Month: July 2005

The Guardian, in the wake of mass murder, publishes this piece defending Islamo-fascism from one of its own “trainee journalists” who also advocates a world-dominant Islamist state, calls for a war to extinguish the Jewish state, and openly boasts that his loyalty is not to any nation-state.

More invaluable analysis of the Schmidt report on Gitmo by Marty Lederman can be read here. He calls the post “Defining Humane Down.” The Schmidt report calls the treatment of detainees “abusive and degrading” but also “humane.” That’s the Orwellian world George W. Bush has introduced us to. What we clearly need is a legislative overhaul of interrogation, clearly defining what is and is not authorized, in the clear light of day. What we have developed under this administration is something quite radical. Money quote:

More disturbing still is the Report’s repeated assertions that the techniques in question … are not only “humane,” but also are authorized by Army Field Manual 34-52. Field Manual 34-52 has, since the 1960’s, defined the interrogation techniques that are acceptable within the military even for POWs who are entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
Until now, the debate over the Bush Administration’s interrogation policies has been about whether and why it was permissible for the Administration to go far beyond Manual 34-52 in its coercive treatment of detainees. But if, as the Schmidt Report concludes, the techniques used at GTMO are authorized by the Army Field Manual itself, it then follows that the military may use those techniques on any detainees, including POWs, anywhere in the world, in any conflict. Accordingly, by virtue of the Schmidt Report itself, this is not simply about al-Qahtani and other high-level detainees, nor about what is permissible at Guantanamo. Rather, it presages a radical transformation of what is deemed acceptable, lawful treatment of U.S. military detainees across the board – an erosion of the Geneva-based standards that have been the basis for the military’s training and practices for the last few decades.

The Bush administration is turning the military into something previous generations would not have recognized: licensed to abuse prisoners of war.

Maybe you still remember the shock of seeing the photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. More gruesome images are on their way, and may well be released within a month. What we saw – the use of barking dogs, people shackled to the floor, sexual abuse, a man dragged around on a leash like a dog, simulation of gay sex, references and threats to relatives – was indeed shocking. But we were emphatically told by the administration that none of this was policy, that all of it was dreamed up by some nutjobs on the night shift who got their ideas from bad television or their own demented psyches. When some of us pointed out that there was clear evidence that some of these techniques were authorized, that, indeed, the commander of Guantanamo Bay, had been sent to Abu Ghraib to “Gitmoize” it, we were told we were slandering the troops and the administration.

SCHMIDT’S BOTTOM LINE: One great merit of the Schmidt report – which is otherwise riddled with worrying euphemisms, dismissal of troubling facts, exoneration of almost all commanders – is that we now know that almost every one of the Abu Ghraib techniques was practised and innovated at Guantanamo. These were not improvised out of nowhere. They were what the report calls “the creative application of authorized interrogation techniques,” and the interrogators “believed they were acting within existing guidance.” Here’s a list of techniques used at Gitmo. You might find some of them familiar:

* interrogators “brought a military working dog into the interrogation room and directed it to growl, bark and show teeth”
* some prisoners were restrained with “hand restraints connected directly to an eyebolt in the floor”
* one interrogator “tied a leash to hand chains, led [the detainee] around the room through a series of dog tricks.”
* a prisoner was pinned down while a female interrogator straddled him
* a prisoner was told he was gay and forced to dance with another male
* one prisoner had his entire head duct-taped because he refused to stop “chanting passages from the Koran;” one had his Koran removed; another had an interrogator squat over his Koran on a table, while interrogating him.

If you recall Abu Ghraib, you will remember how almost every one of these techniques was deployed on the night shift. This is a critical point. The kind of techniques used in Abu Ghraib – sexual humiliation, hooding, use of dogs, tying prisoners up in “stress positions”, mandatory nudity, humiliating prisoners for their religious faith, even the famous Lynndie England leash – were all developed at Guantanamo Bay under the strictest of supervision. What we were told were just frat-guy, crazy techniques on the night shift – had been deployed by the best trained, most tightly controlled, most professional interrogation center we have. The Schmidt report argues that, while some of this was out of bounds, it was only because of some extra creativity, not because the techniques themselves were illicit, or unauthorized by Rumsfeld and Bush. Abu Ghraib is and was policy – just policy absorbed by ill-trained, unprofessional hoodlums. But those hoodlums didn’t get their ideas from thin air. They got them from the Pentagon and the White House.

THE OTHER T-WORD: Was it torture? Well, in the Clintonism deployed by the Bushies, that all depends on what the meaning of torture is. In some ways, it’s a useful thing that this report comes out at a time when the threat of Jihadist mass murderers is still fresh in our minds. The balance between the threat they pose and the methods we use to interrogate them is a precarious and difficult one. And in two cases – of high value detainees – we have a detailed account of what they experienced. This has not been reported in the newspapers, but it is graphic. Make your own mind up about whether this amounts to torture. I’d say that use of aggressive techniques against high-level members of al Qaeda is easily the most defensible use of “coercive interrogation.” But hundreds of others – including many innocent prisoners at Abu Ghraib – found themselves dealing with the consequences of allowing this to become policy. All the following facts come from the Schmidt report. They amount to the minimum abuse that might have occurred. Each incident has been corroborated.

THE FIRST DETAINEE: One high-value detainee was subjected to the following:

He was kept awake for 18 – 20 hours a day for 48 of 54 consecutive days, he was forced to wear bras and thongs on his head, he was prevented from praying, he was forced to crawl around on a dog leash to perform dog tricks, he was told his mother and sister were whores, he was subjected to extensive “cavity searches” (after 160 days in solitary confinement) and then “on seventeen ocasions, between 13 Dec 02 and 14 Jan 03, interrogators, during interrogations, poured water over the subject.”

This latter is a very curious statement. Presumably, the interrogators weren’t refreshing the detainee. This, I infer, was “water-boarding,” a technique finessed by the French in Algeria, where water is poured over a person’s face to bring them to the point of drowning, and then released from suffocation at the last minute. Later in the report, we are told that this was done not just seventeen times but “regularly” as a “control measure.” All this was “legally permissible under the existing guidance.” That guidance was crafted by John Yoo, approved by Alberto Gonzales and signed by the president. Rumsfeld himself personally signed off on this interrogation. If anyone tells you that president Bush had nothing to do with what happened at Abu Ghraib, then hand them a copy of this report. But was it torture? Your call. If it happened to you, what would you call it? The Schmidt report calls it “degrading and abusive treatment.”

THE SECOND DETAINEE: But there’s another detailed account worth absorbing. It’s what happened to another high value detainee. Call him Detainee B. B cracked under interrogation and some of the approved techniques were never used as a result. But when he cooperated, he told one interrogator of what he called previous torture. He said he had been sexually abused: “female interrogators removed their BDU tops and rubbed themselves against the detainee, fondled his genitals, and made lewd sexual comments, noises and gestures.” The report concludes that the interrogators “used their status as females” to interrogate, but cannot corrobroate the specific charges. Recall that this kind of sexual stuff – including the smearing of fake menstrual blood on a detainee’s face – were specifically developed to offend strict Muslims (and were deployed at abu Ghraib). Detainee B also claimed he’d been beaten up. A physician found “rib contusions,” “an edema of the lower lip” and a “small laceration” on his head. Then it gets interesting. During the interrogation process, an interrogator posed as a captain in the Navy and told detainee B that they had captured his mother, and if she and he did not cooperate, she’d be sent to Gitmo as well. Then they sent in a masked interrogator. (The report says that “this was done in case the interrogation team wanted to use that interrogator later in another role.”) This masked man then told the detainee a story:

He told [detainee B] that he had a dream about [detainee B] dying. Specifically he told [detainee B] that in the dream he ‘saw four detainees that were chained together at the feet. They dug a hole that was six feet long, six-feet deep, and four foot wide. Then he observed the detainees throw a plain, pine casket with the detainee’s identification number painted in orange lowered into the ground.’ The masked interrogator told the detainee that his dream meant that he was never going to leave Gitmo unless he started to talk, that he
would inded die here from old age and be buried on ‘Christian … sovereign American soil.’ On 20 Jul 03 the masked interrogator, “Mr. X” told [detainee B] that his family was ‘incarcerated.’

The detainee was later told that his family was “in danger.” Then they sent in a fake messenger to “deliver a message to him:”

“That message was simple: Interrogator’s colleagues are sick of hearing the same lies over and over and are seriously considering washing their hands of him. Once they do so, he will disappear and never be heard from again. Interrogator assured detainee again to use his imagination to think of the worst possible scenario he could end up in. He told detainee that beatings and physical pain are not the worst things in the world. After all, after being beaten for a while, humans tend to disconnect the mind from the body and make it through. However, there are worse things than physical pain. Interrogators assured detainee that, eventually, he will talk, because everyone does. But until then he will very soon disappear down a very dark hole. His very existence will become erased. His electronic files will be deleted from the computer, his paper files will be packed up and filed away, and his existence will be forgotten by all. No one will know what happened to him and, eventually, no one will care.”

This threat helps make sense of the fact, as documented in previous government reports, that the Bush administration has designated some detainees in secret detention centers – and at Abu Ghraib – as “ghost detainees,” assigned them no numbers, and made them subject to potential “disappearance.” The threat, in other words, was a credible one. And it worked. Eventually, detainee B said he was “not willing to continue to protect others to the detriment of himself and his family.” Even the Schmidt report concluded that threatening someone’s life and the life of his family violates US military law, but is not “torture” as redefined by president Bush.

SOME CAVEATS: Some things to be aware of. This is not an independent report. It recommends mild reprimands at best. All of this occurred because interrogators “believed they were acting within existing guidance.” Their failures were just of being over-creative. Some officers lied about these incidents at first: “The JTF-GTMO Commander’s testimony that he was unaware of the creative approaches taken in the interrogation is inconsistent with his 21 Jan 03 letter to CDR USSOUTHCOM in which he asserts that the CJTF approved the interrogation plan in place and it was followed ‘relentlessly by the command.'” The investigation took place not on the basis of detainee allegations, but because FBI staff objected to what they were witnessing. The real details of the interrogations, by their very nature, were often not subject to corroboration. What happened in those cells will always remain to some extent a mystery. Also: “several past interrogators at GTMO declined to be interviewed.” What you call this is semantic and subjective. But we do know one thing. When president George Bush said that the vile practices recorded at Abu Ghraib did not represent America, he was right. They don’t. They represent his administration and his policies. Of that there can no longer be any reasonable doubt.

My emailer of a few days ago asked a question:

People need to stop hiding behind Clintonian semantics here and understand that even if no actual technical violation of the law is found in the Rove/Plame case it will still be true, based on what we know now from the Time emails, that White House actions compromised a CIA asset during a time of war. What would Hannity, Limbaugh, Scarborough and all the cable loudmouths be saying if it had been Sidney Blumenthal?

Here’s David Frum’s response:

As a matter of fact, a Clinton aide – not a top aide, but a political appointee – did release personal information about one of Clinton’s accusers, highly embarrassing information at that: I am referring of course to former Assistant Secretary of Defense Kenneth Bacon’s decision to release Linda Tripp’s 3-decade old arrest record to New Yorker writer Jane Mayer.

Er, that’s it. I’m not defending the attempted smear on Linda Tripp. But a decades-old arrest record is not nearly the same thing as outing a current CIA operative’s cover. At least, not to anyone who cares about national security. I thought Frum did. He will, of course, if the culprit turns out to be a Democrat or liberal.

“I hold no brief for the prisoners. I do hold a brief for the reputation of the United States of America as to adhering to certain standards of treatment of people no matter how evil or terrible they might be.” – Senator John McCain, on the Schmidt report, which found cruel and abusive treatment, but not “torture” of detainees at Gitmo. I’ve just read the entire report and I’ll post the critical details tomorrow. And yes, the details are critical. And so very, very reminiscent of Abu Ghraib. Funny, isn’t it, how the authorized techniques at Gitmo were subsequently described as unauthorized high jinks in the night shift in Abu Ghraib. But there’s a direct link – much more direct than I’d anticipated. More in the morning.

“I think we all know that security measures alone are not going to deal with this. This is not an isolated criminal act we are dealing with – it is an extreme and evil ideology whose roots lie in a perverted and poisonous misinterpretation of the religion of Islam.” – Tony Blair, in the House of Commons today. This story about the young cricketer who became an Islamist murderer is, in its calm Englishness, one of the most terrifying things I have yet read. These kids were programmed zealots – “cleanskins” who could not be traced through the criminal justice system – and who only need the right mosque and al Qaeda contact to become mass murderers. I don’t think the full implications have even begun to sink in. If we think this couldn’t happen in the U.S. or indeed anywhere in the free West, we are sadly mistaken.

Here’s the spin today:

Then there has been a controversy about our use of language – particularly the question of whether the BBC banned the word “terrorist”. There is no ban. It’s true the word is contentious in some contexts on our international services, hence the recommendation that it be employed with care. But we have used and will continue to use the words terror, terrorism and terrorist – as we did in all our flagship bulletins from Thursday.

Here’s the reality:

We must report acts of terror quickly, accurately, fully and responsibly. Our credibility is undermined by the careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgements. The word “terrorist” itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding. We should try to avoid the term, without attribution. We should let other people characterise while we report the facts as we know them.

I think the real policy is: terrorism when it kills Londoners; some other euphemism when anyone else – i.e. Iraqis and, especially, Jews – are murdered.

Bruce Hoffman surveys the Israeli experience and asks what they can tell us about how to cope.

With a fever.

A reader emails to show a contrast between al Jazeera’s coverage of the latest atrocity committed by the insurgents in Iraq, and the New York Times’. Al Jazeera’s is tougher on the terrorists! Start with the photos, here and here. AJ also included this devastating quote:

Hassan Muhammad, whose 13-year-old son Alaa also died, said: “Why do they attack our children? They just destroyed one US Humvee, but they killed dozens of our children. What sort of a resistance is this? It’s a crime.”

I’m not criticizing the NYT’s coverage as such. It was fine, if not as graphic as al-Jazeera. But I’m encouraged that al Jazeera is reporting on the popular backlash to terror. Isn’t that a good sign?