The NYT admits it
May. 10th, 2009 01:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumToday they finally said this was torture.
For most of that time, he was kept in a dark, damp cell with no bed and no opening except a slot in the door through which a bowl of food could be pushed. Much of the time he was handcuffed. Hour after hour, a high-frequency whistle pierced the air.
No weasel words, no scare quotes. A simple declaration of fact.
No slaps, no waterboard, no hypothermia, just isolation, deprivation and persistent noise; while in a stressed position. What, one wonders, can so mild a torture regime (no one even pretended they were going to hurt him, or kill him; much less actually inflicted pain, "equal to amputation or organ failure.") produce?
"“I was grilled day and night, over and over, week in and week out, and in the end, to get [him] and his gang off my back, I confessed to both charges. The charges, of course, were ridiculous. I never participated in germ warfare and neither did anyone else.
Whoa... it got a false confession. But how?
I will regret what I did in that cell the rest of my life,” [he] continued. “But let me say this: it was not really me... who signed that paper. It was a mentality reduced to putty.”
A mentality reduced to putty.
From a bit of dark and damp. Some time in handcuffs, with a whistling noise. That broke him? What a wuss.
He wasn't a wuss of course he was a victim of torture.
Torture?
Damn straight. So what made the the New York Times willing to call a spade a spade? The reason the New York Times is willing to call it torture, not, "techniques some decry as torture", is it was done to an American. Capt. Harold Fischer, USAF. It was done by the Chinese. It was, in fact, the very model for the system we put in place in Guantanamo, and which managed to get to Afghanistan, and Abu Ghraib (which I think happened because people who had been at Gitmo ended up working in both those places; they'd been taught to do something, and they did what they'd been taught. That's what I mean when I say there were systemic problems).
The Right Wing Wurlitzer is going to be running at full-speed, explaining that this is different. The Chinese weren't looking for the truth, the Americans weren't, "bad guys" trying to overthrow the Chinese; they were soldiers, merely doing their duty, America is different.
Nonsense. These are also the people who say, "Rules are rules, and actions have consequences." The party of Three Strikes, and Mandatory Sentencing. "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time" (and yes, I know those ideas have percolated out to the greater society, but that's where they started; it's where they are the strongest model of how to run the nation).
On this topic I agree. Torture is torture, no matter who does it. Those who do it, need to be called to account. There need to be investigations. Not blue-ribbon commissions, criminal investigations. No agenda, find the facts and let the chips fall where they may.
The Right is doing a lot of tu quoque nonsense too. Trying to say Pelosi, and Murtha, and the rest of the Democratic leadership knew; and that means we can't prosecute. Others have said we knew and that we didn't rise up, as a mass, in outrage, means we accept it, and therefore it's ok, no one needs to investigate (and certainly no one needs to go to Prison; a real one, not the sort of minimum security ones that people like Irve Libby would have ended up in if his boss's boss hadn't given him a don't even go to jail card).
Bullshit. This is a big deal. To quote a previous scandal, it's not the torture (though, were it just the torture, that would be enough). It's about making the president somehow above the law. It's about having an adminsitration which flouted the laws, and when caught says, "Yes, we did it, so what?"
If Pelosi, Murtha, etc., were briefed in detail. If they were given information enough to know it was torture, and they signed off on it, try them too. For conspiracy, if nothing else.
I suspect they are in the clear. Those were classified briefings. The CIA got to pick and choose what they said, and the people who got them were forbidden to talk about what they were told (on pain of prison... and who doubts the Bush Administration would have gone after them? Just look at Thomas Tamm). I suspect the CIA shaded things, and made it look as though they were being harsh, but not crossing the lines.
I also suspect they don't have as solid a grounding in how interrogation works, or what defines torture, as they need to actually know if something crosses those lines.
Should they have done something. Yes. They should have done what they are paid to do, be a counterweight to the presidency. Exercise the oversight which was more than just their job, more even than their responsibility. It was their duty.
But this is a time for looking forward, so lets look forward; to a time when we can say we fucked up, and we fixed it.
Because we tortured, and we admitted it, and the world knows it.
For most of that time, he was kept in a dark, damp cell with no bed and no opening except a slot in the door through which a bowl of food could be pushed. Much of the time he was handcuffed. Hour after hour, a high-frequency whistle pierced the air.
No weasel words, no scare quotes. A simple declaration of fact.
No slaps, no waterboard, no hypothermia, just isolation, deprivation and persistent noise; while in a stressed position. What, one wonders, can so mild a torture regime (no one even pretended they were going to hurt him, or kill him; much less actually inflicted pain, "equal to amputation or organ failure.") produce?
"“I was grilled day and night, over and over, week in and week out, and in the end, to get [him] and his gang off my back, I confessed to both charges. The charges, of course, were ridiculous. I never participated in germ warfare and neither did anyone else.
Whoa... it got a false confession. But how?
I will regret what I did in that cell the rest of my life,” [he] continued. “But let me say this: it was not really me... who signed that paper. It was a mentality reduced to putty.”
A mentality reduced to putty.
From a bit of dark and damp. Some time in handcuffs, with a whistling noise. That broke him? What a wuss.
He wasn't a wuss of course he was a victim of torture.
Torture?
Damn straight. So what made the the New York Times willing to call a spade a spade? The reason the New York Times is willing to call it torture, not, "techniques some decry as torture", is it was done to an American. Capt. Harold Fischer, USAF. It was done by the Chinese. It was, in fact, the very model for the system we put in place in Guantanamo, and which managed to get to Afghanistan, and Abu Ghraib (which I think happened because people who had been at Gitmo ended up working in both those places; they'd been taught to do something, and they did what they'd been taught. That's what I mean when I say there were systemic problems).
The Right Wing Wurlitzer is going to be running at full-speed, explaining that this is different. The Chinese weren't looking for the truth, the Americans weren't, "bad guys" trying to overthrow the Chinese; they were soldiers, merely doing their duty, America is different.
Nonsense. These are also the people who say, "Rules are rules, and actions have consequences." The party of Three Strikes, and Mandatory Sentencing. "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time" (and yes, I know those ideas have percolated out to the greater society, but that's where they started; it's where they are the strongest model of how to run the nation).
On this topic I agree. Torture is torture, no matter who does it. Those who do it, need to be called to account. There need to be investigations. Not blue-ribbon commissions, criminal investigations. No agenda, find the facts and let the chips fall where they may.
The Right is doing a lot of tu quoque nonsense too. Trying to say Pelosi, and Murtha, and the rest of the Democratic leadership knew; and that means we can't prosecute. Others have said we knew and that we didn't rise up, as a mass, in outrage, means we accept it, and therefore it's ok, no one needs to investigate (and certainly no one needs to go to Prison; a real one, not the sort of minimum security ones that people like Irve Libby would have ended up in if his boss's boss hadn't given him a don't even go to jail card).
Bullshit. This is a big deal. To quote a previous scandal, it's not the torture (though, were it just the torture, that would be enough). It's about making the president somehow above the law. It's about having an adminsitration which flouted the laws, and when caught says, "Yes, we did it, so what?"
If Pelosi, Murtha, etc., were briefed in detail. If they were given information enough to know it was torture, and they signed off on it, try them too. For conspiracy, if nothing else.
I suspect they are in the clear. Those were classified briefings. The CIA got to pick and choose what they said, and the people who got them were forbidden to talk about what they were told (on pain of prison... and who doubts the Bush Administration would have gone after them? Just look at Thomas Tamm). I suspect the CIA shaded things, and made it look as though they were being harsh, but not crossing the lines.
I also suspect they don't have as solid a grounding in how interrogation works, or what defines torture, as they need to actually know if something crosses those lines.
Should they have done something. Yes. They should have done what they are paid to do, be a counterweight to the presidency. Exercise the oversight which was more than just their job, more even than their responsibility. It was their duty.
But this is a time for looking forward, so lets look forward; to a time when we can say we fucked up, and we fixed it.
Because we tortured, and we admitted it, and the world knows it.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-10 07:39 pm (UTC)http://www.wcfcourier.com/articles/2009/05/10/news/local/11274827.txt
Just because they may not be legal residents, doesn't mean as humans, that they deserve the treatment they go. ARGH, people's thickheadedness makes me really angry sometimes!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-10 08:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 03:55 am (UTC)Because I misdoubt the reporters were really spying.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 02:36 pm (UTC)I've been seeing -- with considerable bemusement -- more and more RightWing charges that some current Problems are the fault of the Democrats because, when they were the minority party, they didn't fight hard enough to oppose the bad things those Bush people were doing. Gaak? I happen to think that, indeed, they didn't fight hard enough, but at the same time I saw practically no opposition whatsoever from the Republican legislators, party, or spokesmen, so I know where I'm going to pinpoint the Responsibility.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 02:48 pm (UTC)But yes, that's rich.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 02:16 am (UTC)Those who are new to power will probably be criticized for having an enemies list, and going after the previous administration purely out of revenge.
Never doubt the determination of people who were willing to torture to do everything they see as necessary to destroy the Constitution, cover their assets, and scheme to get back into power to do more of the same.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 02:27 am (UTC)Maybe. The prime objection is this assumes facts not in evidence. We don't know what the people being briefed on the changes in interrogation practice at Gitmo were told.
One of the things we do know is they were told the practices weren't yet being implemented. We also know they were told in classified briefings. To share that information with people who weren't cleared; with a need to know, is a federal offense. We do know the Bush Administration would have had no hesitation in hounding; if not prosecuting, anyone who blew the whistle on that.
Where they derelict in repsonibility? Most certainly. Are they as guilty as Bush/Cheney/Rice, et. al? Maybe. We don't have the facts yet.
The accusation of an enemies list is true, and irrelevant. Honest investigation, and honest prosecution will persuade those who aren't so partisan they won't care.
Not prosecuting sends a worse message. It tells them they can get away with breaking the law; if they are flagrant enough to make it seem partisan. Since such things didn't stop the Republicans from going after people for political motives, it won't change that aspect of things.
Having the fear that crimes will be pursued ought to outweigh the mewlings of the guilty, and their apologists, about dog-wagging.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 04:30 am (UTC)I wasn't speaking to the truth of their guilt so much as the spin that will be used against people who stand up and speak out. Unfortunately, I'm already hearing rumblings that the spin is working from my friends and neighbors.
This is very much NOT an encouragement that anyone should let that spin succeed.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 02:53 pm (UTC)And yes, I think those reporters were ostensibly arrested for being (*ghasp*) Illegal Aliens, or Journalism Without an Official Permit, or whatever, rather than for "Spying".
no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 10:27 pm (UTC)I can't help wishing Pecunium would write a novel or screenplay (fictionalizing, of course) his reasons for knowing torture doesn't work. I'd certainly buy a copy (or ticket) and tell all my friends to do the same!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-13 01:47 am (UTC)It might be hard to make it dramtically exciting. The better thing (and almost as hard) would be to make the failure of torture a more common dramatic element.
In any case, every time I have dabbled in fiction, the result has been less than satisfactory. I can do scenework, but not arc of story.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-15 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-15 11:10 pm (UTC)I just try to be logical...maybe someone will get it. That's all I can hope for.