We haven’t discussed the major US story this week: the Congress passing the White House’s bill which allows the President to designate who is an enemy combatant (there are questions as to whether the bill as drafted allows the designation of US citizens as such) and which allows designated enemy combatants to be denied habeas corpus (ie the right to challenge their detention in court), and also allows the use of evidence obtained by “coercive interrogation techniques” in the trials before military tribunals.
Chris Clarke of Creek Running North is not convinced that giving up hard-won rights is the most effective way of making intelligence gathering more effective, because current investigative standards are so inept. As an example, he tells his own story: Clarke refused to register for the draft in 1981 and sent letters to Federal authorities informing them of his refusal, giving them his current address when he did so, yet when the FBI came to investigate him they started with the address on his birth certificate, which his parents had left twenty years earlier, and only eventually found him because he told his family and neighbours to pass on his current address.
There are plenty of people arguing, these days, that intelligence gathering requires law enforcement people be allowed the use of physical coercion, pain and fear compliance techniques, indefinite imprisonment without recourse to writs of habeas corpus, torture. The ticking time bomb scenario gets brought up in such discussions. âWhat if traditional law enforcement techniques are insufficient?â? some people ask. âWhat if the sheer scale of damage and close deadline make normal police work impossible?â?
I might find this a more compelling question â probably not, but itâs barely possible â if my experience with the federal law enforcement agencies had persuaded me that they were capable of normal police work. If the FBI was that inept in the first year of the Reagan administration, whatâs happened to it after five years of the Cheney Cronyocracy?
To you who shiver in your National Review Online Aeron Chairs at the thought of terrorists: I have a suggestion. Rather than tossing out both the Constitution and your last shred of human decency so that terrorist acts might be stopped, why not just get rid of the incompetent fucking nimrods in the FBI that couldnât find their ass with both hands if they had night vision goggles and a copy of Grayâs Anatomy?
Chris Clarke has also preemptively declared himself an enemy combatant. Read why here.
When Congress legalizes torture, then this is truly the slippery slope to Fascism. I am glad I am not living in America. They say that Australia is ten years behind American trends. On the issue of torture, I hope not. For now, the rule of law is paraqmount in Australia, but given enough time under John Howard, things could change. Fortunately for us, I can’t see Howard lasting another ten years.
The ‘ticking timebomb’ scenario is well and truly rubbished by Alfred McCoy: “With torture now a key weapon in the war on terror, the time has come to interrogate the logic of the ticking time bomb with a six-point critique. For this scenario embodies our deepest fears and makes most of us quietlyâunwittinglyâcomplicit in the Bush Administrationâs recourse to torture.”
http://www.progressive.org/mag_mccoy1006
The âcoercive interrogation techniquesâ? allowed at Guantanamo were compiled in 2002, but what is in the public domain might be just the tip of the iceberg. Excerpt from P.Sands, âLawless Worldâ, pp.215-6:
âThe âglobal war on terrorismâ was therefore used to justify the need for âadditional techniquesâ – at Guantanamo, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and secretly elsewhere under CIA control. Against the backdrop of this legal advice, the US Armyâs Lt. Col. Jerald Phifer requested approval; for a new âinterrogation planâ at Guantanamo. The additional techniques – going beyond Fm 34-52 – were divided into three categories. Category I included two techniques: yelling and deception. Category II required additional permission and included the use of stress positions (such as standing) for up to four hours; the use of falsified documents; isolation for up to thirty days; deprivation of light and auditory stimuli; hooding during questioning and transportation; twenty-eight hour interrogations; removal of comfort items (including religious items); removal of clothing; forced grooming (shaving of facial hair etc.); and using detainee-specific phobias (such as fear of dogs) to induce stress. Category III was to be used only for âexceptionally resistant detaineesâ⦠it covered the âuse of scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death or seriously painful consequences are imminent for him and/or his familyâ; exposure to cold weather or water; use of a wet towel and dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation; and use of mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushingâ?.
As for torture in Oz, see my post on the treatment of unconvicted remand prisoners in Barwon, and make up your own mind.
http://www.leftwrites.net/2006/09/29/torture-victoria/#more-351
And, for the involvement of Aussies in torture overseas, Rod Barton seems to indicate that this was the case in Baghdad’s ‘Camp Cropper’. It hardly needs said that the Howard Government is complicit in the Guantanamo torture regime.
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2005/s1302767.htm
Newsflash 1215!!!
King
GeorgeJohn met with his barons today on Charter Island near Runnymede. While a number of evil lefties who are probably friends of the terrorists tried to slip a disputed clause into the Magna Carta, the great majority wisely decided the king needs the tools to deal with the terrorists.The rejected clause would have read:
We can all breathe a deep sigh of relief. Any suggestion that the king, far from needing tools, may be one will get you into a fairly noisome dungeon fairly quickly.
Are there any Australians – including politicians – involved in violations of the Geneva Convention, such that they could be brought to trial in the International Court?
Bill & Al first, silky:
Richard Clarke in Against All Enemies:
Frogmarch them away in cuffs, ICC!
Let’s settle the issue of Australian criminality first.
Waterboarding is apparently the most effective technique for extracting information and if done professionally lasts about 15 seconds with a maximum of 2 mins with little or no lasting harm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding
Would you use it to stop a dirty bomb or biological attack on a whole city? That’s a tough one.
Here’s the case for http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=24653
Where, observa, does the Wikipedia article say that waterboarding leads to ‘little or no lasting harm’? How will you ensure that the methods of torture you support lead to ‘little or no lasting harm’, given you also support them being carried out in secret? Where is your evidence, other than an episode of 24 does torture give reliable information?
Silkworm:
Too late. Mr Bush and his fellow culprits have now ensured that the United States will be expelled from the United Nations, will be declared a Rogue State and will suffer the effects of economic sanctions. It doesn’t matter that many of the member-states of the United Nations are themselves guilty of torture …. this is the very dirty game of international politics and naked power, not a polite discussion of the finer points of ethics.
For a couple of centuries now, the United States has held out to the whole world that it it is the bastion of democracy, progress, free enterprise, the rule of law, freedom of worship and belief, freedom of speech and all sorts of civil liberties. In replacing slavery with more efficient forms of exploitation, it won world-wide approval. In return, the whole world has tolerated the shenanegans of the United States.
Now, in approving torture and other abuses of authority, this failed regime has finally destroyed what was left of the special position of the United States in a way no sworn enemies could ever have done. Henceforth, the United States will be treated like any other country …. and right now that means everyone will be queueing up to kick the daylights out of the United States just as the U.S. kicks the daylights out of its detainees ……
Bloody idiots, they voted for Bush.
Brig. Gen. David R. Irvine, an experienced teacher of
interrogation techniques and military law, posting at Alternet last
November:
(1) is torture reliable,
(2) is it consistent with America’s values and Constitution, and
(3) does it best serve [the USA's] national interests?
He answered no on all three, but particularly excoriated the “ticking bomb” justification. In order for it to theoretically work,
* you have to know the bomb exists,
* you have to have the person with the exact knowledge you need rather than someone on the fringe, and
* you have to be sure that they’ve told you the truth rather then just tell you anything they think you want to hear in order to make it stop.
Ask US Senator McCain – he was tortured, and he talked to make it stop, and he told them bullshit, lots of it. It takes time to filter the truth from the lies in coerced confessions, crosschecking it against other intelligence, and time is exactly what you don’t have in ticking bomb scenarios.
Justifying “ticking bomb” interrogations also inevitably leads to abuse:
silkworm: “Are there any Australians – including politicians – involved in violations of the Geneva Convention, such that they could be brought to trial in the International Court?”
For torture? Uncertain. For the crime of aggression against Iraq? quite possibly. but just because they can theoretically be brought in front of the ICC doesn’t mean that will happen. I expect British politicians could be the first to be prosecuted over Iraq, but what with the Cole enquiry and Downer’s amnesia, who knows?
The ‘interrogation techiques’ authorised by the Bush administration are without doubt against the UN Convention against Torture http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html , but as US has pulled out of the Rome Statute of the ICC, those who commit these crimes can only be prosecuted if they are in another country which is a signatory (such as Australia – since 2002), hence, Henry Kissinger has to think before he travels – it’s called the Pinochet precedent.
As for defining torture in Australia – in my opinion the treatment of suspects held in the Acacia Unit of Barwon prison does constitute psychological torture. As I’ve written over at Leftwrites, the Human Rights Law Resource Centre has written to the UN calling for an investigation to see whether these conditions amount to violations of human rights. So I guess it’s up to the UN to decide.
http://www.leftwrites.net/2006/09/29/torture-victoria/#more-351
Ruddock is as shameless as US Attorney General Gonzales. Yesterday he said that sleep deprivation is not torture.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20508720-2,00.html
He is trying to provide moral justification for America’s crimes.
http://www.fairgofordavid.org/htmlfiles/media2006pt1/news09Jun06.htm
So who are these “others in the war on terrorism”?
That’s a shocking statement about sleep deprivation, and Ruddock is just totally off the mark on other points, such as “In relation to torture, the United States has made it clear that torture is not permissible (but) some decisions will have to be taken as to what constitutes torture for the military commission process and those who are adjudicating the matter will determine that,”
WRONG
those who adjudicate what is torture are not the Bush cowboys. In the end of the day, it will be judges in the Supreme Court, which, although stacked with Republicans, has shown its independence in finding against the Bush admin in both Rasul v Bush and Hamden v Rumsfeld.
This new torture law that the Americans have brought in is morally wrong, but it also violates the Geneva convention, and mean more delays for those that it applies to, including David Hicks. There is simply no way that Hicks can now receive a fair trial. Why can’t try him in a normal court? Cos there’s bugerall evidence. It should be the torturers in court, not the tortured.
At least the deputies of the German Reichstag required an actual fire before they passed the Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich. Mere smoke was enough to convince the US congress.
The Bushgesetz also violates the Convention against Torture, which provides:
That principle is almost certainly jus cogens because the absolute ban on torture is universal.
Governments never admit they torture. They always claim that what they practice is not torture. They always claim they face exceptional circumstances that, despite Article 2, somehow let them do what they want. All the Bushgesetz really does is recycle arguments from the Dirty War and continue the fantasy that al-Qa’ida is a threat of the order of the Civil War or the real World Wars.
A worthwhile experiment would involve torturing proponents of torture to extract from them a concession that torture is ineffective.
Beneficial effects:
1. Proponents of torture could prove their sincerity rather than simply blow their bags.
2. Proponents of torture could have hand-on experience in lying effectively to avoid more pain.
3. Propoents of torture might then desist from their prating nonsense. (Perhaps a forelorn hope.)
Observa,
Water boarding is the 21st century equivalent of dunking, a practice beloved of the witch finders of the 16th and 17th centuries. Toture of women produced a number of startling confessions, basically anything and everything put to them by their torturers that victims thought would produce a cessation of the torure. Any textbook on the subject provides a litany of the ‘truths’derived from torturing women suspected of withcraft.
So what exactly are we doing here supporting torture as a method of deriving the truth now? Quite apart from any moral consideration (in the gwot we are all moral relativists now it seems) the fact is that the tortured is likely to say anything to stop the practice, and the seasoned operative will no doubt have the capacity to resist or lie sufficiently, to achive his/her aims.
This is one of the most nonesensical, as well as offensive debates ever to have hit the airwaves.
If ’twere just a ‘debate’ hitting the ‘airwaves’ that would be much better. It’s law now and it’s happening in US-run prisons now.
Shameful.
Yes torture’s not so much useful for getting information as it in getting confessions. And as you mentioned Bemused, it has good historical form. It does a nice line in legitimising the urges of sociopathy too.
Is there a parallel universe Amnesty International that Ruddock belongs to?
Shorter CL (as usual): Clinton does not have an unblemished record on rendition but until you lefties cut off his balls with a rusty pocketknife, what Bush is doing is beyond reproach.
Katz:
Interesting proposal …. who’s first?
Truth be told, I’ve been shying from this thread, because the subject is naturally so repugnant: it appears to be a black day for my country indeed. I haven’t looked at the legislation in its details (didn’t even know the issue was at the point of a vote, so far removed from the day-to-day am I), but it’s hard to imagine how it could be anything other than despicable.
Well, it would hardly be the first time my government has let down my people: Dred Scott, the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jackson’s hand in the decimation of the Cherokee. Still, the genius of the Republic has a habit of re-emerging and correcting old evils over time, and I have faith that this blemish will sooner or later be removed, through some sort of laser surgery. Maybe the Court will strike it down, or maybe, as is often the case, it will be slowly eradicated through struggle. In any event, please don’t believe that it’s carved in stone for eternity.
The people who forecast an encroaching fascism have got it all wrong, I think: what this signifies is a victory (not a final one) for laziness, sloppy thinking, moral cowardice, and an unwillingness of both the electorate and the government to behave like grownups. As the gal said to John Cusack in that movie Say Anything: “Don’t be a guy; be a *man*.” What we have in the US at present it seems is a government of guys; and maybe a majority of the voters are such, too. There is a distinct lack of statesmanship all around; and even, by my lights, a lack of true patriotism.
So much for the blanket condemnations, which are necessary if regrettable; onto the dirty nitty gritty. Wretchard over at the Belmont Club has said some very smart (without being comprehensive) things that needed to be said. One of the dreadful things about all this, if I read the numbers right, is the margin by which this passed. It means the opposition –the Dems by definition– are split into equally despicable groups: the unworldly and the opportunistic. Presumably some Dems voted for this to save their hides in an election year; others might really have conned themselves into thinking this is a good idea; the third group, even if they have the honor of voting against, still retain the dishonor of not being able to put forth a rational, sellable alternative set of strategies that the voters could stand by.
This is a failure of statesmanship and vision, and that failure has been the keystone of the the Dems since the twilight of Clinton. They don’t DO anything, and when they do try, they fuck it up. We will not be led out of the Bush entanglements by a mere ongoing negation of Bush; only a positive vision that is superior to Bush’s miscalculations will succeed. That, almost by definition, is a job for patriots.
So I blame the myopia of Dem rhetoric as much as I blame Bush and the neo-cons; the simplistic meme of “The US is sliding into fascism!” is a case in point. The thing is manifestly untrue, and it therefore becomes next to impossible for a thinking person to seriously back a Bush opposition that lives in a “Chimpy McBusHitler No Blood for Oil!” fantasy world, that is every bit as childish as Mr. Bush’s simplistic view.
Again, where the fuck are the grown-ups? This is a nation of well nigh 300 million people; the idea that we can’t produce even a small handful of serious-minded statesmen with credible election prospects is, to me, maybe the scariest thing of all.
12 Democrats voted for this, if you include Lieberman anymore, and only half are up in the mid-terms, so I don’t know what excuse the others have for voting ‘Yea’, jpz. I do fear the slide into facism, however, because this, along with predecessor acts, is the kind of devolutionary legislation that makes citizens responsible to government in just that model. And the arguments going around, whether at a pro-Bush rally or in the pro-Bush media or at many family dinner tables, reflects Great Leader rhetoric chillingly similar to what we know from the rise of the Axis powers. The more we bowdlerize our Constitution, the further we slide into those errors, especially if we allow our thinking to be governed by fear. The terrorists indeed will win if we cede the moral high ground, as we seem increasingly intent upon doing.
I think comparing this law and BushCo rhetoric to the rise of the Axis powers is an overblown claim which just closes minds.
A far more congruent parallel is to the rise of Milosevic, the disintegration of Yugoslavia and its descent into civil war along sectarian and ethnic lines.
No amount of weasel words from people like Bush and Phil Ruddock can make what they are proposing as acceptable interrogation techniques anything but torture. I don’t know if this is true, (and correct me if I’m wrong) but it seems to me that all these ‘torture-lite’ techniques like waterboarding and sensory deprivation probably work best when and if the suspect being tortured (sorry, questioned) cannot know, does not know that there are limits to what can be done. The suspect, in other words, has to be in the position where they believe that the interrogators can and will ratchet it up to the point of permanent disability or death if they don’t co-operate.
IMO, if we as a society and a culture start down this path where basic human rights are able to be situationally compromised, we are well and truly on a slippery slope that will ultimately ends with extra-judicial executions and government sponsored death squads. Ain’t arguing that it is going to be happening in Australia next week, but what other interpretation can you put on the actions of a government – ours – that condones and participates torture, even if it is kept neatly out of sight and out of mind, like in some Pakistani prison. Anyway…
Cheers…