torture is wrong

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/world/europe/29spain.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Spanish Court Weighs Inquiry on Torture for 6 Bush-Era Officials

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/28/AR2009032802066_pf.html

Detainee's Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/03/hbc-90004644

Information Secured Through Torture Proved Unreliable, CIA Concluded, commentary on this article from Scott Horton

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/03/hbc-90004641

The Accountability Imperative by Scott Horton, from a speech given at the annual meeting of Amnesty International USA on March 28^th 2009, part of the speech excerpted below:

Are We All Torturers Now?

Gross human rights abusers in the modern era have a tried and proven defense to which they turn. They work hard to implicate society as a whole in their crimes, as my friend Mark Danner argues in one of his memorable essays, to spread the guilt and blame as broadly as possible. This, they reason—usually correctly—will inoculate them against future accountability. Since April 2004 at the latest, as photographs and films of the abuse practiced at Abu Ghraib were published, we have known of the Bush torture policies. Americans have done little to stop it. They have elected a government committed to end torture. But can we ever really say that torture is ended without accountability?

The Obama Administration has been in Washington for more than two months now. We can’t expect it to address every problem in its first hundred days. And considering the magnitude of the current crisis it is perfectly reasonable to allow accountability to take some time. But every day that goes past in which the Obama team uses the tricks of its predecessor to cover up past abuses; every occasion on which it learns of a crime and fails to act or to investigate, it slowly takes ownership of the crime of torture. America does not need to take on the shame and guilt of the Bush years. It will not do so if it acts to uphold the law and to hold accountable those who violated it. That process need not be traumatic. It can be the process in which a new national consensus is forged, as the sins of the past are expiated. But to turn away from this important duty would be a very grave error.

Amnesty International has existed for more than three decades. Its essential functions have included documenting and memorializing the wrongdoing of the past, protecting the victims, and holding those in positions of power and authority to account for their lawless conduct. Amnesty’s broad-based call for action provides the essential map to take America out of her current dilemma. We can, we must demand accountability. And if sustained, we will secure not vengeance, but justice. We owe this to ourselves and to the generations that will follow. We are defining the world in which they will live. To say that will be a world without torture is perhaps too much, but let it at least be a world in which torture is fully recognized as a crime and torturers and their abettors are held to account. That is within our grasp, if we fight for it.

http://www.markdanner.com/articles/show/we_are_all_torturers_now

We Are All Torturers Now by Mark Danner, January 6^th 2005, written on the occasion of Alberto Gonzales’s confirmation hearings, part of the article excerpted below:

The war in Iraq and the war on terrorism are ultimately political in character. Victory depends in the end not on technology or on overwhelming force but on political persuasion. By using torture, the country relinquishes the very ideological advantage – the promotion of democracy, freedom and human rights – that the president has so persistently claimed is America’s most powerful weapon in defeating Islamic extremism. One does not reach democracy, or freedom, through torture.

By using torture, we Americans transform ourselves into the very caricature our enemies have sought to make of us. True, that miserable man who pulled out his hair as he lay on the floor at Guantánamo may eventually tell his interrogators what he knows, or what they want to hear. But for America, torture is self-defeating; for a strong country it is in the end a strategy of weakness. After Mr. Gonzales is confirmed, the road back – to justice, order and propriety – will be very long. Torture will belong to us all.

Event: torture is wrong at South By Southwest, Austin , Texas, March 21^st 2009

Bonnie will be speaking to musicians and festival attendees about The Geneva Conventions at The Austin City Hall.

This is an important article because of the public confusion about prolonged isolation or solitary confinement. It is clearly torture and there is no justification for its use. The destruction of self through the use of isolation is well documented and beyond any reasonable dispute. Gawande has written a powerful and heartbreaking  argument against it which we may find helpful.

This is an American World War II era poster often posted in post offices. Click onthe image to see a larger version.

"Over objections from the U.S. intelligence community, the White House is moving to declassify—and publicly release—three internal memos that will lay out, for the first time, details of the "enhanced" interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration for use against "high value" Qaeda detainees. The memos, written by Justice Department lawyers in May 2005, provide the legal rationale for waterboarding, head slapping and other rough tactics used by the CIA. One senior Obama official, who like others interviewed for this story requested anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, said the memos were "ugly" and could embarrass the CIA. Other officials predicted they would fuel demands for a "truth commission" on torture.”

Quote from the full article!

Darius Rejali, the author of “Torture and Democracy”, tells the history of the CIA torture practices revealed by the recently leaked ICRC report.  This is a useful article about the history most people don’t know and don’t want to know.

An article by Brian Tamanaha at Balkinization 

Here is Mark Danner’s entire article in the New York Review of Books. This article is excerpted today in The New York Times in an op-ed titled  “Tales From Torture’s Dark World”.  Here is a link to that article 

Dropping the term “enemy combatant” from the governments Big Book of Terrorism is important but is it just a bright shiny object if it serves to distract from focus on this?

"But in a much anticipated court filing, the Justice Department argued that the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects there without criminal charges, much as the Bush administration had asserted. It provided a broad definition of those who can be held, which was not significantly different from the one used by the Bush administration."

Article from today’s New York Times

Article from Washington Independent

Standing Firm for Injustice, Scott Horton at Harpers

Look back in anger, Scott Horton at The National

An editorial in the NY Times by 2 experienced interrogators, Matthew Alexander and Steve Kleinman recommending the interrogation methods used in World War II and attached, an account of the successful use of those methods by Marine Corp Major Moran, circa 1943.  

The article is here.