May 5, 2013
"I considered the arrival to Cuba a blessing, and so I told my brothers, “Since you guys are not involved in crimes you need to fear nothing. I personally am going to cooperate, since nobody is going to torture me. I don’t want any of you to suffer what I suffered in Jordan.” I wrongly believed that the worst was over, and cared less about the time it would take the Americans to figure out I am not the guy they are looking for. I trusted the American justice system too much, and shared that trust with people from European countries. We all have an idea about how the democratic system works."

—

Mohamedou Ould Slahi, The Guantanamo Memoirs

Necessary reading, if you haven’t already.

3:52pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxkJ1JWk
(Notes: 23)
  
Filed under: politics war on terror guantanamo bay torture 
February 27, 2013
"

As part of a recent study about military interrogations techniques, I spoke to many human intelligence (HUMINT) collectors. Through an online survey, 143 active-duty reserve, and retired military interrogators were asked them how they performed their jobs. These men and women, who served in Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq, and Afghanistan, were also asked to rate the effectiveness of a variety of interrogation techniques.

With the exception of one member of the sample, these interrogators uniformly agreed that torture and other harsh methods were worth little when trying to gather accurate human intelligence. The majority of study participants stated a strong dislike of violence in interrogations and asserted time and again that if the direct questioning of a detainee failed, building rapport was the most effective way to collect information from a human subject. As one study participant wrote, “Torture is for amateurs.”

"

— Mathew D. Semel

12:15pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxf7Qt2A
(Notes: 18)
  
Filed under: politics torture war on terror 
January 17, 2013

theneighbourhoodsuperhero:

Omar Khadr, a sixteen year old Guantanamo Bay detainee weeps uncontrollably, clutching at his face and hair as he calls out for his mother to save him from his torment. “Ya Ummi, Ya Ummi (Oh Mother, Oh Mother),” he wails repeatedly, hauntingly with each breath he takes.

The surveillance tapes, released by Khadr’s defence, show him left alone in an interrogation room for a “break” after he tried complaining to CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) officers about his poor health due to insufficient medical attention. Ignoring his complaints and trying to get him to make false confessions, the officers get frustrated with the sixteen year old’s tears and tell him to get himself together by the time they come back from their break.

“You don’t care about me. Nobody cares about me,” he sobs to them.

The tapes show how the officers manipulated Khadr into thinking that they were helping him because they were also Canadian and how they taunted him with the prospect of home (Canada), (good) food, and familial reunion.

Khadr, a Canadian, was taken into US custody at the age of fifteen, tortured and refused medical attention because he wouldn’t attest to being a member of Al Qaeda, even though he was shot three times in the chest and had shrapnel embedded in his eyes and right shoulder. As a result, Khadr’s left eye is now permanently blind, the vision in his right eye is deteriorating, he develops severe pain in his right shoulder when the temperature drops, and he suffers from extreme nightmares.

He has been incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, suffering extremely harsh interrogations and torture (methods), and is now 25 years old.

“America when will we end the human war?”  — Allen Ginsberg

8:48pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxc0Hxj_
(Notes: 11,353)
  
Filed under: politics war on terror Guantanamo Bay torture omar Khadr 
January 11, 2013
"Having served for almost a decade in the Middle East, I’ve seen the grave long-term strategic damage done to our country by the use of torture. The so-called Enhanced Interrogation program, no matter how many times its supporters claim it kept us safe, has been a powerful recruiting tool for al-Qaida and like-minded associates among the politically disenfranchised young men of the Middle East.
In his treatise “The Art of War,” the ancient Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu stated that all warfare is based on deception — deception aimed at making our enemy’s perception of reality fit the tactical and strategic objectives of our side.
However, we are deceiving no one but ourselves when we believe that torture is a valuable tactic in our struggle against terrorism. Hollywood’s artistic license aside, the ultimate victory against groups like al-Qaida will not be achieved through the ham-handed use of medieval methods of interrogation."

—

Michael Marks: Torture interrogations do not work (via azspot)

Also from the article:

As a retired Naval Criminal Investigative Service special agent with 23 years of experience, I performed numerous rapport-based interrogations on terrorist suspects in the United States, the prison at Guantánamo Bay and Afghanistan. I can attest to success of traditional law-enforcement-type interrogations.


(via azspot)

2:16pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxbWEvVB
(Notes: 53)
  
Filed under: politics war on terror torture 
December 12, 2012
"What liberals want is ultimately to do what conservative hawks want to do, but only after experts and leaders assure them that they have no choice. They want extreme events to make the choice for them. That’s why every discussion of torture always descends into some absurd hypothetical where you *know* that there’s a ticking time bomb and you *know* that a terrorist in your custody has info and you *know* that you can get that info and stop that bomb if you torture him. They devise these incredibly complex scenarios because they need them to take away their personal choice. That’s why writers like Spencer Ackerman exist, to present the proper level of squeamishness and showy moral grappling— to say that these scenes “can make a viewer ashamed to be American, in the context of a movie whose ending scene makes viewers very, very proud to be American”— before the torture happens anyway. The key is to go through the moral indigestion but to eventually get to the all-American pride. There’s a whole cottage industry, like that, for fretting liberals who want to get to the tough guy routine in the end."

—

L’Hote

h/t AZSpot

1:43am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxZBa5sV
(Notes: 19)
  
Filed under: politics war war on terror torture 
March 6, 2012
"Please torture me in the old way … Here they destroy people mentally and physically without leaving marks."

— Letters From Guantanamo. (via lukehackney)

(via lukehackney)

5:09pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxHaR4IE
(Notes: 2,646)
  
Filed under: politics gitmo torture war on terror solitary confinement 
November 17, 2011

mohandasgandhi:

diegueno:

MMA Trainer Ed Clay Gets Waterboarded (by GamenessFightCo)

The party gets started around 3 minutes in to the video.

You’ve got to see the last 2 minutes of the video: Clay talks about things that have been waking me up in the middle of the night for decades.

For proponents of waterboarding who were not convinced it is indeed torture by this video:

  • Here is Christopher Hitchens being waterboarded.
  • Here is far-right Conservative and proponent of torture, Eric Mancow, being waterboarded and admitting it’s torture.
  • Here is Kaj Larsen from Current being waterboarded. (This one is especially nasty.)
  • Here is journalist Sheila Casey, who thinks he can withstand more than 15 seconds of being waterboarded. 
  • Here are the guys of Mythbusters being waterboarded. 
  • Here is former CIA agent Bob Baer discussing torture, claiming Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who was waterboarded 183 times is “almost brain dead.”
  • Here former FBI Interrogator Jack Cloonan talks about the techniques he used while working in the elite Bin Laden unit.
  • Here Jack Cloonan explains that regular interrogation tactics work well on even the worst terrorists, that there’s no such thing as a “ticking timebomb” scenario, and that waterboarding has done much more harm than good.
  • Here, in an IQ2US debate, Jack Cloonan argues against the notion that “tough interrogation of terror suspects is necessary”
  • Here General David Petraeus denounces the use of torture on Fox News
  • Here intelligence officials admit that torture does not work
  • Here Cenk Uygur explains the CIA report that concludes torture did not stop or prevent any attacks or “produce the desired results”
  • Here Cenky Uygur explains how and why the U.S. employed torture
  • Here Richard Armitage denounces torture in an interview with Al Jazeera 
  • Here journalist Henri Alleg discusses being waterboarded by the French Army
  • Here Dick Cheney tells Matt Lauer it’s not okay for Americans to be waterboarded

How many more do you need?

LTMC: well done, MohandasGandhi.  This list is a bit more comprehensive than the one I have on hand.

5:43pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxC3LrIm
(Notes: 272)
  
Filed under: politics waterboarding torture 
November 6, 2011
"It is telling that, to my knowledge, four individuals with first-hand experience in interrogations during the “War on Terror,” have spoken out about enhanced interrogation methods: two Air Force officers (Steve Kleinman and another officer writing under the pseudonym Matthew Alexander), an FBI officer (Soufan), and a CIA officer (myself). All of us, independently, make the same points: interrogation must be based on rapport; enhanced interrogation methods are ineffective, counterproductive, immoral, illegal, and unnecessary, and they had nothing to do with obtaining much, if any, information not otherwise obtainable. It is only apologists for the Bush Administration, or Bush Administration policymakers themselves, who assert that “enhanced interrogation techniques” are legal, or work."

—

Glenn Carle

h/t Sullivan

5:31am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxBZrpRK
(Notes: 14)
  
Filed under: politics war on terror torture 
November 6, 2011
Dryboarding

One small detail of the torture of terror suspect Ali al-Marri in US custody contains a nugget that might cast light on the still bizarre circumstances of the three Gitmo “suicides”, revealed by the National Magazine Award winning report by Scott Horton. For in that detail, we learn of a new torture technique devised at Gitmo, in a must-read piece by Almerindo Ojeda:

It would have gone unnoticed were it not for a recent article by Tony Bartelme in Charleston’s Post and Courier. [But] on one occasion, interrogators decided to stuff Mr. al-Marri’s mouth with cloth and cover his mouth with heavy duct tape - a technique of controlled suffocation that Mr. al-Marri’s lawyer, Andrew Savage, has called dryboarding. Dryboarding is not just a criminal practice; it is a potentially lethal procedure. As he was being dryboarded, Mr. al-Marri tried to relieve the pain caused by the duct tape by loosening the tape with his lips. He succeeded. Taking note of this, the interrogators taped his mouth again, but this time more tightly. At this point, Mr. al-Marri began to choke to death. Panicking, the interrogators acted quickly and removed the tape, thus managing, narrowly, to keep Mr. al-Marri alive (Memorandum, p. 5).

This account of the events is apparently undisputed. Ms. Joanna Baltes, who appeared on behalf of the government in the sentencing of Mr. al-Marri, seems to have acknowledged that this incident took place. She also recognized that this procedure was inconsistent with the Army Field Manual (Sentencing, pp. 259, 261). There are no signs, however, that anyone has been held accountable for carrying it out.

2:46am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxBZho60
(Notes: 8)
  
Filed under: politics war on terror gitmo terrorism torture 
October 1, 2011
A Conversation For The Times

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

6:46pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxAA9gb4
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: politics war on terror criminal law criminal justice torture 
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