WASHINGTON — A newly declassified Congressional report released Tuesday outlined the most detailed evidence yet that the military’s use of harsh interrogation methods on terrorism suspects was approved at high levels of the Bush administration.
The report focused solely on interrogations carried out by the military, not those conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency at its secret prisons overseas. It rejected claims by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others that Pentagon policies played no role in harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or other military facilities.
The 232-page report, the product of an 18-month inquiry, was approved on Nov. 20 by the Senate Armed Services Committee, but has since been under Pentagon review for declassification. Some of the findings were made public in a Dec. 12 article in The New York Times; a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld dismissed the report at the time as “unfounded allegations against those who have served our nation.”
The Senate report documented how some of the techniques used by the military at prisons in Afghanistan and at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as in Iraq — stripping detainees, placing them in “stress positions” or depriving them of sleep — originated in a military program known as Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape, or SERE, intended to train American troops to resist abusive enemy interrogations.
According to the Senate investigation, a military behavioral scientist and a colleague who had witnessed SERE training proposed its use at Guantánamo in October 2002, as pressure was rising “to get ‘tougher’ with detainee interrogations.” Officers there sought authorization, and Mr. Rumsfeld approved 15 interrogation techniques.
The report showed that Mr. Rumsfeld’s authorization was cited by a United States military special-operations lawyer in Afghanistan as “an analogy and basis for use of these techniques,” and that, in February 2003, a special-operations unit in Iraq obtained a copy of the policy from Afghanistan “that included aggressive techniques, changed the letterhead, and adopted the policy verbatim.”
Months later, the report said, the interrogation officer in charge at Abu Ghraib obtained a copy of that policy “and submitted it, virtually unchanged, through her chain of command.” This ultimately led to authorization by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez of the use of stress positions, “sleep management” and military dogs to exploit detainees’ fears, the report said.
“The paper trail on abuse leads to top civilian leaders, and our report connects the dots,” Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. “This report, in great detail, shows a paper trail going from that authorization” by Mr. Rumsfeld “to Guantánamo to Afghanistan and to Iraq,” Mr. Levin said. _________________ A la guerre comme a la guerre èëè âòîðàÿ ðåäàêöèÿ Çàáóãîðíîâà
Î áóðíîé ïîëåìèêå â ÑØÀ â ñâÿçè ñ ïóáëèêàöèåé äîêóìåíòîâ î ïûòêàõ ïðåäïîëàãàåìûõ òåððîðèñòîâ ïèøåò è Àëüáåðòî Ôëîðåñ Ä'Àðñå â ñòàòüå, íàïå÷àòàííîé â ãàçåòå La Repubblica.
Àìåðèêàíñêàÿ The Washington Post ðàçìûøëÿåò î íåçàêîííîñòè ïîäîáíûõ ðåøåíèé ïðàâèòåëüñòâà è íåîáõîäèìîñòè ñëåäîâàòü çàêîíó â âîïðîñå íàêàçàíèÿ âèíîâíûõ.
Ïðè ýòîì Ñóôàí íå ðåêîìåíäóåò ïðèâëåêàòü ñîòðóäíèêîâ ÖÐÓ ê ñóäåáíîé îòâåòñòâåííîñòè çà ïðèìåíåíèå æåñòêèõ ìåòîäîâ: òå, ñ êåì îí ðàáîòàë, â áîëüøèíñòâå ñâîåì îòíîñèëèñü ê ýòèì ìåòîäàì îòðèöàòåëüíî è ïðèìåíÿëè èõ ëèøü ïîä äàâëåíèåì íà÷àëüñòâà.
Ýôôåêòèâíî ëè âåäåíèå äîïðîñîâ ïîä ïûòêàìè? - ðàçìûøëÿåò íà ñòðàíèöàõ The New York Times Ôèëèï Çåëèêîâ, â ïðîøëîì èñïîëíèòåëüíûé äèðåêòîð êîìèññèè, êîòîðàÿ ðàññëåäîâàëà òåðàêòû 11 ñåíòÿáðÿ, à òàêæå ñîâåòíèê Ãîñäåïàðòàìåíòà ÑØÀ â 2005-2006 ãîäàõ.
Âî êàê! Ïðåçèäåíò ðåøèë íå ïðèâëåêàòü èõ ê ñóäåáíîé îòâåòñòâåííîñòè. À êàê æå ïðàâîâîå ãîñóäàðñòâî? À êàê æå âåðõîâåíñòâî çàêîíà? À êàê æå íåçàâèñèìîñòü ñóäåáíûõ âëàñòåé è ïîä÷èíåíèå òîëüêî çàêîíó? _________________ A la guerre comme a la guerre èëè âòîðàÿ ðåäàêöèÿ Çàáóãîðíîâà
Published: April 24 2009 03:00 | Last updated: April 24 2009 03:00
Here is a chilling thought. Barack Obama has gifted a dangerous advantage to America's enemies. How? By assuring terrorists they will not be tortured in US custody. The president, this argument runs, should have kept al-Qaeda guessing as to what fate detainees might suffer at the hands of CIA interrogators.
Mr Obama has sparked considerable controversy by declassifying secret memorandums detailing the interrogation methods used by the CIA in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 2001. The practices included near-drowning, confining detainees in small boxes, slamming them into walls, sleep deprivation and enforced nakedness. Some of the techniques were borrowed from the harrowing experiences of US soldiers held captive in Hanoi during the Vietnam war.
Yet those who authorised these "enhanced interrogation techniques" still deny they amounted to torture. The memorandums explain why. The lengthy justifications set out by Bush administration lawyers remind us how legal bureaucratese can empty the law of any real meaning.
For all that, some of Mr Obama's advisers opposed publication. He had now banned such practices. What purpose would be served in laying out the legal sophistry that said the repeated "water-boarding" of detainees was not cruel, inhuman or degrading? Such sins were best left undisturbed.
From another direction, there has been criticism of Mr Obama's subsequent attempts to draw a line under the affair. This week the president visited CIA headquarters. He suggested that, whatever the manifest flaws of the legal opinions, they should absolve interrogators of blame. He seemed disinclined also to see the authors of the memorandums called to account.
Predictably, though, the harshest criticisms of the president came from those who worked for George W. Bush. Few were as revealing as that of General Michael Hayden, who served as CIA director during the twilight months of his presidency.
General Hayden asserted that by publishing a list of the now-banned methods, the administration had given succour to al-Qaeda. Knowledge of the limits imposed on US interrogators would be "very useful" to the followers of Osama bin Laden.
To follow the logic here is to understand what went so horribly wrong during Mr Bush's time. By the general's account Mr Obama is abetting terrorists by affirming that the US will uphold its guiding laws and values. Yet the defence of those same laws and values is the core purpose of the fight against violent extremism in all its guises.
The moral repugnance of the techniques seems to play no part in the calculations of their apologists. Nor do the legal prohibitions on such treatment under domestic and international law. Lawyers had been found to say it was OK to simulate suffocation. So it was OK.
Almost as disturbing as the ethical agnosticism is the wanton stupidity. To read the memorandums is to understand just how much needless damage was done to America's security by the way the so-called "war on terrorism" was conducted.
Abu Ghraib, the secret CIA prisons, the rendition of prisoners to places of torture elsewhere, and, of course, Guantánamo did more than shatter America's moral authority. They served as a recruiting sergeant for al-Qaeda. What better way could there have been to persuade disaffected young men that the US was waging a brutal war against Islam?
Unsurprisingly, Dick Cheney, the former vice-president, is unmoved by such arguments. Mr Cheney contends that "these programmes", as he calls them, kept the US safe from a further terrorist outrage. Without them, "We would have been attacked again." This week he asserted there was documentary evidence to support his case, and he called for publication of secret CIA assessments.
It would be surprising if among those who subjected so-called "high-value" al-Qaeda operatives to such treatment, some CIA agents did not claim it yielded results. How else could they justify continuing? The problem for Mr Cheney is that others in the front line have consistently said otherwise.
When the US army published its latest manual for intelligence staff in 2006, General John Kimmons, the deputy chief of staff for intelligence, flatly denied torture worked: "No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that . . . the empirical evidence of the last five years tells us that."
General Kimmons made two obvious but important points. The credibility of intelligence obtained under duress is always doubtful: tortured terrorists will say anything. And: "It would do more harm than good when it inevitably became known that abusive practices were used."
The very fact that CIA interrogators thought they needed to water-board two prisoners a total of 260 times says all that needs to be said about efficacy. Meanwhile, the evidence that the US was willing to abandon its own civilised standards wrote the recruitment poster for al-Qaeda.
Mr Cheney's strategy is clear enough. He wants to plant the idea that Mr Obama is somehow "soft" on terrorism. Were the US to suffer another attack, the president could be blamed for not allowing the CIA to torture those who might have provided advance information.
The former vice-president does not allow facts or evidence to get in the way of partisan politics. I have often wondered, though, just how far he would go with his ethically abhorrent and intellectually flawed "ticking bomb" scenario. Would interrogators be justified in, say, torturing or killing the children of a suspected terrorist to persuade him to give up information they considered vital to save American lives? Presumably, Yes.
Mr Obama has understood where the twisted logic of torture takes you. It concedes to the enemy the very thing you are fighting to preserve. By banning abuse, allowing detainees access to US justice and publishing the memorandums, the president has re-asserted the rule of law as the central pillar of America's authority.
He should now follow the logic of that course. It is not for the president to decide whether anyone - interrogator or lawyer - should be held to judicial account for what happened under the previous administration. If the laws framed under the constitution are his starting point, Mr Obama must leave to the proper authorities the question of whether there should now be prosecutions. The Bush administration overturned the scales of justice to the advantage of terrorists. Mr Obama must set them right. _________________ A la guerre comme a la guerre èëè âòîðàÿ ðåäàêöèÿ Çàáóãîðíîâà
Yet those who authorised these "enhanced interrogation techniques" still deny they amounted to torture. The memorandums explain why. The lengthy justifications set out by Bush administration lawyers remind us how legal bureaucratese can empty the law of any real meaning.
Íó à ëîåðû, åñòåñòâåííî, ýòè ïûòêè íå ïðèçíàþò. Ýòî, òèïà, íå ïûòêè, à ì-ì-ì..... "ìåðîïðèÿòèå" _________________ A la guerre comme a la guerre èëè âòîðàÿ ðåäàêöèÿ Çàáóãîðíîâà
Harper's investigation quotes camp staff who say suspects died in interrogation and their deaths were made to look like suicides
Human rights campaigners protest against Guantanamo Bay in front of the White House
Human rights campaigners protest against Guantánamo Bay in front of the White House. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
US government officials may have conspired to conceal evidence that three Guantánamo Bay inmates could have been murdered during interrogations, according to a six-month investigation by American journalists.
All three may have been suffocated during questioning on the same evening and their deaths passed off as suicides by hanging, the joint investigation for Harper's Magazine and NBC News has concluded.
The magazine also suggests the cover-up may explain why the US government is reluctant to allow the release of Shaker Aamer, the last former British resident held at Guantánamo, as he is said to have alleged that he was part-suffocated while being tortured on the same evening.
"The cover-up is amazing in its audacity, and it is continuing into the Obama administration," said Scott Horton, the contributing editor for Harper's who conducted the investigation.
When the three men – Salah Ahmed al-Salami, 37, a Yemeni, and two Saudis, Talal al-Zahrani, 22, and Mani Shaman al-Utaybi, 30 – died in June 2006, the camp's commander declared that they had committed suicide and that this had been "an act of asymmetrical warfare", rather than one of desperation.
According to an official inquiry by the US navy, whose report was heavily censored before release, each man was found in his cell, hanging from bedsheets, with their hands bound and rags stuffed down their throats.
However, Horton spoke to four camp guards who alleged that when the bodies were taken to the camp's medical clinic they had definitely not come from their cell block, which they were guarding, and appeared to have been transfered from a "black site", known as Camp No, within Guantánamo, operated by either the CIA or a Pentagon intelligence agency.
The men said that the following day, a senior officer assembled the guards and told them that the three men had committed suicide by stuffing rags down their throats, that the media would report that they had hanged themselves, and ordered that they must not seek to contradict those reports.
Harper's says that when the bodies of the three men were repatriated, pathologists who conducted postmortem examinations found that each man's larynx, hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage – which could have helped determine cause of death – had been removed and retained by US authorities.
The men's bodes did show signs of mistreatment, however, including bruising and needle marks. Al-Salami's jaw was broken and several teeth missing, injuries that an earlier US pathologist's report attributed to an attempted resuscitation.
Aamer's account of his mistreatment on the same evening as the three deaths appears in papers lodged with a district federal court in Washington. His lawyer, Zachary Katznelson, wrote in an affidavit that Aamer had been beaten for two and a half hours by seven naval military police after he refused to provide a retina scan and fingerprints.
"He reported to me that he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs. The MPs inflicted so much pain, Mr Aamer said he thought he was going to die."
The MPs are also alleged to have pressed on pressure points and held Aamer's eyes open while shining a torch into them. "When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out," Katznelson wrote.
Aamer, 41, whose British wife and four children live in London, has been held at Guantánamo for almost eight years. Next Friday marks the first anniversary of President Obama's order that the camp be closed within a year, but around 214 other men are also still detained there.
In the days that followed the deaths of the three men, US navy investigators seized every piece of paperwork possessed by other inmates. Harper's reports that when the US justice department subsequently went to court to defend the seizure of correspondence between inmates and their lawyers, the judge commented on one aspect of the department's case: that its "citations supporting the fact of the suicides" were all drawn from media accounts.
Harper's also reports that two of the three men had been due for release when they died, and that family members doubt they would have taken their own lives.
One of Horton's sources, a former staff sergeant in his mid-40s called Joseph Hickman, approached the department of justice via his lawyer in February last year to report his concerns, but Harper's says a subsequent investigation appears to have been shelved, raising concerns that the department had been compromised by its own role in the use of torture in the "war on terror".
"Under George W Bush, the CIA created an archipelago of secret detention centres that spanned the globe, and authorities at these sites deployed an array of justice department–sanctioned torture techniques – including waterboarding, which often entails inserting cloth into the subject's mouth – on prisoners they deemed to be involved in terrorism," Horton says.
"The experience of Sergeant Hickman and other Guantánamo guards compels us to ask whether the three prisoners who died on 9 June were being interrogated by the CIA, and whether their deaths resulted from the gruelling techniques the justice department had approved for the agency's use – or from other tortures lacking that sanction." _________________ A la guerre comme a la guerre èëè âòîðàÿ ðåäàêöèÿ Çàáóãîðíîâà
koshka
: 24.05.2006 : 876 : Israel,Mexico,Israel
: , 20 2010, 12:47:59 :
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Çà òî, ÷òî , êàê Âîæäü Àìåðèêó íå ëþáÿò . Òàê... è åãî çà íåëþáîâü?...
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Ìîæ è ê ëó÷øåìó ýòî äëÿ Âîæäÿ, ÷òî èõ äóøàò. Áóäåò íå ëþáèòü â îäèíî÷êó. Îðèãèíàëîì ïðîñëûâåò è â ïëàíå èäåé, è âîçìoæíîãî óäóøåíèÿ â çàñòåíêàõ.