More fun with torture in Iraq/Gitmo Bay

When a person uses a limiting qualifier like that, it means they are taking a limited and qualified position. Presumably, Prof Yu thinks anything is okie-dokie if it doesn't leave visible bruises or scars.

The US has claimed all along that "insurgents"/"terrorists"/"militants"/"whatever" are not an army as defined by the Geneva Conventions (which is true) and therefore the GC's don't apply to them (which is not strictly true, there is an "innocent until proven guilty" clause which kicks in that requires them to obey the GC's until a specially formed tribunal can determine otherwise).

Obviously, certain sections of the rules of war are out of date and should be updated and rewritten in order to cover situations that couldn't have been foreseen at the time. Until then, the US and every other country will have convenient escape clauses. Unfortunately, in a world where 2/3 of the UN General Assembly gives Robert Mugabe a standing ovation for a speech criticising the West for their human rights violations, I doubt there will ever be a consensus where such a rewrite can take place.

The even bigger problem, as Biden pointed out in that great exchange with Ashcroft this year, is that if the biggest, most powerful country in the world shits on the Geneva Conventions, it gives free license to everyone else to follow suit.

Gonzales's torture opinion argued that Bush could order such things because the constitution or congress could place few limitations on his Commander in Chief powers.

Bush as Lemeul Gulliver, bound by the Lilliputians no longer.

How comfortable will America be with the idea that the two presidents they've impeached were for minor allegations, whereas the genocide guy, the funder of terrorists and the torturer have not been even tried?

"Every time the FBI established a rapport with a detainee, the military would step in and the detainee would stop being cooperative," the FBI official wrote. "The military did not stop the interviews while they were in progress but routinely took control of the detainee when the interview was completed.

"The next time that detainee was interviewed, his level of cooperation was diminished," the official said.

(LA Times. FBI Agents Complained of Prisoner Abuse, Records Say. 12/21/04)

Not quite the five stages of grief; more like the Five Stages of Evasion: Buck-passing, Subject-changing, Gore-bashing, Pooh-poohing, and (premature) Bad-appling...

Six SEALs sue AP, reporter

Six Navy SEALs filed a lawsuit against the Associated Press and one of its reporters yesterday, saying the news organization revealed their identities, compromised their security and invaded their privacy by publishing personal photographs in a Dec. 4 story.
The complaint says AP reporter Seth Hettena used about 40 images from the personal photo-storage Web site of a Navy SEAL wife. The AP published nine of the photos, which show the SEAL team capturing members of Saddam Hussein's loyalist forces.
An accompanying story implied the photos "could be" the earliest evidence of abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
The images were picked up by the Arab press, including Al Jazeera, and have made their way onto a billboard outside U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where detainees from the war on terror are being kept. The billboard design includes swastika symbols and accuses the SEALs of "being Nazis," according to the suit.
"It was totally reckless. These photos clearly show the guys' faces, which now put their lives at risk, and the lives of their families," said James W. Hutton, an attorney for the SEALs who filed the complaint in the Superior Court of San Diego.
AP insisted yesterday that there had been no wrongdoing.
"We believe AP's use of the photos and the manner in which they were obtained were entirely lawful and proper," said Dave Tomlin, assistant general counsel for the organization.
Mr. Hutton takes issue with AP's implication that the SEAL photos were on par with pictures showing ill treatment of prisoners by U.S. Army personnel in Iraq's Abu Ghraib facility.
"These photos do not show any prisoner abuse," Mr. Hutton said, but depict "standard procedures during covert actions."
He also noted an ironic twist: The AP story quoted a Navy source who said that revealing the name or face of special warfare operators could endanger them and their families.
"The SEAL photos had obscured the faces of the insurgents. But when the AP published them, they did not bother to obscure the faces of the SEALs. They did not give the Americans the same respect as the insurgents. It's inexcusable and unprofessional," Mr. Hutton said.
"There was no need for the AP to publish the faces of the SEALs. They added nothing to the value of the story."
Mr. Hutton said the six SEALs have been receiving abusive phone calls and that at least one of the wives has been followed. He also said some Arab-language Web sites are "calling for action" against the SEALs.
Several of them are on active duty in Iraq.
"We are very disappointed in this reporter's unprofessional behavior and the fact that he showed such disregard for us, our safety, and the ongoing work we are doing," one of the SEALs said. "This risk is now greater because of Mr. Hettena, and the increased risk was completely unnecessary and preventable."
The group is asking for unspecified damage for their invasion of privacy, plus the emotional distress of two of the wives. It also has requested that the photos not be republished and "to preclude the publication of additional unpublished photographs."

UK soldiers abused Iraqi detainees, court told
By Hugh Williamson in Berlin and Jean Eaglesham
Published: January 18 2005 21:32 | Last updated: January 18 2005 21:32

Photographs of alleged abuse of Iraqi detainees by three British soldiers reflected “shocking and appalling” incidents, the prosecution told a court martial in Germany on Tuesday...

Hunh. Didn't know that this was happening over there, too.

Guantanamo Soldier Details Sexual Tactics

2 hours, 37 minutes ago

By PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider's written account.

A draft manuscript obtained by The Associated Press is classified as secret pending a Pentagon review for a planned book that details ways the U.S. military used women as part of tougher physical and psychological interrogation tactics to get terror suspects to talk.

It's the most revealing account so far of interrogations at the secretive detention camp, where officials say they have halted some controversial techniques.

"I have really struggled with this because the detainees, their families and much of the world will think this is a religious war based on some of the techniques used, even though it is not the case," the author, former Army Sgt. Erik R. Saar, 29, told AP.

Saar didn't provide the manuscript or approach AP, but confirmed the authenticity of nine draft pages AP obtained. He requested his hometown remain private so he wouldn't be harassed. Saar, who is neither Muslim nor of Arab descent, worked as an Arabic translator at the U.S. camp in eastern Cuba from December 2002 to June 2003. At the time, it was under the command of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who had a mandate to get better intelligence from prisoners, including alleged al-Qaida members caught in Afghanistan.

Saar said he witnessed about 20 interrogations and about three months after his arrival at the remote U.S. base he started noticing "disturbing" practices.

One female civilian contractor used a special outfit that included a miniskirt, thong underwear and a bra during late-night interrogations with prisoners, mostly Muslim men who consider it taboo to have close contact with women who aren't their wives.

Beginning in April 2003, "there hung a short skirt and thong underwear on the hook on the back of the door" of one interrogation team's office, he writes. "Later I learned that this outfit was used for interrogations by one of the female civilian contractors ... on a team which conducted interrogations in the middle of the night on Saudi men who were refusing to talk."

Some Guantanamo prisoners who have been released say they were tormented by "prostitutes."

In another case, Saar describes a female military interrogator questioning an uncooperative 21-year-old Saudi detainee who allegedly had taken flying lessons in Arizona before the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Suspected Sept. 11 hijacker Hani Hanjour received pilot instruction for three months in 1996 and in December 1997 at a flight school in Scottsdale, Ariz.

"His female interrogator decided that she needed to turn up the heat," Saar writes, saying she repeatedly asked the detainee who had sent him to Arizona, telling him he could "cooperate" or "have no hope whatsoever of ever leaving this place or talking to a lawyer.'"

The man closed his eyes and began to pray, Saar writes.

The female interrogator wanted to "break him," Saar adds, describing how she removed her uniform top to expose a tight-fitting T-shirt and began taunting the detainee, touching her breasts, rubbing them against the prisoner's back and commenting on his apparent erection.

The detainee looked up and spat in her face, the manuscript recounts.

The interrogator left the room to ask a Muslim linguist how she could break the prisoner's reliance on God. The linguist told her to tell the detainee that she was menstruating, touch him, then make sure to turn off the water in his cell so he couldn't wash.

Strict interpretation of Islamic law forbids physical contact with women other than a man's wife or family, and with any menstruating women, who are considered unclean.

"The concept was to make the detainee feel that after talking to her he was unclean and was unable to go before his God in prayer and gain strength," says the draft, stamped "Secret."

The interrogator used ink from a red pen to fool the detainee, Saar writes.

"She then started to place her hands in her pants as she walked behind the detainee," he says. "As she circled around him he could see that she was taking her hand out of her pants. When it became visible the detainee saw what appeared to be red blood on her hand. She said, 'Who sent you to Arizona?' He then glared at her with a piercing look of hatred.

"She then wiped the red ink on his face. He shouted at the top of his lungs, spat at her and lunged forward" — so fiercely that he broke loose from one ankle shackle.

"He began to cry like a baby," the draft says, noting the interrogator left saying, "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself."

Events Saar describes resemble two previous reports of abusive female interrogation tactics, although it wasn't possible to independently verify his account.

In November, in response to an AP request, the military described an April 2003 incident in which a female interrogator took off her uniform top, exposed her brown T-shirt, ran her fingers through a detainee's hair and sat on his lap. That session was immediately ended by a supervisor and that interrogator received a written reprimand and additional training, the military said.

In another incident, the military reported that in early 2003 a different female interrogator "wiped dye from red magic marker on detainees' shirt after detainee spit (cq) on her," telling the detainee it was blood. She was verbally reprimanded, the military said.

Sexual tactics used by female interrogators have been criticized by the FBI (news - web sites), which complained in a letter obtained by AP last month that U.S. defense officials hadn't acted on complaints by FBI observers of "highly aggressive" interrogation techniques, including one in which a female interrogator grabbed a detainee's genitals.

About 20 percent of the guards at Guantanamo are women, said Lt. Col. James Marshall, a spokesman for U.S. Southern Command. He wouldn't say how many of the interrogators were female.

Marshall wouldn't address whether the U.S. military had a specific strategy to use women.

"U.S. forces treat all detainees and conduct all interrogations, wherever they may occur, humanely and consistent with U.S. legal obligations, and in particular with legal obligations prohibiting torture," Marshall said late Wednesday.

But some officials at the U.S. Southern Command have questioned the formation of an all-female team as one of Guantanamo's "Immediate Reaction Force" units that subdue troublesome male prisoners in their cells, according to a document classified as secret and obtained by AP.

In one incident, dated June 19, 2004, "The detainee appears to be genuinely traumatized by a female escort securing the detainee's leg irons," according to the document, a U.S. Southern Command summary of videotapes shot when the teams were used.

The summary warned that anyone outside Department of Defense (news - web sites) channels should be prepared to address allegations that women were used intentionally with Muslim men.

At Guantanamo, Saar said, "Interrogators were given a lot of latitude under Miller," the commander who went from the prison in Cuba to overseeing prisons in Iraq, where the Abu Ghraib scandal shocked the world with pictures revealing sexual humiliation of naked prisoners.

Several female troops have been charged in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Saar said he volunteered to go to Guantanamo because "I really believed in the mission," but then he became disillusioned during his six months at the prison.

After leaving the Army with more than four years service, Saar worked as a contractor briefly for the FBI.

The Department of Defense has censored parts of his draft, mainly blacking out people's names, said Saar, who hired Washington attorney Mark S. Zaid to represent him. Saar needed permission to publish because he signed a disclosure statement before going to Guantanamo.

The book, which Saar titled "Inside the Wire," is due out this year with Penguin Press.

Guantanamo has about 545 prisoners from some 40 countries, many held more than three years without charge or access to lawyers and many suspected of links to al-Qaida or Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime, which harbored the terrorist network.

AP: Videos Show Guantanamo Prisoner Abuse
1 hour, 42 minutes ago Top Stories - AP
By PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Videotapes of riot squads subduing troublesome terror suspects at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay show the guards punching some detainees, tying one to a gurney for questioning and forcing a dozen to strip from the waist down, according to a secret report. One squad was all-female, traumatizing some Muslim prisoners.

Investigators from U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which oversees the camp in Cuba, wrote the report that was obtained by The Associated Press after spending a little over a week in June reviewing 20 of some 500 hours of videotapes involving "Immediate Reaction Forces."

[...]

One such clip the investigators flagged was from Feb. 17, 2004. It showed "one or more" team members punching a detainee "on an area of his body that seemingly would be inconsistent with striking a pressure point," which is a sanctioned tactic for subduing prisoners.

[..]

Although a court ordered the government to comply with the ACLU request and turn over documents — thousands of which the ACLU has received — the government has refused to provide videos, citing privacy concerns, said Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU attorney...

This story reminds me a little of the George Galloway hearing in the Senate, in that Americans in general are so insulated from what anyone else in the world thinks about us. I don't think most Americans are even aware of how important Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib seem outside our borders. I mean, we forgot about them in a week or so, why can't everyone else?

Biden: U.S. Needs to Close Cuba Prison
2 hours, 15 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A leading Senate Democrat said Sunday the United States needs to move toward shutting down the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"This has become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world. And it is unnecessary to be in that position," said Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record), D-Del.

A Pentagon report released Friday detailed incidents in which U.S. guards at Guantanamo desecrated the Quran. Last month, Amnesty International called the detention center for alleged terrorists "the gulag of our time," a charge Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld dismissed as "reprehensible."

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania, plans hearings this month on the treatment of foreign terrorism suspects at the prison camp.

Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proposed that an independent commission take a look at Guantanamo and make recommendations.

"But the end result is, I think we should end up shutting it down, moving those prisoners," he told ABC's "This Week."

"Those that we have reason to keep, keep. And those we don't, let go."

He added, "I think more Americans are in jeopardy as a consequence of the perception that exists worldwide with its existence than if there were no Gitmo."

There are about 540 detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Some have been there more than three years without being charged with a crime. Most were captured on the battlefields of Afghanistanin 2001 and 2002 and were sent to Guantanamo Bay in hope of extracting useful intelligence about the al-Qaida terrorist network.

How does this help anything? Presumably, the govt believes that everybody in Gitmo is kept there for a valid reason.

NEWSWEEK LIED ABOUT THE KORAN....oh wait, no they didn't.

Which makes it harder to understand why detainees themselves were pissing on Korans, ripping up their Korans, and flushing them down the toilets.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050713/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/guantanamo_abuse_investigation

Military Outlines Cases of Abuse at Gitmo
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN and LOLITA BALDOR, Associated Press Writers
28 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Interrogators subjected a suspected terrorist to abusive and degrading treatment, forcing him to wear a bra, dance with another man and behave like a dog, military investigators reported Wednesday, saying that justified their call for disciplinary action...

[...]

"It is clear from the report that detainee mistreatment was not simply the product of a few rogue miltiary police in a night shift," said Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the committee. Bush administration officials have sought to portray the excesses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq as just that.

But Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said investigators found only three instances, out of thousands of interrogations, where military personnel violated Army policy. He did not immediately describe those incidents.

Investigators determined that interrogators violated the Geneva Conventions and Army regulations three times. It was unclear from the aide's description what those instances were.

The military investigation was conducted by Schmidt and Army Brig. Gen. John T. Furlow after the FBI agents' reports of abuse at Guantanamo surfaced last year. Craddock and the two investigators testifiedabout their findings at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday.

Previous investigations of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo have hurt U.S. standing worldwide.

[...and there's more to the article]

again, it's the INVESTIGATIONS of all this shit. not the fact that any of it actually happened, just that somebody looked into it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1566197,00.html

there are reports of "Reverse Stockholm Syndrome" happening down there, where interrogators were accused of defending the prisoners against the guards, slipping personal info about the MPs(name/social security #s) to the prisoners in exchange for intel, etc.

The interrogator "sees himself as a hero for the detainees, and against the MPs, on a crusade in the battle of the MPs against the detainees," one investigator wrote in the report on the inquiry that The Associated Press obtained under a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

It also links to a review of a book by Professor John Yoo, the guy I mentioned in the thread starting post:

Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush's legal policies in the "war on terror" than John Yoo. This is a remarkable feat, because Yoo was not a cabinet official, not a White House lawyer, and not even a senior officer within the Justice Department. He was merely a mid-level attorney in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel with little supervisory authority and no power to enforce laws. Yet by all accounts, Yoo had a hand in virtually every major legal decision involving the US response to the attacks of September 11, and at every point, so far as we know, his advice was virtually always the same— the president can do whatever the president wants.

Yoo's most famous piece of advice was in an August 2002 memorandum stating that the president cannot constitutionally be barred from ordering torture in wartime—even though the United States has signed and ratified a treaty absolutely forbidding torture under all circumstances, and even though Congress has passed a law pursuant to that treaty, which without any exceptions prohibits torture. Yoo reasoned that because the Constitution makes the president the "Commander-in-Chief," no law can restrict the actions he may take in pursuit of war. On this reasoning, the president would be entitled by the Constitution to resort to genocide if he wished...

And plenty of other scary-ass ideas in that article(President can break any treaty at any time, courts have no power to enforce them, etc)...

Fuck these people, seriously. Six months in the brig for doing the right thing:

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) -- A military jury recommended Friday that a Navy lawyer be discharged and imprisoned for six months for sending a human rights attorney the names of 550 Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz was convicted Thursday of communicating secret information about Guantanamo Bay detainees that could be used to injure the United States and three other charges of leaking information to an unauthorized person.

The jury of seven Navy officers recommended that Diaz receive his pay and benefits while incarcerated, but the sentence must be approved by Rear Admiral Rick Ruehe. The dismissal will also be reviewed by a military appellate court, the Navy said.

Diaz, who could have received up to 14 years in prison, gave emotional testimony during the sentencing hearing, apologizing for his actions.

"The prosecutors were right: I'm a meticulous man. I should have done better. It was extremely irrational for me to do what I did," Diaz said.

After the first day of his trial Monday, Diaz had told The Dallas Morning News he felt sending the list -- which was inside an unmarked Valentine's Day card -- was the right decision because of how the detainees were being treated.

"My oath as a commissioned officer is to the Constitution of the United States," Diaz said. "I'm not a criminal."

In early 2005, as he was concluding a six-month tour of duty as a legal adviser at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Diaz sent an anonymous note to a New York civil liberties group containing the detainees' names...