The Advocates of Torture

"Torture has never been a reliable means of extracting information. It is ultimately self-defeating as a means of control. One wonders it is still practiced." ~ Jean Luc Picard.

"We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. ~ Dick Cheney.

“The gloves are coming off gentlemen regarding these detainees, [redacted] has made clear it wants these individuals broken,” MI ALWAYS OUT IN FRONT, (08/14/2003)

Americans have known for a century, since the Philippine Insurrection, that Torture is wrong. That was until 2001 and the Bush/Cheney Regime. A Harvard Student Research Paper found that when Americans learned of the Abu Gharib scandal suddenly Bush Torture Lawyers began to push the notion of "Harsh" or "Enhanced Interrogation" methods to their media contacts and those stories began to equivocate and pretend as though there was a hotly contested debate about what is and what isn't Torture.

The reason is simple, Dick Cheney said as much right after 9/11, American Policy was Torture. And who would be tortured? Anyone. Everyone. Innocence and Guilt were non-factors. Bush and Cheney wanted Torture.

Whole sections of the Executive Branch were devoted to making Torture Official US Policy, the Justice Department was co-opted into crafting "legal" arguments for the efficacy of Torture and the rescinding of the "quaint" Geneva Conventions, White House officials made repeated Sunday Talk Show appearances hinting at the dozens of plots stopped by Torture, Jack Bauer would save Fox America through Torture. Torture was the Universal Cure-all of the Bush White House.

George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, Ari Fleischer, Liz Cheney, Monica Goodling, Jay Bybee are war criminals. And they are worst of sort of war criminals for they, safely ensconced in air-conditioned offices, far from the battlefield, coldly crafted Torture memos and policies. Clear intent not influenced by the heat of the moment.

Yet how could it be that a section of the American people not only defend the Bush Regime War Criminals but defend the use of Torture? Well, the Media stopped calling it Torture. And magically we have two sides of the Torture issue.

And worst of all everyone knows that Torture is not useful in gaining information and gaining information through coercion is not only futile but criminal.

The clearest example of an interrogation practice that will void a confession is the infliction of physical force or pain upon the person under interrogation, because it is an incontestable fact that harm of this nature may produce a confession of guilt from an innocent person. This is also true as regards indirect physical harm - for instance, an unduly prolonged continuous interrogation, especially by two or more interrogators working in relays or the deprivation of food, water, or access to toilet facilities for an unreasonable period of time. A threat of physical harm may have a similar effect --- the extraction of confession from innocent persons. ~ Fred E. Inbau

Illinois Law- (720 ILCS 5/12‑7) Compelling confession or information by force or threat.

(a) A person who, with intent to obtain a confession, statement or information regarding any offense, knowingly inflicts or threatens imminent bodily harm upon the person threatened or upon any other person commits the offense of compelling a confession or information by force or threat.

(b) Sentence. Compelling a confession or information is a: (1) Class 4 felony if the defendant threatens imminent bodily harm to obtain a confession, statement, or information but does not inflict bodily harm on the victim, (2) Class 3 felony if the defendant inflicts bodily harm on the victim to obtain a confession, statement, or information, and (3) Class 2 felony if the defendant inflicts great bodily harm to obtain a confession, statement, or information.

Related Disaffected Blog Posts:
Opening Salvo, First Blog Post:

Water Torture was used on the Filipinos ,this was eventually admitted to by future President William Howard Taft.

Torture.

George Bush oversaw the implementation of Torture in the name of the American people. Here is the strangest dissonance from the Pro-Human Pain and Suffering Right Wing: The harsh interrogation methods we used are so wimpy that slapping oneself on air is the equivalent. However, they are so awesome and useful that if need be we can use them and break someone in 35 seconds to save us from the Right Wing Extremist Bogus Ticking Time Bomb Scenario.

So it's both Torture and Not Torture.

Stalag 17, Revisited:

Remember the film Stalag 17? One of the techniques the Nazis use is Sleep Deprivation. Watch the scene. In it Von Scherbach also declares Lieutenant Dunbar is not a prisoner of war. Strange how much Ari "Sleep Deprivation, I have no Problem with" Fleischer resembles Von Scherbach and not Otto Preminger.

Delving Into the Water Cure:

Paul Kramer has a detailed expose for The New Yorker on it's use 100 years ago: Many Americans were puzzled by the news, in 1902, that United States soldiers were torturing Filipinos with water. The United States, throughout its emergence as a world power, had spoken the language of liberation, rescue, and freedom.

Victory in Iraq (again)

The Declarations of Victory in Iraq have emerged from bloggers, Organizations such as the College Republicans and from noted Accurate-tician Bill Kristol, "we've won the war".

Zombie Times declared 11/22/08, in solidarity with others, as Victory in Iraq Day (VI Day). The College Republicans want the following answered: Now, the only question is will President Obama purposefully force defeat on our troops in Iraq, or will he let our military finish the job?

The obtuse attempts at connecting the Iraq War with World War II continue. The Iraq Invasion and Occupation are not WWII or Vietnam but mainly analogous, as I've often posted, to the small wars of the 19th century and America's involvement in the Philippines.

And all the protestations of victory in Iraq on 11/22/08 have not stopped guys from dying. Nor does the fallacious analogy that more Americans died in Chicago than Iraq, hold up to scrutiny. Cook County has over 5 million residents, roughly 180,000 Americans are in Iraq so the sample sizes are quite different.

The reasons those in their comfortable homes in the States are declaring victory in Iraq is two-fold. The smaller part is an attempt to salvage for Bush something other than absolute ridicule for all time, the larger part is to use Iraq against Obama. By declaring Victory (again) the set-up has been made to blame him if Iraq were to fall into fractional fighting, which is almost assured as the Kurds attempt to gain a Nation-State or if the extremists on the islamic religious divide decide to bomb one of the otherside's mosques again.

But, when you find yourself absorbed in an ideological struggle to control the awesome Apparatus of the US Government everything is acceptable. And the problem is all the Declarations won't comfort those who lose their loved ones after the War has been "Won".

I'll Define Winning in Iraq Right Now...

Winning in Iraq is when US Soldiers no longer have to occupy the country. However, this is a cynical answer because the US isn't going to leave Iraq despite the demands of Nouri al-Maliki that Iraq wants a timeline for withdrawal of U.S. troops to be attached to a security agreement. Of course, the American People can't agree to such an artificial timetable for withdrawal.

After all as Super War proponent Der Max Boot recently offered up at Commentary Magazine:

In order to build on the success that General Petraeus and his soldiers have had, we need to maintain a long-term commitment in Iraq-for 100 years if need be, as John McCain has said.

The Surge has worked.
No it hasn't...
Yes it has!
No! It! Hasn't!
YES!
NO!

The Surge was nothing less than another shell game. The Surge was touted as a success even before it happened. As violence spiked and more Americans died in 2007 than any other year of the Occupation The Surge was working. As US service members deaths dropped (thankfully!) The Surge worked.

The fact is it doesn't matter.

In my first blog post a year ago I postulated the Occupation of Iraq is more akin to the US invasion and Occupation of the Philippine Islands than Vietnam.

In a hundred years no one's going to remember the hundreds of thousands killed and maimed. No one will remember the 3 Marines killed by a Suicide Bomber or the 30 or so Iraqi unpersons after The Surge worked and the Enemy in Anbar Province was neutralized. And we'll have Iraqis working as barbers and cooks and cleaners here in America!

But, for many of those who've served the Occupation of Iraq is forever.

When Johnny NEVER Comes Marching Home Again, Hurrah! Hurrah!

From the Ebullient Rachel Maddow.



"Do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?" Matt Lauer.

"No, but that's not too important," John McCain said. "What's important is casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea. Americans are in Japan. American troops are in Germany. That's all fine."

But, no the government isn't into the Imperial Empire Business. Because we don't keep territory. Nope! Never have! Never ever!

The lie that America isn't an Empire is one that continues to be sold to every generation. Read the disgusting comments by Marine General John Kelly,

"We as Americans can be proud of the kind of people we are as we have never retained a square foot of any country we have defeated. We possess no empire. No man or woman call us master, as we have never subjugated any society."

Yeah, tell it to the Marines.

Update:
HOT DAMN! I figured out why McCain doesn't want to leave Iraq ever! It comes from the Johnny Comes Marching Home lyrics:

And we'll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home

As we all know teh gay scares warmongering republicans more than Islamfascism.

Delving into the Water Cure

I've mentioned the American use of the Water Torture several times (here and here) in the Philippines. Well, Meet the New Boss because the CIA finally admitted the US Government is still using waterboarding (torture), today.

Paul Kramer has a detailed expose for The New Yorker on it's use 100 years ago:

Many Americans were puzzled by the news, in 1902, that United States soldiers were torturing Filipinos with water. The United States, throughout its emergence as a world power, had spoken the language of liberation, rescue, and freedom.

(With a Hat Tip to Brown over at Borrowed Suits)

Sound familiar? It should be frightening to the American People when their Government grants itself the latitude to torture people it deems "enemies" for the slope is slippery indeed..

Who next will become an "enemy" of the State to be taken away? And who next will be ordered to administer the torture?

While this post is filled with some over-the-top hyperbole (perhaps) the Government has often used violence to supress those deemed less than desirable. Recall: WTO Seattle, Kent State, The Bonus Army, Sacco and Vanzetti, Haymarket Square Chicago, Ludlow, Wounded Knee...

Waterboarding: An American Tradition since 1901!

The US used waterboarding in the Phillipines back in 1901. Of course back in 1903, they called it the "Water Cure":

The commonest form of torture was known as the "water cure," and it was so common that, on Bohol, toward the end of the war, people joked about getting it -- and then got it. It became, as its nickname suggests, a kind of liquid panacea, a cure for whatever you couldn't kill -- a cure for disloyalty, a cure for native "insolence," a cure for the insurrection -- that the army doled out like the shots for the small pox it also dispensed. Ostensibly, the "water cure" was used to elicit information. But the information it obtained was always suspect. And people died from it.

Testifying before Congress in 1903, Lt. Grover Flint gave a sanitized but still vivid account of the way that it worked:

A man is thrown down on his back and three or four men sit or stand on his arms and legs and hold him down; ...a carbine barrel or a stick as big as a belaying pin... is simply thrust into his jaws and his jaws are thrust back, and, if possible, a wooden log or stone is put under his head or neck, so he can be held more firmly. In the case of very old men I have seen their teeth fall out, -- and I mean when it was done a little roughly. He is simply held down and then water is poured onto his face down his throat and nose from a jar; and that is kept up until the man gives some sign or becomes unconscious. And then... he is simply... rolled aside rudely, so that water is expelled. A man suffers tremendously, there is no doubt about it. [S. Doc. 331, 57 Cong., 1 Sess. (1903), pp. 1767-1768]

Waterboarding is torture.

And it's frightening to read "Americans" (in reality FREEpers) support the practice. Or US Senator Kit Bond equate torture by drowning with swimming.

Hey Kit, would you have been happy if your son Sam had, "learned" to swim this way at Quantico? Or would it be okay if insurgents in Iraq used waterboarding on your son in Iraq? Because I don't think so, but I guess you would be fine with the insurgent freestyle...

Update:

Sam Stein at The Huffington Post exposes 30 Anti-American cowards against waterboarding. Strangely they all have General or Admiral before their name...

Opening Salvo

To start I'll use the words of Mark Twain:

I said to myself, here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves.

But I have thought some more, since then... and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. ~ New York Herald [New York, 10/15/1900]

I wonder what Twain would make of the recent American Imperialist Adventure in Mesopotamia.

There are many parallels between Iraq and the Philippines:

Letters from soldiers documented the atrocities ("The howling wilderness of Samar"),

Between 250,000 and 1 million civilians were killed,

Water Torture was used on the Filipinos (this was eventually admitted to by future President William Howard Taft),

The only military strategy which could be imagined was to separate the civilian populace from the insurgents, this was accomplished by a scorched earth policy, ignoring the plight of the civilian population and the creation of concentration camps,

Journalists were heavily controlled and The War Department (since relabelled Department of Defense) issued reports asserting all manner of atrocities were being committed by the Filipinos in order to stem the growing anti-war sentiment of Americans,

Fighting continued until 1913 (even though as early as 1902 the War was considered won),

The Philippines gained their independence in 1946, but it wasn't until Nov. 24, 1992 the last US base closed at Subic Bay, a period of 94 years from the start of American involvement.

I think he would merely have quoted himself:
But now -- why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation. ~ Returning Home, New York World [London, 10/6/1900