It is the most extensive medical study of former detainees published so far to determine whether their stories of abuse at American hands could be corroborated with physical evidence. It followed standards and methods used worldwide to document torture.
Doctors and mental health professionals examined 11 former prisoners in intensive two-day sessions. All the prisoners were freed without charges, either innocent or not valuable enough to the military to hold.
The group alleges it found evidence of U.S. torture and war crimes, and said some U.S. military health professionals allowed the abuse of detainees, denying them medical care and providing confidential medical information to interrogators which was then exploited.
"Some of these men really are, several years later, very severely scarred," said Barry Rosenfeld, a psychology professor at Fordham University who conducted psychological tests on six of the 11 detainees covered by the study. "It's a testimony to how bad those conditions were and how personal the abuse was."
The report came as the Senate Armed Services Committee revealed documents showing military lawyers warned the Pentagon that some of the methods it used to interrogate and hold detainees after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks violated military, U.S. and international law. Those objections were overruled by the top Pentagon lawyer, who said he was unaware of the criticism.
The Pentagon's former top lawyer, William Haynes, suddenly can't remember anything:
"I don't recall seeing this memorandum before and I'm not even sure this is one I've seen before. . . . I don't recall seeing this memorandum and I don't recall specific objections of this nature. . . . Well, I don't recall seeing this document, either. . . . I don't recall specific concerns. . . . I don't recall these and I don't recall seeing these memoranda. . . . I can't even read this document, but I don't remember seeing it. . . . I don't recall that specifically. . . . I don't remember doing that. . . . I don't recall seeing these things."
Some of the testimony released by the Senate Armed Services Committee is nauseating:
"Under the Torture Convention, torture has been prohibited by international law, but the language of the statutes is written vaguely. Severe mental and physical pain is prohibited. The mental part if explained as poorly as the physical. Severe physical pain described as anything causing permanent damage to major organs or body parts. Mental torture described as anything leading to permanent, profound damage to the senses or personality. It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies you're doing it wrong.
" . . . Any of these techniques that lie on the harshest end of the spectrum must be performed by a highly trained individual. Medical personnel should be present to treat any possible accidents. . . . When the CIA has wanted to use more aggressive techniques in the past, the FBI has pulled their personnel from the theatre.
" . . . if someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used, regardless of cause of death, the backlash of attention would be severely detrimental. Everything must be approved and documented."
_ Jonathan Fredman, chief counsel, CIA Counter-terrorism Center, according to the minutes of an Oct. 2, 2002, Counter Resistance Strategy Meeting.
McClatchley news service released an exhaustive report about how our detainee prorgam is going, and uncovered all sorts of evidence of torture, not to mention innocents being held and tortured for undefined lengths of time:
An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments. McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials — primarily in Afghanistan — and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records. This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals.
At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials.
In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies. The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners. Prisoner mistreatment became a regular feature in cellblocks and interrogation rooms at Bagram and Kandahar air bases, the two main way stations in Afghanistan en route to Guantanamo.
Alberto Mora, Navy General Counsel from 2001–2006, makes the case for why Guantanamo and "enhanced interrogation techniques" actually kill Americans. Video.
And at least one writer tries to sum up what the recent rash of testimony means:
In fact at this point the evidence is clear and convincing, and it points to a top-down process. Figures near the top of the administration decided that they wanted brutal techniques and they hammered them through, usually over strong opposition from the ranks of professionals.
Yesterday’s hearings in the Senate Armed Services Committee helped make that point, and brought a new focus on a figure who has been lurking in the shadows of the controversy for some times: William J. Haynes II, Rumsfeld’s lawyer and now a lawyer for Chevron. Two things emerge from the hearing. First, that Haynes was effectively a stationmaster when it came to introducing torture techniques in the “war on terror,” circumventing opposition from career military and pushing through a policy of brutality and cruelty, by stealth when necessary. And second, that Haynes lacks the courage of his convictions, a willingness to stand up and testify honesty about what he did. [...]
He forgot his visit in September 2002 to Guantánamo with the rest of his War Council, a most convenient memory failure about which Philippe Sands confronted him during their interview. The minutes of that visit point to many private discussions between Haynes and the Guantánamo commander. Haynes doesn’t recall those, either, but immediately after them, the process of preparing requests for highly coercive techniques begins. Haynes wants us to consider this a coincidence. Experience teaches otherwise.
And he’s forgotten all about the push from the top, originating in his office, to have the SERE (“Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape”) techniques studied as a basis for new “gloves off” interrogation techniques. Haynes had his deputy, Richard Shiffrin, launch a dialogue with SERE trainers about techniques that could be derived from their training program. This is path through which waterboarding and a number of other illegal techniques made their passage into the interrogator’s repertoire, first for the CIA and later for the military. In July 2005, Jane Mayer reported on this in a New Yorker article, and yesterday her work was validated through disclosure of the paper trail.
Anyway, there's a lot of info bubbling to the surface. Some questions:
If you deny that the U.S.A. has been engaged in torture, go ahead and make your case.
Should anyone engaged in torture be brought up on criminal charges?
If so, how high up the chain of command would you be willing to start? Where should such a prosecution start?
Why should torture be criminalized when, historically, we have never criminalized differences of policy opinion in this country?
If no charges are brought against anyone, what is to prevent this sort of thing happening again?
Can we depend on either candidate to terminate "enhanced interrogation techniques"? Do we have evidence that either of them will suspend this program?
"If the Detainee Dies, You're Doing it Wrong"
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