[BurdenRobert]

...seen at a few airports around Europe and also said to have been seen in Afghanistan . You can easily trace its' frame number and also the owners, listed as Path Corporation.


am unable to load the photo but follow this link to see the actual aircraft: http://www.airliners.net/open.file/848894/M/

[exeftWabreava]

here it is:

[pinawinekolad]

Frightening how something so innocuous can conceal such a dark secret.

[AccusaJalsBub]

European Probe to Check Suspect Planes


Tuesday November 22, 2005
By JAN SLIVA
Associated Press Writer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlates...432814,00.html


PARIS (AP) - The head of an investigation into alleged secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe said Tuesday he was checking 31 suspect planes that landed in Europe in recent years and was trying to acquire past satellite images of sites in Romania and Poland.

If the European probe uncovers evidence of covert facilities, the potential impact ranges from major embarrassment for the United States to political turmoil in countries that might have participated, even unwittingly. Countries found housing secret detention centers also could be suspended or expelled from the 46-member Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog organization.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Swiss senator Dick Marty said the Council of Europe, on whose behalf he was investigating, had a "moral obligation'' to look into claims the CIA set up secret prisons on the continent to interrogate al-Qaida suspects.

He said that despite lack of proof, there were "many hints, such as suspicious moving patterns of aircraft, that have to be investigated.''

But given the limited powers of the Strasbourg-based council, Marty's chances of uncovering explosive state secrets seemed unclear. The U.S. government has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of such facilities.

Allegations the CIA hid and interrogated key al-Qaida suspects at Soviet-era compounds in Eastern Europe were first reported in The Washington Post on Nov. 2. The paper did not name the countries involved.

A day later, Human Rights Watch said it had evidence indicating the CIA transported suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania. The New York-based group identified the Kogalniceanu military airfield in Romania and Poland's Szczytno-Szymany airport as possible sites for secret detention centers, saying it based its conclusion on flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004 that it had obtained.

In a report presented in Paris on Tuesday to the legal affairs committee of the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly, Marty said other airports that might have been used by CIA aircraft in some capacity are Palma de Mallorca in Spain, Larnaca in Cyprus and Shannon in Ireland.

Marty's report - a copy of which was obtained by the AP - contends the aircraft are "alleged to belong to entities with direct or indirect links to the CIA. It is claimed these were used by the CIA to transport prisoners.''

He said he asked the Brussels, Belgium-based Eurocontrol air safety organization to provide details of 31 suspect planes that flew through Europe, in accordance with a list given to him by Human Rights Watch.
Member states send Eurocontrol - also known as the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation - flight logs of both civilian and military flights, but these are not published.

Marty also said he asked the European Union's Satellite Center in Spain to look up and hand over satellite images of suspect sites in Romania and Poland.

"When we talk about 'prisons,' they don't necessarily have to be for many people, they could be cells for a very small group of people, one or two,'' he said.

Marty said he was planning to ask authorities in the Council of Europe's member states whether they have been contacted in order to ``authorize secret detention in one form or another.''

He also said he intended to ask Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, to share any information the Senate may get from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on the possible existence of secret detention facilities outside the United States.

Earlier this month, the Senate voted to require National Intelligence Director John Negroponte to provide the Senate and House intelligence committees with details of any clandestine facilities where the United States holds or has held terrorism suspects.

On Tuesday, several EU countries - including Britain, the Netherlands and Finland - agreed to write the United States on behalf of the European Union requesting clarification of the reports of secret prisons.

Marty said the probe was not meant to spark anti-American feelings or question the U.S. fight against terrorism.

"This is absolutely not a crusade against America. I think all Europeans agree with Americans that we must fight terrorism,'' he said. "We do not want to weaken the fight against terrorism ... but this fight has to be fought by legal means. Wrongdoing only gives ammunition to both the terrorists and their sympathizers.''

The Council of Europe is the guardian of the European Convention on Human Rights, a legally binding human rights treaty signed by all 46 council members. The council itself has no direct jurisdiction over any country but can exercise political pressure.

Membership in the organization is considered prestigious for European countries as it attests to their attachment to Europe's human rights principles.

[MasdMnPa]

The U.S. Policy of allowing "Torture" will haunt this country for years to come:

Torture claims 'forced US to cut terror charges'

· Dirty bomb evidence came from al-Qaida leaders
· CIA worried case would expose prison network

Jamie Wilson in Washington
Friday November 25, 2005
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/st...html?gusrc=rss

The Bush administration decided not to charge Jose Padilla with planning to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a US city because the evidence against him was extracted using torture on members of al-Qaida, it was claimed yesterday.

Mr Padilla, a US citizen who had been held for more than three years as an "enemy combatant" in a military prison in North Carolina, was indicted on Tuesday on the lesser charges of supporting terrorism abroad. After his arrest in 2002 the Brooklyn-born Muslim convert was also accused by the administration of planning to blow up apartment blocks in New York using natural gas.

The administration had used his case as evidence of the continued threat posed by al-Qaida inside America.

Yesterday's New York Times, quoting unnamed current and former government officials, said the main evidence of Mr Padilla's involvement in the plots against US cities had come from two captured al-Qaida leaders, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, and Abu Zubaydah, a leading al-Qaida recruiter. But the officials told the newspaper Mr Padilla could not be charged with the bomb plots because neither of the al-Qaida leaders could be used as witnesses as they had been subjected to harsh questioning and could open up charges from defence lawyers that their earlier statements resulted from torture. Officials also feared that their testimony could expose classified information about the CIA prison system in which the men were thought to be held.

The CIA has never publicly acknowledged it is detaining Mr Mohammed and Mr Zubaydah. It is not known where they are being held. But it was reported last month the CIA was using secret detention centres in eastern Europe, possibly in Poland and Romania, for interrogations, thus beyond the reach of US law.

Internal reviews by the CIA have raised questions about the treatment and credibility of the two men. The New York Times said one review, completed in spring last year by the CIA inspector general, found that in the first months after his capture Mr Mohammed had suffered excessive use of "waterboarding", a technique involving near drowning which entails the detainee being strapped to a board and then submerged.

Announcing the charges against Mr Padilla on Tuesday, the attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, repeatedly refused to answer questions on why none of the allegations involving attacks on the US had been included. "I am not going to talk about previous accusations and allegations that are outside the indictment," he said. However, the New York Times said the officials had emphasised that the government was not backing off its initial assertions about the seriousness of Mr Padilla's actions.

Mr Padilla was arrested at O'Hare airport in Chicago in 2002 after returning from Pakistan. President George Bush declared him an enemy combatant, and the administration resisted calls to charge and try him in civilian courts. His case became a cause célèbre, with human rights groups claiming it was an extreme example of how civil liberties had been brushed aside in pursuit of the war on terror.

Mr Padilla was handed over last week to the justice department for civilian proceedings, avoiding a potentially embarrassing supreme court showdown over how long the US government could hold one of its citizens in military custody without charges.

Torture has become an emotive issue around the world since prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq was uncovered. A new law sponsored by Senator John McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate and a war hero who was tortured in Vietnam, would ban inhumane treatment and oblige all US agencies to abide by international law on torture. The draft law was approved by 90 votes to nine in the Senate earlier this month, but the House of Representatives has yet to give its support and Dick Cheney has launched an aggressive effort to modify the legislation to allow the CIA to be exempted - causing the Washington Post to label him "Vice President for Torture" in an editorial.

[bitymnmictada]

[Ankeseiband]

This article shows how clueless the Torture-Mongers are.

McCain's clear statement that "the information was of no real use to the Vietnamese" contradicts what these folk so desperately want to prove ...
That McCain broke under torture doesn't make him any less of an American hero. But it does prove he's wrong to claim that harsh interrogation techniques simply don't work. John McCain: Torture Worked on Me

Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2005
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2...9/100012.shtml


Sen. John McCain is leading the charge against so-called "torture" techniques allegedly used by U.S. interrogators, insisting that practices like sleep deprivation and withholding medical attention are not only brutal - they simply don't work to persuade terrorist suspects to give accurate information.

Nearly forty years ago, however - when McCain was held captive in a North Vietnamese prison camp - some of the same techniques were used on him. And - as McCain has publicly admitted at least twice - the torture worked!

In his 1999 autobiography, "Faith of My Fathers," McCain describes how he was severely injured when his plane was shot down over Hanoi - and how his North Vietnamese interrogators used his injuries to extract information.
"Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I did not cooperate," he wrote.

"I thought they were bluffing and refused to provide any information beyond my name, rank and serial number, and date of birth. They knocked me around a little to force my cooperation."

The punishment finally worked, McCain said. "Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant."

Recalling how he gave up military information to his interrogators, McCain said: "I regret very much having done so. The information was of no real use to the Vietnamese, but the Code of Conduct for American Prisoners of War orders us to refrain from providing any information beyond our names, rank and serial number."

The episode wasn't the only instance when McCain broke under physical pressure.
Just after his release in May 1973, he detailed his experience as a P.O.W. in a lengthy account in U.S. News & World Report.

He described the day Hanoi Hilton guards beat him "from pillar to post, kicking and laughing and scratching. After a few hours of that, ropes were put on me and I sat that night bound with ropes."

"For the next four days, I was beaten every two to three hours by different guards . . . Finally, I reached the lowest point of my 5 1/2 years in North Vietnam. I was at the point of suicide, because I saw that I was reaching the end of my rope."

McCain was taken to an interrogation room and ordered to sign a document confessing to war crimes. "I signed it," he recalled. "It was in their language, and spoke about black crimes, and other generalities."

"I had learned what we all learned over there," McCain said. "Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine."
That McCain broke under torture doesn't make him any less of an American hero. But it does prove he's wrong to claim that harsh interrogation techniques simply don't work.

[Cucoulkrory]

What a stupid article.

Interrogation tecniques do not work to get the information you want, not just to break a prisoner.

What a stupid STUPID statement this article is making.

It is like saying "Smashing things DOES make things change!!!"

But it obviously does not create anything (the change that we would be looking for).

I hate it when people play with somantics, especially when they know what the person meant in the first place.

[Kghyutgykim]

Just yesterday Bush unequivocally stated (yet again) that the war should be run by the military commanders and NOT the politicians in Washington.

Seemingly Rumsfeld didn't get that message ...

Top U.S. military officer contradicts his civilian boss

11/30/2005
http://www.abc15.com/news/morenews/index.asp?did=23049


WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's top military man, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, said American troops in Iraq have a duty to intercede and stop abuse of prisoners by Iraqi security personnel.

When Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld contradicted Pace, the general stood firm.

Rumsfeld told the general he believed Pace meant to say the U.S. soldiers had to report the abuse, not stop it.

Pace stuck to his original statement.

The unusual exchange occurred during a discussion at a news conference about the relationship between U.S. forces in Iraq and an Iraqi government considered sovereign by the United States.

A questioner asked whether the United States and its allies might be deemed responsible for preventing mistreatment of people under arrest in Iraq, given that the U.S. and its allies train Iraqi forces.

"There are a lot of people involved in this, dozens of countries trying to help train these Iraqi forces. Any instance of inhumane behavior is obviously worrisome and harmful to them when that occurs," Rumsfeld said. "Iraq knows, of certain knowledge, that they need the support of the international community. And a good way to lose it is to make a practice of something that is inconsistent with the values of the international community."

He added: "Now, you know, I can't go any further in talking about it.

Obviously, the United States does not have a responsibility when a sovereign country engages in something that they disapprove of."

Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked what orders the troops have to handle such incidents. He responded: "It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene, to stop it."

He said soldiers who hear of but don't see an incident should deal with it through superiors of the offending Iraqis.

That's when Rumsfeld stepped to the microphone and said, "I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it. It's to report it."

Pace then repeated to Rumsfeld that intervening when witnessing abuse is the order the troops must follow, not just reporting it.


On the Net:
Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil

Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press.

[crazuMovies]

I don't know who to side with here. If the military wants to intercede on the behalf of the inmate being tortured, then I can see where Pace is coming from. But at the same time, defying Rumsfeld is a disturbing concept in and of itself because it implies an undermining of civilian control of the military.

[Freedjome]

Hmm, hard choice:

Defying Rumsfeld ... or defying the accepted International Rules of War?

[18holesin]

Quite apart from the barbarity of torture, the consequences of information obtained under torture are far reaching, especially when they are used by governments to shape or justify policy and laws. As an example, here in the UK the government wants to impose compulsory ID cards containing biometric data on the holder linked to multiple government, medical and law enforcement data bases.

There are many profound implications for this; it changes the relationship between citizen and government (actually we are subjects) meaning we have to justify ourselves to government and their agencies for the first time in our history. You will be required to produce the card on demand, to purchase a rail or air ticket even petrol and anything else the government deems. Databases will be used to categorise people by ethnicity, location - current past and future, political tendencies, union membership and many, many other infringements on privacy.

When first announced the government stated they were needed to protect us against terrorism. Police chiefs were rolled out to back up their position stating they had seen unspecified intelligence leaving them in no doubt that the threat was real, imminent and catastrophic justifying any infringement on civil liberties that i.d. cards would bring.

It has since transpired that the "intelligence" they were shown referred to so called "dirty bombs" planned to be detonated in UK cities. This "intelligence" has since been shown to obtained from a radical Muslim after many months of torture, since proven to be totally spurious.

The government has since admitted that i.d. cards would not have prevented ANY of the terrorist attacks in the UK or indeed in the US and are now justifying the £8 billion i.d. card bill on the prevention of identity theft....

It is just one indication of how cynical politicians will, if allowed, use even the degradation of common held values to make policy, law and even war and it can all be traced back to one person having a cattle prod shoved up his arse.


BTW - the last government to attempt a nation i.d. scheme backed up by databases was the German Nazi Part in the 1930's. It was invented by IBM expressly for Adolf Hitler to provide him with the first of many solutions to Germany's perceived problems that led to the Holocaust. Indeed, there was no solution IBM was unwilling to provide Hitler with.

Until the 12-year strategic alliance between IBM and the Nazi regime, people could be counted manually, but not individually identified. At the end of the 19th Century, IBM invented data processing with its Hollerith punch card system - that is, a simple process of storing information on individuals, places, objects and processes by mechanically punching select holes in designated columns and rows. In 1933, as Hitler wanted to identify the Jews and other 'enemies of the state' so he could target them for persecution, IBM energetically stepped forward, offering to create an automated system for Hitler's first national census. The company designed a census that not only counted heads but also recorded the characteristics of those heads by name and background. Throughout the 12-year Reich, IBM's technology helped the Nazis in all six phases of the Holocaust: identification, social exclusion, confiscation, ghettoisation, deportation and even extermination.

There was an IBM customer site, known as the Hollerith Department, in almost every concentration camp, from Auschwitz (IBM coded 001) to Dachau (IBM coded 003). It all began with national identification in 1933.

The system was used to target any designated enemy: for example, homosexuals (coded 2), Jehovah's Witnesses (3), Communists (6), Gypsies (2) and, of course, Jews (8).

As ever, US companies are at the forefront in bidding for contracts to supply the technology for the UK's i.d. cards and databases.

IBM’s punch cards were simply a piece of paper with holes in it. In practice, the technology was deadly.

I.D. cards are simple credit card like smart cards and as our government says - "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear"......

http://www.no2id.net/

[brandiweb]

Except fear itself.


Total indexing of the US population is a scary prospect.

-Citizen No: 4567-9851-7899-4

[deermealec]

Hmm, hard choice:

Defying Rumsfeld ... or defying the accepted International Rules of War?

It may be Rumsfeld, but it's still civilian control over the military. Who knows what repercussions that might have in future administrations?

[LkEHaduy]

EXCLUSIVE: Sources Tell ABC News Top Al Qaeda Figures Held in Secret CIA Prisons

10 Out of 11 High-Value Terror Leaders Subjected to 'Enhanced Interrogation Techniques'

By BRIAN ROSS and RICHARD ESPOSITO
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigat...ory?id=1375123


Dec. 5, 2005 — Two CIA secret prisons were operating in Eastern Europe until last month when they were shut down following Human Rights Watch reports of their existence in Poland and Romania.

Current and former CIA officers speaking to ABC News on the condition of confidentiality say the United States scrambled to get all the suspects off European soil before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived there today. The officers say 11 top al Qaeda suspects have now been moved to a new CIA facility in the North African desert.

CIA officials asked ABC News not the name the specific countries where the prisons were located, citing security concerns.

The CIA declines to comment, but current and former intelligence officials tell ABC News that 11 top al Qaeda figures were all held at one point on a former Soviet air base in one Eastern European country. Several of them were later moved to a second Eastern European country.

All but one of these 11 high-value al Qaeda prisoners were subjected to the harshest interrogation techniques in the CIA's secret arsenal, the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" authorized for use by about 14 CIA officers and first reported by ABC News on Nov. 18.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today avoided directly answering the question of secret prisons in remarks made on her departure for Europe, where the issue of secret prisons and secret flights has caused a furor.

Without mentioning any country by name, Rice acknowledged special handling for certain terrorists.

"The captured terrorists of the 21st century do not fit easily into traditional systems of criminal or military justice, which were designed for different needs. We have had to adapt," Rice said.

The CIA has used a small fleet of private jets to move top al Qaeda suspects from Afghanistan and the Middle East to Eastern Europe, where Human Rights Watch has identified Poland and Romania as the countries that housed secret sites.

But Polish Defense Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told ABC Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross today: "My president has said there is no truth in these reports."

Ross asked: "Do you know otherwise, sir, are you aware of these sites being shut down in the last few weeks, operating on a base under your direct control?"

Sikorski answered, "I think this is as much as I can tell you about this."

In Romania, where the secret prison was possibly at a military base visited last year by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the new Romanian prime minister said today there is no evidence of a CIA site but that he will investigate.

Sources tell ABC that the CIA's secret prisons have existed since March 2002 when one was established in Thailand to house the first important al Qaeda target captured. Sources tell ABC that the approval for another secret prison was granted last year by a North African nation.

Sources tell ABC News that the CIA has a related system of secretly returning other prisoners to their home country when they have outlived their usefulness to the United States.

These same sources also tell ABC News that U.S. intelligence also ships some "unlawful combatants" to countries that use interrogation techniques harsher than any authorized for use by U.S. intelligence officers. They say that Jordan, Syria, Morocco and Egypt were among the nations used in order to extract confessions quickly using techniques harsher than those authorized for use by U.S. intelligence officers. These prisoners were not necessarily citizens of those nations.

According to sources directly involved in setting up the CIA secret prison system, it began with the capture of Abu Zabayda in Pakistan. After treatment there for gunshot wounds, he was whisked by the CIA to Thailand where he was housed in a small disused warehouse on an active airbase.

There, his cell was kept under 24-hour closed circuit TV surveillance and his life-threatening wounds were tended to by a CIA doctor especially sent from Langley headquarters to assure Abu Zubaydah was given proper care, sources said. Once healthy, he was slapped, grabbed, made to stand long hours in a cold cell and finally handcuffed and strapped feet up to a water board until after .31 seconds he begged for mercy and began to cooperate.

While in the secret facilities in Eastern Europe, Abu Zubaydah and his fellow captives were fed breakfasts that included yogurt and fruit, lunches that included steamed vegetables and beans, and dinners that included meat or chicken and more vegetables and rice, sources say. In exchange for cooperation, prisoners were sometimes given hard candies, deserts and chocolates. Abu Zubaydah was partial to Kit Kats, the same treat Saddam Hussein fancied in his captivity.

"One of the difficult issues in this new kind of conflict is what to do with captured individuals who we know or believe to be terrorists," Rice said. "The individuals come from many countries and are often captured far from their original homes. Among them are those who are effectively stateless, owing allegiance only to the extremist cause of transnational terrorism. Many are extremely dangerous. And some have information that may save lives, perhaps even thousands of lives."

Sources tell ABC News that Jordanians, Egyptians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians, Saudis, Pakistanis, Uzbekistanis and Chinese citizens have been returned to their nations' intelligence services after initial debriefing by U.S. intelligence officers. Rice said renditions such as these are vital to the war on terror. "Rendition is a vital tool in combating transnational terrorism," she said.

Of the 12 high value targets housed by the CIA, only one did not require water boarding before he talked. Ramzi bin al-Shibh broke down in tears after he was walked past the cell of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the operational planner for Sept. 11. Visibly shaken, he started to cry and became as cooperative as if he had been tied down to a water board, sources said.

[Menierofe]

"The captured terrorists of the 21st century do not fit easily into traditional systems of criminal or military justice, which were designed for different needs. We have had to adapt," Rice said. So we have to REGRESS in our interrogation techniques?

GJ Condi!

[BuyCheapest]

America can't take it anymore

The Bush administration has embraced torture as a key part of the "war on terror."
Finally, members of Congress, the military and the CIA are speaking out against the abuse.

By Mark Follman
Dec. 5, 2005

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/20...ash/index.html


Five days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney instructed the nation that the U.S. government would begin working "the dark side" to defeat its enemies in a new global war. "A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion," Cheney declared on NBC's "Meet the Press." He added, "It's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal."

More than four years later, the Bush administration has delivered on Cheney's vow to wage war in the shadows, free from oversight and accountability.

Policies for seizing and interrogating suspects -- conceived and commanded at the highest levels of the White House -- have permitted numerous acts of torture and even murder at the hands of American soldiers and interrogators.

The grim acts unleashed by those policies are no secret today. Cruel and wanton abuses have been exposed at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, and other lesser known U.S. military bases and prisons around the world. In November, the Washington Post uncovered a global network of covert CIA prisons known as "black sites," top-secret interrogation facilities reportedly operating in far-flung locations from Eastern Europe to Thailand. Still, many dark details remain unknown.

"There is no instance in American history where we've been exposed as being so deeply involved in actually conducting torture on a routine and regular basis," says Thomas Powers, an expert on national security and the author of two books on the CIA.

In recent months, a fierce backlash against the abuses has not only been rising in Washington, but well beyond. Many Americans on the front lines of national security are demoralized and angered by the fact that only a few foot soldiers have been punished -- such as Pvt. Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib infamy -- while commanders in the field and policymakers have remained untouched. A growing number of military and CIA personnel, according to officers from both realms, admit that the Bush policies, hatched in the fearful weeks and months after 9/11, have deeply corrupted military and intelligence operations over four years of war.

In October, the Senate passed the McCain amendment with overwhelming bipartisan support. It would impose uniform standards for interrogation on both the military and CIA, adhering to the Geneva Conventions' ban on torture and other "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of prisoners. As the amendment makes its way to the House, the Bush administration is fighting it every step of the way. Cheney is wielding his influence on both Capitol Hill and in the Pentagon, seeking to water down language in the McCain amendment and exempt the CIA from new guidelines.

Following the revelation of the black sites, President Bush stated: "We do not do torture." Much evidence proves otherwise, but what else could the president of the United States say? Torturing prisoners is both illegal and morally reprehensible. Committed by Americans, it has undermined the mission to bring democratic reform to Afghanistan, Iraq and the greater Middle East.

It has done profound damage to America's image at home and worldwide. And most intelligence experts, including CIA director Porter Goss, agree that when it comes to gathering useful information, torture simply doesn't work.

By now, the public may be desensitized to all the personal testimonials of torture brought to light in the media. In some cases, skepticism is warranted: Captured al-Qaida training manuals revealed instructions for prisoners to lie about being tortured to undermine the enemy. Military investigators have said they've found instances of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay making false allegations.

But evidence of widespread use of torture by the United States under the Bush administration is indisputable, including the policy of rendition, or the handing over of prisoners to foreign allies like Jordan and Egypt who are known to torture. European leaders have been in an uproar as further evidence emerges that the CIA has secretly used European airports to transport prisoners for interrogation.

The numbers alone tell a chilling story. According to recent reports by the Associated Press, the United States has held more than 83,000 prisoners since the war on terror began, primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, more than 14,000 remain in U.S. custody, mostly in Iraq, where U.S. military officials have acknowledged in the past that many prisoners were of little or no intelligence value. Military officials have said the same of the majority of prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay; yet from Guantánamo to the war zones, more than 4,000 prisoners have been held for a year or longer, with several hundred held for multiple years.

As of March this year, 108 detainees were known to have died in U.S. military and CIA custody. Of those, 22 died when insurgents attacked Abu Ghraib prison, while others reportedly died of natural causes. At least 26 deaths have been deemed criminal homicides.

Particularly troubling, says Powers, is that the Bush White House has taken no responsibility for the long trail of illegal abuses committed in the name of fighting terror: "Has anybody high up been held accountable for those 26 homicides? Not that I know of. And I'd be very surprised if we ever learn the full extent of all this. My guess is that if we could see the whole picture, it'd be extremely dark and unpleasant."

Army Capt. Ray Kimball is among the growing number who say that interrogation by torture is anti-American, ineffective and categorically wrong.

In an interview with Salon, he said it also causes severe harm to U.S. soldiers themselves.

"Torture not only degrades the victim, it also ultimately degrades the torturer," said Kimball, who served in Iraq and now teaches history at West Point. "We already have enough soldiers dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder after legitimate combat experiences. But now you're talking about adding the burden of willfully inflicting wanton pain on another human being.

You tell a soldier to go out there and 'waterboard' someone" -- strap a prisoner to a board, bind his face in cloth, and pour water over his face until he fears death by drowning -- "or mock-execute someone, but nobody is thinking about what that's going to do to that soldier months or years later, when it comes to dealing with the rationalizations and internal consequences. We're talking about serious psychic trauma."

A few courageous soldiers, including Army Capt. Ian Fishback of the elite 82nd Airborne Division, have spoken out against policies they say have cultivated torture on the battlefield. For 17 months, Fishback sought clarification within the military for the proper treatment of prisoners, and could find none. "I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder," Fishback wrote in an open letter to Sen. John McCain in September. "I and troops under my command witnessed some of these abuses in both Afghanistan and Iraq."

Coercion used on detainees, Fishback wrote, "is morally inconsistent with the Constitution and justice in war. It is unacceptable ... If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession."

More soldiers are starting to come forward with the support of groups like Human Rights Watch, which conducts leading research on torture in the war on terror. Although unwilling to talk on the record for fear of retribution by the military, a number of active-duty soldiers who've spoken with Human Rights Watch are increasingly angry about the torture scandals, according to researcher John Sifton. While some soldiers are wary that media and human rights groups are out to make the military look bad, Sifton says most of them realize that they are taking the sole blame for the abuses.

"A number of soldiers we've talked to have told us they were ordered by military intelligence to torture," Sifton told Salon. "And not just at Abu Ghraib but at forward operating bases across Iraq." According to Sifton, several soldiers who tried to report misconduct say their superiors told them to take a hike.

One of them was Army Spc. Tony Lagouranis, who worked as an interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison and in a special intelligence unit that operated across Iraq in 2004. After multiple attempts to report wrongdoing, he became frustrated by stonewalling inside the military and took his knowledge of abuses to the media.

"It's all over Iraq," Lagouranis, now retired, told the PBS show "Frontline" in late September. "The worst stuff I saw was from the detaining units who would torture people in their homes. They were using things like ... burns.

They would smash people's feet with the back of an axe-head. They would break bones, ribs." At the root of the abuses, he said, was a lot of "frustration that we weren't getting good intel," and murky directives regarding the treatment of prisoners. Inevitably, Lagouranis said, those conditions gave rise to instances of "pure sadism," like the ones at Abu Ghraib.

There are other accounts of stonewalling and coverup by the military: One Army whistleblower who tried to report abuses in Iraq in 2003 was suddenly declared psychologically ill and forcibly shipped out of the country. "They were determined to protect their own asses no matter who they had to take down," said Sgt. Frank "Greg" Ford, in a Salon report last year.

In a joint effort with Human Rights First and NYU's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, Human Rights Watch has been amassing a database of "literally hundreds and hundreds of cases of torture" at the hands of the U.S. military and CIA that have gone uninvestigated or unresolved. "There are only two cases I know of in which an officer or senior NCO has been accused of criminal conduct because of actions of those under their command," Sifton said. While some lower-level troops who committed abuse have been rightfully punished, he said, "it's simply shocking that nobody higher up has been held criminally liable."

"The message that's going out to guys is, as long as you're a senior military member or administration staffer, you're golden," says one active-duty Army officer, a veteran of combat in Iraq. "Just make sure either you've got a fall guy, or you're high enough up in the hierarchy, and you'll be fine."

Beginning almost immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, policies crafted inside the Bush White House set the conditions for rampant abuses by the military and CIA. In the first fearful weeks and months after the attacks, top administration lawyers in the White House and Justice Department drew up a series of secret legal memos that recast the rules for the treatment of so-called enemy combatants, those considered terrorist suspects from no easily identifiable army or nation. The memos argued that captured enemy combatants were not entitled to fundamental protections of U.S. or international law, including the obligations of the U.N. Convention Against Torture, a treaty the United States ratified in 1994 explicitly outlawing "torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of prisoners.

The administration also relied on a classified document known as a "presidential finding," authorizing broad covert action by the CIA to capture, detain or kill members of al-Qaida anywhere in the world. The finding, which administration legal advisors apparently ruled lawful, was signed by Bush on Sept. 17, 2001. A day later, Congress granted the administration additional power by authorizing the use of "all necessary and appropriate" military force at the discretion of the president.

This November, in response to the torture scandals, the Pentagon issued a new high-level directive requiring that interrogations be conducted using "humane" treatment. That term replaced language in an earlier draft of the directive modeled after the international rules against torture -- a change that was made following intense pressure from Cheney's office.

According to one senior Army officer, a judge advocate general who has been involved in discussions with Pentagon officials on the issue, reaching a consensus on what constitutes "humane" treatment can be exceedingly difficult -- and vague language remains precisely the strategy of the Bush administration's legal maneuverings on detention and interrogation. Pentagon officials working to revise the Army field manual have also reportedly faced stiff resistance from Cheney's office. In theory, the senior Army JAG says, the rules outlined in the current version of the manual, including 14 techniques approved for interrogations, were already well-defined enough to avert wrongdoing -- at least until the Bush administration began calling for "the gloves to come off" in the war on terror.

According to the senior Army JAG, who wasn't authorized to speak to the media and was granted anonymity by Salon, many fellow JAGs and military officers feel that the administration has long since veered into dubious territory. "There are plenty of us who think that the legal opinions put forth by the administration, while maybe passable from a technical standpoint, aren't serving our long-term interests. The feeling is that there are steep costs to the administration's views, and that we're just beginning to pay them."

It is no accident that the McCain amendment seeks to tighten controls over both the military and CIA. The two often work in concert in an ill-defined, shadowy world of prisoner capture, transport and interrogation. While some abuses took place in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay prior to the Iraq war, conventional wisdom holds that torture only ballooned with the rise of the Iraqi insurgency. But according to one active-duty Army officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, U.S. intelligence operatives were working alongside the military in the Middle East well before the war even began.

"Before the invasion of Iraq, I was on an airfield in a foreign country that had an OGA site operating on it," says the Army officer. (OGA, or "other government agency," is parlance for a nonmilitary agency, typically the CIA.)

"The airfield was prepped for any number of missions. It was made abundantly clear to us that those guys were self-sufficient and operated under their own set of rules. And if we didn't like that, that was too damn bad."

Robert Baer, a veteran CIA officer who operated in Iraq and across the Middle East before retiring in 1997, affirms that the CIA often works with military and private contractors, including on interrogations. He says joint operations are likely all over Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as at the "black sites," which, according to the Washington Post, were set up beginning nearly four years ago.

A recent report by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker revealed how the joint operations can shield any single agency from responsibility for torture. The killing of a terrorist suspect in U.S hands at Abu Ghraib in 2003 may go unpunished, according to the report, because of murky circumstances over whether the military or CIA had custody of him. The prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, was first captured and roughed up by Navy SEALS before being handed over to a CIA interrogator at the prison. The CIA interrogator reportedly placed a bag over al-Jamadi's head, bound his hands behind his back, and hung him by his hands. Top forensics experts who examined the case said al-Jamadi, who had broken ribs, suffocated to death.

Several military investigations have fingered the CIA for operations in Iraq that essentially made prisoners like al-Jamadi disappear within the military's detention system with no record of their captivity -- a practice known as "ghosting." To date, only one agency employee has been held to account, a CIA contractor -- but not an officer -- charged for beating a prisoner to death in Afghanistan.

The CIA has never had a sterling reputation on human rights, says author Thomas Powers, though no one inside the agency would ever admit to using torture. "They've also said they don't commit assassinations," Powers says wryly. "They don't, except when they do."

Nevertheless, Bush policies appear to have corrupted the CIA to an unprecedented degree. Between the torture scandals and the prewar intelligence meltdown -- Powers says analysts were made to "hop on one leg and whistle" while pumping up bogus intelligence on Iraqi WMD -- the CIA has become an "operational arm" of the Bush White House.

The network of secret CIA prisons is particularly disturbing, Powers says, because they make prospects for oversight and accountability even dimmer.
As with the military, it's likely that only the rank and file will be held accountable. "Over the last 50 years the agency has been asked many times to do extreme things," Powers says. "But almost always, whenever there's somebody to be blamed for it, nobody in the White House takes a hit."

Other CIA experts confirm that torture fails to exact useful information from prisoners, especially insurgents. "I've never seen torture solve an insurgency problem. It just makes it worse," Baer says. In addition to decrying its ineffectiveness, some veteran CIA officers, like their counterparts in the military, have begun to speak out against torture on moral grounds.

"It goes completely against the profile of people the CIA wants to recruit," Baer says, adding that officers are trained to resist interrogation, but generally not to conduct it. "This is a 180-degree turn, and it's wrecking the CIA further."

The rising backlash against torture today indicates more military and intelligence officers are realizing that the Bush administration is sinking the United States into an unprecedented moral quagmire -- one that could lead to an especially dire end. "The problems with this are huge and they're hitting home now," Powers says. "How do you let these people go, especially the ones deemed to be of no intelligence value, after they've been treated so badly? Are you just going to hold them forever? You have to ask whether or not they will eventually reach the stage of just summarily killing them. It may have happened already. This policy isn't just ineffectual -- it's complete madness."

Last summer, Sen. Richard Durbin, a senior Democrat from Illinois who co-wrote the McCain amendment, was savaged by the White House for pointed criticisms he made comparing torture at the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay with Nazism and the Soviet gulags. Looking back, Durbin maintains he could have chosen his words more carefully -- but more importantly, he says, Cheney's battle against the McCain amendment represents a betrayal of America's men and women fighting on the front lines, and an "incredible contradiction" from the White House on torture.

For Durbin, who served on the Senate Intelligence Committee until last January, the revelation of the CIA "black sites" has raised new, troubling questions. "To my knowledge, it was never discussed -- whether they exist, where they exist, who runs them, and what's going on inside," Durbin said, speaking by phone from his office on Capitol Hill. "I think we absolutely need a more thorough investigation. But we'll be hard pressed to see it because it reflects directly on statements made by the president and vice president. And when it gets that delicate politically, the Senate Intelligence Committee has refused to step in."

That's been the norm under the Bush White House, Durbin adds. Cheney, he says, enjoys powerful sway over the committee. "There is a close relationship between Sen. Pat Roberts [who heads the Intelligence Committee] and the vice president. I can tell you that little or nothing was done while I served on the committee, in terms of a thorough review of our treatment of prisoners."

While Durbin and fellow lawmakers responsible for oversight were kept in the dark on covert interrogation operations, before he left the committee he and others viewed hundreds of classified photos of torture from Abu Ghraib.

According to Durbin, a number of the images they witnessed were even more horrific than the public has seen to date, though he declined to go into detail, because they remain classified. "In all of my years of public service, I'll never forget that day. I was standing there in a room with fellow senators, some of whom were in tears, as we watched brought up on a screen hundreds and hundreds of photos showing the most unimaginable treatment of prisoners."

"I honestly believe that when this war is over, we'll look back on this treatment of prisoners as our own Japanese internment-camp issue," Durbin says. "It's further illustration that when a nation is in fear, as we are of continued attacks of terrorism, a nation will do things that do not stand up well at all by the judgment of history."


Copyright ©2005 Salon Media Group, Inc.

[Percocetti]

Rumsfeld questions policy on preventing Iraqi abuse of detainees

December 7, 2005

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051207/pl_afp/usiraqdetainees&printer=1


Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has questioned a policy that requires US military personnel who witness abuse of detainees in Iraqi custody to take "all reasonable actions" to prevent it, a spokesman said.

Rumsfeld seemed taken aback last month when General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, told him at a news conference that all US military personnel had the responsibility to try to stop abuse that they witness.

( link: http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/sh...8&postcount=29 )

Since then, Rumsfeld has raised questions about the policy, said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.

He indicated that a key question is what happens when a permanent, sovereign government is formed in Iraq following elections December 15.

"Our forces are in a sovereign nation and the law enforcement of that nation is the responsibility of that country," Whitman said.

At the same time, he said, "This is a new democracy. We know that this is tough stuff, and it's a change, a dramatic change from the way things were done in the past."

The problem came to the fore last month when US and Iraqi troops raided an Iraqi Interior Ministry jail in Baghdad and found about 170 detainees who had been abused and in some cases tortured.

A top commander in Iraq told reporters last week that US military intelligence is drawing up a list of other suspected Interior Ministry jails for inspection by US-Iraqi teams.

Whitman said US service members would be expected to try to persuade Iraqis abusing prisoners that their behavior is "inappropriate" and to report it up their chain of command.

But General George Casey, the commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), issued a policy directive earlier this year setting a higher standard of responsibility for US troops who witness abuse of detainees in Iraqi custody.

"It is the responsibility of all MNF-I units and personnel to take all reasonable actions in accordance with the rules of engagement to stop or prevent any observed or suspected instances of physical or mental abuse that could lead to serious injury or death of a detained person in Iraqi custody," it said.

The directive added that soldiers should "promptly report the details through the chain of command so that those acts can be appropriately addressed with Iraqi government officials."

Asked whether Rumsfeld was questioning what was meant by "all reasonable actions," Whitman said: "That would certainly be part of it."

"The secretary, in the way that he typically does, asks questions to try and understand and ensure that the policies and procedures for our service members are well understood in a way that doesn't conflict," Whitman said.

Whitman noted that in other countries, US troops are typically governed by a status of forces agreement with the host country. But US forces have no such agreement with Iraq.

"So you have to make sure your policies and procedures are consistent with the laws of the land that we are in, and are well understood by the miitary personnel that are there," he said.

Rumsfeld alluded to his misgivings Monday during a question-and-answer session with students and faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.


He said "reporting something that looks amiss is good; orally trying to stop something that looks amiss to me sounds very reasonable.

"Then the next question is: what level of force should they use to try to stop it if they see it happening in a country where they dont know the laws, they dont know the culture."
He said the response "could vary depending on whether ... the abusive act or the seemingly inhumane act or possibly illegal act ... is being performed by an official of that government -- a policeman or a soldier -- or just by someone else."






Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse

[seervezex]

"....If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession." - perfectly, eruditely put!

The Law Lords (similar to your supreme court judges)here in the UK today ruled that evidence obtained under torture to be inadmissable in court.

The country's highest court ruled on Thursday that evidence obtained under torture cannot be used in legal hearings, backing the case of eight terrorism suspects and civil rights campaigners.

A panel of seven Law Lords overthrew a decision by the Appeal Court in 2004 that secret tribunals hearing cases relating to the terrorism suspects could consider evidence that would not be acceptable in a criminal court trial.

That meant authorities could consider information that might have been extracted using torture in another country, provided British agents were not directly involved.

"I have to conclude that the duty not to countenance the use of torture by admission of evidence in judicial proceedings must be regarded as paramount and to allow its admission would shock the conscience, abuse or degrade the proceedings and involve the state in moral defilement," Lord Carswell said.

The tide is turning, things are changing.

[casinobonuscxz]

He Says Yes to Legalized Torture

ANNE E. KORNBLUT
New York Times
Sunday Dec. 11, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/we...1kornblut.html



Katie Falkenberg for The New York Times

In the Fray Charles Krauthammer, conservative conundrum.


WASHINGTON -- AS the debate over torture intensified earlier this month, Charles Krauthammer hit a nerve.

In a Dec. 5 cover essay in The Weekly Standard, the conservative magazine, Mr. Krauthammer argued that torture is not only defensible in certain very limited circumstances, but in fact morally necessary - if, for instance, it would save thousands of civilians by squeezing information about an imminent attack from a captured terrorist.

He was not the first to say so, but in his 4,000-word polemic, Mr. Krauthammer crystallized the case for keeping torture legal in a way that the Bush administration had not, ridiculing the "moral preening" of his critics and taking apart an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, point by point, while assailing the administration at the same time.

"Once you have gone public with a blanket ban on all forms of coercion, it is going to be very difficult to publicly carve out exceptions," Mr. Krauthammer wrote. "The Bush administration is to be faulted for having attempted such a codification with the kind of secrecy, lack of coherence, and lack of strict enforcement that led us to the McCain reaction."

In this debate as in so many others, Mr. Krauthammer found himself at the nexus of debate among conservatives; he has, after decades as a public intellectual, weighed in on almost every important issue at some point along the way, including stem cell research, the Iraq war and the debate over creationism and intelligent design.

In some instances, as in the torture debate, he has arguably articulated the administration's stance better than President Bush or his cabinet secretaries. And after years of opposing neoconservatives in their quest to spread democracy abroad, Mr. Krauthammer is now among the firmest supporters of the war in Iraq, so much so that he is occasionally a lightning rod for the war's critics.

But Mr. Krauthammer's views over the years have shifted, prompting many conservatives to wonder just what camp he belongs to.

"He doesn't waffle, and he certainly doesn't have, I think, certain sacrosanct positions," said Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute.

"That in and of itself can set you apart."

Gary Rosen, the managing editor of Commentary magazine, agreed. "He doesn't like wild-eye idealism," he said. "He's always wanted to be this shrewd, practical commentator, and I think he takes some pride in cutting through what he sees as the rhetoric on both sides."

Mr. Krauthammer has never fit any typical Washington profile: Trained in psychiatry, he has spent most of his adult life in a wheelchair after a diving accident left him paraplegic in his first year of medical school. He spent seven years practicing medicine before moving into politics, first as a policy planner for President Jimmy Carter and then, in the 1980 campaign, as a speechwriter for Walter Mondale.

He began writing for The New Republic in 1981, soon developing a rotation of columns - in The Washington Post, on the back page of Time magazine - that put him in touch with an outside-the-Beltway audience.

From the start he has viewed himself as an outside voice, arguing against what he calls the "nuclear freeze hysteria" in his first editorial in The New Republic. The editor at the time announced that the editorial - published at the height of the movement to halt nuclear proliferation - "caused more subscription cancellations than any other in the magazine's history," Mr. Krauthammer said.

Now, firmly part of The Weekly Standard orbit and a regular commentator on Fox News, he claimed the neoconservative mantle in an unconventional manner, shunning it at critical times - such as during the intervention in Bosnia.

Most neoconservatives would say they believe in the use of American military force to spread democracy around the globe. But Mr. Krauthammer says there must also be a compelling strategic interest for the United States to warrant intervention, a position more often associated with the so-called "realists," like Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser under the first President Bush.

Mr. Scowcroft recently criticized the Bush administration for arguing that the chief mission in Iraq is spreading democracy.

For his part, Mr. Krauthammer in his newspaper column also criticized Mr. Scowcroft's stance on the Iraq war.

As if such distinctions were not complicated enough, Mr. Krauthammer has developed his own ideological categories, identifying himself as a "democratic realist" - which he says is someone who believes the United States "will support democracy everywhere," but only commit "blood and treasure" - that is, troops - in places that present an overwhelming threat to the existence of the United States. For him, that meant Iraq in 1991 and 2003, but not Bosnia.

To most casual readers, such distinctions may come across as a muddle, but in intellectual circles, discerning Mr. Krauthammer's leanings is a parlor sport. Is he a neoconservative? A realist? Some mixture of the two? Or something else?

"The one curious thing - I don't know quite where he stands right now is - he really was not a neoconservative in a way, and in fact I think he's tried to deny he was a neoconservative, if you go back to all the debates of the 1990's," said Francis Fukuyama, who has been in a public rift with Mr. Krauthammer since last year, when Mr. Fukuyama assailed a speech his former friend gave defending Iraq.

William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, said Mr. Krauthammer, whom he has known for many years, has moved from the realist school toward the neoconservative position since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, - a shift that Mr. Krauthammer himself disputes.

And so it was that he defended the nine senators who voted against Mr. McCain's anti-torture amendment. That essay in The Weekly Standard set off a round of debate from all sides, including one from the Standard's more liberal counterpart, The New Republic. In the latest issue, Andrew Sullivan, its senior editor, answered Mr. Krauthammer point by point. And the cover was a parody of The Weekly Standard's.

But perhaps the latest measure of his influence came earlier this year from the White House, following the uproar over the Harriet Miers nomination. Mr. Krauthammer, who fiercely objected to Ms. Miers as unqualified for the job, mapped out an exit strategy for her in one of his columns - suggesting that if Republicans demanded documents about her White House service and Mr. Bush refused to provide them, the resulting stalemate would give Ms. Miers a graceful way to withdraw.

That was exactly what happened. Mr. Krauthammer said he had no prior inkling from the administration that they were taking that route; he has subsequently gotten credit for giving them a plan. And therein, he says, is a unifying theme of his recent writings. Referring to Ms. Miers, he said with a twinkle: "I didn't want to see her tortured."

Copyright 2005The New York Times Company