What a Vile Human Being: Ms. Fiorina Endorses Torture

Evidently Carly is just fine with torture.  Link is here.

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina has endorsed waterboarding, the controversial interrogation method that has been called torture, as an important tactic that was used only “when there was no other way to get information that was necessary”.

In an interview with Yahoo News, Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO who surged in recent polls of Republican primary voters, said: “I believe that all of the evidence is very clear – that waterboarding was used in a very small handful of cases [and] was supervised by medical personnel in every one of those cases.”

The 2014 Senate report that called waterboarding – in which water is poured over a cloth on a prisoner’s face in order to simulate the feeling of drowning – tantamount to torture and said it produced little useful intelligence. Fiorina called the report “disingenuous” and “a shame” that “undermined the morale of a whole lot of people who dedicated their lives to keeping the country safe”.

Naureen Shah of Amnesty International told Yahoo of Fiorina’s comments: “This is completely rewriting the history of what happened.”

Yet...everything can still be a bit nuanced.  I'm sticking to the title of this piece, "What a Vile Human Being," although a dear friend and I had a large difference of opinion over this one last night at dinner.

He, a former military officer, recalled that during his SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) training, he  and his fellow recruits were briefly waterboarded to demo the technique and familiarize them to it.  His opinion: while unpleasant, it surely wasn't torture.

Plus the fact that he was in the Pentagon fourteen years ago when American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into it.  I can see how that experience might make someone hold the opinions he does.

Possibly the Best That Humankind has to Offer

The day after we read in the Torture Report about the worst that this nation can do, then we see something that has to be one of the best things than humankind can offer.

YouTube is full of cute and touching videos and I almost always blow them off whenever somebody sends me a link.  While I'm sure that it would be interesting, I figure that I just don't have time to do that for every single link that somebody thinks is worthwhile.

Well, the video below is worth 6 minutes of your time.  Trust me, you will not regret spending those few minutes of your life watching this:



(Link is here in case the embedded video does not play)

I should point out that while the musicians are Air Force personnel, this beauty of this piece has nothing to do with the military.  It is simply beautiful music wonderfully played and sung, and, well, is just kinda inspirational.

When we send space probes out to the far reaches of our solar system and beyond, a lot of thought goes into what info is included in case some other intelligent species finds it someday and wants to know who sent it.  I believe that things like stellar maps,  mathematical universal facts such as pi, and the pediodic chart of the elements are included, as well as some cultural info about our species.

In the latter category, they should just include this video.

Senate Report on Torture

From the Earth Bound Misfit, a succinct summary of where things stand or should stand with respect to the just-released Senate Report on torture.

"Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly." -- Attorney General John Ashcroft, in one of many meetings about using torture.

The Bush Administration knew about it. The Cheney Cabal pushed for using more brutal methods.  

As horrific as the report is turning out to be, it is also a profile in cowardice. There was no acknowledgement of the Bush Administration's demands that people be tortured. And the Obama Administration, aka MTAHNS, refused to turn over nearly ten thousand documents to the investigators. Obama opposed the CIA turning anything whatsoever over to the Senate inquiry, which makes Obama, for trying to cover up the commission of war crimes, as culpable as Bush.

The CIA and the Department of Defense committed war crimes. They committed the sort of crimes that, nearly seventy years ago, we executed enemy prisoners for doing similar things.

But they were not rogue agencies. The CIA and the military did what their bosses demanded of them. Which is not an excuse, but an explanation.

The release of the Senate report is a laudable step. But it is also a stark example of the shitty tendency of bureaucracy to blame the underlings for following the orders of the bosses.

Which leads me to this: We should either open a prosecution of the senior members of the Bush Administration for what they did, or pardon everyone who was convicted for torturing prisoners at Abu Graib. Either we follow through on being a nation of laws or embrace that we are a nation of war criminals. There really isn't any middle ground.

My thoughts are that since so many people wanted to hide the report--basically because it contained unpleasant things and would cast the mighty United States of America in an unfavorable light--then that's all the more reason to release it fully. 

If we are not proud of what we did, then it was wrong.  Period.  So...I'm waiting for the indictments or the pardons.  It's likely to be a long wait.

Nobel Prize Winner

Via the always-vigilant Digby, we have a follow-on to my post of a couple weeks ago about the bombing proclivities of a certain Nobel Prize winner:

A very select club petitions one of its own members to do the right thing by digby

Hey, remember when President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize? I know, those were heady times.  Check out what his fellow Peace Prize Winners are asking of him today:

Twelve winners of the Nobel Peace Prize asked President Barack Obama late Sunday to make sure that a Senate report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of harsh interrogation tactics is released so the U.S. can put an end to a practice condemned by many as torture.

The release of the report, which is the most detailed account of the CIA’s interrogation practices in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, would be an opportunity for the U.S. and the world to come to terms with interrogation techniques that went too far, the laureates said in an open letter and petition. The release of the report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has stalled as the Obama Administration the CIA, and lawmakers clashed over how much of it should be redacted.

Why not just release the report?  Oh, I guess it might make us look bad....so maybe that tells us that what we did wasn't so good.

Duh.

I Guess I'm Being Sanctimonious

About a week ago, President Obama made some remarks about the torture program of the US during the previous administration. I've had some days to mull this topic over, then today I read a post, here, by William Rivers Pitt, that absolutely articulated my thoughts so much better than I ever could.

So here's an excerpt.  You should really go and read the whole thing.

"Even before I came into office," said the President on Friday, "I was very clear that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong. We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values."

"I understand why it happened," the President continued. "I think it's important when we look back to recall how afraid people were after the twin towers fell and the Pentagon had been hit and the plane in Pennsylvania had fallen and people did not know whether more attacks were imminent and there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this.".

By citing the fear that came after the attacks of 9/11 - a moment when defending the Constitution and holding to that oath was very, very hard - as a free pass for those who instituted and practiced this program of torture, the president betrayed his oath, just as those who practiced torture betrayed theirs. No one was prosecuted for these crimes, and the "investigations" conducted by this administration into that torture were so piddly and toothless as to be utterly meaningless.

Beyond that oath is the Geneva Convention Against Torture, of which the United States is a signatory, and is therefore bound to its edicts. Article Two, Section One of the Convention reads, "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture." In other words, no excuses, period, end of file. "Afraid" is not an excuse.

The Constitution was violated, the Geneva Convention was violated, and still everyone walked, and on Friday, the president said that was fine, because we were "afraid." The moral failure in this is so vast as to be bottomless...but Mr. Obama wasn't quite finished twisting the knife.

"And, you know," he continued, "it's important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots, but having said all that, we did some things that were wrong." 

There's more; the whole post is worth  reading if you want to be disgusted.  Unless, of course, I'm being sanctimonious.

What a Horrid Human Being

As reported in various outlets, to include Talking Points Memo, despicable words of "wisdom" from Sarah Palin: "Waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists."

I am so speechless that all I can do is to use British invectives to describe her, such as vile, horrid, abominable, and dreadful:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) says she wouldn't be afraid to torture terroristst if she were president.

"C'mon! Enemies who would utterly annihilate America, they would obviously have information on plots. They carry out jihad. Oh, but you can’t offend them. Can’t make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen," Palin said on Saturday during a speech at the National Rifle Association's "Stand And Fight" rally. "Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists."

During her speech, Palin criticized the Obama administration's national security policy, which she said pokes, "our allies in the eye, calling them adversaries, instead of putting the fear of God in our enemies" according to CBS News.

The rally, held at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, was part of the NRA's annual meeting.

Palin also warned the crowd that there are increased efforts to strip their gun rights. She said that Obama is trying to use gun control policy to control Americans.

"If you control oil, you control an economy. If you control money, you control commerce," she said. "But if you control arms, you control the people, and that is what they're trying to do."

The United States of America cannot torture.  Ever.  We are better than that, plus there is a practical reason not to torture (as if the moral reason is not enough).  See, what the Sarah Palins of the world--along with all the other hawks--are doing is to set our citizens up for torture should they be captured.  Pretty simple, actually.

Next time you see Ms. Palin on TV, besides wondering why she still remains a national figure, ponder her words one more time:

"Waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists."

(It's not) Torture...Really?

Haven't blogged about torture lately, so it's about time.  Via Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing (you should read that blog if you don't already), in its entirety:

Courtesy of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a list of "things that government officials could do to an American citizen and still claim later that they didn't know they were "torturing" that citizen."

Prolonged isolation; Deprivation of light; Exposure to prolonged periods of light and/or darkness; Extreme variations in temperature; Sleep adjustment; Threats of severe physical abuse; Death threats; Administration of psychotropic drugs; Shackling and manacling for hours at a time; Use of "stress" positions; Noxious fumes that caused pain to eyes and nose; Withholding of any mattress, pillow, sheet or blanket; Forced grooming; Suspension of showers; Removal of religious items; Constant surveillance; Incommunicado detention, including denial of all contact with family and legal counsel for a 21-month period; Interference with religious observance; and Denial of medical care for serious and potentially life-threatening ailments, including chest pain and difficulty breathing, as well as for treatment of the chronic, extreme pain caused by being forced to endure stress positions, resulting in severe and continuing mental and physical harm, pain, and profound disruption of the senses and personality.

Lowering the Bar explains:

The legal issue was whether John Yoo should be entitled to "qualified immunity" in a case brought by Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen detained as an "enemy combatant." "Qualified immunity" is a doctrine that bars claims against government officials if, at the time they acted, it was not "sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he or she was doing violated the plaintiff's rights." The idea is to try to preserve some freedom of action for officials who have to act in areas where the law may not always be clear. If it applies, no lawsuit.

So, next question: do you think a "reasonable official" in 2001-03, when John Yoo was in the government, should have understood that doing those things to an American citizen -- one who, by the way, had not been convicted of or even charged with a crime -- violated that citizen's rights?

So tell me again why Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Yoo, et al, are not behind bars?

Sharing an Irony

If my memory serves me well, according to Kurt Vonnegut (and I think it was in Cat's Cradle, currently awaiting a re-read in my Kindle), it is impossible to share an irony.

An irony is a personal "aha moment" that a person either gets or not, and cannot be successfully explained to someone who did not get it initially.

Thus I offer emptywheel's post in its entirety from last week, and trust that you will get it, for I cannot explain it to you.  It can't be done.  The graphic is a slide from an FBI PowerPoint training session.

Spencer has a must read story on the FBI’s recent training program for counter-terrorism agents on Islam.

I’m going to have a few points to make about it. But for the moment I wanted to (in addition to recommending you go read the whole thing) draw attention to this slide on Islamic law, explaining some of the reasons why it purportedly leads to militancy.

The problem, you see, is Mohammad “ordered the assassinations” of critics and “employed torture to extract information.”

I can imagine how such things would corrupt the people who practice such things.

Gary says, "Indeed."

 

 

War Criminals...and Ultrarunning

Now this is kinda ironic...but again, we've been told that we are not looking back....

Via a link from Avedon Carol: Obama Bans War Criminals, but Not Our Own, by Nat Hentoff.

"By executive order on Aug. 4, President Barack Obama refused entry to the United States of war criminals and human-rights violators (Jurist.org, Aug. 4). He ignored, as he often does, the deeply documented factual evidence of war crimes committed by the Bush-Cheney administration - along with grim proof that the Obama administration also violates our anti-torture laws and the U.N. Convention Against Torture we signed. 

The United States also signed the Geneva Conventions, which mandates - and please pay attention to this, President Obama - each contracting party "shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches (of the Geneva Conventions), and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts."

This means that you, President Obama, are obligated to bring the foregoing list of war criminals [George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, David Addington (counsel to Cheney) and John Yoo author of the unsparingly cruel, aptly dubbed "torture memos" from the Ashcroft Justice Department that gave "legal cover" to allow torture] during the Bush presidency into our courts - or, before that, be subject to an independent criminal investigation."

I guess what boggles my mind is why the Very Serious People in Washington cannot see this with the clarity that I and my friends see this.  Wait, they're not stupid, of course they see what I see...and choose to provide "professional courtesy" (read: cover) for their predecessors, hoping to establish precedent in case they themselves will need cover from the subsequent administration for their present actions.

Oh...and the link to Ultrarunning?  For those of us gentle people who quietly run trails, seeking solace and solitude, the concept of torturing another human being fills us with revulsion.  That our elected leaders do it our our name to "keep us safe"...I'd just rather be unsafe.

 

REPOST: Sir Paul McCarntey...and Torture

While I am down after arm surgery and can't type, I am recycling some posts from a year ago.

This from 9 June 2010:

Greg Sargent, of the Washington Post, 4 June 2010, commenting on Sir Paul McCartney's recent visit to DC to receive an honor:

And the random deep thought of the day: Paul McCartney's crack about George W. Bush's lack of familiarity with libraries is far more controversial and worthy of discussion than Bush's glib claim that he would authorize torture again.

We certainly have become desensitized, haven't we?

Per Dan Froomkin at the Huffington Post blog:

George W. Bush's casual acknowledgment Wednesday that he had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed waterboarded -- and would do it again -- has horrified some former military and intelligence officials who argue that the former president doesn't seem to understand the gravity of what he is admitting.

Waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, is "unequivocably torture", said retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years.

"As a nation, we have historically prosecuted it as such, going back to the time of the Spanish-American War," Irvine said. "Moreover, it cannot be demonstrated that any use of waterboarding by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life."

   

Torture, Take 2

Blogspot software has been hosed up off and on for a couple days.  Finally it seems OK as I write this post Friday PM for posting Saturday morning (you didn't really think I got up every single day to write a post around 6:00 am, did you?).

My Thursday morning's post on War Machines never went up and for some reason remained as a draft until I just hit PUBLISH moments ago.  Friday morning's post on torture didn't get published until Friday afternoon and was inaccessible to me to revise.

So...here is the rest of the torture post, which consists of a couple more lefties like me decrying the normalization of torture:

Matthew Alexander, quoted at Crooks and Liars: My argument is pretty simple, Amy. I don't torture because it doesn't work. I don't torture because it's immoral, and it's against the law, and it's inconsistent with my oath of office, in which I swore to defend the Constitution of the United States.

And it's also inconsistent with American principles. So, my primary argument against torture is one of morality, not one of efficacy.

You know, if torture did work and we could say it worked 100 percent of the time, I still wouldn't use it. The U.S. Army Infantry, when it goes out into battle and it faces resistance, it doesn't come back and ask for the permission to use chemical weapons. I mean, chemical weapons are extremely effective-we could say almost 100 percent effective. And yet, we don't use them. But we make this-carve out this special space for interrogators and say that, well, they're different, so they can violate the laws of war if they face obstacles.

And next, from Pruning Shears:

If you're willing to allow your visceral impulses to conjure up exceptions to your principles then you have to let others do the same - which is exactly what led to the torture regime, general disregard of human rights, and the implementation of police state surveillance. That said, my main reaction [to bin Laden's death] has been, "he is one dead m*rf*r."  I know my deep satisfaction with his death comes from a primitive and emotional place. I understand how dangerous it is to let animal instinct take precedence over rational thought. I should be better than that. I'm working on it.

 
So am I.

 

An Adult Conversation About Torture

From the blog Whiskeyfire, on how proponents of torture are crawling back out of the shadows, and the following quote from one of them:

Patterico: It's infantile to argue about whether or not torture works. Of course it does! This scene from Dirty Harry proves it.


Whiskeyfire: Yes, that's really his argument.


Patterico: So let's please stop the childish claim that waterboarding-hell, even torture-cannot be effective. And let's instead have the adult conversation about whether we as a people believe it is morally justified and if so, when.


Whiskeyfire: "Adult conversations" exclude the idea that torture can ever be morally justified.  Not that I am claiming we live in a nation run by adults. At best, vicious adolescents not half as bright as they imagine.

I gotta go with Whiskeyfire on this one.  I still cannot believe that we are even having this discussion.  The efficacy of torture?  Doesn't matter--it's just wrong, one of those things that moral people don't do.

 

 

Torture and Assassination

From Glenn Greenwald at Salon on 2 Oct

During the Bush-era torture debates, I was never able to get past my initial incredulity that we were even having a "debate" over whether the President has the authority to torture people.

Andrew Sullivan has responded to some of the questions I posed about his defense of Obama's assassination program, and I realize now that throughout this whole assassination debate, specific legal and factual issues aside, my overarching reaction is quite similar: I actually can't believe that there is even a "debate" over whether an American President -- without a shred of due process or oversight -- has the power to compile hit lists of American citizens whom he orders the CIA to kill far away from any battlefield.

The notion that the President has such an unconstrained, unchecked power is such a blatant distortion of everything our political system is supposed to be -- such a pure embodiment of the very definition of tyrannical power -- that, no matter how many times I see it, it's still hard for me to believe there are people willing to expressly defend it.

My sentiments exactly.  Very Serious People were unapologetically talking then about torture--as they are talking now about targeted killings--without the slightest bit of self-consciousness, or humility, or conscience....

That kind of hubris is nothing short of unbelievable.

 

Dick Cheney…and Ultrarunning

One of my favorite reads is Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I. She gets pretty irate abut stuff and sometimes drops a lot of f-bombs, and I say, “I wish I’d said that.”

Well, she just did it again in this post.

A tantalizing excerpt. After quoting a USA Today piece about going after a Guatemalan human rights abuser, she says:

What about our own war criminals? What about the National Security Council of the Bush Administration, which discussed, with great specificity, what torture techniques were to be used?

No, we won't go after our own war criminals. We'll let other nations do that. Which is why you probably have not seen any of the senior cabinet members of the Bush Administration, other than maybe the Secretary of Agriculture (whoever the hell that was) take any foreign vacations since they left office.

This whole Obama “we’re looking forward, not looking back” thing is really just looking the other way. What a disappointment.

Sure, the torture of captives in Iraq and Guantanamo has very little to do—directly—with Ultrarunning. Probably nothing. But when I run trails I want to be comfortable in my own skin, to know that I’m one of the good guys. And if my President, the guy I voted for with a feeling of hope, wants to continue to sweep this utter moral failure under the rug, then I can’t rest easy.

This probably sounds utterly stupid, but for me the fact that the United States of America not only tortured prisoners, we continue to ignore what was done, kinda diminishes the whole wilderness thing. I mean, how can I blissfully run my trails and act like there’s nothing wrong? Conflicted doesn’t even begin to cut it.

Defending the Indefensible

I recently ran across a pretty funny post--in a sarcastic way--by Stephen M. Walt, that he called Defending the Indefensible: a How-to Guide (link here)

I'll excerpt a few of the good ones of his list of 21:

Powerful states often do bad things. When they do, government officials and sympathizers inevitably try to defend their conduct, even when those actions are clearly wrong or obviously counterproductive. This is called being an "apologist," although people who do this rarely apologize for much of anything.

Some readers out there may aspire to careers in foreign policy, and you may be called upon to perform these duties as part of your professional obligations. Moreover, all of us need to be able to spot the rhetorical ploys that governments use to justify their own misconduct. To help students prepare for future acts of diplomatic casuistry, and to raise public consciousness about these tactics, I offer as a public service this handy 21-step guide: "How to Defend the Indefensible and Get Away With It." The connection to recent events is obvious, but such practices are commonplace in many countries and widely practiced by non-state actors as well.

Here are my 21 handy talking-points when you need to apply the white-wash:

....

4. Ok, we did it but it wasn't that bad ("waterboarding isn't really torture, you know").

5. Well, maybe it was pretty bad but it was justified or necessary. (We only torture terrorists, or suspected terrorists, or people who might know a terrorist...")

 7. Besides, what we did was technically legal under some interpretations of international law (or at least as our lawyers interpret the law as it applies to us.)

18. It's a tough world out there and Serious People understand that sometimes you have to do these things. Only ignorant idealists, terrorist sympathizers, craven appeasers and/or treasonous liberals would question our actions.

....

Time to go read the whole list, don't you think?

Sir Paul McCartney...and Torture

Greg Sargent, of the Washington Post, 4 June 2010, commenting on Sir Paul McCartney's recent visit to DC to receive an honor:

And the random deep thought of the day: Paul McCartney's crack about George W. Bush's lack of familiarity with libraries is far more controversial and worthy of discussion than Bush's glib claim that he would authorize torture again.

We certainly have become desensitized, haven't we?

Per Dan Froomkin at the Huffington Post blog:

George W. Bush's casual acknowledgment Wednesday that he had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed waterboarded -- and would do it again -- has horrified some former military and intelligence officials who argue that the former president doesn't seem to understand the gravity of what he is admitting.

Waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, is "unequivocably torture", said retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years.

"As a nation, we have historically prosecuted it as such, going back to the time of the Spanish-American War," Irvine said. "Moreover, it cannot be demonstrated that any use of waterboarding by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life."

Terrible Things

While I'm on a Writer's Almanac roll (see Saturday's post on Salvador Dali), I saved this one from last August 14th:

It's the birthday of journalist, essayist, and humorist Russell Baker, (books by this author) born in Morrisonville, Virginia (1925). He's a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner; the first he won in 1979 for distinguished commentary for his syndicated humor column, "The Observer," which ran from the early 1960s to the late 1990s. The second Pulitzer he received for his autobiography, Growing Up (1982). He's edited a number of anthologies, including The Norton Book of Light Verse (1986). He once said, "I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago, when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world."

Russell Baker said, "Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things."

Sure makes me immediately think of the War on Terror and the justifications for torture, unlawful wiretaps, and incarcerations without due process.