White House Defends Interrogations

[struggle4progress]

Official Says Program Forbids Torture

Mar 6, 2005 3:14 pm US/Pacific

NEW YORK (CBS) A senior Bush administration official says a secret CIA program to transfer suspected terrorists to foreign countries for interrogation is a legal alternative to the cumbersome and expensive process of holding them in U.S. facilities.

The official told the New York Times the program is not used to send people to other countries to be tortured, but did not dispute that some prisoners had been mistreated. <snip>

60 Minutes' four-month investigation of the CIA's "rendition" program, the practice of sending suspects to foreign governments for interrogation, also found a man who says he was mistakenly taken on the plane to a jail in Afghanistan where he was mistreated for months. <snip>

Mike Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit and one of the agents who helped set up the rendition program, ... won't comment on its legality, but allows that the practice is a convenience. "It's finding someone else to do your dirty work," he tells Pelley. <snip>

http://www2.cbs5.com/topstories/topstories_story_065181745.html


British MI-5 Show Illustrates Benefits Of Torture

Ted Twietmeyer, www.rense.com

March 6, 2005 - It's now time for all to understand that "torture is good" for the new freedom we all enjoy now. Or, to steal a line from Chubby Checker: "How low.....can you go." Stop thinking that torture is bad...even if it is true.

The new equation is:

(war + torture + eliminating liberties + effective media brainwashing) = "new freedom"

Our british friends clearly are working hard to show how tough, mean, nasty and low-reaching their domestic intelligence people can be. EVERYTHING in UK media and film is government approved, just like it is in the USA. The television series MI-5 clearly illustrates this. It is apparently intended to get people accustomed (read that "brainwashed") to the "new freedom" envisioned by the Bush-Blair bottom feeders. Nothing like hands across the sea. TV network A&E (American last I knew) is now airing our important new freedom lessons. It should be renamed A&B for "Arts and Brainwashing" network. Think about that "new freedom" which the two-legged conifer in Washington is always reminding us of, as you read about a recent television episode below.

We will explore the glories of torture as expounded upon in a recent "MI-5" episode aired on Saturday March 5th, 2005 on A&E network. MI apparently doesn't stand for "Military Intelligence," but instead "Misery Incorporated." In most television plots, the audience is either led to feel sorry for the accused, or made to hate him/her before detention takes place. <snip>

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m10176&l=i&size=1&hd=0

[mike_c]

1. welcome to the new dark ages....

eom

[Warren Stupidity]

9. The enlightenment is over.

Too bad there isn't a good word for the endarkenment.

[w4rma]

2. No. The White House is defending torture. Not "interrogations". (nt)

[wtmusic]

5. The only reason it's "cumbersome" to detain them in the US

is that someone might hear their screams...

[wtmusic]

3. If it wasn't for CBS

and the NYT this shit would be buried. Nada. Zilch.

[atommom]

4. Damn, I didn't realize that treating prisoners humanely was so

expensive and cumbersome. How long will it be before we start seeing movies and TV shows that will educate us Americans on how much better it really is to just ship 'em off and let somebody else torture 'em? I smell a psyops campaign brewing...

[NYC Liberal]

6. "...cumbersome and expensive process of holding them in U.S. facilities."

As opposed to shipping them all over the world? Riiiiight.

And anyway, here's the story of a Canadian who was sent to SYRIA (by the U.S.):
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0729-01.htm

Arar was picked up by U.S. authorities at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, accused of being a terrorist and then shipped on Justice Department orders to Syria under a highly secret policy known as rendition. Arar's story reveals much about the Bush administration's hidden war on terror.

"I think when they say they do not support torture, they are not being truthful," the Syrian-born telecommunications engineer said in an interview in Ottawa. "Whether they admit or not, they are complicit."

Shackled and cuffed, he soon found himself on a midsize private jet with luxurious leather seats, accompanied by U.S. agents who he believes were either CIA or FBI agents.

...snip...

Arar says the beatings lasted about two weeks. He was slapped and punched and beaten with electrical cords. Worse than the physical violence, though, were the shrieks of pain from others in the prison being tortured. That let him know what was coming.

[bemildred]

7. Expediency trumps "values" all of a sudden. nt

[Ouabache]

8. Torturing POWs is unAmerican

Always has been - always will be.
The Bad Apples are Bu$h Cheney Rumsfeld Gonzales and Negroponte.

A fish rots from the head.

[tom_paine]

12. UnAmerican, yes, but VERY Amerikan...as much as Celebrity Trials

Amerika is where we lived now. I miss Old America, but that place is gone and not likely to return

(we can still hope...)

[struggle4progress]

10. Gonzales says U-S can't control torture of detainees by foreign government

WASHINGTON Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says the U-S gets assurances terror suspects won't be tortured by foreign governments -- but he acknowledges U-S officials have little control once suspects are handed over. <snip>

http://www.kpho.com/Global/story.asp?S=3043158


<edit:>
U.S. Can't `Control' Terror Probing, Gonzales Says (Update1)

<snip> The American Civil Liberties Union renewed calls for an independent special investigation into treatment of detainees by the U.S. military in Iraq. The ACLU asked Gonzales to look into war crimes and reports of inhumane conduct. <snip>

The rendition policy, which has been classified since it was adopted by President George W. Bush within days of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, grants the Central Intelligence Agency authority to act without case-by-case approval from the White House, the New York Times reported yesterday, citing current and former government officials. The secret program is designed to save costs, the Times said. <snip>

Representative Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, introduced a bill in February seeking to end the rendition practice. He also asked the White House to declassify memos related to the policy.

``The current practice of `outsourcing torture' is unacceptable and must be stopped,'' Markey said in a statement. ``The president needs to declassify the memos for this directive so that Americans can know that we are neither engaging in torture ourselves, nor outsourcing torture to other nations.'' <snip>

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=adMPQU5bnQXs&refer=us

[struggle4progress]

11. Airport Police move swiftly to suppress evidence.

Is there a "torture jet" behind that warplane?
by Tim Hourigan Monday, Mar 7 2005, 9:11pm
clare / anti-war / feature

Ed Horgan arrested for taking a photograph.

From the newswire (Tim Hourigan):

Just got a phone call from Ed Horgan. He was gathering more evidence of the crimes at Shannon when he was set upon by the Airport Police. Ed was told that Airport "Police Inspector" John Martin, Garda Morrissey and Garda Coleman were taking him into custody for taking a photograph of a US militatry Hercules. UPDATE: It also appears that Ed saw a plane very similar to the CIA torture jet that has been using Ireland as an essential part of its war crime infrastructure.

The arresting officers cited Section 33 of the Air Transport and Navigation Act, which only restricts photographs in certain areas (such as the airfield) not on the public roads.

Under Section 59 of the same act it says "lest there be any doubt, the road, is, for the purpose of any enactment, a public place." <snip>

http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=68866&type=feature