Interesting read indeed. Well, Obama has adopted so many Bush policies and kept so many of the same procedures, one would wager to guess that yes torture will continue, but it’ll have a nice catchy name or phrase to it…Torture You Can Believe In…..or…torturing them over here, so we don’t have to over there….or….what was it called under Clinton? Oh ya extraordinary rendition…kinda catchy

Shameful, and absolutely unacceptable.

When I was a child in the ’60′s, I used to boast that if I had been born in the Soviet Union I would be in the gulag.

Ha! So easy to say…

Is there any question, seriously?

Of course they are torturing and will torture anyone they think can tell them anything. IMO opinion it matters not what land they are standing in while they are doing it. Torture is torture is torture.

Can’t wait for your next post Jeff…should be a good read!

MR. GIBBS: Well, ask that question of some of our severe detractors on this and see if you get agreement on that.

Perhaps I don’t qualify as one of the President’s “severe detractors” (I do my best), but I have written that very thought recently:

[The Obama Administration] hasn’t really closed Guantanamo Bay – it just moved it to Illinois.

So have others. I’m not sure what Gibbs means there.

Thanks.

The facility with which this society appears to be accepting the presence of torture — against all treaties, laws, and societal conventions — is mind blowing.

The reason, of course, is that none dare call it torture. The Army Field Manual calls it an “authorized technique” (masking the fact that the technique — “Separation” — is actually the amalgam of a number of procedures). When some, like Chuck Todd, start to bluster that things aren’t as they seem, Obama administration spokespersons such as Robert Gibbs speak out to put the critics back in their place.

And who on the “left” or “progressive” sides of politics will gainsay the holy words of the Obama administration? Luckily, there have been a few, as the article notes. But we need a lot more. I’m throwing down the gauntlet here. Appendix M is not a side issue in the anti-torture struggle: it is the central pillar, at this point in time, in the torture policies of the United States as they exist in the post-Bush era.

I’m throwing down the gauntlet here. Appendix M is not a side issue in the anti-torture struggle: it is the central pillar, at this point in time, in the torture policies of the United States as they exist in the post-Bush era.

Yes.

I think Gibbs is referring to the administration’s “severe detractors” on the right… you know, the one’s who feel Guantanamo is a great place, that it should be expanded, that closing Guantanamo is helping the “terrorists” etc.

When you’re ruling from the center, you can always use the specter of criticism from the opposite end of the spectrum to justify your own sell-out policies. So for Gibbs/Obama, they can’t be wrong on Gitmo or the Army Field Manual because Cheney (for instance) is telling them what they’re doing is wrong. And if Cheney is wrong, we must be right? Right?

“Failure to speak out about what is morally right, is a prelude to becoming a victim of that which is criminally wrong.”

Zig Ziglar

Reading some of these comments is torture. Marjorie Cohn and Hina Shamsi, now they’re two people that make Americans feels safe. Anyway you look at it, Attorney’s would rather defend a suspected terrorist, on the taxpayers dime, then learn about terrorist acts that could kill innocent Americans. Say Jeff, if I ever need someone to watch my back in the event of an attack, Pee Wee Herman or Jeff Kaye…I’m going with Pee Wee Herman! I might even consider Mr. Gibbs.

When you’re ruling from the center, you can always use the specter of criticism from the opposite end of the spectrum to justify your own sell-out policies. So for Gibbs/Obama, they can’t be wrong on Gitmo or the Army Field Manual because Cheney (for instance) is telling them what they’re doing is wrong. And if Cheney is wrong, we must be right? Right?

I’ve been wondering for a while now. I think fourthbranch is evil, not stupid, so he has to know that about 95%+ of Cheney/Bush policy as regards internment, wiretaps and secrecy-vs.-transparency is intact as a legacy in the Obama administration.

So isn’t Cheney’s barking a form of professional political courtesy? He get’s to bash Obama, Obama has a critic as a foil, and nothing changes.

Including Gates leadership at the Pentagon.

If somebody can figure out a way to move the torture to the States it won’t be long before one of the networks has a new reality show for the screaming masses that are always looking for something new in entertainment. Maybe the guy that does World Wrestling can set something going. I guarantee it will be a ratings bonanza for the network because as H.L Mencken said “no one ever went broke underestimating the bad taste of the American public.” And I say a people that condones or overlooks torture done in their names is not deserving of liberty but of liberation.

Yes, I think that’s the error of false dichotomy, with a bit of reductio ad hitlerium thrown in. You see that a lot in political theatre.

Eli is upstairs!
How To Be A National Security Expert

Well maybe if we’re nice and offer them a cookie they’ll give up their secrets.

Sleep deprivation and isolation – are you seriously whining about that?

To my acerbic critics @10 and 15, it’s quite heartening to hear your voices, as I know I must be hitting a nerve when I receive such naked attempts at infantilizing put-downs as yours.

Are you volunteering to be a test subject?

Appendix M is required to undergo yearly review. Given that the military has jurisdiction in Illinois at the proposed “Guantánamo North”, it requires substantial modification that it will not get, no doubt.

As I tried to convey yesterday, for all intents and purposes, the Yoo-Bradbury doctrine on CIDT has been upheld by the courts — the notion that the 8th and 14th amendments don’t apply because the prisoners are not being punished and it is not an issue of treatment by a state rather than the federal government respectively will apply in Illinois. The notion that the 5th amendment requirements for due process do not apply changes, because the prisoners will have “substantial U.S. presence”. However, it is hard to see how a court will uphold a contention of CIDT if the treatment resembles that of U.S. prisons operating on U.S. soil with American inmates — the ADX Florence Supermax comes to mind. The upholding of restrictions on Boumediene by both the dismissal and by the Bagram Detainee case do not apply in Illinois.

However, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, section 1003, clauses (b), (c), and (d) are now ambiguous:

~~~Note: The above link is straight to PDF~~~

(b) Construction.–Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose any geographical limitation on the applicability of the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment under this section.

(c) Limitation on Supersedure.–The provisions of this section shall not be superseded, except by a provision of law enacted after the date of the enactment of this Act which specifically repeals, modifies, or supersedes the provisions of this section.

(d) Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Defined.–In this section, the term “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” means the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.

Since Appendix M is fundamentally based on this act, and on the War Crimes Act which implements the Geneva Conventions prohibitions on grave breaches, and the Geneva Conventions themselves, and since the DTA provisions prohibiting CIDT are no longer in effect except where the treatment possibly violates the 5th Amendment due process clause, the Appendix needs to be reviewed because it cannot be consistently interpreted as written.

Just a possible argument to force a review.

As far as the Appendix itself, it is a clear end run around the 3rd Geneva Convention prohibition of close confinement for more than 30 days, and the CAT torture provision, in its U.S. implementation as prohibiting profound alterations of the psyche. It is now known that ion channels on the cells that implement the psyche are replaced on about a 2 week basis, and that new growth filipodia and pruning can take as many as 10 days to fully implement new connections. Consequently, the 30 day period (derived from the 3rd Geneva Convention, Article 21), is quite generous, since atrophy can occur at the microscopic level in a period quite short of that. That this appendix allows for unlimited re-application with any specified break period approved by superiors, it clearly is capable of permanent damage.

“There will be more Hashmis, and the Justice Department, planning for future detentions, set up in 2006 a segregated facility, the Communication Management Unit, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Nearly all the inmates transferred to Terre Haute are Muslims. A second facility has been set up at Marion, Ill., where the inmates again are mostly Muslim but also include a sprinkling of animal rights and environmental activists…

I have been writing about this since November 2001, when George W. Bush’s authoritarian claims over the liberty — and lives — of every human being on earth were first coming to light.
It is very simple: all the government has to do is declare, arbitrarily, with no due process, that you — yes, you, Mister and Ms American Citizen — are a terrorist, or suspected terrorist, or an enemy combatant, and you can be stripped of your legal personhood, plunged into a gulag, confined indefinitely, plunged into isolation — or killed.”

Excerpt, “Update on Our Brave New Slavery”, Chris Floyd,Empire Burlesque

Update on Our Brave New Slavery: Yes, It Applies to American …Dec 30, 2009 … Update on Our Brave New Slavery: Yes, It Applies to American Citizens, … could reintroduce the principle of slavery and get away with it. …
http://www.chris-floyd.com/…news/1893-update-on-our-brave-new-slavery-yes-it-applies-to-american-citizens-too.html?…source... – Cached

Thanks for your heroic efforts (in the Campbellian sense: going to hell and back for love of your community, then returning and successfully delivering a salvific boon). As one with a BA in psychology, the science that helped spawn our new and improved torture, I want to thank you for helping to rectify one of American psychology’s worst crimes

We’re already torturing people in our prisons, so I don’t see anything stopping our new and improved brutality from becoming domesticated. Reliance on patriarchal applications of kinetic force to solve every problem under the sun is an American tradition. “Wait Till Your Father Gets Home” was an animated TV show, and it aptly expresses our attitude: You better do as you’re told or The Big Man will beat you senseless.

We believe in the power of force, period. One of our fundamental modern assumptions goes like this: If the cosmos is a mechanism governed by Newton’s laws, then to get things done, apply more leverage. Or, on the other hand, one might believe the universe to be the construct of a male war god, who rules by kinetic force and the power of his spoken word (fiat). Same result: to get things done, appeal to the father of all MOTU for divine intercession–usually while applying more leverage.

The Industrial Revolution ingrained in us the bizarre conflation of organisms with mechanisms. We say, “so-and-so is a lean, mean, fighting machine;” we depict the processes of life as if they were processes of manufacturing; we talk about our own physiology as if we were mechanisms.

Forcing our external environment into compliance with our demands has been our way of life for centuries now. Wars, genocides, brutal prison conditions have been with us all this time, and they’ve been more normal than exceptional. We speak of “the conquest of nature,” “the conquest of space,” “winning the war against (fill in the blank).”

Our science, economy, and military are believed to be the supreme achievements of humanity. Kinetic force rules our day. Tom Engelhardt’s article, Crusading in the Arc of Instability, has been a touchstone on this topic for me ever since I read it.

In truth, the most obvious factor linking all of the above together, however, the real thing they have in common, is not, in the normal sense, religious at all. If there is a religious war going on, waged by men (and a few women) of faith, then that faith is neither Christianity, nor Judaism, nor is the war against Islam per se. It comes instead from the fundamentalist Church of Our Man of Global Domination and at its heart is the monotheistic religion of Force. If the arc of instability were inhabited by recalcitrant, angry, sometimes armed, and sometimes destructive Buddhists, sitting on vast energy reserves, this war would look like a war against the Buddha himself.

The essential doctrine of faith that ties all the disparate foreign-policy acts of this administration together is the belief that to every global problem, to every difficult situation, there is but a single striking and uniform response — not the application of democracy, but the application of force.

[...]

The religion of Force has proven itself a remarkably weak reed in our complex and difficult world, but that doesn’t matter to them. Like many cultists, deeply imbued with their own way of looking at life, our President, our Vice President, and their dwindling band of compatriots can still imagine no other solutions than force, whatever the presenting problems. Not only can’t they think outside the box, but the box itself is narrowing around this Presidency and Vice Presidency — and believe me, given their crusading record, that’s dangerous indeed. [Emphasis added.]

Actually, Chuck Todd, it isn’t a matter of interpretation,. The AFM now clearly allows what the rest of the world calls torture. And lest our naive, wannabe warrior commenters here forget, the torture is allowed with suspects, some of whom were kidnapped or arrested on the basis of very questionable grounds, and some of whom are probably innocent. They will either have a military trial leading to certain conviction, or permanent imprisonment with no charges or due process at all, or they will be released with no explanation after being tortured. USA!
Real courage is standing up for human rights, truth and justice, and standing against government abuse and government terrorism.

Interesting insights. I’m not sure what you mean that Appendix M needs yearly review.

As to the reliance on the amendments, I think Crawford makes the point that the Appendix M like techniques used on Al Qahtani amounted to torture, i.e., “shocked the conscience,” which is the current criterion for the eighth amendment prohibition, I believe.

I address some of what you say in the final installment of this series, so will not say more here.

Except that you are totally right about the end run around Geneva, and also on the physiology of isolation, about which more could be said, also.

I’ll say this for Todd’s questions, at least he was asking something. The rest of the mainstream media, and many of the progressive commentators, too, have kept mum on the topic. I won’t mention names re the latter here. I’ve let them know what I think already.

Yes, at least Todd tried, and it’s revealing that Gibbs then reacted with outraged disbelief, as if Todd had just started saying something unthinkable, impugning the integrity of the AFM and the military. It was a smart strategy to hide torture in a modification of what is often regarded as an honored code of the military.

The yearly review is documented in the introduction to the manual:

This manual will be reviewed annually and may be amended or updated from time totime to account for changes in doctrine, policy, or law, and to address lessons learned.

What I mean about the courts validating the Yoo-Bradbury doctrine is that the criteria for CIDT under that doctrine are limited by the Senate’s reservations to the CAT, that Article 16 be limited to treatment prohibited by the 5th, 8th, and 14th amendments. Both Yoo and Bradbury argued that the 14th amendment can never apply to federal prisoners because it mandates due process for prisoners of individual states. The 8th amendment doesn’t apply because the prisoners aren’t being punished (Justice Scalia has also enunciated that one), they are not charged with crimes but held for the ‘duration of conflict’. And they argue the 5th amendment never applies to foreign prisoners held on foreign soil because they lack U.S. presence under Johnson v. Eisentrager.

When the appeals court dismissed the suits in Rasul et al. v. Myers et al., they validated the 5th amendment and 14th amendment arguments, and the government will argue both the Yoo-Bradbury version of the 8th, and their version against the Torture Act, namely that the punishments don’t rise to the level of torture per the European Court of Human Rights decision on the ’5 techniques’ used by the RUC in Northern Ireland. They will also argue that techniques used at ADX Florence on civilian prisoners, like long-term extreme isolation, can’t be ‘cruel and unusual’ because they aren’t ‘unusual’.

That’s one of the reasons they were looking at the Istanbul Protocol when they designed the program. The whole thing is an end run from start to finish, and was designed that way.

Thanks re the yearly review info. That’s very important, and will need to be followed up. (What reviews have been done, what were results? etc.)

Your points are very well taken about the fate of the Yoo-Bradbury doctrine as it meets the court challenges. I don’t know that these fights are over yet; I know ACLU and CCR and perhaps others continue the fight through the courts. It’s also ironically interesting to see that the torturers now want to use “International” courts or decisions when appropriate to their needs. The decision by the ECHR on the RUC “5 Techniques” torture was, IMHO, a defeat for human rights activists, although not quite a Waterloo. It did leave the question of CIDT on the table, and we know from the Bradbury memos in particular that the government was keen to acquit themselves on that score as well.

RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary] interrogators working “under the supervision” of the British Army applied five well-established techniques which had previously been practiced in the course of colonial emergencies: (1) hooding, (2) wall-standing, (3) subjection to noise, (4) relative deprivation of food and water and (5) sleep deprivation….

In December 1971, the Republic of Ireland had filed an application with the European Commission on Human Rights alleging that the emergency procedures applied against suspected terrorists in Northern Ireland violated several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights. It is depressing to note that little more than a decade earlier, Dublin had been Britain’s ally in combating cross-border IRA activity. The case was referred to the European Court of Human Rights for adjudication. Ireland v. United Kingdom was the first inter-state case ever brought before the European Court. Reviewing the evidence in December 1977, the court found the five techniques to be “cruel,” inhuman and degrading” and thus breaches of the convention but stopped short of describing them as torture.

Re the Istanbul Protocol, I’m not sure how they could use it to design their program. The Protocol describes procedures used to document physical and psychological torture, and is meant for use by forensic clinicians. I think they are afraid of the IP, and noted this issue in an FDL posting a while back, after Fredman was quoted as referring to the Istanbul protocol at a meeting at Guantanamo of different intelligence officials and BSCT psychologists.

See Fredman’s Mea Culpa, the Army Field Manual, and the Istanbul Protocol. I make the point there that the IP is not a treaty or binding document, but note:

It seems the CIA/CTC legal counsel [Fredman] is concerned about the gathering of evidence, and how it might be used someday in an international setting, if not in a U.S. court.

Of course, that’s giving Fredman the benefit of the doubt, and that the whole Istanbul Protocol story wasn’t a bullshit alibi for outrageous statements he demonstratively made at that Gitmo meeting. I’d add that nowhere else, except in Fredman’s letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee in Nov. 2008, is there any indication that the government used the Istanbul Protocol in the construction of its torture program.

Forgot the link on the RUC/Five Techniques quote above:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/justify/3.html