Category Archives: Torture

Seymour M. Hersh interviews Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba (forcibly Ret.), and gets a preview of his testimony at the c. 2010 war crimes trials:

“There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff”—the explicit images—“was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.” He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

The Tortured Lives of Interrogators – washingtonpost.com

“I tortured people,” said Lagouranis, 37, who was a military intelligence specialist in Iraq from January 2004 until January 2005. “You have to twist your mind up so much to justify doing that.”

Being an interrogator, Lagouranis discovered, can be torture.

I think the most compelling arguments against torture are its fundamental immorality, what it does to this country;s moral standing, what it does to this country's legal standing, and that it doesn't work real well, in that order. But I'm willing to add what it does to the torturers to the end of the list.

They could, after all refuse, costly as it would be to them personally. And, indeed, some do:

Lagouranis's tools included stress positions, a staged execution and hypothermia so extreme the detainees' lips turned purple. He has written an account of his experiences in a book, “Fear Up Harsh,” which has been read by the Pentagon and will be published this week. Stephen Lewis, an interrogator who was deployed with Lagouranis, confirmed the account, and Staff Sgt. Shawn Campbell, who was Lagouranis's team leader and direct supervisor, said Lagouranis's assertions were “as true as true can get. It's all verifiable.” John Sifton, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the group investigated many of Lagouranis's claims about abuses and independently corroborated them.

“At every point, there was part of me resisting, part of me enjoying,” Lagouranis said. “Using dogs on someone, there was a tingling throughout my body. If you saw the reaction in the prisoner, it's thrilling.”

In Mosul, he took detainees outside the prison gate to a metal shipping container they called “the disco,” with blaring music and lights. Before and after questioning, military police officers stripped them and checked for injuries, noting cuts and bumps “like a car inspection at a parking garage.” Once a week, an Iraqi councilman and an American colonel visited. “We had to hide the tortured guys,” Lagouranis said.

Then a soldier's aunt sent over several copies of Viktor E. Frankel's Holocaust memoir, “Man's Search for Meaning.” Lagouranis found himself trying to pick up tips from the Nazis. He realized he had gone too far.

At that point, Lagouranis said, he moderated his techniques and submitted sworn statements to supervisors concerning prisoner abuse.

The Post's article has lots more, not all of it unambiguous, and is worth reading in full.

Senator Bill Nelson Votes for Torture.

Or, as the NYT put it,

The Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday questioned the continuing value of the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret interrogation program for terrorism suspects, suggesting that international condemnation and the obstacles it has created to criminal prosecution may outweigh its worth in gathering information.

The committee rejected by one vote a Democratic proposal that would essentially have cut money for the program by banning harsh interrogation techniques except in dire emergencies, a committee report revealed.

And that one vote was Florida's own Bill Nelson.

In a closed session on May 23, two Democrats, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Dianne Feinstein of California, proposed barring spending on interrogation techniques that go beyond the Army Field Manual, which bans physical pressure or pain. Under their proposal, the only exception would have been when the president determined “that an individual has information about a specific and imminent threat.”.

The amendment failed when Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, joined all the Republicans in voting no.

All Floridians should be ashamed of Sen. Bill Nelson, who provided the deciding vote to prevent the Senate from taking a stand against torture.

He has sunk to the level of Sen. Martinez, which is pretty low indeed.

There is no excuse for this sort of vote. None.

It's good to know, I guess, that there are some things so horrible that the CIA will deny that it did them.

Father of Pakistani Alleges U.S. Torture It also alleged that the building held two children, ages about 6 and 8, of Mohammed, who had been captured in Pakistan within days of Khan.

“They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding,” the statement charged.

Gimigliano, the CIA spokesman, said the agency “forcefully and completely rejects as false any suggestion that its officers would in any way mistreat children, including children of al-Qaida terrorists.”

Just two more small details:

1. In light of everything else we know, how reliable is the CIA's denial?

2. What about the adults?

This sounds like a big deal:

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog: Contractual Error

The Washington Post reports that private contractors have played a role in alleged detainee abuses at Guantanamo, sometimes even directing Army personnel to perform such abuse. This information was obtained from a 2004 survey of FBI agents who visited the detention facilities and is the latest addition in a long series of reports on contractor misconduct.

If the allegations are true, the Dept. of Defense would be in violation of Subpart 7.503©(3) and (7) of the Federal Acquisition Regulations, which states that direction of federal employees and military forces is an “inherently governmental function” not to be performed by contractors.

These episodes of misconduct shed light on fundamental questions about the proper role of private contractors in service to the federal government.

…

Peter Singer highlights this debate for DefenseTech and argues that a new provision of the FY 2007 defense budget could force security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan to comply with the Uniform Code of Military Justice. However, security contractors outside of conflict areas, such as those at Guantanamo, would still remain outside the bounds of legal obligation.

There's more, and it's worth reading.