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Alyssa

The Torturers And The Tortured: How Will ’24′ Return In A World Of ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘Scandal,’ And ‘Zero Dark Thirty’?

By Alyssa Rosenberg on May 17, 2013 at 2:07 pm

“This isn’t happening for a reason.” -The Boy, Game of Thrones

“They were real.” -Huck, Scandal

“You don’t want to be the last one caught holding a dog collar.” -Dan, Zero Dark Thirty

When Fox announced that it was bringing back 24, its serialized drama about counterterrorist federal agent Jack Bauer that finished its initial run in 2010, as a limited-episode special event in 2014, much of the commentary about the news focused on questions of structure, rather than content. Time Magazine television critic James Poniewozik argued that 24′s resurrection was part of an exciting move by Fox to make more limited series and more special events, a strategy that includes a shorter run for its serial killer hit The Following, a move that both was meant to accomodate star Kevin Bacon’s schedule and to ape the success of dark cable dramas with shorter runs, and an order of limited-run series Wayward Pines. Others saw it as part of Fox’s decision to walk away from a focus on female-focused comedies and return to an old, reliable—and male-centered—hit from its past. But I’m curious about another question. How is Jack Bauer, whose use of torture, as reported by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, prompted U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan to meet with the producers of 24 to talk to them about how the show was affecting American soldiers, going to play in a world where pop culture has become more thoughtful and searing about the impact of these tactics on both both the tortured and torturers themselves?

One of the most painful depictions of torture presently airing appears on HBO’s medieval fantasy Game of Thrones, where the destruction of Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen), formerly a spoiled ward of the Stark family, and now the prisoner of a man who appears to be systematically remolding him according to a monstrous blueprint. It’s a storyline that’s been so grotesque and emotionally agonizing that it’s turned off some critics like The Atlantic’s Christopher Orr, who have found themselves exhausted by what they see as an exploitative element to the proceedings, which are presented only in flashbacks in the novels on which the show is based.

But the relentless return to Theon’s cell, to his crucifixion, flaying, hooding, starvation, sexual manipulation, and last week, emasculation, seems precisely like the point, even if it’s so unpleasant to watch that I’ve taken to peeking at those scenes through my fingers on the first go-round and leaving the room for the second. Theon can’t escape his torture, and neither can we. His lead torturer tells him that “this isn’t happening for a reason,” and in point of fact in the narrative, it’s mostly not. The only new information Theon reveals, that he has not actually murdered the heirs to Winterfell, a Northern stronghold, doesn’t defuse a ticking time bomb scenario, but gets filed away for reference. “You’ve already told me everything, remember? Your daddy was mean to you. The Starks didn’t appreciate you. One good bit, though. The Stark boys. They’re still alive. Wouldn’t that be a hunt to remember?” the mysterious man reflects menacingly. When Theon asks “Where am I? Who are you? What do you want?” one of that man’s henchmen replies, “I want to do this.” Torture is arbitrary and endless, a manifestation of insanity, whether that madness is innate or simply the logical place men arrive at during an endless war.
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Security

Republicans Are Resisting Obama’s Renewed Attempt To Close Gitmo

By Hayes Brown on May 7, 2013 at 5:00 pm

(Credit: AP)

President Obama’s renewed calls to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are already being met with promises of further stonewalling from Republicans in Congress, before a new plan can even be put forward.

It’s not new that Republicans oppose the idea that closing a prison that has been for years now a symbol of U.S. disregard for human rights would be in the interests of the United States, having blocked administration proposals several times. And now, Republicans are already shooting down Obama’s renewed push, mostly based on previous proposals to transport detainees to “supermax” prisons in the United States:

  • Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “There is wide, bipartisan opposition in Congress to the president’s goal of moving those terrorists to American cities and towns.”
  • Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC): “[The detainees are] individuals hell-bent on our destruction and destroying our way of life.”
  • Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL): “All of the prisoners housed at Guantanamo are terrorists. They pose an obvious threat to our national security, and they should not be allowed to set foot on our soil.”
  • Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN): “The American people expect us to keep them safe. I have yet to hear one good reason why moving these terrorists from off our shores right into the heart of our country makes us safer.”
  • Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN): “The president needs to realize that the Global War on Terrorism did not end with the killing of Osama bin Laden. The Boston bombing is a sharp reminder that there is still a clear and present threat to our American way of life from those that mean us harm.”
  • Rep. Jimmy Duncan (R-TN): “[Detainees] are not U.S. citizens and should not be given the same rights and privileges as if they were. [...] I do not support any plan for these prisoners that puts them on U.S. soil.”

The insistence that Guantanamo’s current population of 166 detainees must remain in place rather than reach U.S. soil is in itself based on a flawed premise. More than 200 international terrorists are currently serving out sentences in super-maximum security facilities in the United States, and — counter to GOP theories about the consequences of transferring detainees to the mainland — no convicted terrorist has escaped or attacked a prison in the U.S.

While Democrats are largely remaining silent on the issue thus far, not all Republicans are opposed to closing down the prison, with some seeming willing to work with the President on its closure — so long as they aren’t the ones that have to propose solutions. “I don’t agree with the reasons that have been offered, that they outweigh the use of Guantanamo,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) told the Wall Street Journal, but maintained that she would be willing to work with the administration should they propose a new detention policy. Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon — chair of the House Armed Services Committee — made a similar point in an op-ed this weekend, demanding a new detention suggestion from Obama before Gitmo can be closed.

Obama made his comments regarding Gitmo’s eventual closure at a press conference last week when asked about the ongoing hunger strike among the detainees imprisoned there. “I’ve asked my team to review everything that’s currently being done in Guantanamo, everything that we can do administratively and I’m going to reengage with Congress to try to make the case that this is not something that’s in the best interests of the American people,” Obama said at the time.

Given the intransigence of Republicans, President Obama may be forced to go around Congress to release some Gitmo detainees. Several options are available to Obama including, as CAP expert Ken Gude pointed out, utilizing his authority to transfer detainees cleared for release from Gitmo to custody in their country of origin.

Security

U.N. Official Says Gitmo Force-Feeding Violates International Law

By Hayes Brown on May 1, 2013 at 10:22 am

Guantanamo Bay (Credit: AFP/Getty)

A United Nations official called the practice of force-feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay “torture” on Wednesday, adding the world body to a growing list of those concerned over U.S. treatment of detainees there.

For the last several weeks, a hunger strike has been spreading throughout Guantanamo, as detainees refuse to accept food what is now widely understood as a protest of their indefinite detention. In response, the military has begun force-feeding several of the inmates through a nasal tube to keep them alive. According to AFP, the United Nations’ main human rights office has taken notice:

“If it’s perceived as torture or inhuman treatment — and it’s the case, it’s painful — then it is prohibited by international law,” Rupert Coville, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights, told AFP.

A bipartisan task force on detainees assembled by the Constitution Project earlier this month condemned force-feeding and one member also suggested that it could be torture. “The World Medical Association and international officials have clearly identified that process as cruel, in human and degrading treatment,” said Dr. Gerald Thomson. “And given the level of brutality could extend to torture.”

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, who has long advocated for the closure of Guantanamo, reiterated her call for the prison’s closure when the hunger strike first began. “Given the uncertainty and anxieties surrounding their prolonged and apparently indefinite detention in Guantanamo, it is scarcely surprising that people’s frustrations boil over and they resort to such desperate measures,” Pillay said of the hunger strike at the time.

Coville’s statement is in-line with the opinion of the American Medical Association (AMA), which recently wrote to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel condemning the practice. Both the AMA and United Nations base their conclusion on the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Tokyo in 1975, which holds that when a prisoner “refuses nourishment and is considered by the physician as capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment concerning the consequences of such a voluntary refusal of nourishment, he or she shall not be fed artificially.” In 1991, the group also declared that force-feeding is “never ethically acceptable.”

As of Wednesday, 100 of the 160 prisoners held within Guantanamo are on hunger strike. According to the Department of Defense, 23 of those striking are being force-fed, an increase of two from yesterday. Military doctors have been rushed to Guantanamo to provide additional support to the base’s medical facilities.

President Obama on Tuesday said he would renew his attempt to close Guantanamo Bay, saying that the prison is not in the United States’ interest and is “not sustainable.”

Security

Vice President Biden Wants Senate Torture Report Released

By Hayes Brown on Apr 29, 2013 at 2:20 pm

Vice-President Joe Biden

Vice President Joe Biden came out in favor of declassifying a secret report on the U.S.’ use of torture during the Bush administration on Friday, raising expectations that the Obama administration will back the report’s release.

Biden was speaking at an event in Sedona, AZ, appearing on stage in a conversation with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). During the McCain Institute event, according to Roll Call, the conversation shifted to a recently completed report on the United States’ use of torture in combating terrorism in the post-Sept. 11-era.

“[Torture] offends the fundamentals of what kind of country we are, and the practical side of it is, don’t think it didn’t damage the United States’ image in the world in ways that we’ll be paying for for years to come,” McCain said, echoing his previous support for the report’s wide release. Biden quickly agreed:

“It is not resolved yet, John, but I’m where you are. I think the only way you excise the demons is you acknowledge, you acknowledge exactly what happened straightforward,” Biden said. He explained his position that issues related to torture must be laid out before a country can move beyond them, citing the war crimes committed in the Balkans and other acts of torture overseas.

“The single best thing that ever happened to Germany were the war crimes tribunals, because it forced Germany to come to its milk about what in fact has happened,” Biden said. “That’s why they’ve become the great democracy they’ve become.”

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence approved the nearly 6,000-page report approved the nearly 6,000-page report back in Dec. 2012, which was then sent to the Executive Branch for “review and comment.” According to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chair of the Intelligence Committee, that includes going “to the White House, to the attorney general, to the DNI [Director of National Intelligence], to the CIA for possible technical amendments.” Only after that review is complete will the Senate consider declassifying the report.

Vice President Biden’s comments come just weeks after a bipartisan group determined that the U.S. did, in fact, utilize torture — also euphemistically referred to as “enhanced interrogation” — on detainees in order to gain information in the years after 2001. That panel’s conclusion that not only did the United States engage in torture but it was ineffective as an information gathering tool seems to fall in line with those from the Senate’s, according to a 2012 report from Reuters.

Should the Obama administration wind up siding with Biden on releasing the report, such a move would help mute criticism the administration has faced over refusing to launch investigations into Bush-era torture.

Alyssa

‘Game of Thrones’ Recap: “And Now His Watch Is Ended”

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Apr 22, 2013 at 9:03 am

This post discusses plot points from the April 21 episode of Game of Thrones.

“Power is a curious thing,” Lord Varys told Tyrion Lannister in the second season of Game of Thrones, offering him up a parable to explain his point. “Three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man. Between them stands a common sellsword. Each great man bids the sellsword kill the other two. Who lives, who dies? Power resides where men believe it resides; it’s a trick, a shadow on the wall, and a very small man can cast a very large shadow.” But this week’s episode of Game of Thrones is a seminar in all of the ways that Varys’ story itself is a masterful piece of misdirection. Power is sometimes where you least expect it, and those wise enough to know that can magnify their influence by taking advantage of those foolish enough to overlook and underestimate them.

Varys—who is emerging as one of the strongest characters in Game of Thrones, thanks to his enhanced role and Conleth Hill’s stiletto of a performance—knows that, of course. “Prodigies appear in the oddest of places,” he muses, both considering reports of Podrick Payne’s sexual prowess*, and letting Ros knows he appreciates the initiative she took in approaching him with information about Littlefinger’s plans, in wise recognition that she won’t have her existing patron for much longer.

He’s not the only one who reflects on the advantage of surprise. “Are you here to seduce me, Lord Varys?” the Queen of Thorn asks him. “Please, seduce away. It’s been so long.” The man who has been helping Theon, and who turns out to have betrayed him, brags of his cleverness in what turns out to be a canny act of double misdirection that takes advantage of Theon’s lofty self-regard, unbroken by torture. “I served them, the men who were torturing you,” the man tells Theon, playing innocent in reporting his play at innocence. “I did what they said and waited for the right moment.” You speak Valyrian?” the Wise Master of Astapor asks Daenerys Targaryen when she reveals that she’s been listening to him insult her throughout their entire negotiation. “I am Danyaers Stormborn of the House Targaryen, of the blood of Old Valyria,” she tells him with calm contempt. “Valyrian is my mother tongue.”
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Justice

High Court Squelches Ability To Hold Anyone Accountable For Human Rights Violations Abroad

By Nicole Flatow on Apr 17, 2013 at 12:08 pm

What started out as a case about whether corporations could be held accountable in U.S. courts for human rights abuses against foreigners abroad turned into a case about whether anyone can be held accountable. And on Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the answer is, mostly, no.

In a sweeping holding, Chief Justice John Roberts led a splintered court in ruling that several Nigerians alleging an oil company aided an abetted torture, arbitrary killings, and indefinite detention could not sue, because the corporate conduct occurred outside the United States. Roberts reasoned that what is known as the “presumption against extraterritoriality” applies to a 200-year-old statute that authorizes civil lawsuits by “aliens” for “violations of the law of nations,” meaning courts should err against enforcing a law intended to punish egregious foreign conduct in the frequent instances when that conduct takes place in a foreign country.

“[T]here is no indication that the ATS was passed to make the United States a uniquely hospitable forum for the enforcement of international norms,” Justice Roberts wrote for the majority in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum.

Roberts’ conclusion is rebutted by the very conduct the Alien Tort Statute was designed to prevent. Piracy was one of the primary torts targeted by Congress at the time of ATS’ passage – conduct that inherently takes place on the high seas. Justice Stephen Breyer explains in a four-justice concurring opinion that would decide the case on significantly narrower grounds:

As I have indicated, we should treat this Nation’s interest in not becoming a safe harbor for violators of the most fundamental international norms as an important jurisdiction related interest justifying application of the ATS in light of the statute’s basic purposes—in particular that of compensating those who have suffered harm at the hands of, e.g., torturers or other modern pirates. Nothing in the statute or its history suggests that our courts should turn a blind eye to the plight of victims in that “handful of heinous actions.”

Now, that handful of heinous actions will have to find remedy elsewhere. This decision not only means that Nigerians cannot sue foreign corporations for their conduct abroad. On this particular point, the four-justice Breyer concurrence agreed that this case did not pass muster. Roberts’ sweeping pronouncement against extraterritoriality may also mean that foreign nationals subject to abuse, for example, at the hands of a U.S. corporation that houses its factories in places whose laws shield it from liability, or an American citizen who commits human rights violations abroad against foreigners, also could not be subject to suit in the United States.

In two recent federal appeals court decisions, lawsuits that challenged torture abroad by two foreign actors were allowed to proceed in U.S. courts because the defendants had lived or were living in the United States. As Justice Breyer points out, Congress is aware that the ATS is the basis for these sorts of lawsuits, and has not sought to amend the act in any way – likely because they recognize that the act was intended to target foreign conduct that is otherwise difficult to reach. But that did not stop the Roberts majority from inferring the narrowest possible congressional intent.

The scope of the opinion will not become clear until it is interpreted by courts. Extraterritoriality is a legal concept that asks not just whether conduct took place abroad, but also whether the claims “touch and concern the territory of the United States” such that a plaintiff can overcome the presumption against them. The only hint the court gives is that lawsuits against corporations will face a particularly heavy burden, noting, “Corporations are often present in many countries, and it would reach too far to say that mere corporate presence suffices.”

What is clear is that the presumption is exceedingly difficult to overcome, and that both individuals and corporations have a high chance of skirting liability simply by doing their dirty work elsewhere.

Security

National Security Brief: Pressure Mounts On Obama To Investigate Torture

By ThinkProgress on Apr 17, 2013 at 9:12 am


Pressure is mounting on the Obama administration to allow access to documents pertaining to the CIA’s post 9/11 terror suspect detention program and to order a full accounting of the Bush-era torture program. At the outset of his first term, President Obama said his administration would not be investigating torture because, he said, he wanted to “look forward, not backward.”

A bipartisan 11-member task force convened by the Constitution Project released a report on Tuesday concluding that the Bush administration’s interrogation polices after 9/11 were, in fact, torture, but it also criticized the Obama White House for blocking a formal investigation into the matter. “As long as the debate continues, so too does the possibility that the United States could again engage in torture,” their report says.

“The Obama administration also has failed to be as open and accountable on such fundamental questions of law, morality and principle as a great power that widely supports human rights needs to be,” Task Force member Thomas Pickering wrote in the Washington Post on Tuesday.

An editorial in the New York Times on Wednesday piled on. “The report’s appearance all these years later is a reminder of the lost opportunity for a full accounting in 2009 when President Obama chose not to support a national commission to investigate the post-9/11 detention and interrogation programs,” the Times writes, adding, “[I]dentifying past mistakes so they can be avoided is central to looking forward.”

And the Huffington Post’s Dan Froomkin notes that the United States is obligated under international law to investigate:

[Ignoring the Bush-era torture program] actually violates the U.S.’s legal obligations under the international Convention Against Torture, which requires each country to “[c]riminalize all acts of torture, attempts to commit torture, or complicity or participation in torture,” and “proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction.”

Pickering says the Obama administration should declassify all relevant documents as soon as possible and work with Congress to “close the loopholes that allowed torture to occur under a pretense of legality.”

“Democracy and torture cannot peacefully coexist in the same body politic,” Pickering writes, adding that not accounting for human rights abuses diminishes American’s standing in the world: “Successful human rights diplomacy and torture can’t either.”

In other news:

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Security

Detainee Report Task Force Condemns Force-Feeding Hunger Strikers At Gitmo

By Ben Armbruster on Apr 16, 2013 at 5:30 pm

Guantanamo Bay prison (Photo: Getty)

A new bipartisan report released on Tuesday by the Constitution Project condemned force-feeding terror detainees that are engaged in hunger strikes.

The issue came to the forefront on Monday after the New York Times published an op-ed by an inmate at the Guantanamo Bay prison detailing the hunger strike he and other inmates have undergone and the harsh treatment they have received because of it.

The detainee, Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, says he began his hunger strike on Feb. 10 and described the “painful” experience of being force-fed. “There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone,” he wrote.

The Constitution Project’s report, which made headlines on Tuesday for its wider conclusion that the U.S. government did indeed torture terror suspects in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, also criticized force-feeding and said the policy should end.

The report said that Gitmo authorities have not been following proper federal prison guidelines when resorting to force-feeding hunger striking inmates, including introducing force-feeding too soon into the protest and using a so-called “restraint chair,” which the Task Force said “completely immobilizes a person strapped into it, using a lap belt and straps that immobilize the head as well as wrist and ankle restraints.”

Task Force member Dr. Gerald Thomson expounded at a press conference on Tuesday releasing the group’s report, suggesting that such practices could be labeled as torture:

THOMSON: You know that the task force came out very strongly condemning force feeding and this is in keeping and in line with international ethical standards both of professional treatment of hunger strikers and the ethics of treating hunger strikers. We do not believe that force-feeding should be an approach to the hunger strike. If you can imagine being a detainee and using refusal to eat as a form of protest and then you are forced to eat, forced physically to eat, by being strapped to into a specially made chair and having restraints put on your limbs, your arms, your legs, you body, your head so that you cannot move. Having a tube inserted into your throat that extends into your stomach and you’re trying to resist that with the only muscles that are free in your throat. Pain, discomfort, obviously. [...]

The World Medical Association and international officials have clearly identified that process as cruel, in human and degrading treatment. And given the level of brutality could extend to torture.

Watch the clip:

“Forced feeding of detainees is a form of abuse and must end,” the Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment says, recommending that “the United States should adopt standards of care, policies and procedures regarding detainees engaged in hunger strikes that are in keeping with established medical professional ethical and care standards set forth as guidelines for the management of hunger strikers in the 1991 World Medical Association Declaration of Malta on Hunger Strikes (revised 1992 and 2006), including affirmation that force-feeding is prohibitedand that physicians should be responsible for evaluating, providing care for and advising detainees engaged in hunger strikes.”

Justice

Seven Ways U.S. Post-9/11 Detention Policy Fell Short Of Human Rights Standards

By Nicole Flatow on Apr 16, 2013 at 4:30 pm

As hunger strikes at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay increasingly become a human rights concern, a new exhaustive report from a group of bipartisan former officials, and medical and legal experts declares that U.S. treatment of detainees after September 11, 2001 constituted torture.

The 577-page report comes out of more than two years of research, interviews, investigation, and analysis. It was led by staunch Republican Asa Hutchinson, who told the New York Times, “This has not been an easy inquiry for me, because I know many of the players … But I just think we learn from history.”

The report issues a series of unanimous recommendations. However, there was one point on which they could not reach consensus: whether or not the detention center should be closed. They repeatedly lamented the lack of declassified government information, and suggested that more access might enable them to reach a conclusion on that question. Below are seven key findings from the report.

1. U.S. forces used interrogation techniques that constitute torture, and many more constituted “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” — both violations of international treaty obligations. Techniques included sleep deprivation, stress positions, nudity, sensory deprivation, and threatening detainees with dogs. During a press conference today, former Ambassador Thomas Pickering lamented: “I spent my life as a diplomat and spent a good part of that life trying to importune other governments to life up to the rule of law. I was chagrined, embarrassed and in many ways felt undermined.

2. The nation’s most senior officials bear responsibility for “allowing and contributing to the spread of illegal interrogation techniques.” The report explains: “The most important element may have been to declare that the Geneva Conventions, a venerable instrument for ensuring humane treatment in time of war, did not apply to Al Qaeda and Taliban captives in Afghanistan or Guantanamo. The administration never specified what rules would apply instead. The other major factor was President Bush’s authorization of brutal techniques by the CIA for selected detainees.” The CIA also created its own detention and interrogation facilities in several other locations.

3. There is no compelling evidence that illegal torture techniques were effective. In fact, it is likely that torture techniques are less effective, since they often compel false confessions, and distinguishing what is useful from what is misleading is difficult at best.

4. Lawyers in President Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel repeatedly gave wrong advice that authorized illegal and torturous interrogation techniques. In doing so, they willfully ignored the advice of those in other departments with substantial expertise and “ did not properly serve their clients: the president the American people.

5. The United States violated its international legal obligations in capturing individuals and transferring them to another country for interrogation without legal process. From the Report: “After September 11, 2001, the extraordinary rendition program consisted of individuals being captured in one part of the world and transferred extrajudicially to another location for the purpose of interrogation rather than legal process. The U.N. officials involved did not notify the detainees’ families of their whereabouts, or provide the detainees with legal representation in any locations operated by the CIA as ‘black sites’ or for proxy detention. What’s more, the commission found that U.S. officials committed torture at these black sites, and that suspects were more likely than not to be tortured in the detaining countries, in spite of diplomatic assurances to the contrary.

6. Forced feeding techniques used on hunger strikers are a form of torture and must end. While the commission sympathizes with the U.S. interest in preventing inmate suicides, it calls for physicians to oversee this invasive and painful process, and to determine the competence of the detainees — man of whom have now lost hope that they will ever see legal process — to make their own decisions.

7. The U.S. government should not invoke the state-secrets privilege to block lawsuits seeking internationally recognized relief for torture. The Convention Against Torture requires states to ensure that the legal system contains an adequate means for torture redress; ours does not when every lawsuit is blocked by government claims of immunity without an opportunity for the judge to review, in secret, the information the government claims must remain secret.

Although commissioners did not come to a consensus on how to handle prisoners indefinitely detained at Guantanamo, those who called for the detention center’s closure said detainees should get a trial either in U.S. courts or in a military commission with equivalent rights to the U.S. system. In recent weeks, increasing signs have emerged that the legal process for detainees who are getting a trial is not even close to living up to American values, with defendants’ legal files disappearing, and new evidence that intelligence officials were spying on confidential lawyer-client conversations.

Security

National Security Brief: Bipartisan Report Concludes It’s ‘Indisputable’ That The U.S. Tortured After 9/11

By ThinkProgress on Apr 16, 2013 at 8:52 am


A bipartisan report has concluded that the United States engaged in torture after the 9/11 terror attacks.

The study, conducted by the 11-member Constitution Project after 2 years of research and interviews, concludes that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it, according to the New York TImes.

While the report notes that Americans have engaged in brutality in every war it has fought, never before had there been “the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.”

Former Bush administration officials, like former vice president Dick Cheney, continue to argue that the United States’ interrogation practices after 9/11 were not torture and that techniques, like waterboarding, gleaned valuable information, saved lives and was the right thing to do. However, the report seeks to close the debate on whether the U.S. tortured terror-suspects in the aftermath 9/11 and whether the tactics were useful. “As long as the debate continues, so too does the possibility that the United States could again engage in torture,” the report says, adding that the bipartisan group found “no firm or persuasive evidence” they worked.

While “a person subjected to torture might well divulge useful information,” much of the information obtained by force was not reliable, the report says.

The Constitution Project also calls on the Senate to release the Intelligence Committee’s recently concluded study on torture, which relies mainly on CIA documents, rather than interviews as the study out today does. James Jones, a Democrat on the panel and a former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, said the two reports would, as the Times reports, “complement each other in documenting what he called a grave series of policy errors.”

Read the full report here.

In other news:

  • USA Today reports: President Obama vowed Monday night to get to the bottom of who is behind a pair of deadly explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, but he warned Americans not to jump to any conclusions. “We still do not know who did this, or why, and people shouldn’t jump to conclusions before we have all the facts,” Obama said in a brief statement. “But make no mistake, we will get to the bottom of this.”
  • The Wall Street Journal reports: Tension in Venezuela rose sharply Monday after the government reneged on its promise to carry out a full recount of the bitterly contested presidential vote and declared acting President Nicolás Maduro as president-elect. The opposition, pointing to irregularities in the election, said it wouldn’t recognize the result and began to demonstrating across the country, as the U.S. urged a vote recount.
  • The Washington Post reports: The special medal for the Pentagon’s drone operators and cyberwarriors didn’t last long. Two months after the military rolled out the Distinguished Warfare Medal for troops who don’t set foot on the battlefield, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has concluded it was a bad idea. Some veterans and some lawmakers spoke out against the award, arguing that it was unfair to make the medal a higher honor than some issued for valor on the battlefield.

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