Wednesday 27th of November 2024
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the american way .....

the american way .....

United States interrogators killed nearly four dozen detainees during or after their interrogations, according a report published by a human rights researcher based on a Human Rights First report and follow-up investigations.

In all, 98 detainees have died while in U.S. hands. Thirty-four homicides have been identified, with at least eight detainees - and as many as 12 - having been tortured to death, according to a 2006 Human Rights First report that underwrites the researcher's posting. The causes of 48 more deaths remain uncertain.

The researcher, John Sifton, worked for five years for Human Rights Watch. In a posting Tuesday, he documents myriad cases of detainees who died at the hands of their U.S. interrogators. Some of the instances he cites are graphic.

Most of those taken captive were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They include at least one Afghani soldier, Jamal Naseer, who was mistakenly arrested in 2004. "Those arrested with Naseer later said that during interrogations U.S. personnel punched and kicked them, hung them upside down, and hit them with sticks or cables," Sifton writes. "Some said they were doused with cold water and forced to lie in the snow.

Nasser collapsed about two weeks after the arrest, complaining of stomach pain, probably an internal hemorrhage."

http://www.alternet.org/rights/139867/revealed%3A_u.s._interrogators_may_have_killed_dozens_of_detainees/

meanwhile .....

Who in the George W. Bush White House tried to shred a memo challenging the use of torture?

On April 21, Philip Zelikow, who was counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the Bush administration, revealed on Foreign Policy's "Shadow Government" blog that he wrote a memo in 2005 disputing the conclusions of Bush Justice Department lawyers that torture was legal. The existence of such a memo was a surprise. But Zelikow also disclosed that the "White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo."

This story is not over. Zelikow tells Mother Jones that he doesn't know for sure who in the White House ordered the suppression of his memo, but he says that his "supposition at the time" was that the office of Vice President Dick Cheney was behind the cover-up. In an email exchange with Mother Jones, Zelikow notes that Cheney's office did not have the authority to request that his memo be deep-sixed: "They didn't run the interagency process. Such a request would more likely have come from the White House Counsel's office or from NSC staff."

But that request did not reach him in written form. "It was conveyed to me, and I ignored it," Zelikow recalls. But he suspected that Team Cheney was probably behind it.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/139878/is_a_cheney_cover-up_scandal_brewing/

lessons in ethics .....

The Bush administration's Justice Department must have used Sidney Lumet's 1973 police-crime drama, "Serpico," as its investigative lodestar, because after a vigorously self-honest self-investigation, it found, as I'm sure you have read by now, that, all things considered, the legal firm of Yoo, Bybee & Bradbury was clean as a hound's tooth.

Mistakes? Well, sure they made mistakes. Shucks, who doesn't? These Brooks Brothered American boys with a license to brutalize perhaps got a little carried away in the noble defense of their country -- and hey, we're talking this exceptional country, so normal rules of international standards imposed by fussy globalists don't apply -- but, as they say, that's why they put erasers on pencils. No real harm done, let's all just move along, nothing much to see here.

The creative-writing specialists behind the 220-page draft report may themselves be guilty of having knowingly, willfully labored under serial oxymorons -- their draft is the official product of "the Office of Professional Responsibility, an internal ethics unit within the [Bush-Cheney] Justice Department" -- but other than that, these big-hearted lovable slobs couldn't find much fault.

Oh yeah, there were "lapses of judgment" committed by Yoo, Bybee & Bradbury all right, especially in their crafting of "secret memorandums authorizing brutal interrogations" which unambiguously violated not only the federal anti-torture statute but Articles A-Z of the Geneva Conventions.

But it would body forth the splitting of the very finest of legal hairs to argue that unambiguous violations of an unambiguous felony statute are worthy of criminal prosecution -- not, heaven forfend, when nothing but goodness fluttered and swelled the perpetrators' red-blooded hearts. If only Willie Sutton had thought of arguing he was merely making determined withdrawals on behalf of poor widows and destitute orphans.

No, criminal prosecution would be foolishly fussy, if not downright unpatriotic. Instead, the "internal ethicists" went one better: They have issued a "stinging rebuke." Yes, a stinging rebuke, mind you -- one that could potentially close the door on the future law practice of Yoo, Bybee & Bradbury, yet maybe open the door to luxurious professorships at Bob Jones ... uh ... University.

In fact, this rebuke was so stinging that it moved former Attorney General Michael Mukasey to dash off a 10-page rebuttal; a rebuttal intended to show, no doubt, that not only is Mr. Mukasey even more patriotically infused than the fastidious ethicists, but that the ethicists were, indeed, being excessively fastidious.

Even a rebuke -- let alone prosecution -- is unthinkably harsh. But, if a rebuke need be, then let it be so: a classic negotiation-kind-of-plea-bargain tactic.

President Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, must still decide if he wants any editing done on the Bush-ethicists' creative-writing term paper, although administration officials said that while "it is possible that the final report might be subject to further revision ... they did not expect major alterations in its main findings or recommendations."

Excellent. We wouldn't want to clutter up a joke of a legal finding with a bunch of serious legal thought.

http://blog.buzzflash.com/carpenter/382