One of the most stunning revelations in Jane Mayer's current, remarkable New Yorker article about CIA black sites is that an explicit part of the rationale for refusing to provide detainees with attorneys is the fear that the detainees will provide those attorneys with the details of the torture they'd suffered:
The utter isolation of these detainees has been described as essential to America’s national security. The Justice Department argued this point explicitly last November, in the case of a Baltimore-area resident named Majid Khan, who was held for more than three years by the C.I.A. Khan, the government said, had to be prohibited from access to a lawyer specifically because he might describe the “alternative interrogation methods” that the agency had used when questioning him.
One has to imagine that this figured into the Bush administration's efforts in mid-2006--after the black sites had supposedly been shut down and their prisoners shipped over to Guantanamo--to more broadly suspend the writ of habeas corpus. It's as ingenious as it is sinister. Think about it--call someone a terrorist, torture him into admitting that they're a terrorist, then deny him access to an attorney to hide the fact that he was tortured and send him away forever. If the policy is ever questioned, suggest a non-existent threat to national security.
Recently I reported on a congressional hearing during which a former Bush administration attorney--a man named Bradford Berenson--made the argument that closing Guantanamo is inherently difficult because a lot of countries refuse to repatriate these detainees. Even if they've been exonerated. Here's the key exchange between Berenson and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY):
When detainees are exonerated, for instance, there’s often a problem: no country will repatriate them. Many fear that, in such circumstances, innocent prisoners will remain incarcerated indefinitely. When Nadler pressed Berenson on this, it evoked one of the hearing’s weightiest repartees.
“The notion of bringing them into the United States strikes me as extremely dangerous,” Berenson cautioned. “We’re not always right.”
“Do we have a right under our laws to keep them in jail forever?” Nadler asked.
“If the only alternative is to release them into the population of the United States and give them immigration status,” Berenson asked rhetorically. “It’s a series of bad choices.”
“That we created,” Nadler noted.
Charming. So the implicit logic is that if a detainee's country of origin will in fact repatriate him, then releasing him should be no problem. Right? Well apparently not.
The decision this week by the British government to request the return of five Guantánamo detainees with British ties was welcome news for Bush administration officials eager to cut the detention center’s population.
But officials quickly suggested that several of the men might be too dangerous to be set free, indicating that sensitive negotiations over how Britain will treat them are probably needed before they can leave Cuba. The episode illustrates why the administration has had such a difficult time reducing the detention center’s population.
The effort has been hampered by a laundry list of diplomatic, legal and political challenges, including the unwillingness of some countries to accept detainees and concerns about human rights abuses in others, officials and critics of the administration say.
Read the whole story. Though it portrays the administration's efforts in a somewhat different light than I would, keep this bit in mind, "Brent Mickum IV, the American lawyer for one of the detainees with British ties, said the administration was continuing to portray many of the detainees as extremely dangerous, while insisting that other countries have a duty to accept them." Just as with the five detainees described above. Not what I'd call a great way of hastening the end of Guantanamo. The relevant question to my mind is whether the administration is hampering the process so that some of these guys don't someday describe the torture techniques used against them to a lawyer or a judge or the media. If that's the case, then you can be sure the administration will do anything in its power to keep these guys in military custody for as long as possible. Which is one of the more perverse ways I can imagine of obstructing inquiries into serious crimes committed at the highest levels of our government.
This whole torture thing is so sick and ugly that I try not to keep it in mind for more than bursts. We are throwing out hundreds of years of jurisprudence and humane protection of the rule of law because torture can't be reconciled with our heritage - nor with any sane evaluation of its (in)effectiveness
Protect torture first, has become our motto. Put that above the doorway to the DoJ and SCOTUS and be proud of what Bush and Cheney have done to our republic.
I'm ready for some war crimes trials of US officials ala Neurenberg: Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Elliot Richardson, Cambone, Rumsfeld, Feith, Hadley, Rice, Powell, assorted General Officers, et. al.
We need an acid bath of the stinks and stains that this administration has put on our body politic.
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | August 09, 2007 at 11:59 AM
"Rekindling Humanity" - by James Scott Francis, Australia
I’m beginning to comprehend some of the reasons for Hitler’s astounding success,” wrote American journalist William L. Shirer from Berlin in September 1934. “All the talk here has been of peace,” wrote The New York Times reporter as early as 1933, “yet the atmosphere has been far from peace loving.”
As history teaches us, the sole and sinew of the Nazi system was the inevitable result of the ideal of Aryan supremacy, which provided the heart-beat of the Nazi ideology that ultimately led to Nazi racism and to an outrageous, inhuman holocaust unparalleled in human history.
Hand in hand with the destruction of the Jews went the ruthless exploitation of both the human and material resources of subjugated lands. For the profit of the German Reich, material resources were shipped to the homeland, while untold millions were forced into slave labour. None of it of course could have transpired without the German Army, commanded personally by Hitler.
During his lifetime, Adolf Hitler spoke before audiences totaling an estimated 35 million people. He frequently used his hands, gracefully to help weave his spell of deception on the international community and the German domestic population. In July 1940 he made this remark:
“In the middle of the tremendous struggle for freedom and the future of the German nation,” he began, “I have called you into session to give our own people insight into the unique historic events that we have experienced, and to thank our well-deserving soldiers.”
Hitler radiated power and inspired fear. Thus, by the extraordinary power of his personality, he stood as the sole repository and dispenser of power in Nazi Germany.
The World cannot afford another global conflict; not because of the latent possibility of the destruction of billions of lives, if not life generally on this planet, but for practical reasons which go to the very heart of the continuing existence of the human species and contemporary human civilization.
We are standing at the precipice of World War III, given current geopolitical events in my opinion. Nation states across the planet are preparing for this eventuality, evidenced by the heavy investment (if you could call it that) in military hardware, inter alia.
We are relentlessly consuming irreplaceable finite resources on a global scale in furtherance of our misguided pursuits. Our actions are based, I would argue, on historical considerations, driven by an outdated ideology and collective thinking system which is no longer relevant to contemporary human existence. I note Albert Einstein said: “The world needs a new system of thinking.” Isn’t it time we consider ourselves as a species, then step-back and consider an alternative direction before dominant nation states consume this planet’s resources in their relentless pursuit of profit and individual material gain.
I dare to see a future where humanity works together as a species, (1) to ensure the survival of the human species on this planet, and life generally, and (2) elsewhere! I see a future where energy will be the tool which humanity uses to escape this planet. If these things are to come to pass, Humanity must stop relentlessly consuming the endowment of humanity in the reckless manner nation states, and individuals currently are.
Humanity must take whatever action is necessary to avoid another global confrontation. I am unreservedly of this opinion and belief. Frankly, I think it is absurd nation states continue to war against each other. Isn’t it high time world leader’s start behaving in a manner that ensures the survival of the human species? It is for this reason that I have proposed the abolition of the nation state system, and the establishment of a liberal democratic global parliament, underpinned by a body of law which respects human dignity above anything else.
I am personally of the opinion a global parliament should be created having due regard to the Westminster system of governance (which is a common law system). I am compelled to point out that I acknowledge without reservation this is a matter ultimately for others not me. Yet, imagine a global parliament drawing on a library of human cultural heritage, derived from learned decisions of legal bodies across the planet … Frankly, the prospect excites me.
It is now abundantly clear, given the plethora of available evidence in the public arena many nation states have acted lawlessly, covertly and abominably under the shield of state secrecy. This conduct constitutes an observable trend globally to subvert the rule of law, the suppression of human dignity, human achievement thus far, and threatens the very existence of humanity and the continuation of human civilization.
How can we protect ourselves form our own stupidity. Well the answer is quite simple in my opinion: respect human dignity - this doesn’t mean that we must necessarily like each other; however, I hold the belief in time this can change.
I spoke earlier of the principle proposed by William Catton, or ''‘scope expansion’''. I reiterate those remarks here and say scope expansion is an inevitable outcome, as a matter of necessity, given the finite resources of this planet.
Finally, I contend myself with the following thoughts: When the first link of the chain is forged, the first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, such conduct chains us all irrevocably. The first time any man’s freedom is trodden on we are all damaged.
James Scott Francis
Geopolitical Analyst (Francis-Liebelt & Co., Australia)
Posted by: James Francis | August 09, 2007 at 01:01 PM