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WaPo doing the same thing today:

The White House successfully resisted efforts by congressional Democrats to establish a "truth and reconciliation" panel. But fresh disclosures have continued to emerge about detainee mistreatment, including a secret CIA watchdog report, recently reviewed by Holder, highlighting several episodes that could be likened to torture.

Holder's decision could come within weeks, around the same time the Justice Department releases an ethics report about Bush lawyers who drafted memos supporting harsh interrogation practices, the sources said. The legal documents spell out in sometimes painstaking detail how interrogators were allowed to subject detainees to simulated drowning, sleep deprivation, wall slamming and confinement in small, dark spaces.

But the sources said an inquiry would apply only to activities by interrogators, working in bad faith, that fell outside the "four corners" of the legal memos. Some incidents that might go beyond interrogation techniques that were permitted involve detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, and are described in the secret 2004 CIA inspector general report, set for release Aug. 31.

Aug 31 ='weeks'. And Labor Day...

But is it legal?

Skirting the line at best. IIRC this is where the tapes where erased.

Bat wrote:

Skirting the line at best. IIRC this is where the tapes where erased.

I would think holding a gun to someone's head and threatening to blow it off would count as torture.

Of course, if these clowns really were responsible for the crap they were accused of, I'm not going to feel all that bad for them. They certainly didn't feel bad about meting out death to Americans, whether with bombs (like the Kohl) or with knives (Danial Berg) so a few days, months, years of brutal torture and perpetual fear seems about right for scum like that. I'm certainly not losing any sleep over their suffering.

Unfortunately, we (had) decided that this was unacceptable to do in this country; so I feel more bad that laws were broken, and no one was held accountable. Worse, these guys didn't get trials, so we really don't know if they were actually bad guys, or just brown people in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm more concerned about our system of justice than I am a bunch of terrorist scum.

radarman wrote:

Bat wrote:

Skirting the line at best. IIRC this is where the tapes where erased.

I would think holding a gun to someone's head and threatening to blow it off would count as torture.

Of course, if these clowns really were responsible for the crap they were accused of, I'm not going to feel all that bad for them. They certainly didn't feel bad about meting out death to Americans, whether with bombs (like the Kohl) or with knives (Danial Berg) so a few days, months, years of brutal torture and perpetual fear seems about right for scum like that. I'm certainly not losing any sleep over their suffering.

Unfortunately, we (had) decided that this was unacceptable to do in this country; so I feel more bad that laws were broken, and no one was held accountable. Worse, these guys didn't get trials, so we really don't know if they were actually bad guys, or just brown people in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm more concerned about our system of justice than I am a bunch of terrorist scum.

Someone at the very top said "I don't care about the niceties of human rights. Make it legal". And everything followed.

read and weep
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/us/po … ia.html?hp

Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, said: “The C.I.A. in no way endorsed behavior — no matter how infrequent — that went beyond the formal guidance. This has all been looked at; professionals in the Department of Justice decided if and when to pursue prosecution.”

A federal prosecutor is now investigating the destruction of the C.I.A. tapes, but the Justice Department has thus far declined to open a formal investigation into the abuses in C.I.A. prisons.

That may be about to change, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is considering whether to appoint a prosecutor to examine the allegations in Mr. Helgerson’s report, and to investigate a number of cases where detainees died in C.I.A. custody.

President Obama has insisted that C.I.A. officers who adhered to Justice Department interrogation guidelines should escape prosecution, and Mr. Holder is not expected to single out Justice Department lawyers who approved the brutal interrogation techniques.

This would give any future investigation a somewhat narrow mandate: aiming only at C.I.A. officers who carried out abuses that exceed the interrogation guidelines.

Mr. Helgerson’s report is said to document in grim detail a number of abuse cases, and its release on Monday is likely to reinvigorate a partisan debate on Capitol Hill. Some senior Democrats have described the Bush administration’s interrogation methods, including waterboarding, as torture.

Republicans have responded that top Democratic lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, attended C.I.A. briefings about the interrogation methods and apparently did not object.

Even as White House officials say that they are hesitant to dwell on the detainee abuse during the Bush administration, the A.C.L.U. lawsuit has forced a number of classified documents from that era to be made public, including the Justice Department memos authorizing the C.I.A. interrogations. When it was completed in April 2004, Mr. Helgerson’s report forced the C.I.A. to put a halt to the most extreme interrogation techniques, including waterboarding.

Besides the inspector general’s report, other documents expected to be released Monday are a 2007 Justice Department memo reauthorizing the C.I.A.’s “enhanced” interrogation techniques, documents that former Vice President Dick Cheney has said provide evidence that the interrogation methods produced valuable information about Al Qaeda; and Justice Department memos from 2006 concerning conditions of confinement in C.I.A. jails.

In Mr. Nashiri’s case, military prosecutors announced in July 2008 that they would seek the death penalty as they brought war crimes charges against him. He has been held at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and is suspected of helping to plan the bombing of the Cole, an attack that killed 17 sailors.

Last edited by daemon (2009-08-22 5:43 pm)

Monday should tell, then. Meanwhile

Military to give detainee names to Red Cross
Pentagon reverses policy in sharing identities of suspects at secret camps

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. military quietly tightened its detention policy to require that the International Committee of the Red Cross be notified promptly of terrorism suspects held at a special camp in Iraq and another in Afghanistan, a senior military officer said Saturday.

The change in policy, first reported by The New York Times on its web site Saturday, took effect in early August with no public announcement, the officer said. The officer, who has direct knowledge of the change, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The locations of the camps are classified secret.

U.S. policy on the handling of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere has been a politically explosive issue since the early years following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. The Justice Department is now considering whether to investigate alleged harsh interrogation practices sanctioned by the Bush administration after Sept. 11, 2001.

Policy reversal
In the latest shift in U.S. detention policy, the military has decided that the names and identification numbers of foreign fighters and terrorist suspects held in secret at a camp in Iraq and another in Afghanistan that are run by U.S. special operations forces must be provided to the Red Cross within two weeks of capture, the officer said. The previous procedure was to notify the Red Cross as soon as practicable, but there was no U.S. requirement that it be done within two weeks of capture, the officer said.

The Times reported that as many as 30 to 40 foreign prisoners have been held at the camp in Iraq at any given time. It reported no estimate for the Afghan camp but said it probably was smaller.

(their) sp

Last edited by Bat (2009-08-22 9:07 pm)

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=8403694

CIA releases intel documents that Cheney talked about, potentially indicating (but not explicitly indicating) that "torture works."

I think as the Obama admin pushes ahead on prosecutions, the CIA, as much as they must have hated the Bush admin manipulating them, is going to push back I think.

I think the question of whether or not torture "works" is irrelevant, but the information that has been released certainly doesn't prove that position (and there has been testimony of the exact opposite).

Hey! Murder works too!  I'll remember that next time I'm upset with somebody.