torture Posts

Reports are in that link up the US torture program and the hunt for the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Jonathan S Landay in McClatchy News quotes a "former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue":

"The main [reason for the torture] is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

All this is not really a surprise; I covered it in real time over on Nonviolence.org. There were numerous reports that the Vice President and Secretary of Defense were pushing the intelligence agencies to come up with evidence that would back their flawed theories.

The United States is supposed to be the champion of freedom but we resorted to the most brutal of communist-era torture techniques because our highest officials were more interested in their cartoon view of the world than the complex reality (and not so complex: anyone who's taken an "Intro to Islam" class would know that an alliance between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden would be have been very unlikely). When facts and ideological theories don't match up, it's time to dig for more facts and revisit the ideologies. 

Part of the playbook for American torture in Iraq and Guantánamo comes from Chinese interrogation methods used against captured Americans during the Cold War.

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners. The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

It sounds like something out of the 1962 thriller film The Manchurian Candidate. And in a way it is: the idea that Chinese Communists had used inhuman ruthlessness to unlock the secrets of the brain to create the perfect truth technique would be a charming artifact of 1950s American culture, something to show alongside the hula hoop and the Jetson-like hover cars we're all supposed to be driving in the year 2000. Instead it's yet another exhibit in Pentagon amnesia.

Doesn't anyone do any fact checking at the Pentagon? "Officials who drew on the SERE program [in 2002 to design American intelligence adaptation] appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners." And yet... it's clear that Presidents Bush and Cheney wanted false information in 2002 to launch the war against Iraq. Whatever "confessions" can be wrung from the Baghdad taxi drivers who got caught up in the arrest sweeps can certainly be used to bully the growing number who oppose the war.

But what do we want, justifications or the truth? Peace in the region or protection from sins of the past? Forget that torture is inhuman: it's also just an unreliable way of getting accurate information. It's hard to imagine a realistic scenario where the horrible events of 9/11 could have been stopped by acts of torture by U.S. intelligence or military personnel but it's could have been stopped if thoughtful analysts had been allowed to share information across agency lines and been focused on true knowledge and understanding.

• Shawna on the little miracles that
  This is what I call a "shoelace miracle." It's a little thing. A really little and unimportant thing. And not very impressive. But it's like this: when a three-yr-old goes to his father and holds out his shoe, and asks his father to tie his shoelace.
  (tags: quaker.fwcc)
• Scott W on functional atheism in Friends decision-making
  Part of what the emerging church can teach us and remind us is that we easily fall into the trap of "functional atheism" [where] we give lip service to God and to the guidance and power of God but we function as if we are doing it all ourselves.
  (tags: quaker quaker.emergent quaker.christianity quaker.process)
• Glenn R on some generational advise to young Friends (via QuakerQuaker.org)
  Our immediate graying elders - the weighty and influential in our Quaker Society - are what we might call 'Aquarians'. The Aquarians came of age (were mostly 12 - 29* years old) that consciousness-raising Summer of Love, 1967.
  (tags: quaker.youth quaker)
• Chris M w/2nd hand report on convergent dinner
  They included Friends from meetings affiliated with Friends United Meeting and Friends General Conference, as well as Conservative and unaffiliated yearly meetings.
  (tags: quaker.fwcc quaker.convergent)
• Wess on breaking the cycle of listening to God just so He listens back
  We keep things safe by keeping up the appearance of listening when in fact we're really just investing in currency. This may be why Quakers silence is still a very radical practice, there is always the chance that the cycle will be broken
  (tags: quaker quaker.ministry)
• Liberata on squemishness around political acts
  Even Friends are squeamish these days about topics that are too controversial or --heaven forefend!-- "political." I guess there's historical precedent. Many 19th-century Fds thought that activism for the abolition of slavery was too "worldly" a pursuit.
  (tags: quaker quaker.witness)
• Agitator Dave reads a bio of Cesar Chavez
  There might be better written biographies of Cesar Chavez, and I'm sure at some point I'll find one, but this might be the most comprehensive biography of a man and of a movement that I have read so far.
  (tags: comment)
• Quaker Agitator Dave on bringing Quaker education principles to public school
  It means changing the school culture in a lot of different ways. It means more parental involvement, and not everybody likes that. It means bringing the kids in as more active participants in the system.
  (tags: quaker quaker.education)
• Light & Silence Simon on Hauerwas and early Friends on Jesus
  Theologically, this is a powerful statement, but seen from a modern historical perspective, it's earth-shattering. This telling moves well beyond practices that acknowledge bias to what many would argue is sheer propaganda.
  (tags: quaker quaker.christianity)

• Will T: the awkward role of ministers among liberal Friends
  Today, people with a ministry often find themselves in an awkward position. Our Quaker culture says to wait until you are recognized. But then we don't recognize anyone. [The] people who do come forth are people who are willing to put themselves forward.
  (tags: quaker quaker.ministry quaker.liberal)
• Livejournalers trying to get QuakerQuaker working
  Need to fix Feedburner domain-listed feed
  (tags: comment)
• Once more President Bush condones torture (NYTimes)
  Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the agency from using waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning and that has been the subject of intense criticism at home and abroad.
  (tags: nv)

• Micah starts to doubt on a religious trip to Mexico (via QuakerQuaker.org)
  I got to think a great deal about the interaction between "essential Quakerism" and the culture in which that Quakerism is expressed. I wondered very much, "is Quakerism a cultural phenomenon without any ultimate, universal value for all of humanity?"
  (tags: quaker quaker.alientation quaker.universalism quaker.youth comment)
• Pax et lux on talking about torture with Friends
  I was feeling very discouraged at how few of us there are who care or who haven't been bewitched by the messages of fear or vengeance. As I closed my eyes and centered down during meeting for worship, I heard the words of Jesus
  (tags: quaker quaker.witness)
• Aj Schwanz on communion and rituals whose meanings have been forgotten
  I understand how the lack of physical symbols is a symbol in itself. While it was seemingly so meaningful to first gen Qs, I wonder if the power dissipates with each generation: as we follow them, we see more of their shoes than where they were headed.
  (tags: quaker quaker.evangelical quaker.christiantiy)

The latest in the growing scandal of the CIA's destroyed torture tapes comes from the US Justice Department:

The department is taking an even harder line with other Congressional committees looking into the matter, and is refusing to provide information about any role it might have played in the destruction of the videotapes.

The Times article goes on to explain that scheduled grilling of CIA officials by the House Intelligence Committee will almost definitely be postponed because of the Justice Department's obstruction.

2002: the CIA tortures prisoners and films the proceedings;
2005: the CIA destroys the evidence because it would implicate those agents who conducted torture;
2007: the Justice Department tries to shut down Congressional investigations into the tapes' destruction.

Thankfully Congressional leaders don't seem to be standing down in the wake of the Justice Department bullying, with both Democrats and Republicans vowing to press on. From the Washington Post: "Congressional leaders from both parties alleged that Justice is trying to block their investigation and vowed to press ahead with hearings." Will Congress finally start demanding accountability for how American intelligence forces have been acting since 2001? Well, don't hold your breath. Still we might all be in store for some interesting revelations over the next couple of weeks.

More from the U.S. War of Terror. Two years ago officials of the Central Intelligence Agency purposefully destroyed taped evidence of its torture program.

They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.

The CIA guys were put in a difficult position: more or less ordered by their President to torture prisoners suspected of belonging to al Qaeda in an moment of history--the tapes were made in 2002--when many Americans were willing to look the other way. But it should go without saying that torture is never okay, never justified. Many studies have proven it generally doesn't provide reliable information as the victim says whatever they think their captor wants to hear just to end the pain. How many court cases against real al Qaeda agents are going to have to be thrown out now that we know the evidence is a product of abuse?

There are times when men and women of honor have to say no to their superiors, no to their President and no to the American people, when they must draw a line in the sand for the sake of decency and humanity. That would have been hard enough in 2002. But to destroy the evidence is 2005 is pure obstruction of justice. The CIA is hiding the acts it performed in our name from us. Everyone involved in the cover-up and destruction belongs in jail. Let's hope for democracy's sake that they end up there.