Month: May 2009

Those of us who held out hope that the Obama administration would not be actively covering up the brutal torture of a Gitmo prisoner who was subject to abuse in several countries must now concede the obvious. They're covering it up – in such a crude and obvious fashion that it is actually a crime in Britain. I have little to add to what Glenn Greenwald writes here. On all the core points, he's plainly correct and those of us who have tried to give Obama the benefit of the doubt must concede that there is no longer any benefit or any doubt. As to why, I suspected it might be to avoid inflaming Pakistan still further. Glenn pushes back:

(a) it's possible (actually, quite easy) to detail what was done to Mohamed without disclosing in which foreign government's custody he was when it happened; (b) why would evidence of the Musharraf government's torture of Mohamed harm the current Pakistani government?; and, most of all, (c) it's already public knowledge that Mohamed was seized, detained and abused in Pakistan (see paragraphs 59-68 of Mohamed's complaint against Jeppesen, entitled "Detention, Interrogation and Torture in Pakistan").

It increasingly looks as if Brown and Obama simply cannot face the consequences of revealing to the world the full facts of a brutal torture conducted at the behest of and possibly at the hands of the two alleged paragons of human rights in the world, the UK and the US.

Eisenach, Germany, 1.23 pm

A reader writes:

The reason is pretty simple. Without photos, we would never have heard of the mass abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib. Bush and Cheney would be denying today that any of it happened at all. When the photos were uncovered, revealing clearly what the anodyne words "stress position", "mock execution", "forced nudity" etc actually meant, we finally were able to hold the government accountable for the abuse it authorized.

Of course, they lied to us and to the Congress about this, declaring that these techniques, meticulously crafted in Washington, had been improvised by a few "bad apples" on the night shift  whom the Weekly Standard believed should be jailed or executed (that was before they discovered that their friends were deeply implicated).

We now know that these Abu Ghraib techniques were imported from Gitmo and were used in every theater of war as Cheney constructed a secret war machine that used the capture, torture and abuse of prisoners as its central intelligence-gathering tool. But we only have the photos from Abu Ghraib and so people can continue to pull a Noonan and pretend that this didn't happen no a much wider scale. From my understanding, the photos would prove very similar techniques spread across the globe. And so it would be clear that any Muslim anywhere, upon seeing US troops, could be Abu Ghraibed. The photos would reveal more powerfully than the impressive documentation in countless reports that Bush and Cheney's torture and abuse machine was everywhere, in every theater. How do you run an effective counter-insurgency when all Afghans know that Americans bring torture along with "democracy"?

Obama inherits this legacy. He has two options: pull the lid right off it, and fuel more anger and anti-Americanism; or hunker down, acquiesce to the military and become an active accomplice to the cover-up. He's trying to straddle the divide but now realizes he cannot prosecute Bush's wars with Bush's military while exposing Bush's war crimes. Hence the cover-up.

The Obama administration's decision to actively cover up the war crimes of its predecessors and thereby become increasingly complicit in them, as well as appointing a Cheney man to run the war in Afghanistan, might seem unconnected. And perhaps they are. But I am drawn to the following passage in an account of one of the most barbaric scenes in Iraq during the early occupation:

As you know, marriage equality is on the verge of being passed in New York State. There are around 26 votes in the Senate now in favor, and 32 are needed for passage. After the jump is a list of state senators, with phone numbers and email addresses. Contacting them soon – before they take a public stand – and urging them to back equality could make a real difference. Imagine if New York state is added to the roster of states granting civil equality. And you're really going to lag behind Connecticut?

John Sampson (D-Brooklyn)
(718) 649-7653
(518) 455-2788
sampson@senate.state.ny.us

Brian Foley (D-Suffolk County)
518-455-2303
631-360-3356

Ruth Hassell-Thompson (D-Bronx)
(718) 547-8854
(518) 455-2061

George Onorato (D-Astoria)
(718) 545-9706
(518) 455-3486
onorato@senate.state.ny.us

William Stachowski (D-Buffalo)
(518)-455-2426
(716)-826-3344
stachows@senate.state.ny.us

David Valesky (D-Oneida)
518-455-2838
315-478-8745
valesky@senate.state.ny.us

Shirley Huntley (D-Jamaica)
(718) 523-3069 Office
(518) 455-3531 Office
shuntley@senate.state.ny.us

Kemp Hannon (R-Nassau County)
516-739-1700
518-455-2200
hannon@senate.state.ny.us

Thomas Morahan (R-Rockland County)
(518) 455-3261
(845) 425-1818
morahan@senate.state.ny.us

Vincent Leibell (R-Putnam and Westchester Counties)
(518) 455-3111
(845) 279-3773
leibell@senate.state.ny.us

James Alesi (R-Rochester)
(518) 455-2015
(585) 223-1800
alesi@senate.state.ny.us

From The Onion:

And the war, of course.

From extending and deepening the war in Afghanistan, to suppressing evidence of rampant and widespread abuse and torture of prisoners under Bush, to thuggishly threatening the British with intelligence cut-off if they reveal the brutal torture inflicted on Binyam Mohamed, Obama now has new cheer-leaders: Bill Kristol, Michael Goldfarb and Max Boot.

In what can only be seen as a stunning reversal, the president is now refusing to release photographs that would help prove that the abuse and torture techniques revealed at Abu Ghraib were endemic in the Bush military. I can't help but wonder if this is related to his decision to appoint Stanley McChrystal as the commander of his Afghanistan war and occupation. There is solid evidence that McChrystal played an active part in enabling torture in Iraq, and his activities in charge of many secret special operations almost certainly involved condoning acts that might be illustrated by these photos. The MSM has, of course, failed to mention this in their fawning profiles of McChrystal.

Slowly but surely, Obama is owning the cover-up of his predcessors' war crimes. But covering up war crimes, refusing to proscute them, promoting those associated with them, and suppressing evidence of them are themselves violations of Geneva and the UN Convention. So Cheney begins to successfully coopt his successor. The rationale for the suppression is fatuous:

You mean releasing evidence of war crimes would render US soldiers more vulnerable to attack? How?

The state assembly has passed marriage equality by an impressive margin. The state senate will now face the music. Here's the new ad being run. It's a great one. We're learning:

FBI agent Ali Soufan is testifying today. Greg Sargent points out significant parts of his written testimony:

Soufan will directly contradict key claims by torture apologists that the techniques elicited high-value information. He will say flat out that the claim that Abu Zubaydah didn’t start giving up info until August 2002, when he was waterboarded, is false. “The truth is that we got actionable intelligence from him in the first hour of interrogating him,” Soufan will say.

Soufan will also contradict claims that waterboarding got Abu Zubaydah to cough up info leading to the capture of so-called “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla. He will point out that waterboarding wasn’t approved until August of 2002, while Padilla was captured in May of 2002.

And Soufan will deny yet another key claim of torture apologists: That torture revealed Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s involvement in 9/11. “That was discovered in April 2002, while waterboarding was not introduced until almost three months later.” Soufan will say.