In April 2009, a confidential February 2007 ICRC torture report was publicly released. Titled, “ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen ‘High Value Detainees’ in CIA Custody,” it detailed harsh and abusive treatment from their time of arrest, detention, transfer, and incarceration at Guantanamo where ICRC professionals interviewed them.

Besides detailed information on torture and abusive treatment, they obtained damning, consistent detainee accounts of medical personnel involvement, including: Continue reading →

On the publication of the CIA Inspector General’s Report About the Use of Torture , from The World Can’t Wait:

We understand that the May 2004 Inspector General’s report from the CIA to be released today reveals that the techniques called “enhanced interrogation” by the Bush regime were used prior interrogators receiving legal authorization. The techniques used on detainees went beyond what was authorized, scurrilous as the legal opiniona by John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and other Bush appointees were. Continue reading →

When Obma said he would close Gitmo, I was overjoyed! Perhaps now this particular blot on our badly stained escutcheon could be erased. No such luck. I wrote the poem below in memory of the three who did escape in June of 2004. I offer it again in memory of, Yemeni Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih, 31, who is the first prisoner to die since the White House changed hands four months ago. Continue reading →

There’s always the possibility that the reason only five percent of people released from Guantanamo are “returning to terrorism” and only another nine percent are returning to the fight against American forces in their homelands is that they were the only ones who were actually terrorists and enemy fighters in the first place, and the other 86 percent of released detainees were just innocent people captured, detained, tortured and finally released. FULL ARTICLE

Anyone who studies even elementary psychology knows that many times the bully had been bullied as a child. The sexual abuser had been sexually abused as a child. Remember the sordid tales of all those Catholic Priests ( read Jimmy Breslin’s fine book The Church That Forgot Christ ) who sexually abused young boys?

One wonders how many of those innocent victims later on became sexual abusers themselves. Trauma is a terrible thing to experience. As individuals have to deal with trauma, so do societies i.e.: cultures and even nations. Continue reading →

This is truly a moment I must say, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention….”

The stunning plan Barack Obama slipped into his speech Thursday, a speech filled with “the rule of law” is PROLONGED, or PREVENTIVE DETENTION.

The President said he will “develop an appropriate legal regime” to indefinitely imprison people without charges based on what he thinks they might want to do, on their speech, or their associations.  He admitted that there are people now detained who cannot be prosecuted because evidence against them is tainted by torture, or because there simply IS no evidence against them.  He implied this could go on for a decade or more. Continue reading →

Little Johnny lifted his neighbor’s motorized tricycle. Pushed it home while no one was looking. He was caught before he could get any joy out of it. When confronted about the theft by his father, the boy declared that it didn’t work anyway. “You see”, dad says, “that’s why you shouldn’t steal!”

The wisdom encompassed in this fatherly advice is currently on display in the debate over torture. Many critics of torture are pointing to its “efficacy problem”. It doesn’t work. Presumably, then, if it did work its use might possibly be justified, or at least something worth arguing.

Then what are we against? Torture itself, or torture in that it demonstrates a lack of efficacy? I’ll leave it to the legal scholars but my guess is that, in all the domestic and international laws and conventions against torture, the prohibition is based on the act itself without regard to its consequences. Continue reading →

No, Mr. President, we cannot move on, as you keep suggesting; not until we recognize, accept and make amends for all the criminality incurred in our name during the recent past. All those trips you made overseas at the onset of your presidency, or the interview at al-Arabiya TV, will be seen by the world as nothing but empty palaver. FULL ARTICLE

Here are excerpts (with added annotation) from a Reuters article appearing in the online version of the New York Times on May 7 under the title, “Holder Cautious on U.S. Interrogations Probes”. Continue reading →

Friends, there’s a moment here, this month, when more and more is coming out about the systematic, sanctioned use of torture by the US, approved at all levels, including the responsible Democrats in Congress. In two weeks, more photos come out for the world to see. Continue reading →