Ashcroft is guilty of authorizing torture, and he knows it

I would've posted this in the links side-bar, but I think it's an absolute "Must-Read". A couple of students got the chance to ask Ashcroft some questions, and they did, to put it mildly, a much better job than the media's been doing.

ME: I'm sorry, I was under the impression that we still use the method of putting a cloth over someone's face and pouring water down their throat...

ASHCROFT: (interrupting, red-faced, shouting) Pouring! Pouring! Did you hear what she said? "Putting a cloth over someone's face and pouring water on them." That's not what you said before! Read that again, what you said before!

ME: Sir, other reports of the time say...

ASHCROFT: (shouting) Read what you said before! (cries of "Answer her fucking question!" from the audience) Read it!

ME: (firmly) Mr. Ashcroft, please answer the question.

ASHCROFT: (shouting) Read it back!

ME: "The victim was bound or otherwise secured in a prone position; and water was forced through his mouth and nostrils into his lungs and stomach."

ASHCROFT: (shouting) You hear that? You hear it? "Forced!" If you can't tell the difference between forcing and pouring...does this college have an anatomy class? If you can't tell the difference between forcing and pouring...

ME: (firmly and loudly) Mr. Ashcroft, do you believe that Yukio Asano's sentence was unjust? Answer the question. (pause)

ASHCROFT: (more restrained) It's not a fair question; there's no comparison. Next question! (loud chorus of boos from the audience)

He's guilty and he knows it. Maybe some of these other cretins (Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, etcetera; and probably Bush) don't, but Ashcroft realizes it; reportedly he said "History will not judge us kindly." But of course that doesn't matter, he's as guilty as the rest of the lot. We need to get a commitment out of Barack Obama to pursue prosecution of these people, or it'll poison international relations and domestic discourse for decades to come. Read the full post; there's much more where the above came from...

By the way, I'll have an article on torture in tomorrow's Independent; I'll post the link when it's put up on the site. 

McCain votes for waterboarding?

Let me preface this by saying: A lot of people who don't particularly agree with John McCain's political leanings nonetheless respect him. I am one of those people. As a former POW, he has an awful lot of moral authority on the issue of torture, and it's particularly important given that he belongs to the same party as the president and attorney general who have repeatedly claimed that there's some magical line between "torture" and "intensive interrogation tactics," and that they can toe that line as much as they like without violating international law or the minimum standard for decent humanity. McCain's been good on this issue in the past and I love him for it.

But this makes me start to question that:

But on Wednesday, when the Senate voted on the intelligence bill, which includes a provision that effectively bans waterboarding from being used as an interrogation technique by all 16 intelligence agencies, McCain voted against the bill.

[...]

In a statement, McCain said the measure goes too far in applying military standards to intelligence agencies and maintained that existing law already forbids waterboarding. "Staging a mock execution by including the misperception of drowning is a clear violation,'' he said.

But the U-turn in Wednesday's vote by the captain of the Straight Talk Express comes in the wake of the Bush administration suggesting that waterboarding remains a "legal" tactic that they reserve the right to use if circumstances warrant it.

As with most votes in Congress, there are typically legitimate reasons to oppose a bill that contains a few legitimate provisions, or to vote for a bill that contains one or two objectionable things. If Ted Stevens attached a million dollars in funding for an airlift that carried spawning salmon upstream by helicopter since it's too damn hard for them to swim up the river to a bill providing universal dental care to all gappy-toothed kids, it would be reasonable to hold your nose and vote yes. So I'm certainly not going to categorically conclude that McCain would personally waterboard some poor Gitmo inmate if he got the chance. But I can't say that I'm particularly convinced by his explanation. I think he's right that current law, correctly interpreted, forbids waterboarding - but the current law is clearly not being correctly interpreted by the people who put it into practice, and at that point it becomes the Congress' job to unambiguously clarify it.

You'd think that now that McCain has the nomination pretty well sealed up,he could stop pandering to the base and keep doing those things that make him appealing to independents in the first place, like bucking the party line and opposing torture. Oh. And good public policy, too - not to mention principles and all that jazz. But there must be something about traveling around the country and pandering to Republicans that gets to your head. Sorry, Mac.

Good news roundup

In the Gleeful Cackling Department, Karl Rove and Josh Bolten were found in contempt of Congress for failing to cooperate with investigations into the firing of U.S. attorneys.

In the Our Primary Field is Better than Your Primary Field Department, conservative elites do not heart Huckabee. Really? And Joe Biden has a plan for Iraq he named after himself?

In the Congress Finally Recognizes the Obvious Department, the House voted to ban the CIA from using "harsh interrogation techniques" like waterboarding. This is obviously a classic softy-liberal move, since waterboarding, as Rob has pointed out, is just like going for a leisurely swim, but with CIA agents. Or possibly Uzbek or Macedonian intelligence officers. Anyway, the point is, this is a good move, since even if Bush vetoes it, the symbolic importance of the House taking a stand against torture is a step in the right direction.

Wait. We're talking about symbolic American opposition to torture? Something isn't right here. But that's about as good as it gets in this week's good news.

"Enhanced Interrogation"

From Digby, here's an earlier example of "fixing facts around the policy": 

On Friday, June 30, 1628, the aforesaid Junius was again without torture exhorted to confess, but again confessed nothing, whereupon, . . . since he would confess nothing, he was put to the torture, and first the [Page 24] Thumb-screws were applied. Says he has never denied God his Saviour nor suffered himself to be otherwise baptized; [1] will again stake his life on it; feels no pain in the thumb-screws.

Leg-screws. Will confess absolutely nothing [and] knows nothing about it. He has never renounced God; will never do such a thing; has never been guilty of this vice; feels likewise no pain.

Is stripped and examined; on his right side is found a bluish mark, like a clover leaf, is thrice pricked therein, but feels no pain and no blood flows out.

Strappado. He has never renounced God; God will not forsake him; if he were such a wretch he would not let himself be so tortured; God must show some token of his innocence. He knows nothing about witchcraft. . . .

On July 5, the above named Junius is without torture, but with urgent persuasions, exhorted to confess, and at last begins and confesses.

Waterboarding. It's like swimming, except it's torture.

Does Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo) really think that waterboarding is like swimming the backstroke? Apparently, yes:

Jim Crow Mississippi 1, Bush Administration 0

All this via The Debate Link, one of my favorites.

I'd like to say that I've been looking for a long time for some appropriate measure of exactly how far back our respect for human rights has regressed over the course of the "war on terror," since we started waterboarding people and passing it off as practically offering a thirsty man a drink. That would be a lie. I have been searching for no such analogy, but I'm provided with one in the form of two court cases. The first was Fisher v. State, in which the Mississippi Supreme Court granted a retrial to a murderer whose confession had been obtained by waterboarding, explicitly referring to the tactic as "torture." Fisher cited the second case, White v. State, a similar decision rendered a few years before that described the tactic as "barbarous."

Here's the catch. Fisher called waterboarding "torture" in 1926. And White called it "barbarous" in 1922. Indeed, it was so barbarous that they reversed the conviction of a black man accused of killing a white man. In Mississippi. IN 1922.

Does this seem a little problematic to anyone but me?

Kavulla: Padilla's treatment doesn't amount to torture

Travis Kavulla, of the Salient and Crimson, responds to my Jose Padilla post:

I was a bit surprised by this response, because it seems extraordinarily callous. Kavulla admits several behaviors while claiming they aren't torture: solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, cold (as long as it's not cold enough to leave a mark), and an environment that was purposefully kept inconsistent (it's not just, "So he didn't have a mattress"; the material deprivations were part of a strategy to break the man down.)

And this is all being visited on a man that is presumed innocent under US law, and was deprived of his right to a lawyer and really all of his civil rights for three years. (CORRECTION: Padilla was deprived of a lawyer for "only" 21 months)

If Kavulla really thinks that all this is acceptable behavior on the part of a government, then surely he wouldn't object to the same being visited on him.

Kavulla also scoffs at Padilla's claim that he was drugged, but he failed to mention that Dr. Hagerty pointed out that what Padilla thought were the effects of drugs may well have been the effect of extended sleep and sensory deprivation.

And no, I'm not arguing that imprisonment under humane conditions amounts to torture. But I would say that solitary confinement, and the accompanying sensory deprivation, does:

 

At Pelican Bay in California, where 1200 people are held in the isolation wing, inmates are confined to tiny cells for twenty-two and a half hours a day, then released into an “exercise yard” for “recreation”. The yard consists of a concrete well about 12 feet in length with walls 20 feet high and a metal grill across the sky. The recreation consists of pacing back and forth, alone(10).

The results are much as you would expect. As National Public Radio reveals, 10% of the isolation prisoners at Pelican Bay are now in the psychiatric wing, and there’s a waiting list(11). Prisoners in solitary confinement, according to Dr Henry Weinstein, a psychiatrist who studies them, suffer from “memory loss to severe anxiety to hallucinations to delusions … under the severest cases of sensory deprivation, people go crazy.”(12) People who went in bad and dangerous come out mad as well. The only two studies conducted so far - in Texas and Washington state - both show that the recidivism rates for prisoners held in solitary confinement are worse than for those who were allowed to mix with other prisoners(13). If we were to judge the United States by its penal policies, we would perceive a strange beast: a Christian society that believes in neither forgiveness nor redemption.

From this delightful experiment, US interrogators appear to have extracted a useful lesson: if you want to erase a man’s mind, deprive him of contact with the rest of the world. This has nothing to do with obtaining information: torture of all kinds - physical or mental - produces the result that people will say anything to make it end. It is about power, and the thrilling discovery that in the right conditions one man’s power over another is unlimited. It is an indulgence which turns its perpetrators into everything they claim to be confronting.

And what Padilla experienced was, of course, worse than what was inflicted on prisoners at Pelican Bay. Padilla was reportedly kept in a totally darkened room, with no human contact except for being slapped around once in a while. He was kept in an empty wing of the prison, and guards opened and closed the metal doors at random intervals to disturb any attempt he might make at sound sleep. The picture that accompanied my first article, along with this New York Times report, make a powerful case that the US pursued a strategy of destroying Mr. Padilla mentally. The interview with Ms. Hegarty which I cited shows that they were extremely successful.

I haven't seen anyone question Ms. Hegarty's credibility: she's a professor of psychiatry at Columbia. Or perhaps Padilla was lying, cleverly faking symptoms of mental distress, and doing it so consistently and well that over the course of 22 hours of interviews, Hegarty was fooled. But I don't find that likely either.

IF Kavulla wants to assert that anything that doesn't leave a physical mark doesn't qualify as torture, then I say go ahead, but I don't know how far he'll get.

But perhaps if he considered Padilla as a human, with basic human rights, instead of a faceless other, he wouldn't be so snarky and dismissive. By all means, try to prove that these accounts aren't true; I sure hope that they aren't. But to admit that we are treating our prisoners this way and then to dismiss it is unconscionable.

Jose Padilla was Tortured

Jose Padilla's was tortured beyond the point of brain damage by the United States government. He was held for three years in total isolation without trial, without access to a lawyer, and without any contact with the outside world. There's no use anymore saying, "It Can Happen Here." It already has. Read the interview with the psychiatrist who interviewed Jose Padilla, and then, I don't know, run into the street and scream or something. And then write your legislator.

After reading this interview, it's obvious to me that Jose Padilla is so broken that he couldn't possibly pose any further threat to the United States, and furthermore, it's now impossible to find out if he ever did pose any threat to the United States, because we broke him. Yes, we did it, because the government represents us. And it's our responsibility, as a people altogether, to put a stop to it.

LIVEBLOG DUEL

We're here in Emerson 101 and it's a little chilly because of an open window. The topic? TORTURE. Is it justifiable? I wonder if my shower singing (preferably Phil Collins) qualifies as "torture?" 

Torture Bill Passes

These people ought to resign for pissing all over our Constitution:

Democrats: Thomas Carper, Tim Johnson, Mary Landrieu, Frank Lautenberg, Joseph Lieberman, Robert Menéndez, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Mark Pryor, Jay Rockefeller, Kenneth Salazar, Debbie Stabenow

Republicans: Lamar Alexander, Wayne Allard, George Allen, Robert Bennett, Kit Bond, Sam Brownback, Jim Bunning, Conrad Burns, Richard Burr, Saxby Chambliss, Tom Coburn, Thad Cochran, Norm Coleman, Susan Collins, John Cornyn, Larry Craig, Michael Crapo, Jim DeMint, Mike DeWine, Elizabeth Dole, Pete Domenici, John Ensign, Michael Enzi, Bill Frist, Lindsey Graham, Charles Grassley, Judd Gregg, Chuck Hagel, Orrin Hatch, Kay Bailey Hutchison, James Inhofe, Johnny Isakson, Jon Kyl, Trent Lott, Richard Lugar, Mel Martinez, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Roberts, Rick Santorum, Jeff Sessions, Richard Shelby, Gordon Smith, Arlen Specter, Ted Stevens, John Sununu, Jim Talent, Craig Thomas, John Thune, David Vitter, George Voinovich, John Warner

And why the hell wasn't this filibustered? Even if the final vote was 65-34, weren't there 40 Democrats willing to use a filibuster in its original sense--to extend debate?

...oh, and Chafee was the only Republican to vote against it. Kind of makes me feel bad that we're campaigning against him (although I recognize the necessity of wresting control of Congress from pro-torture extremists.)