| Our government continues to extrajudicially transfer Afghanistan detainees in violation of international conventions against torture, according to United Nations' report, Treatment of Conflict Related Detainees in Afghan Custody (dated October 2011).1 The extrajudical transfers have been periodically halted pending improvements. However, given the lack of transparency, oversight, and accountability it's unclear whether improvements, if any can be effectively monitored, measured, and maintained. Hopefully, the Afghanistan Interrogation and Torture Centers have not become “wink and nod” substitutes for our illegal and lawless Guantanamo Interrogation and Torture Center2? |  |
UPDATED 11/17/2018 ACLU, Summary and Reflection of Chief of Medical Services on OMS Participation in the RDI Program
UPDATED 06/22/2017 NYT, C.I.A. Torture: Interrogating The Interrogators | The New York Times
UPDATED 06/05/2017 SA, We’ve Known for 400 Years That Torture Doesn’t Work ...so why does our nation continue advocating for torture and secretly using torture?
UPDATED 06/03/2017 NBCNews, Senate Intel Chair Calls for Return of CIA Torture Report
UPDATED 08/17/2016 NYT, The Guantanamo Docket: A chronology of detainees’ arrivals, transfers and deaths.
The President has transferred 15 more religious zealots from our Guantanamo Interrogation and Torture Center over the perpetual objections of the religious zealots in Congress—sixty-one still in perpetual detainment.
UPDATED 02/23/2016 NewYorker, Obama Signs Executive Order Relocating Congress to Guantánamo Satire from Borowitz and WH, President Obama Delivers Remarks on Closing of Guantanamo Bay (No satire)
DoD, Plan for Closing the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility (Link courtesy of MoJo, Eight Years Later, Obama Finally Moves to Shut Down Guantanamo)
UPDATED 12/01/2015 Reuters, Human Rights Watch demands U.S. criminal probe of CIA torture and HRW, No More Excuses: A Roadmap to Justice for CIA Torture
[...]ABA therefore calls on the administration to undertake a new, comprehensive review and accounting of all available evidence and, if warranted, to initiate “appropriate proceedings against any persons who ... committed, assisted, authorized, condoned, had command responsibility for, or otherwise participated in such violations.”[...] --ABA Letter Dated June 23, 2015--
UPDATED 09/24/2015 OpenTheGovt, OpenTheGovernment.org Challenges Ongoing Classification of the CIA Torture Program
UPDATED 09/12/2015 PBS, Bid to shut Guantanamo roils Pentagon, White House, Congress
Mr. President, you could just close the Guantanamo Interrogation and Torture Center and let the religious zealots in Congress add another item to their growing list of "Reasons to sue the President".
UPDATED 07/23/2015 WP, Gitmo to go, Carter in Iraq, and Iran on the Hill again
Mr. President, changing the religious zealots, in Congress, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan or elsewhere is best left to "prayer and God"—fortunately, we need not await a response before acting in accordance with the rule of law.
UPDATED 07/13/2015 Guardian, US torture doctors could face charges after report alleges post-9/11 'collusion' and NYT, Psychologists and ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation ( pdf Hoffman Report)
Fortunately, some in the medical profession were early to vociferously criticize King Bush the Idiot's realm and its court jesters facilitating torture (e.g. Dr. Steven Miles).
UPDATED 06/12/2015 Atlantic, When a Government Declares Memories Classified
Mr. President, continuously chanting "this is not who we are" sounds like an ethereal prayer to the religious zealots in Congress, which is ineffective at closing the Guantanamo Interrogation and Torture Center.
UPDATED 05/23/2015 Frontline, Secrets, Politics and Torture
UPDATED 12/17/2014 FirstLook, Live Coverage of the Senate Torture Report
UPDATED 12/11/2014 UPI, U.S. denounced globally after torture report and SenateIntelligenceCommittee, SSCI Study One (SSCI Torture Report) and SenateIntelligenceCommittee, SSCI Study Three (Minority Response to SSCI Study One)
It's surreal and unnecessary to debate our leaders responsible for authorizing torture or those participating in the torture of detainees over the irrelevant assertions that their torture was effective.
If our torturers think the effectiveness of torture justifies its authorization or usage then let them assert this during their war crimes trial at The Hague.
UPDATED 08/02/2014 WH, The President Delivers a Statement
Kudos to our President for finally and formally acknowledging what has been obvious to most—America secretly, wrongfully and illegally tortured some detainees.
The formal acknowledgement occurred at the end of yesterday's (Friday) forty plus minute press chat. After, the President feigned disappointment that nobody from the White House press corps had, yet, wished him a happy birthday he responded to two additional questions. (Monday is the President's birthday—Happy Birthday Mr. President!)
The entire unredacted Senate torture report (not just a six-hundred page redacted executive summary) must be released and the Guantanamo Interrogation and Torture Center system immediately shutdown. Any detainees which cannot be transferred and tried in a regularly convened court of law must be released or held guardian ad litem or its equivalent until such time as that detainee can be tried, released or naturally dies, at no costs to themselves.
UPDATED 07/24/2014 Reuters, European court says CIA ran secret jail in a Polish forest
It's difficult to imagine a more effective governmental method for guaranteeing citizens hold the rule of law in contempt.
Although, the European court's action are unlikely to forestall any CIA implosion, it's actions are nevertheless a welcomed voice in opposition to the proposition that any nation can publicly parrot adherence to the rule of law while secretly adhering to the rule of force, violence, and torture.
...all while chanting "weeee... are exceptional" and lecturing other nations on the benefits of developing a respect for the rule of law!
UPDATED 04/14/2014 Newser, Complaints from prisoner, and Senate report shine spotlight on secret Guantanamo camp
Modern methods of torture and kangaroo proceedings that opaquely continue at the Guantanamo Interrogation and Torture Center, Cuba, behind untested claims of state secrecy, national security, arbitrary measures and impervious classified data has fatally impaired constitutionally adequate due process under law.
UPDATED 04/03/2014 Guardian, Senate committee votes to declassify parts of CIA torture report
How simultaneously hilarious and bizarre that those investigating the usage of torture would send their final report to the torturers for redaction—you can't make this stuff up!
Not to worry, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chairman of the Select Senate Intelligence Committee has publicly expressed her hope that the redactions will be kept to a minimum—really, you can't make this stuff up!
UPDATED 03/04/2014 NYT, C.I.A. Employees Face New Inquiry Amid Clashes on Detention Program
Our torturers may be thwarting subsequent investigation and disclosure of their torture activity utilizing the same tortured "Commander in Chief" logic (aka Unitary Executive) so prevalent during King Bush the Idiot's reign?
UPDATED 05/11/2012 ProPublica, Timeline: How Obama Compares to Bush on Torture, Surveillance and Detention
UPDATED 05/03/2012 Thomson Reuters, 9th Circuit rejects torture-related case against Bush lawyer
CA9, Jose Padilla v. John Yoo, 09-16478
"Under recent Supreme Court law, however, we are compelled to conclude that, regardless of the legality of Padilla’s detention and the wisdom of Yoo’s judgments, at the time he acted the law was not “sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he [wa]s doing violate[d]” the plaintiffs’ rights. Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 2083 (2011) (internal quotation marks omitted).
We therefore hold that Yoo must be granted qualified immunity, and accordingly reverse the decision of the district court."--CA9, 09-16478--Wasn't Yoo et al. the "reasonable official(s)" that worked so hard obfuscating and misdefining torture--excluding mistreatment short of organ failure or its equivalent from torture (Torture Memos)?
The appellate panel reasoned that: Yoo is entitled to qualified immunity, however, because it was not clearly established [by our Supreme Court] in 2001-03 that the treatment to which Padilla says he was subjected amounted to torture.
There is something unsatisfying about appellate court logic that uses obfuscation to simultaneously enable and excuse the inhumane treatment of human beings, notwithstanding long established, well-known and applied conventions against the inhumane treatment of all human beings.
UPDATED 04/27/2012 Reuters, Exclusive: Senate probe finds little evidence of effective "torture"
Unsurprisingly, the evidence has failed to support the proponents of torture.
Those who authorize and deploy torture under the subterfuge of defending or protecting our nation profoundly harm the nation, which they purport to protect or defend.
Many adding insult to injury by their understandable but ignorant bravado, bullying and denials or defense of torture.
UPDATED 03/28/2012 UPI, Poland investigates rendition links
UPDATED 01/23/2012 Reuters, U.S. flouts law at Guantanamo, despite Obama vow: U.N.
UPDATED 01/23/2012 UPI, Ex-CIA officer charged with leaking info
A nation that prosecutes an individual for revealing the identity of a torturer and effectively grants immunity to its torturers has perverted the rule-of-law at best and abandoned it at worst.
UPDATED 10/28/2011 RT, Lithuania in the dock for role in CIA rendition program
NYT, U.N. Finds ‘Systematic’ Torture in Afghanistan
-----notes-----
1. The report makes a series of recommendation applicable to a variety of intra and inter state actors—those applicable to "To Troop Contributing Countries and Concerned States":
"Suspend transfer of detainees to those NDS and ANP units and facilities where credible allegations or reports of torture and ill‐treatment have been made pending a full assessment.As with all human endeavors, general increases in literacy and education levels will have a positive effect on Afghanistan civil society structures, especially the literacy and education of children and women.
Review monitoring practices at each NDS facility where detainees are transferred and revise as necessary to ensure no detainees are transferred to a risk of torture.
Review policies on transferring detainees to ANP and NDS custody to ensure adequate safeguards and use participation in joint operations, funding arrangements, the transition process, intelligence liaison relationships and other means to stop the use of torture and promote reforms by NDS and ANP.
Build the capacity of NDS and ANP facilities and personnel including through mentoring and training on the legal and human rights of detainees and detention practices in line with international human rights standards.
Increase efforts to support training to all NDS and ANP interrogators and their supervisors in lawful and effective interrogation methods, and alternative investigative approaches (such as forensics)."
2. Unfortunately, our lawless Guantanamo Interrogation and Torture Center continues to dispense kangaroo justice, even as we extract our nation from the catastrophic Afghanistan and Iraq debacles:
UPDATED 12/17/2012 UPI, U.S. drops appeal of Guantanamo ruling Article III courts set rules for lawyers for Guantanamo inmates (how about exclusive jurisdiction over lawyer-detainee relationship?).
UPDATED 12/13/2012 Reuters, Senate committee approves report on CIA interrogations, revives torture debate
A congressional committee chairperson sending a purported classified report on King Bush the Idiot and jesters' torture episodes for presidential comment or a decision on making the torture transparent and public is surreal, absurd and as lawless as the torture it reportedly describes!
Neither a senate committee chairperson nor our president nor other persons nor other entities possess the authority to render opaque any torture episode.
UPDATED 11/29/2012 NYT, Government Report Supports Closing Guantánamo
The GAO report Guantanamo Bay Detainees: Facilities and Factors for Consideration If Detainees Were Brought to the United States makes explicit what many deduced shortly after King Bush the Idiot and his jesters began rounding up, torturing and indefinitely storing the "worst of the worst" at their lawless Guantanamo Interrogation and Torture Center—our judicial system can handle Guantanamo detainees.
UPDATED 02/29/2012 NPR, Guilty Plea From 'High Value' Guantanamo Prisoner UPDATED 02/18/2012 Time, Detainee Faces Guantanamo War Crimes Trial and Reuters, Hints of a plea deal for US-raised Guantanamo captive
No comments:
Post a Comment