Think Progress

Obama considering an executive order allowing indefinite detention.

The Washington Post reports today that Obama administration officials are possibly “crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely.” Impetus for the executive order comes from officials being “increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may be impossible.” Additionally, such an order “could be rescinded and would not block later efforts to write legislation.” Over on The Wonk Room, CAP’s Ken Gude explains that while there are still concerns over the emerging policy, “it would be a significant improvement over the Bush administration and would go a long way towards cleaning up the mess at Guantanamo”:

After Congress’ pathetic performance during consideration of Guantanamo funding in the supplemental appropriations bill, it is now evident that no matter how well-intentioned the president and some responsible members are, Congress is not a reliable partner. Whatever would emerge from the sausage grinder risks being far worse than even the already unacceptable status quo. [...]

[Obama's order] would be a significant shift from the Bush administration’s policy that swept into U.S. military detention virtually anyone suspected of terrorist activity captured anywhere in the world. It would restore the bright line between criminal and military detention, a crucial distinction to preserve not just in the United States, but also in other countries that look to or use the U.S. as an example.

There are still ambiguities about whether or not there actually is a draft executive order, as Time’s Michael Scherer notes. Spencer Ackerman spoke to Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Policy, who also said that if Obama “issues an executive order like the one [the Washington Post story describes], it’ll be a major victory.” However, Glenn Greenwald, Digby, the ACLU, and the Center for Constitutional Rights still have significant concerns about the possible order. Steve Benen has more here.

BBC investigation of Bagram finds detainees were ‘beaten,’ ‘hung from the ceiling.’

The BBC recently interviewed 27 former detainees who were held at the Bagram Airbase detention facility between 2002 and 2008. All but two of the detainees said they had been ill-treated. According to the investigation, the detainees were “beaten, deprived of sleep, hung from the ceiling and threatened with dogs. Four claimed officials had put a gun to their head and threatened to kill them.” One inmate said:

‘They did things that you would not do against animals let alone to humans.

‘They poured cold water on you in winter and hot water in summer. They used dogs against us. They put a pistol or a gun to your head and threatened you with death.

‘They put some kind of medicine in the juice or water to make you sleepless and then they would interrogate you.’

All the detainees were ultimately released without charge.

CIA told Zubaydah they mistook him for a high-level al Qaeda operative.

According to new transcripts from of a 2007 Combatant Status Review Tribunal held at Guantanamo Bay, detainee Abu Zubaydah said that his CIA captors told him after he was subjected to torture that “they had mistakenly thought he was the No. 3 man in the organization’s hierarchy and a partner of Osama bin Laden.” “They told me, ‘Sorry, we discover that you are not Number 3, not a partner, not even a fighter,’” Zubaydah said. Zubaydah, who was subjected to waterboarding 83 times in one month, also said that he nearly died in prison:

Abu Zubaida, a nom de guerre for Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, told the 2007 panel of military officers at the detention facility in Cuba that “doctors told me that I nearly died four times” and that he endured “months of suffering and torture” on the false premise that he was an al-Qaeda leader.

Despite President Bush’s rhetoric, Zubaydah’s torture “foiled no plots,” a point that one of his interrogators confirmed during a congressional hearing last May. The portion of the 2007 Combatant Review Status hearing transcript in which Majid Khan — an alleged associate of Khalid Sheik Mohammad — discussed his treatment at CIA black sites was “blacked out for eight consecutive pages.”

John Yoo ordered to testify on torture.

The New York Times reports that a federal judge in California has ruled that former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo will have to testify in court about accusations that his work led to the torture of a detainee:

The government had asked Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco to dismiss the case filed by Jose Padilla, an American citizen who spent more than three years in a military brig as an enemy combatant. Judge White denied most elements of Mr. Yoo’s motion and quoted a passage from the Federalist Papers that in times of war, nations, to be more safe, “at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.”

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley has said that Yoo’s memos “provide the very definition of tyranny.”

Lieberman-Graham torture photo ban will be added to ‘every piece of legislation that comes down the pike.’

Yesterday, Jane Hamsher reported that the detainee photo amendment sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was stripped from the war supplemental in committee. The amendment would have allowed the Obama administration to suppress any “photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained” after 9/11 by U.S. forces. This afternoon, Graham and Lieberman held a press conference to register their objections to dropping the measure and announce that they had “added our original legislation as an amendment to the FDA regulation of tobacco bill that’s on the floor right now”:

LIEBERMAN: [W]e’re going to vote against cloture on the bill, and I’m going to do everything I can to see if I can convince other Democrats to do that.

We’re just not going to roll over because some folks in the House don’t like this amendment. [W]e’re going to do everything we can to hold up the supplemental appropriations bill until we’re sure that this amendment prohibiting the release of these dangerous photographs is on that bill. And then we’ll continue to do everything we can to attach it to other legislation, to slow up the process.

Graham said the amendment was needed because “These photos, if they’re released, will be used by the enemy to incite violence as they walk down these streets.” A “senior Democratic aide” told the Weekly Standard that the two senators would “attach [the amendment] to every piece of legislation that comes down the pike.”

O’Reilly defends torture: ‘Look, if it were illegal, Bush and Cheney would have been arrested.’ »

Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly has always been one of the most outspoken defenders of torture, declaring there’s “certainly no proof” that “mistreatment” ever happened at Guantanamo, and insisting it’s “just bull” to say it’s ineffective to “dunk [someone] into water.” Trying to link abortion (which is legal) and torture (which is not) in an argument with Juan Williams last night, O’Reilly insisted that torture must not be illegal since Bush or Cheney were never arrested:

WILLIAMS: Well, let me just say on the second point about Guantanamo Bay, Bill, that when you think about torture, torture is illegal. It’s illegal on the Geneva Convention. It’s illegal under U.S. law. So torture is illegal. [...]

O’REILLY: Juan, you’re hiding behind semantics and meaning, Juan, rather than getting to the crux of the matter. Look, if it were illegal, Bush and Cheney would have been arrested. You’re sitting authorities, the attorney general ruled waterboarding was not torture. It was legal. Rare occasion it was used.

Watch it:

Of course, the Justice Department O’Reilly trumpets was hardly an independent legal authority. Indeed, as then-deputy attorney general James Comey wrote in a 2005 e-mail expressing his concerns about torture, “everyone seemed to be thinking as if they still work at the White House and not the United States Department of Justice.”

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Ney challenges Gonzales: ‘Let’s see what you think of waterboarding — after you’ve tried it!’

Disgraced former congressman Bob Ney — now a radio talk show host — today issued a challenge to former Bush attorney general Alberto Gonzales: “Let’s see what you think of waterboarding — after you’ve tried it!”:

“If Alberto Gonzales wants to clear his name by saying he didn’t cooperate in torture, then let him try it himself,” said Ney, whose 1 PM show on WVLY and WVLY.net is heard in eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania and throughout the western panhandle of West Virginia.

“When it comes to the worst abuses by the Bush administration, Alberto Gonzales is scurrying under every rock you turn up,” said Ney, who served in Congress from 1995 to 2006, when he resigned to face criminal charges in connection with the Jack Abramoff scandal.

“Whether it was rushing to the sickbed of his predecessor, John Ashcroft, to try to pressure him to sign off on illegal warrantless wiretaps, or getting the Justice Department to approve clear violations of the Geneva Conventions, there was Alberto Gonzales. He didn’t follow the law; he did whatever he was told. He’s part of the ‘Great Lie’ that was the last administration.”

In a conversation with ThinkProgress at the America’s Future Now conference this week, Ney joked that Gonzales should have served time in the Morgantown, WV federal prison — just like he did.

Gen. Ricardo Sanchez calls for war crimes truth commission.

Sitting on a panel moderated by Rachel Maddow last night, retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq from 2003-2004, called for a truth commission to investigate Bush-era interrogation and torture tactics. The Huffington Post’s Jack Hidary reports:

The General described the failures at all levels of civilian and military command that led to the abuses in Iraq, “and that is why I support the formation of a truth commission.”

The General went on to say that, “during my time in Iraq there was not one instance of actionable intelligence that came out of these interrogation techniques.”

I interviewed General Sanchez after the event and asked him to elaborate on why he felt the US needed such a commission. … “If we do not find out what happened,” continued the General, “then we are doomed to repeat it.”

Sanchez described the interrogation program as “a personal failure on the part of many.” Indeed, Sanchez himself wrote and signed a 2003 memo that included specific interrogation tactics approved for use despite noting that they may violate the Geneva Conventions. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sanchez denied signing off on these interrogation methods.

Horton confirms reports that unreleased torture photos show rape and sexual assault.

This week, the Daily Telegraph reported that the torture photos President Obama recently decided to withhold from the public depict “rape and sexual abuse.” The Pentagon denied the report, saying, “None of the photos in question depict the images that are described in that article.” But yesterday, Scott Horton reported that he has confirmed that the photos do, in fact, “depict sexually explicit acts,” including “a government contractor engaged in an act of sodomy with a male prisoner and scenes of forced masturbation,” as well as “penetration involving phosphorous sticks and brooms.” Horton writes further:

A senior military officer familiar with the photos told me that they would likely provoke a storm of outrage if released. … Some show U.S. personnel engaged in sexual acts with prisoners and each other. In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed. In another, a prisoner is suspended naked upside down from the top bunk of a bed in a stress position. [...]

Still other withheld photographs have been circulating among U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq. One soldier showed them to me, including a photograph in which a male in a U.S. military uniform receives oral sex from a female prisoner.

Horton also obtained what he characterizes as “rarely seen Abu Ghraib torture photos,” which can be viewed here.

‘Censored’ Abu Ghraib photographs show rape of detainees.

Earlier this month, President Obama announced that he would ban the release of photographs showing torture. While Obama said at the time that the pictures were “not particularly sensational,” the London Telegraph reports that “at least one picture” from Abu Ghraib “shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee”:

Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency. [...]

Among the graphic statements…is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.” [...]

Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed.

Petraeus agrees with Obama: It’s time to close Guantanamo and end torture.

In an interview this past weekend with Radio Free Europe, Gen. David Petraeus said that he supports President Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and opposes the use of enhanced interrogation techniques:

PETRAEUS: In fact, I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention. And as a division commander in Iraq in the early days, we put out guidance very early on to make sure that our soldiers, in fact, knew that we needed to stay within those guidelines.

With respect to Guantanamo, I think that the closure in a responsible manner, obviously one that is certainly being worked out now by the Department of Justice — I talked to the attorney general the other day [and] they have a very intensive effort ongoing to determine, indeed, what to do with the detainees who are left, how to deal with them in a legal way, and if continued incarceration is necessary — again, how to take that forward.

But doing that in a responsible manner, I think, sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees.

Will Petraeus change the minds of any conservatives who are currently criticizing Obama for these same opinions? Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has called Petraeus one of the “wisest people” he knows, and conservatives have said that it would be a “dream” to have the general run for president.

Powell refuses to answer questions about torture-Iraq war link.

Earlier this month, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, revealed that the reason why detainee Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was waterboarded was not to prevent another terrorist attack, but to unearth “a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.” This false confession was later used by Powell in his infamous February 2003 U.N. speech making the case for the Iraq war. On Sunday, blogger Sam Husseini asked Powell about al-Libi. In a tense exchange, Powell refused to talk about the detainee, saying, “I don’t have any details on the al-Libi case:”

Q: Your chief of staff, Wilkerson, has written about this.

POWELL: So what? [inaudible]

Q: So you’d think you’d know about it.

POWELL: The information I presented to the UN was vetted by the CIA. Every word came from the CIA and they stood behind all that information. I don’t know that any of them believe that torture was involved. I don’t know that in fact. A lot of speculation, particularly by people who never attended any of these meetings, but I’m not aware of it.

Watch it:

A recent Senate Intelligence committee report concluded that al-Libi lied about the link “to avoid torture.” “They were killing me,” al-Libi told the FBI about his interrgators. “I had to tell them something.”

Ex-Taliban official describes torture at Bagram: ‘They were beating me…until I was unconscious.’

In an interview with CNN, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef — a close ally of Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Afghanistan’s former ambassador to Pakistan — described his detention experiences at Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Zaeef has since been freed and claims he is no longer a member of the Taliban. “He says he is still bitter about his time there. Closing Guantanamo Bay, he told CNN, is only part of the justice those detained there deserve”:

“It was a bad stain on American history,” he said. “If they are closing Guantanamo for justice, they have to bring the people who are torturing people, who abuse people, to justice.” [...]

“I didn’t see a worse situation in my life than Bagram,” recalled Zaeef. “They were beating me, they put me in the snow, in the cold, until I was unconscious.”

Watch it: