A federal court has rejected former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s attempt to have a lawsuit dismissed that alleges he is responsible for authorizing the torture of two military contractors. The case, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al is one of two cases out of more than a dozen that allege Rumsfeld allowed torture to take place against US citizens in Iraq.

The dismissal means Rumsfeld has now lost two appeals against torture suits filed against him. Last week, a federal court in Washington, DC, released an opinion that upheld the other lawsuit moving forward against Rumsfeld, John Doe v. Donald Rumsfeld, et al, a case that alleges the former defense secretary had a role in the torture and illegal detention of a US citizen that was working in Iraq as a translator.

Keith Olbermann continued his coverage of US citizens, who are suing former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture. On “Countdown” on Friday night, Donald Vance, a US navy veteran and former defense contractor, appeared on the show to describe how he came to be held and tortured in an American-run prison in Iraq for almost 100 days.

In January 2002, the British government gave instructions to its intelligence agencies debriefing or interrogations prisoners captured in Afghanistan, many of whom were being abused or tortured by their US allies. The agencies asked for legal guidance, and the UK Guardian has now published what that guidance was, posting the original document online.

Up until now, it’s been accepted that only the CIA waterboarded detainees at black sites in the “war on terror,” and only three prisoners at that. But a new investigation of available materials from Congress, Inspector General reports, first-hand and second-hand accounts in the press, as well as other documentary evidence, shows that use of waterboarding-style torture was likely used widely by U.S. forces, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Guantanamo.

In an an arrogant riposte to an earlier posting of mine, Lawfare blogger and member of the Hoover Institute Task Force on National Security and the Law, Benjamin Wittes, proclaimed he is “Happy to be a government proxy.”

Wittes’ tongue may seem somewhat in cheek, but he really means it. “Government proxy” how? In my earlier article criticizing both Wittes and Adweek columnist Alex Koppelman for their poorly resourced and vituperative articles attacking Scott Horton’s investigation of the 2006 deaths of three Guantanamo detainees, published by Harper’s Magazine in January 2010. Department of Defense investigations had labeled all three deaths suicides.

The announcement of John Durham’s decision to investigate two CIA detainee murders prompts a reexamination at how the different torture techniques were developed, and how they were propagated across governmental institutional boundaries between the Department of Defense and the CIA. If the press did their job, perhaps we could get a better picture of how torture was implemented, who was responsible, leading the public to demand the accountability that otherwise, without significant public outcry, is not going to happen.

As if we already didn’t know the media is full of lies and stupidity, two new examples have surfaced in recent days, with former administration officials and their media mouthpieces vying for who can pronounce the most incredible lies about the torture policies of the U.S. government.

And today’s wingnut “Libya is so awesome today because George W. Bush killed 250,000 Iraqis” take comes from a two-time Secretary of Defense and all-around great guy.

The isolation and degradation of Bradley Manning by the Marine Corps penal authorities at the Quantico brig represents a significant acceleration of government torture policy, as it is meant, among other things, to further desensitize the U.S. population to the use of torture. Torture will be used on political dissidents in this country, that is clear now, and PFC Manning is the first, but there will be others.

Besides conditions of solitary confinement, harassment day and night, restriction of reading material, making him walk in shackles if he leaves his cell, inability to communicate with any other prisoners, all imposed upon PFC Bradley Manning, who has never been convicted of any crime, we must now add the degradation and humiliation of hours-long forced nakedness