLANE
The True Story of the CIA
Rendition and Torture Program.
Stephen
Grey. St. Martin's Griffin
On June 10th, 2002, Attorney General
John Ashcroft announced that the US United States Karachi Airport
before Padilla’s arrest on April 10, 2002, Mohamed was put on a luxury
executive jet and flown to an interrogation center in Morocco Clinton
administration, but taking a decidedly more voracious turn after 9/11, the
rendition system has seen the transfer of more than 1000 prisoners into jails
stretching from Guantanamo
CONNECT WITH THE
AUTHOR
OFFICIAL SITES
Jump to:
·
Reviews
BOOK EXCERPTS
Read an Excerpt
Ghost Plane
PART ONEDESTINATION TORTURE1THE MEN IN BLACKFLIGHTLOGRegistration: N379P Type: Gulfstream VOperator: Premier Executive Transport, MassachusettsDate 17 December 2001 Flight plan:Johnston
County , North Carolina Dulles , Washington ,
DCDulles , Washington Cairo , Egypt (arr. 3:19 P.M.) 18 December Cairo , Egypt Stockholm ,
Sweden Stockholm , Sweden Cairo , Egypt STOCKHOLM , SWEDEN
PART ONEDESTINATION TORTURE1THE MEN IN BLACKFLIGHTLOGRegistration: N379P Type: Gulfstream VOperator: Premier Executive Transport, MassachusettsDate 17 December 2001 Flight plan:
REVIEWS
Praise for Ghost
Plane
"Powerful and
damning...[Grey] is a prodigious digger and more than a single-minded
muckraker. His attention to detail can be chilling."
--The Washington
"An explosive new
book provides a rare glimpse into the full extent of the Agency’s controversial
terror renditions."
--Time
"It's not often an
author gets an unsolicited pre-publication stamp of legitimacy from the U.S.
president, much less one who reports on human-rights issues...disturbing in the
depth and detail of its evidence."
--Kirkus Reviews,
(Starred)
Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantánamo, Bagram,
and Kandahar
NOW IN PAPERBACK THE “SHOCKING FIRSTHAND
ACCOUNT” (CHICAGO
The first authentic firsthand portrait of a detainee’s life at Guantánamo
. . . essential reading. [Moazzam Begg] describes his incarceration with
restraint, precision, and sometimes withering humor.
THENEW YORK
THE
When Enemy
Combatant was first
published in the United
States
Writing in the Washington
Post Book World, Jane Mayer described Enemy
Combatant as
“fascinating . . . Begg provides some ideological counterweight to the
one–sided spin coming from the U.S.
Recommended by
the Financial Times and Tikkun magazine
and a ColorLines Editors’ Pick of Post–9/11 Books, Enemy Combatant is “a forcefully told, up-to-the-minute political story . . .
necessary reading for people on all sides of the issue” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Moazzam Begg was born and raised in
The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld
A Prosecution by Book by MICHAEL RATNER. 2008.
THE EVIDENCE
THAT THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS GUILTY OF WAR CRIMES, PRESENTED IN THE FORM OF A COURT CASE BROUGHT
BY ONE OF THE PREMIER CIVIL RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES
He won’t be
tried in the United States
—
—
The Case Against Donald Rumsfeld lays out the evidence that high-level officials of the Bush
administration ordered, authorized, implemented, and permitted war crimes,
in particular the crimes of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading
treatment.
Using primary source documents ranging from Rumsfeld’s “techniques chart” and Iraqi plaintiffs’ statements to the testimony of whistleblowers and key pieces of reportage, the book sets forth evidence of a torture program that took place throughout the world: in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo, secret CIA prisons, and other places unknown.
The accused are accorded a defense drawn from their memos and public statements. Readers are allowed to judge whether the Bush administration has engaged in torture and whom among the administration to hold responsible.
Reminiscent of Christopher Hitchens’s bestselling The Trial of Henry Kissinger, The Case Against Donald Rumsfeld constitutes one of the only attempts to hold high-ranking Bush administration officials criminally responsible for their actions.
Using primary source documents ranging from Rumsfeld’s “techniques chart” and Iraqi plaintiffs’ statements to the testimony of whistleblowers and key pieces of reportage, the book sets forth evidence of a torture program that took place throughout the world: in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo, secret CIA prisons, and other places unknown.
The accused are accorded a defense drawn from their memos and public statements. Readers are allowed to judge whether the Bush administration has engaged in torture and whom among the administration to hold responsible.
Reminiscent of Christopher Hitchens’s bestselling The Trial of Henry Kissinger, The Case Against Donald Rumsfeld constitutes one of the only attempts to hold high-ranking Bush administration officials criminally responsible for their actions.
Michael Ratner is the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which, along with other human rights groups, filed a war crimes lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, and other
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Copyright © 2013 The New Press
38 Greene Street New York ,
NY 10013
Copyright © 2013 The New Press
Six Questions for Jane Mayer, Author of The Dark Side
Share
S
In a series of gripping articles, Jane
Mayer has chronicled the Bush Administration’s grim and furtive dealings with
torture and has exposed both the individuals within the administration who
“made it happen” (a group that starts with Vice President Cheney and his chief
of staff, David Addington), the team of psychologists who put together the
palette of techniques, and the Fox television program “24,” which was developed
to help sell it to the American public. In a new book, The Dark Side, Mayer puts together the major
conclusions from her articles and fills in a number of important gaps. Most
significantly, we learn the details on the torture techniques and the drama
behind the fierce and lingering struggle within the administration over
torture, and we learn that many within the administration recognized the
potential criminal accountability they faced over these torture tactics and
moved frantically to protect themselves from possible future prosecution. I put
six questions to Jane Mayer on the subject of her book, The Dark Side.
1. Reports have circulated for some time
that the Red Cross examination of the CIA’s highly coercive interrogation
regime—what President Bush likes to call “The Program”—concluded that it was
“tantamount to torture.” But you write that the Red Cross categorically described the program as
“torture.” The Red Cross is notoriously tight-lipped about its reports, and you
do not cite your source or even note that you examined the report. Do you
believe that the threat of criminal prosecution drove the Bush Administration’s
crafting of the Military Commissions Act?
Whether
anyone involved in the Bush Administration’s interrogation and detention
program will be prosecuted is as much a political question as a legal one.
Right now in Italy America Washington , D.C.
Much will
depend on who the next president and attorney general are, and how much
pressure they feel. At the very least, as a journalist, I hope that the records
are opened, and all the legal memos released (several crucial ones remain
secret) so that the country can learn its own history here. My guess is that
the real accountability for President Bush will be in the history books, not
the court room.
As for the
damning Red Cross report, as I make clear to readers in the book, I have not
personally read it, because as you say, it is very closely held. I have instead
relied upon multiple sources who are knowledgeable about it. Adding to the
confidence I have concerning it is the specificity, and consistency of the
details, as well as confirmation I was able to get from additional independent
sources familiar with the treatment of the detainees. For instance, Abu Zubayda
claimed to have been locked in a tiny cage, in which he had to remain doubled
up for long periods of time, prior to the period when he was waterboarded. This
account—which he gave to the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC)—was confirmed to me independently by a former CIA officer familiar with
his interrogation. It also is consistent with the chronology of legal actions
taken inside the Justice Department. Incidentally, being caged only made him
angry, according to the former CIA source. The sadistic treatment of Abu
Zubayda also seems to have affected him psychologically in bizarre ways. Two
sources said that he became sexually obsessive, masturbating so much his
captors feared he would injure himself. One described him as acting “like a
monkey at the zoo.” A physician was called in for consultation—one of many
instances in which health professionals have played truly disturbing roles in
this program. (I personally feel that the medical and psychological
professionals who have used their skills to further a program designed to cause
pain and suffering should be a high priority in terms of accountability. It has
long been a ghastly aspect of torture, worldwide, that doctors and other
medical professionals often assist. The licensing boards and professional
societies are worthless, in my view, if they don’t demand serious
investigations of such unethical uses of science.)
The reaction of top Bush Administration
officials to the ICRC report, from what I can gather, has been defensive and
dismissive. They reject the ICRC’s legal analysis as incorrect. Yet my
reporting shows that inside the White House there has been growing fear of
criminal prosecution, particularly after the Supreme Court ruled in the Hamdan case that the Geneva Conventions
applied to the treatment of the detainees. This nervousness resulted in the
successful effort to add retroactive immunity to the Military Commission Act.
Cheney personally spearheaded this effort. Fear of the consequences of exposure
also weighed heavily in discussions about whether to shut the CIA program down.
In White House meetings, Cheney warned that if they transferred the CIA’s prisoners
to Guantanamo
2. You have patiently traced the torture
techniques used by the CIA back to two psychologists, James Mitchell and John
Bruce Jessen—you describe them as ”good looking, clean-cut, polite Mormons”—who
reverse-engineered their techniques out of the SERE (survival, evasion,
resistance, escape) program used to train U.S. pilots in self-defense. In Dark Side, you identify an approach called
“Learned Helplessness” as the model they used, and you note that its author,
Prof. Martin Seligman, made a visit to the SERE school and spoke with Mitchell
and Jessen as the program was being formed. Seligman is a former president of
the American Psychological Association (APA), which is the sole association of
health care professionals to buck condemnation of “The Program” and to resist
calls that its members not be involved in it. Do you believe that Seligman’s
proximity to the torture program helps explain the difficulty that APA has in
rejecting it?
Central… was the work of one of America University of Pennsylvania San Diego
—From The Dark Side
—From The Dark Side
It was
completely fascinating to me to learn that Martin Seligman, one of the most
esteemed psychologists in the country, a former head of the APA, was connected
to the CIA after 9/11. Seligman is known for work he did back in the 1960’s at
the University of
Pennsylvania SERE
School in San Diego U.S.
But, according to numerous sources (who
are quoted on the record in The
Dark Side), Seligman’s theories were cited admiringly soon after by James
Mitchell, the psychologist whom the CIA put on contract to advise on its secret
interrogation protocol. Eyewitnesses describe Mitchell as quoting Seligman’s
theories of “Learned Helplessness” as useful in showing how to break the
resistance of detainees’ to interrogation. One source recounts Mitchell
specifically touting the experiments done on dogs in the context of how to
treat detainees.
Through a
lawyer, Mitchell has denied that these theories guided his and the CIA’s use of
such coercive measures as close confinement, psychological manipulation, and
calibrated pain. But Mitchell confirmed, when I spoke to him, that he admired
Seligman’s work.
Among the
U.S. Government’s interrogation techniques that seem to echo these experiments
are the uses of random maltreatment—taking away any predictable schedule from
detainees so that they have no idea what time it is, no sense of when meals are
delivered, no idea if it is day or night, as well as manipulating temperature,
sound, sleep, and using isolation, all of which are meant to cause psychic
stress that would erode a prisoner’s resistance to being interrogated and foster
total dependency upon an interrogator. Perhaps just coincidentally, the
detainees have described other ways in which they were treated like dogs—the
use of dog cages and of a collar and leash.
3. This week Scott McClellan, Bush’s
press secretary, so famous for pronouncing that “we do not torture,” issued a
retraction in an interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper, admitting that he could not
“honestly deny” the Administration’s acceptance and use of torture techniques.
President Bush has specifically defended the program with a series of claims
concerning Abu Zubaydah. Do his claims stand up to scrutiny?
President
Bush has repeatedly defended the need to use “enhanced interrogations” in order
to get life-saving intelligence, and has pointed to Abu Zubayda’s case as an
example. I went over the claims in this case carefully, and found them highly
dubious. Bush claimed three breakthroughs from coercive tactics used on Abu
Zubayda.
First, he
said, Abu Zubayda told the CIA that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the terrorist
behind the 9/11 plot. But, if one reads the 9/11 Commission’s detailed report
on what information had reached the CIA prior to the 9/11 attacks, it is clear
that the CIA already had this information.
Second,
President Bush said that Abu Zubayda revealed that an American-born Al Qaeda
figure was on his way to attack America
Third, the
President said Abu Zubayda gave up information leading to the capture of
another top Al Qaeda terrorist, Ramsi Bin Al Shibh. But circumstantial
evidence, as well as previously published accounts, suggest that Bin Al Shibh
was more likely located by the United
States
Meanwhile,
although President Bush has argued that “enhanced” interrogation had led to
numerous breakthroughs he has never publicly acknowledged the false and
fabricated intelligence it has yielded, too. One former top CIA official told
me, “Ninety percent of what we got was crap.”
4. You spend more time showing how the
torture process compromised lawyers than how it compromised health care
professionals. One of the more revealing cases involves Jessica Radack, a young
career attorney in the Justice Department’s Honors Program, who dispensed
ethics advice concerning plans for the interrogation of John Walker Lindh. It
seems that her advice was contrary to the ethical views of senior Bush
Administration lawyers, and you note that when a federal judge demanded to see
the internal Department of Justice records relating to the matter, all of
Radack’s emails, including the advice actually dispensed, had been deleted and
the hard copies removed, and none of this was furnished to the court. Did the
Justice Department ever undertake an internal probe into the obstruction?
Radack was
in some ways an early guinea pig showing how high the costs were for
anyone—including administration lawyers—who dissented from the Bush
Administration’s determination to rewrite the rules for the treatment of
terrorists. Her job in the department was to give ethical advice. She was asked
whether an FBI officer in Afghanistan
To her
amazement, the FBI agent went ahead and did so anyway, and then the prosecutors
in the Justice Department proceeded to use Lindh’s statements against him in their
criminal prosecution. She told me, “It was like ethics were out the window.
After 9/11, it was, like, ‘anything goes’ in the name of terrorism. It felt
like they’d made up their minds to get him, regardless of the process.” Radack
believed that the role of the ethics office was to “rein in the cowboys” whose
zeal to stop criminals sometimes led them to overstep legal boundaries. “But
after 9/11 we were bending ethics to fit our needs,” she said. “Something wrong
was going on. It wasn’t just fishy—it stank.”
What
happened next was truly scary. She tried to ensure that a judge overseeing the
case, who asked for all information regarding the Department’s handling of
Lindh, was given the full record, including her own contrary advice. But
instead, she said she found that her superiors at Justice sent the judge only
selective portions of the record, excluding her contrary opinion. Her case
files, she said, were tampered with, and documents missing. Among the senior
Justice Department officials who were sent her files, she said was Alice
Fisher, a deputy to Michael Chertoff who followed him as head of the
Department’s Criminal Division.
Michael Chertoff, who was the head of the Justice Department’s
Criminal Division when Zubayda was caught, downplayed his role… But according
to a top CIA official directly involved at the time, as well as a former top
Justice Department official involved in a secondhand war, Chertoff was
consulted extensively about detainees’ treatment. The former senior Agency
official said with disgust, “Chertoff, and Gonzales, and all these other guys
act like they know nothing about this now, but they were all in the room.
They’re moonwalking backwards so fast, Michael Jackson would be proud of them.”
—From The Dark Side
—From The Dark Side
Radack
complained about what she thought were serious omissions of the record being
withheld from the judge. Within weeks of disagreeing with the top Justice
Department officials, Radack went from having been singled out for praise, to
being hounded out of the department. Radack got a job in private practice, but
after her story appeared in Newsweek, with copies of some of her emails, the
Justice Department opened a leak investigation. The U.S. Attorney then opened a
criminal investigation. Radack has since become an advocate for
whistle-blowers’ rights. But the episode served as a warning to anyone in the
government who stood in the way of the so-called, “New Paradigm.” It is unclear
to me what sort of investigation, if any, there has been of this case,
including of the potential obstruction.
5. In a recent speech in Boston, Attorney
General Mukasey tried to excuse John Yoo, David Addington, and other key
players in the Bush Administration torture team by arguing they were operating
under intense pressure and were motivated only by a desire to protect the
country. But isn’t it obvious that the “War Council” seized upon 9/11 and the
war mood that prevailed in its wake as an opportunity to test-pilot their
constitutionally-untenable views of presidential power and authority and the
irrelevance of international law?
After
interviewing hundreds of sources in and around the Bush White House, I think it
is clear that many of the legal steps taken by the so-called “War Council” were
less a “New Paradigm,” as Alberto Gonzales dubbed it, than an old political
wish list, consisting of grievances that Cheney and his legal adviser, David
Addington, had been compiling for decades. Cheney in particular had been
chafing at the post-Watergate reforms, and had longed to restore the executive
branch powers Nixon had assumed, constituting what historian Arthur Schlesinger
Jr. called “the Imperial Presidency.”
Before
September 11, 2001, these extreme political positions would not have stood a
change of being instituted—they would never have survived democratic scrutiny.
But by September 12, 2001, President Bush and Vice President Cheney were
extraordinarily empowered. Political opposition evaporated as critics feared
being labeled anti-patriotic or worse. It’s a familiar dynamic in American
history—not unlike the shameful abridgement of civil liberties represented by
FDR’s internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry. One of the strongest quotes
in the book, I think, comes from Philip Zelikow, the former executive director
of the 9/11 Commission, former counselor to Secretary of State Condi Rice, and
a historian who teaches at the University
of Virginia America
6. One of the lingering mysteries in Washington
The fact
that John Helgerson—the inspector general at the CIA who is supposed to act as
an independent watchdog—was called in by Cheney to discuss his tough report in
2004 is definitely surprising news. Asked for comment, Helgerson through the
CIA spokesman denied he felt pressured in any way by Cheney. But others I
interviewed have described the IG’s office to me as extremely politicized. They
have also suggested it was very unusual that the Vice President interjected
himself into the work of the IG. Fred Hitz, who had the same post in previous
administrations, told me that no vice president had ever met with him. He
thought it highly unusual.
Helgerson’s
2004 report had been described to me as very disturbing, the size of two Manhattan
We know
that in addition, the IG investigated several alleged homicides involving CIA
detainees, and that Helgerson’s office forwarded several to the Justice
Department for further consideration and potential prosecution. The only case
so far that has been prosecuted in the criminal courts is that involving David
Passaro—a low-level CIA contractor, not a full official in the Agency. Why have
there been no charges filed? It’s a question to which one would expect that
Congress and the public would like some answers. Sources suggested to me that,
as you imply, it is highly uncomfortable for top Bush Justice officials to
prosecute these cases because, inevitably, it means shining a light on what
those same officials sanctioned. Chertoff’s role in particular seems ripe for
investigation. Alice Fisher’s role also seems of interest. Much remains to be
uncovered.
|
||
alt=More v:shapes="_x0000_i1102">
n 2002 Donald Rumsfeld signed a memo
that authorized the controversial interrogation practices that later
migrated to Guantanamo , Afghanistan
PHILIPPE SANDS
AND TORTURE TEAM ARE MAKING HISTORY.
The New Yorker, April 13, 2009
Andrew Sullivan's blog The Daily Dish;
April 6, 2009
Sands is quoted in the New York Times, Nov. 5, 2008
TORTURE TEAM covered in October 15, 2008’s New York Times:
PBS-sponsored documentary “Torturing Democracy” cancels airdate and reschedules
Nation-wide airing for January 21, 2009—one day into the new administration
PBS-sponsored documentary “Torturing Democracy” cancels airdate and reschedules
Nation-wide airing for January 21, 2009—one day into the new administration
October 16, 2008, New York’s Channel 13 aired the
documentary, along with the supplementary panel discussion
with Philippe Sands, Alan Dershowitz, and Carol Rosenberg
Sands is interviewed in the
September/October 2008 issue of Mother Jones:
Sands was featured in Nat Hentoff’s
article in The Village Voice; Sept. 30, 2008
Frank Rich’s discussing TORTURE
TEAM
July 13, 2008 New York Times
July 13, 2008 New York Times
Sands’s latest article
on Slate.com
SANDS’S June 19,
2008 interview on NPR’S “FRESH AIR!”
Senator Feinstein chaired a
Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing June 10, 2008 on the origins of
the Administration's torture policies. Among the witnesses was Philippe Sands.
Republican leaders attempted to block Sands's testimony through
extraordinary maneuvers on the floor of the Senate. Here's a report on the scene that
resulted: Senate Conservatives Uses Rare Maneuver To
Try To Close Down A Hearing On Torture
Review of TORTURE TEAM in the
May 31, 2008 Financial Times
Nina Totenberg’s review of
TORTURE TEAM May 24, 2008 on NPR
Huffington Post piece on Sands' work and TORTURE
TEAM, May 13, 2008:
Sands’s interview on Bill
Moyers Journal (May 9, and May 11,
2008):
Video of Philippe
Sands on The New America Foundation,
May 7, 2008 event:
May 8, 2008, The
Washington Post ran an article discussing (and
quoting)
Sands and Torture Team
Sands and Torture Team
May 8, 2008, Sands was
interviewed on Democracy Now!
Airing nationally on over 700 stations
Airing nationally on over 700 stations
Sands testified before the
House Judiciary Committee hearing, at 10:00 am on May 6, 2008, regarding the revelations in
TORTURE TEAM. Watch it on C-SPAN
The Times of London
The Absolute Violation: Why
Torture Must Be Prohibited
MQUP, Jul
24, 2008.
238 pages
Richard Matthews challenges the
increasing acceptability of state-sponsored torture interrogation, repudiating
any possible justifications. He confronts its various supporters - ticking time
bomb and tragic choice theorists, utilitarians, legal scholars - and draws from
philosophy, medicine, psychiatry, survivor and torturer narratives, history,
feminism, the experience of working intelligence officials, anthropology, and
game theory to illustrate that no moral
justification for torture can be supported.
None of Us Were Like This Before: American Soldiers and
Torture by Joshua E. S. Phillips.
Alibris, 2011??
Based on firsthand reporting from Iraq as
well as interviews with soldiers and their families, this work illustrates that
the damaging legacy of torture is not only borne by the detainees, but also by
American soldiers and the country to which they've returned.
RELATED
Some of these books
are mainly about US state torture and might be placed in the list above. The others are partly about US torture or
mainly discuss torture as an ethical issue or torture around the world.
Edward
Peters. Torture. 1996.
Conroy. Unspeakable
Acts. 2001.
*Seymour
*Ann
Fagan Ginger, ed. (Meiklejohn Civil
Liberties Institute). Challenging U.S.
Torture: Religious Ethics and National Security
by John Perry.
Novalis, 2005.
Kenneth
Roth and Minky Worden, eds. Torture: Does It Make Us Safer? Is It Ever OK?: A Human Rights Perspective. New Press, 2005.
Bob
Brecher. Torture and the Ticking Bomb.
2006.
William
Schulz. The Phenomenon of Torture. 2007.
Review
of Greenberg and Roth & Worden.
Torture by Edward
Peters. Expanded edition 1996 (1986).
"In the restrained prose of Torture lies a passionate message about the
intentional violation of the bodies of human beings, in our time and in the
past."—New York Times"Torture goes beyond the solemn declaration of evil's banality. It offers an explanation of how institutional characteristics—even more strongly than personal ones like sadism or psychosis—produce that evil. It contributes to our understanding—if we dare call it that—of how creatures who begin by crying for their mothers can graduate to bashing in heads."—
"A masterful analytical history of torture's emergence in Roman law, its insertion into the medieval law of proof, its gradual abolition after 1750, and its dreadful recrudescence in modern times. The book is an exemplary application of historical scholarship to an issue where emotions tend to run ahead of reason."—Times Literary Supplement
"Torture has ceased to exist," Victor Hugo claimed, with some justification, in 1874. Yet more than a century later, torture is used routinely in one out of every three countries. This book is about torture in Western society from earliest times to the present.
A landmark study since its original publication a decade ago, Torture is now available in an expanded and updated paperback edition. Included for the first time is a broad and disturbing selection of documents charting the historical practice of torture from the ancient Romans to the Khmer Rouge.
Edward Peters is Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at the
Unspeakable
Acts, Ordinary People
The Dynamics of Torture.
John Conroy (Author)
Not available in British
Commonwealth , Ireland ,
South Africa ; Available in United States , Canada ,
Philippines
Paperback, 315 pages
Unspeakable
Acts, Ordinary People is a riveting book that exposes
the potential in each of us for acting unspeakably. John Conroy sits down with
torturers from several nations and comes to understand their motivations. His
compelling narrative has the tension of a novel. He takes us into a Chicago police station, two villages in the West Bank, and
a secret British interrogation center in Northern Ireland
Seymour
Publisher,
2nd ed. 2005: Since September 11, 2001, Seymour M. Hersh has riveted readers -- and outraged
the Bush Administration -- with his explosive stories in The
New Yorker, including his headline-making pieces on the abuse of
prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Now, Hersh brings together what he has learned, along
with new reporting, to answer the critical question of the last four years: How
did America get from the
clear morning when two planes crashed into the World
Trade Center
to a divisive and dirty war in Iraq
In Chain of Command, Hersh takes
an unflinching look behind the public story of the war on terror and into the
lies and obsessions that led America
into Iraq America America
ANNALS OF NATIONAL SECURITY
CHAIN OF COMMAND
How
the Department of Defense mishandled the disaster at Abu Ghraib BY SEYMOUR M. HERSH, The New Yorker, MAY 17, 2004.
·
PRINT
·
KEYWORDS
In his devastating report on conditions at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq
Taguba’s
report was triggered by a soldier’s decision to give Army investigators
photographs of the sexual humiliation and abuse of prisoners. These images were
first broadcast on “60 Minutes II” on April 28th. Seven enlisted members of the
372nd Military Police Company of the 320th Military Police Battalion, an Army
reserve unit, are now facing prosecution, and six officers have been
reprimanded. Last week, I was given another set of digital photographs, which
had been in the possession of a member of the 320th. According to a time
sequence embedded in the digital files, the photographs were taken by two
different cameras over a twelve-minute period on the evening of December 12,
2003, two months after the military-police unit was assigned to Abu Ghraib.
One of
the new photographs shows a young soldier, wearing a dark jacket over his
uniform and smiling into the camera, in the corridor of the jail. In the
background are two Army dog handlers, in full camouflage combat gear, restraining
two German shepherds. The dogs are barking at a man who is partly obscured from
the camera’s view by the smiling soldier. Another image shows that the man, an
Iraqi prisoner, is naked. His hands are clasped behind his neck and he is
leaning against the door to a cell, contorted with terror, as the dogs bark a
few feet away. Other photographs show the dogs straining at their leashes and
snarling at the prisoner. In another, taken a few minutes later, the Iraqi is
lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a soldier sitting on top of him,
knee pressed to his back. Blood is streaming from the inmate’s leg. Another
photograph is a closeup of the naked prisoner, from his waist to his ankles,
lying on the floor. On his right thigh is what appears to be a bite or a deep
scratch. There is another, larger wound on his left leg, covered in blood.
·
There is at least
one other report of violence involving American soldiers, an Army dog, and
Iraqi citizens, but it was not in Abu Ghraib. Cliff Kindy, a member of the
Christian Peacemaker Teams, a church-supported group that has been monitoring
the situation in Iraq, told me that last November G.I.s unleashed a military
dog on a group of civilians during a sweep in Ramadi, about thirty miles west
of Fallujah. At first, Kindy told me, “the soldiers went house to house, and
arrested thirty people.” (One of them was Saad al-Khashab, an attorney with the
Organization for Human Rights in Iraq
When I
asked retired Major General Charles Hines, who was commandant of the Army’s
military-police school during a twenty-eight-year career in military law enforcement,
about these reports, he reacted with dismay. “Turning a dog loose in a room of
people? Loosing dogs on prisoners of war? I’ve never heard of it, and it would
never have been tolerated,” Hines said. He added that trained police dogs have
long been a presence in Army prisons, where they are used for sniffing out
narcotics and other contraband among the prisoners, and, occasionally, for riot
control. But, he said, “I would never have authorized it for interrogating or
coercing prisoners. If I had, I’d have been put in jail or kicked out of the
Army.”
The International Red Cross and human-rights groups have repeatedly
complained during the past year about the American military’s treatment of
Iraqi prisoners, with little success. In one case, disclosed last month by the Denver
Army
commanders had a different response when, on January 13th, a military policeman
presented Army investigators with a computer disk containing graphic
photographs. The images were being swapped from computer to computer throughout
the 320th Battalion. The Army’s senior commanders immediately understood they
had a problem—a looming political and public-relations disaster that would
taint America
One of
the first soldiers to be questioned was Ivan Frederick, the M.P. sergeant who
was in charge of a night shift at Abu Ghraib. Frederick, who has been ordered
to face a court-martial in Iraq Frederick Frederick
Ann
Fagan Ginger, ed. (Meiklejohn Civil
Liberties Institute). Challenging U.S.
$
Activists,
lawyers, students, teachers, union members, government officials, and judges
will welcome this thoroughly researched, comprehensive examination of human
rights violations in the wake of 9/11. Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute
Executive Director Ann Fagan Ginger has created an accessible, well-organized
reference work divided into six parts:
§
Part
I, “The Mobilization of Shame,” describes executive orders and new laws
violating basic rights, and citizen reactions, to add up the real score in the
War on Terrorism.
§
Part
II, “Where the People and their Lawyers Can Go to Redress Grievances,” spells
out the complaint process through the little known Office of Inspector General,
and in U.S.
§
Part
III, “What the Government Is Committed and Required To Do in the United Nations
and the Organization of American States,” describes the reporting process and
how it has brought about improvements in many countries, such as new treatments
for AIDS.
§
Part
IV, “Report on Human Rights Violations,” forms the bulk of the book. It
describes all the relevant facts in 184 reports on 30 types of violations.
Activists will find all the facts they need and lawyers can reference the
specific laws being violated by government officials, military personnel,
agents, and contractors.
§
Part
V, “Text of Petitions, Resolutions, Ordinances,” spells out what has been
proposed, and adopted, since 9/11 to stop violations.
§
Part
VI, “Text of Laws Violated and Ignored,” provides the language of the U.S.
Constitution, Bill Of Rights, Articles in the UN Charter, the Convention
Against Torture, the Geneva Conventions, and other human rights and
international law treaties the U.S. has ratified or signed.
This
is an indispensable tool for citizens and lawyers defending civil liberties in
the era of the Patriot Act and the War on Terrorism.
“Activists, politicians, students and human rights researchers alike will welcome [this] important analysis…a hard-hitting, factual account which describes executive orders, new laws, new complaint processes and new reporting processes involved in civil rights since 9/11, drawing some important connections between civil liberties and the legal process. Any defending civil liberties must have [this book] close at hand: it not only documents changes and events, but packs in reports on 30 types of violations and refers to specific laws being violated by the government, military and their agents.”
“Activists, politicians, students and human rights researchers alike will welcome [this] important analysis…a hard-hitting, factual account which describes executive orders, new laws, new complaint processes and new reporting processes involved in civil rights since 9/11, drawing some important connections between civil liberties and the legal process. Any defending civil liberties must have [this book] close at hand: it not only documents changes and events, but packs in reports on 30 types of violations and refers to specific laws being violated by the government, military and their agents.”
- Bookwatch, Midwest Book Review
"This
report is a veritable roadmap to the countless ways in which the Bush
administration has used lies and the politics of fear to assault the Bill of
Rights, trash human rights, and launch a phony 'War on Terror.'... demands to
be read by every concerned citizen."
John Conyers Jr., Ranking Member, Judiciary Committee
US House of Representatives
US House of Representatives
“This compendium is important in multiple ways. It extensively documents abuses that merit the careful attention of citizens concerned with freedom, human rights, and democracy. It reviews the documentary and legal basis essential for confronting these crucial issues. And it provides concrete suggestions about actions that can be taken to preserve and extend the legacy of rights that have been won over centuries of struggle. These contributions are of great value to concerned citizens.”
Noam Chomsky
Institute Professor, MIT
Institute Professor, MIT
“This is an immensely valuable book for all Americans concerned about their constitutional rights in the midst of a supposed 'war on terrorism.' Ann Fagan Ginger has pulled together a shocking compendium of human rights violations, and at the same time has given us practical tools, legal and political, for defending our liberties.”
Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus of Political Science
Boston University
Book Binding: Paperback
Pages: 471
Pages: 471
ISBN: 1-59102-279-7
Shipping Weight: 1lbs
Shipping Weight: 1lbs
Ann Fagan Ginger (San Francisco , CA
Torture:
Religious Ethics and National Security
by John Perry.
Novalis, 2005.
Publisher: Until recently, torture was chiefly
associated with foreign juntas or other notorious human rights abusers. In
light of the "war on terror" this has changed dramatically. Whether
it is the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the policy of "extraordinary
rendition" of terror suspects into the hands of overseas interrogators, or
questions regarding the authority of the U.S. President to take extreme
measures for the sake of national security--suddenly the practice of torture
has become a matter of urgent public debate. Reviewing the history and practice
of torture, and the arguments used to justify it, Perry takes us into minds of
both the torturers and their victims. Ultimately, showing why torture is
different from other acts of war, and why it is fundamentally immoral:
"not only because it violates the dignity we owe to the human person but
also because it directly or indirectly degrades any society that would tolerate
it."
See: John Perry on The Wrong Torture Question By - Posted on 01 May 2009.
Torture: Does It Make Us Safer? Is It Ever OK?: A Human Rights Perspective. EDITED BY KENNETH ROTH AND MINKY
WORDEN. New Press, 2005.
TODAY’S LEADING THINKERS EXPLORE THE MOST
INCENDIARY HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE OF OUR TIME
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment.
Of all the issues
on the human rights agenda, torture offered Americans the moral high ground . .
. until this year. With the abuses at Abu Ghraib that led to accusations of
torture within the domestic criminal justice system, the question of cruel and
unusual treatment has taken on new urgency in the United States
In Torture,
twelve newly written essays by leading thinkers and experts range over history and continents,
offering a nuanced, up-to the-minute exploration of this wrenching but timely
topic, including, among others, Reed Brody on the road to Abu Ghraib and “ghost
detainees”; Eitan Felner on the Israeli experience; Tom Malinowski on
violations of State Department “forbidden practices” at Abu Ghraib and in
Afghanistan; Kenneth Roth on the U.S. government’s shift from cover-up to
justification; and Minky Worden on a global survey of torturing countries.
Intended for a
general audience, some of the key questions addressed include how to define
torture, whether torture is ever effective, and whether it is ever acceptable.
Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch. He has written articles on a range of human rights topics for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and the International Herald Tribune, among other publications. He lives in
Torture
and the Ticking Bomb
By:
Publisher:
Do you really think torture is acceptable in any circumstances?
The controversial arguments of
Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz supporting the legalisation of torture in
so-called 'ticking bomb' scenarios represent the most sophisticated and visible
of recent attempts to make torture an accepted weapon in the war on terror.States and other agents engage in torture, as both sides of the debate accept. According to Bob Brecher, it is precisely because the general public are taking the “new realism” of Dershowitz and others seriously that there is a pressing need to expose the fundamental flaws in their arguments, lest the peoples of democratic societies lose their moral compass and fail to be vigilant in holding their governments properly to account.
This timely and passionate book is the first to address itself directly to the arguments for the limited use of interrogational torture and to its legalisation. Brecher takes on those arguments, drawing out the practical implications for policy and confronting the empirical question of the efficacy of torture, as well as the ethical implications.
The
Phenomenon of Torture
readings and commentary (Google
eBook)
William F Schulz
The
Phenomenon of Torture Readings Carr
Center for Human Rights Policy at
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Senior Fellow at the Center for
American Progress, and Adjunct Professor at the New
School in New York City Pennsylvania
Review by LANCE MORROW
Published: January 29, 2006
Sept. 11 encouraged a corrupted version of
American exceptionalism, among other things. The superpower suddenly became the
embattled victim, the injured innocent - which was how Americans imagined
themselves when they declared their independence in 1776. The Bush Justice
Department's 2002 "torture memos" - hardboiled pettifogging intended to give legal cover for getting rough, for
"taking the gloves off" in America's war on terror - were later
repudiated by the administration. But the memos amounted subliminally to a
different sort of declaration of independence, conjured up out of the founding
Shinto: America , claiming a
special dispensation under Providence ,
would make its own rules, especially if national security was at stake. The
signal emanating from the White House and the Pentagon borrowed a memory from
the American subconscious: we would not be contradicted by the tainted Old
World, with its treaties and conventions drawn up far away - in Geneva , for example -
especially not when such conventions would protect the likes of Al Qaeda.
THE TORTURE DEBATE IN AMERICA
Edited by Karen J. Greenberg.
414 pp.Cambridge
University
TORTURE
Does It Make Us Safer? Is It Ever OK?
Edited by Kenneth Roth and Minky Worden; Amy D. Bernstein, contributing editor.
218 pp. The New Press. $25.95.
Edited by Karen J. Greenberg.
414 pp.
TORTURE
Does It Make Us Safer? Is It Ever OK?
Edited by Kenneth Roth and Minky Worden; Amy D. Bernstein, contributing editor.
218 pp. The New Press. $25.95.
Forum: Book News and Reviews
New reality trumps
old morality. Out of a new emergency of history, one particularly menacing
narrative took shape, darkened by the prestige of apocalypse - the ticking
bomb. A script emerged, along these lines:
The Qaeda terrorist breaks under aggressive
questioning. (The waterboard worked. He came up spluttering and talking.) The
interrogator relays information that, just in time, snips the wire on the dirty
nuke hidden in the heart of an American city. The interrogator -
"torturer," if you insist - is actually a hero. Thousands of lives
are saved.
The ticking bomb may be hypothetical for now, but
according to this scenario a certain amount of rough stuff may already have
paid off in the war on terror, which, mind you, is a real war against
ingeniously concealed fanatics traveling the globe at will, capable of mass
killing, anywhere, without warning. In this context, due process, beyond a
certain formal point, is for sissies. We live in a newly vulnerable, porous
world. Human rights fetishists, fighting the last war (a state-to-state
conflict, with old rules now rendered quaint) have become Al Qaeda's useful
idiots. What will the bien-pensants have to say if and when another 9/11 - or
something worse - occurs?
Who-whom?, Lenin asked. The rough-stuff rationale
elicits an indignant counterversion from advocates of human rights:
Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo have become outposts in
a global American gulag in which innocent and guilty alike are illegally
detained and tortured, usually with no yield of usable intelligence - we
squander the nation's moral capital for trash. Torture is the refuge of the
lazy, the stupid, the pseudo-tough. Real intelligence services don't have to
torture; they are intelligent enough to learn the prisoner's language and
culture. Why would a tortured man tell you the truth? He will say anything to
stop the pain. What happened to those mystic chords of memory about all men -
all of them - being created equal, endowed with unalienable rights? What of America 's
respect for human dignity? For itself? A couple of dozen prisoners, give or
take, have died in the American gulag - not to speak of those whom the C.I.A.
has disappeared into regimes far less fastidious than our own.
The American superpower, many human rights
advocates go on, has under George
W. Bush turned its
back on civilized opinion from Aristotle on, has abandoned the Geneva
Conventions, America's 1994 antitorture law and a century's progress toward
basic rights, and in the process, compromised the ideals of freedom and
democracy for which the wars on terror and in Iraq are supposedly being fought.
America has become a pariah
among nations by committing human rights crimes similar to those for which Nazi
government officials were tried and convicted at Nuremberg .
Two new volumes of essays take up all of the
questions contained in these contrasting views, examining the subject of
torture in the context of international terrorism, studying it in various
lights - moral, legal, political, historical, military, philosophical.
"The Torture Debate in America," edited by Karen J. Greenberg,
focuses especially on legal questions; almost all of its contributors have been
trained as lawyers, and are either professors of law or human rights workers.
"Torture: Does It Make Us Safer? Is It Ever OK?," edited by Kenneth
Roth and Minky Worden, looks at torture from a more global and historical
perspective, ranging from ancient Greece
and Rome , through the Renaissance, to
contemporary Israel and Algeria and Argentina
and Rwanda .
Both collections proceed from an essentially left-brain mentality; the right
brain's script has only token defenders. Overall, the voices in these books
suffer from a tendency toward piousness: Torture bad, me virtuous.
Critics in both volumes dismiss the ticking-bomb
scenario as chimerical - a puerile Hollywood
hypothesis highly unlikely in actuality. The real danger of the
administration's anything-goes message, they say, was that it fatally
routinized and bureaucratized the coercive impulse, and once that message had
made its way down the chain of command to the grunt level, it ordained in
effect that all of Islam should be considered a ticking bomb. Any Muslim was
fair game for waterboarding.
Is that version overdone? Heather Mac Donald, a
fellow of the conservative Manhattan Institute, is one of the few contrarian
contributors to either of the volumes. She argues in "The Torture
Debate" that Abu Ghraib, which she says showed nothing more than "the
sadism of a prison out of control," generated among the critics of
President Bush a false "master narrative - call it 'the torture
narrative.' " "The actual interrogation techniques promulgated in the
war on terror," Mac Donald writes, were "light years from real
torture and hedged around with bureaucratic safeguards."
Mac Donald's defense of rough coercive
interrogation contrasts the Americans' "torture lite" with the
gruesome, mangling, sadistic and genuinely evil ingenuity that torturers have
historically shown, from the Inquisition to Pol Pot.
Training manuals for Al Qaeda, according to Chris Mackey in "The
Interrogators," tell fighters that a failure to cooperate with Americans
carries no penalties and no risk of torture - a sign of American weakness. Mac
Donald quotes an American interrogator who said: "They realized: 'The
Americans will give us our Holy Book, they'll draw lines on the floor showing
us where to pray, we'll get three meals a day with fresh fruit, do Jazzercise
with the guards. . . . We can wait them out.' " Gitmo as Club Med.
Conscience is a protean thing; it reprehends acts
that, unofficially, it may consider necessary under some circumstances. We have
formal morals and vernacular morals, like the good china and the everyday.
Torture is that paradox, an all-but-universal practice that is simultaneously a
universal taboo, like incest. In the real world lots of people marry their
cousins.
IF you call something torture, you are officially
bound to be against it. So call it "interrogation." Almost everyone
concedes that it is all right to try to find out what a terrorist in your
custody may know. But what methods are all right? Sleep deprivation? Being
forced to stand for long periods? Bright lights? Hooding? Rock music? Menacing
dogs? Cigarette burns? Thumbscrews? Electric shock? Rape? Where do you draw the
line?
Any wholesome mind thinking of torture
sympathizes with the victim. (A diseased mind identifies with the torturer.)
Therefore, anyone inclined to countenance rough physical or psychological
treatment is bound to argue either that what he has in mind is not really
torture, but something short of that, temporary discomfort maybe, or that a
certain amount of brutal questioning is legitimate because it is aimed not at
the past but the future: it is inflicted not for purposes of punishment or
revenge, but to prevent a future catastrophe, another 9/11. The change of tense
from past to future is what might turn the interrogator from villain to hero.
But surely torture - whether torture lite or
torture satanic - is, in the long run, bad karma for the United States .
Noah Feldman, a professor of law at New York University School of Law, argues
in one essay in "The Torture Debate" that "whatever the merits
of unilateralism in foreign policy, unilateralism in law and morals is
incoherent and dangerous."
Saul Bellow's Mr. Sammler observed that different
people living at the same time may inhabit different centuries. What century
does Osama
bin Laden inhabit? In
what century is Guantánamo located? Who is pulling whom back to darkness and
barbarism? Being a victim of 9/11 gave Americans a kind of moral Get Out of
Jail Free card. But a superpower cannot plausibly play the victim for long; for
many of those who recognize the dilemmas surrounding torture, the card expired
somewhere between Shock and Awe and Abu Ghraib.
As for myself, after reading these two thoughtful
collections, I would contend that America should be setting an
example of attention to international norms and treaties, and respect for the
opinions of others in the world. Torture is a mug's game. You give up too much
in the way of ideals for too little in the way of information. Al Qaeda may not
abide by the Geneva Conventions, but Americans should do so scrupulously,
ostentatiously, not in order to coddle terrorists but to encourage the rule of
law in a bad world. God presumably granted Americans their dispensation only on
condition that they aspire upward. When they head in the other direction, the
dispensation is rescinded.
Lance Morrow is the author of "Evil: An
Investigation," and most recently of "Second Drafts of History,"
a collection of his essays. He is working on a biography of Henry Luce.
Here
is the link to all OMNI newsletters: http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and
ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for change.
END TORTURE AWARENESS MONTH
JUNE 2013
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