Misblog

A few bad apples on the Abu Ghraib night shift included Rumsfeld and other top officials, according to newly released documents:

"The newly released documents show that in the summer of 2002, Pentagon officials compiled lists of aggressive techniques, soliciting opinions from the CIA and others, and ultimately implementing the practices [at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib] over opposition from military lawyers who argued that the proposed tactics were probably illegal and could harm U.S. troops."--Washington Post--

Web:

• UPDATED 06/19/2008 Time Mag, Seeking Answers on Detainee Abuse. Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver is the military female counterpart to John Yoo.

  Cheney, Rumsfeld, Haynes, and Addington were working at both ends to implement the administration's torture regimen.

• UPDATED 06/18/2008 BBC, US-held terror suspects 'abused' Those familiar with the torture news from the current administration over the last several years will recognizes the following shameful list.

  The list was not developed on the Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo night shift by a few bad apples, it's a zerox from the CIA's KUBARK torture manual¹:

  • Stress positions
  • Beatings and other forms of physical assault
  • Use of extremes of temperature
  • Waterboarding or any other form of simulated drowning
  • Threats of harm to the detainee, his family, or friends
  • Sleep deprivation
  • Sensory bombardment through the use of extreme noise and/or light
  • Violent shaking
  • Religious, cultural, and sexual humiliation including, but not limited to, forced nakedness
  • Prolonged isolation
  • Sensory deprivation, including, but not limited to, hooding and blindfolding
  • Use of psychotropic, mind-altering, or other drugs for the purpose of decreasing resistance or gaining information
  • Mock execution
  • Exploitation of phobias, psychopathology, or physical vulnerability
  • Rape and sexual assault
  • Electric shocks
  • Deprivation of basic necessities and sanitary conditions
• WP, CIA Played Larger Role In Advising Pentagon

Res:

• UPDATED 06/18/2008 Physicians for Human Rights, Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact

  "After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.--Maj. General Antonio M. Taguba (USA-Ret.), Preface to Report--

  If our nation tries to shield those who authorized abuse and torture from accountability, because "they believed it necessary to protect our nation" we will only compound the damage inflicted on our great nation.

• Senate Armed Services Committee, Hearing on aggressive interrogation techniques: Part I, inquiry into the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody

-----notes-----

1. Many in the administration seeking to mask the torture occurring in our joint military-CIA secret torture and interrogation chambers have characterized the torture as nothing more than SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training provided to our soldiers.

There is a night and day difference between SERE training and the KUBARK torture inflicted in the joint military-CIA secret torture and interrogation chambers.

One can certainly understand why those authorizing torture would subsequently seek to re-characterize their authorization as defensive resistance training—however untruthful and irrelevant.