Newsweek: The Politics of Torture (Interrogation Techniques)

[Hissyspit]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14870307/site/newsweek/?rf=snwnewsletter

The Politics of Torture
Lost amid the legal wrangling over how to interrogate detainees are the techniques used in the war on terror.
By Michael Hirsh and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Sept. 25, 2006 issue - Waterboarding, which dates back to the Spanish Inquisition, is an interrogation method that involves strapping a prisoner face up onto a table and pouring water into his nose. The idea is to create the sensation of drowning so that the panicked prisoner will talk. According to The New York Times, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded by the CIA. He eventually confessed what President Bush described last Friday as "information about terrorist plans we couldn't get anywhere else." Neither Bush nor any other administration official has acknowledged, on the record, the use of waterboarding or any other specific CIA method. But at a White House news conference, Bush passionately defended the once secret CIA interrogation program involving such "alternative" techniques as "vital."

The question is whether waterboarding, however effective, is torture—and whether Americans ought to be doing such things at all. Some leading Republican senators, John McCain, John Warner and Lindsey Graham, believe it should be clearly banned under new legislation. The Bush administration has proposed its own bill seeking to redefine the Geneva Conventions—which set out the rules of war—in order to preserve the CIA's right to use some harsher methods. But even Bush's former secretary of State, Colin Powell, publicly questioned last week whether the administration's stance might lead the world to "doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." And recently Bush administration officials, in private negotiations with the Senate, have agreed to drop waterboarding from a list of approved CIA interrogation techniques, according to a Senate source involved in the dispute. (He, like the other administration officials and congressional sources quoted in this story, asked not to be identified owing to the sensitivity of the negotiations over classified information.)

The Bush administration wants to maintain seven other approved CIA interrogation methods, however, for use against suspected high-level terrorists, according to one congressional source and a lawyer involved in the negotiations. A senior administration official said he could not discuss what CIA methods are still being considered. But the official added that "one should not assume all techniques used previously will be used in the future." He also noted that the new U.S. Army field manual bans waterboarding. Two other sources, one a U.S. legislator and the other a counterterrorism official, told NEWSWEEK that the total number of CIA detainees subjected to the "most rigorous" interrogation techniques was less than five. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the only one among them whose identity has been acknowledged by former government officials.

- snip -

Neither administration nor congressional sources would describe the other interrogation methods in dispute. As NEWSWEEK has previously reported, various CIA techniques such as open-handed slapping were first discussed in Alberto Gonzales's office in 2002 before the then White House Counsel became attorney general. Scott Horton, a New York City Bar Association lawyer who has advised the Senate on the legislation, says Capitol Hill aides have told him that the CIA has sought to use the following techniques: (1) induced hypothermia; (2) long periods of forced standing; (3) sleep deprivation; (4) the "attention grab" (the forceful seizing of a suspect's shirt); (5) the "attention slap"; (6) the "belly slap"; and (7) sound and light manipulation. Tom Malinowski, the Washington director for the group Human Rights Watch, says that Hill sources working on the legislation have described the same list to him.

Some human-rights activists view only the first two methods, hypothermia and forced standing, as outright torture. But Malinowski said there is a reason why U.S. military interrogation manuals consistently ban physical abuse of any kind. "The Army's experience has taught them that once you allow physical contact once, even if it's mild, it's very difficult to prevent much more violent physical contact," he said.

MORE

[lebkuchen]

1. Let's face it. Bush has already tortured, plenty of times.

Now he's trying to cover his ass legally. He's a disgusting MoFo. So is the CIA, Donald Rumsfeld, and any military doctors who supervised the torturing.

[Joanne98]

2. The Spanish Inquisition, torture techniques.. That figures!

[lebkuchen]

5. And now the Bushies are building a moat around Baghdad

America's finest will be manning the ramparts with...what? Hot oil and the rotting carcasses of catapulted Shia, Sunni, and Green Zone residents?

Is it time to start hoarding salt for the siege?

[Joanne98]

6. But but they're freedom moats!

[lebkuchen]

10. As long as we're revisiting the Middle Ages,

I suggest that George, Dick, Donny, Bill Frist, and Denny Hastert be forced to wear shame masks, symbolic of the shame they have brought upon the United States and its Constitution.

This mask would be representative of their piggish behavior at the public trough as they use taxpayer money to enrich themselves while torturing in our name.

[leftchick]

3. forced standing

with your wrists handcuffed above your head for forty eight hours in freezing temperatures while naked. Details, details. I read a couple of articles one in Harpers with an innocent man eventually released, one in Rolling stone with a 15 year old treated as an adult. They were both absolutely shocking. I mean SHOCKING what the USA is doing to people who are not convicted of any crime. Remember these are SUSPECTS with no rights treated like animals. Worse than animals. :puke:

[EFerrari]

4. Thank you, Hissyspit.

K&R

:kick:

/ack

[KansDem]

7. "The question is whether waterboarding, however effective, is torture"

...however effective...

Just how reliable is torture? I've read that the information gleaned from such techniques can't be trusted since anyone will say anything to avoid intense pain and discomfort.

He eventually confessed what President Bush described last Friday as "information about terrorist plans we couldn't get anywhere else."
--Really? And could it be the "plans we couldn't get anywhere else" was because these "plans" didn't exist anywhere else?

[EFerrari]

8. Torture is all about intimidating the people who witness. n/t

[90-percent]

9. torture's effectiveness?

Wasn't some of the info used to justify the Iraq War gained by torture?

I think Bush likes torture because it allows him to justify virtually anything he wants to do.

"We have reliable information that Iran will be firing nucular tipped war heads at new york city some time next month. We can't allow the smoking gun to be in the form of a mushroom cloud, as you know. Therefore, we are attacking Iran in five minutes. It's a good thing you have smart folks like us running your government and keeping you safe."

And all this will be the result of some Iranian teenage skateboarder getting scooped up in some US dragnet somewhere in the world and renditioned until he tells us what we want to hear.

-85% Jimmy

[EFerrari]

11. You're right about that. But the main use of torture is to scare

the hell out of everyone who knows it's happening.

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies.

:(

[lebkuchen]

12. Brings new meaning to Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American"

Is he still around? Maybe Lee and Tobie could get together and merge their patriotic talents with a new song about America's pride in its torture techniques against people we're supposed to be "freeing," techniques like water boarding, sleep/food depravation, mock executions, and sexual degradation. Throw Charlie Daniels' input into the mix for a great threesome.

[EFerrari]

16. I don't even recognize this country. But, this isn't new.

There are many families all around the world that lost loved ones because the Great Communicator thought it was just fine to torture and kill brown people.

Ronnie, we hardly knew ye.

:puke:

[Disturbed]

14. The Military, CIA, and other Agencies that torture will

not cease their actions and methods. They will disavow their pratices in public and continue them in secret as they have been doing. Most of the world knows that the Busholini Regime has a widespread policy of Torture and other methods short of outright torture that are milder forms of it. All of what is public now is posturing. The McLame Bill was a sham, set aside by a Busholini Signing Statement.

There is only one remedy to the War Crimes of the Busholin Regime. Impeachment of the Pres, VP, Sec. of State, Sec. of Defense and the prosecution of top level personnel of the NSA, Military and the CIA. Of course, none of that will happen in Fascist America.

Rumsfeld Shouldn't be Fired, He Should be Indicted
by Matthew Rothschild

“Secretary Rumsfeld has publicly admitted that . . . he ordered an Iraqi national held in Camp Cropper, a high security detention center in Iraq, to be kept off the prison’s rolls and not presented to the International Committee of the Red Cross,” the report noted. The Geneva Conventions require countries to grant the Red Cross access to all detainees. “

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0418-24.htm

[KoKo]

13. Are they using the ancient practices of "THE RACK" and the Chinese

torture of bamboo splints inserted under fingernails slowly to cause maximum pain? What about cutting tongues out and castration? Those were popular torture techniques going back to the Egyptians and some used this Technique in the Western World beyond the middle ages.

What about cigarette burns, hot irons and the Iron Maiden? How many Ghoulish things have Rummy/Cheney and Bush talked about over a glass of port and a cigar well into the night. How many photographs have they enjoyed gloating over in their all nighters of torture "through the ages." I wonder if the Library of Congress was working overtime sending in books and photo's of "extreme and unusual positions," that were practiced "through the ages," too.

[Fresh_Start]

15. I think dems should approve of torture

as an extremely limited policy to guard against the worst threats to America.

Of course, I believe that corruption in government, bribery, influence peddling are the worst threats to our country.
I will gladly write my congressmen that I approve an amendment authorizing torture in interrogations investigating corruption in government. It will not interfere with our GC treaties since its purely a domestic issue.

Ney, Abrahoff, Delay, Cunningham line up, we have some questions to ask you. Mr Bush, we have some more questions to ask since you didn't testify under oath to the 9/11 commission.