Déjà vu on Interrogation "Reform": McCain/Feinstein Amendment Won't Stop Torture

"There's truth that lives and truth that dies..." - Leonard Cohen

In a bizarre mixture of the sincere and the insincere, an amendment proposed by a bipartisan group of senators to the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is being touted as all but ending torture by the U.S. -- if it passes.

According to an article in The Intercept, "Human rights and transparency organizations are applauding the effort." But is there really anything here to celebrate?

If you read The Intercept article all the way to the end, there's mention that a group of medical experts found the Army Field Manual "permits techniques that are 'recognized under international law as forms of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.'” So why is there applause?

Mark Fallon, the former deputy commander of the Criminal Investigation Task Force at Guantanamo, and currently Chair of the Research Committee of President Obama's inter-departmental High-value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), told Jason Leopold at Vice News the amendment "mandates and advocates the use of science and evidence-based research so we can be more effective during interrogations." Furthermore, there would be "a review of the Army Field Manual [AFM] to ensure we are only using best and lawful techniques" during interrogation.

Constitutional scholar David Cole writes at the Just Security website that he supports the amendment, which is jointly sponsored by Senators John McCain, Dianne Feinstein, Jack Reed and Susan Collins. Cole adds that others support it, too, including "David Keene, former President of the National Rifle Association and editorial page editor of the Washington Times..."

Newsweek posted an article by Rupert Stone this week, titled "Beyond Torture: The New Science of Interrogating Terrorists," which includes a long discussion of the importance of putting interrogation on a science-centered base.

Stone's article goes into more detail than others about problems concerning "the current version of the Army Field Manual [which] still offers a back door to some of the brutal tactics authorized after 9/11." Stone is of course talking about Appendix M of the Army Field Manual, which allows theoretically indefinitely extended amounts of solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and sensory deprivation on so-called "unlawful enemy combatants." The interrogation methods of Appendix M are so severe, they require at times physician and/or psychologist in attendance to implement (shades of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" program!).

But problems with the Army Field Manual do not start or end with Appendix M. The main section of the manual includes coercive methods of interrogation, including psychological techniques to induce fear, to tear down the ego and self-esteem of prisoners, to tear down their resistance to interrogation by inducing "hopelessness and helplessness," and allowing use of drugs on prisoners, so long as the drugs don't cause "lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage."

But Fallon and others, like veteran interrogator and Col. (ret.) Steven Kleinman, believe that the review mandated by the amendment will take care of the problems sometime in the future. Meanwhile, they urge passage of the amendment now. Kleinman told Newsweek, "Passing strongly worded legislation that would stand as a bulwark against torture... is the single most important step we must take.” (Both Fallon and Kleinman have impeccable anti-torture credentials.)

According to The Hill, this view is echoed by Elisa Massimino, President and CEO of Human Rights First, who said of the senators' amendment, “This is how a strong democracy deals with its mistakes — we examine what we did, and take the necessary steps to make it right.”

Meanwhile, in my email box, I have a plea from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. The mailing promises the "introduced legislation... could permanently end CIA torture." It asks I call my senators now, even as a group of seven human rights and civil liberties organizations, have released a statement, including ACLU and Physicians for Human Rights, supporting the amendment.

The entire campaign around the whole Feinstein-McCain amendment has an unreal quality. It arose all of a sudden. There's no real period of public discussion about it. The interpretation of the amendment itself is via sanitized sources we are supposed to trust. It's presented as a slam dunk issue for those who oppose torture. You'd have to be an ingrate to oppose such a good thing.

"Pick up my guitar and play, just like yesterday"

Where have I heard this all before? When the current Army Field Manual was released in September 2006, there was the same near-universal acclaim, the same pious intonations by human rights groups, the same spate of articles in the mainstream press. But nine years later -- though many news outlets still downplay or simply eliminate reference to it -- we know the 2006 version of the Army Field Manual contained forms of ill-treatment that the UN, reviewing torture policies by the United States, recently condemned.

I analyzed the PR campaign to sell the current version of the Army Field Manual in an article at Alternet in 2009. I pointed out how when the Army Field Manual was released in 2006, we had the same gushing praise and platitudes from the press.

The Washington Post bragged that the then-new Army Field Manual "repudiated the harsh interrogation tactics adopted since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."

Human rights groups chimed in. As reported by the Post, Tom Malinowski, then Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch (but previously a Senior Director of the Clinton White House National Security Council), stated, "This is the Pentagon coming full circle... This is very strong guidance."

Recently, Malinowski was tapped by the Obama administration to answer the United Nations in their questions about ill-treatment in Appendix M. In 2007, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he praised the AFM for using using "professional, humane interrogation methods."

Over and over I read how the Army Field Manual had "safeguards," "oversight," was a big "step-forward." Amnesty International's advocacy director called the AFM "an important return to the rule of law.... It is an important public statement."

But it was no such thing.

Similar misrepresentations take place today. In Cole's piece at Just Security, for instance, he claims that the Office of Legal Counsel memos authorizing torture memos, "written between 2002 and 2007, have all been rescinded and rejected."

But that's not true. One of them was not, and tellingly, it was the one dealing with the Army Field Manual and Appendix M.

"You know something is happening, but you don't know what it is"

Let's examine the text of the Feinstein-McCain amendment (download PDF) and see if the promises of its supporters holds any water.

"An individual... shall not be subjected to any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation, that is not authorized by and listed in the Army Field Manual 2-22.3"

Okay. We see that the existing Army Field Manual, including use of techniques and "approaches" such as "Fear Up," "Futility," "Ego Down", "False Flag" and "Separation" will continue to be the law of the land. The "Separation" or Appendix M approach is really an omnibus set of abusive techniques that includes use of solitary confinement, sleep and sensory deprivation, and environmental or dietary manipulation.

I asked via FOIA for DoD to produce examples of requests to use Appendix M, as is described by the Army Field Manual. DoD said it could not find any documents pertaining to that. So much for transparency and safeguards.

For 14 months I have had an outstanding FOIA requesting materials related to review of Appendix M by the Office of Secretary of Defense. I asked because the Army Field Manual itself states, "The Office of the Secretary of Defense will review these activities periodically in accordance with DOD Directive 3115.09." That FOIA is still pending. But if the partisans of the Feinstein-McCain amendment believe that DoD or the government will do any better in producing oversight material upon request to the public or press, I have a fine bridge in Brooklyn to sell them.

The Feinstein-McCain amendment states that "a thorough review" of the AFM is to be conducted at least one year after the enactment of the Authorization Act, and then every subsequent three years "to ensure that Army Field Manual 2-22.3 complies with the legal obligations of the United States and reflects current, evidence-based, best practices for interrogation that are designed to elicit reliable and voluntary statements and do not involve the use of threat of force."

The "thorough review" is to be conducted by "the Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Attorney General, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Director of National Intelligence." In other words, the Executive Branch is to have total control over assessments of compliance of Army Field Manual practice with so-called "evidence-based, best practices for interrogation." What that really means is that there will be no "checks and balances" oversight here.

The model for such review would be DoD's 2009 Review of Department Compliance with President's Executive Order on Detainee Conditions of Confinement (PDF), which produced a wildly unrealistic picture of Guantanamo as consistent with Geneva norms of humane treatment. At the time there were continuing hunger strikes, as prisoners were savagely beaten by teams of guards. By June 2009, yet another detainee was found dead in a cell in the GTMO Behavioral Health Unit, where prisoners were observed every three minutes, supposedly dead by his own hand, having been driven insane by what the autopsy report called "conditions of confinement."

The highly-regarded researcher of the Guantanamo camp, Andy Worthington, called the 2009 review "a bitter joke." There's no reason not to expect the same from the Feinstein-McCain Amendment's proposed AFM reviews.

Interestingly, however, it's worth noting that the the Central Intelligence Agency appears to be frozen out of the proposed review process.

"People writing songs that voices never share"

"Not less than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the interagency body established... shall submit to the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, the Attorney General, and other appropriate officials [could this be the CIA?] a report on current, evidence-based, best practices for interrogation that are designed to elicit reliable and voluntary statements and do not involve the use of force.... The report required... may include recommendations for revisions to Army Field Manual 2-22.3 based on the body of research commissioned by the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group."

While HIG experts like Fallon and Kleinman may take umbrage in such verbiage -- indeed, it's flattering to see your own research touted as something of governmental importance -- there is nothing mandated in this language, at least as regards any updating or change in techniques or approaches in the Army Field Manual.

"The report... may include recommendations," and nothing is said about any recommendations being enforced. Indeed, we already have public members of the HIG on record as being against some of the abuse in the Army Field Manual, and still nothing changes.

One of those associated, Col. Kleinman, was on record as recently as 2011 as stating in an article, "The Obama Administration has made a good-faith attempt to bring standards to American interrogation practices by issuing an Executive Order that extended the relevant U.S. Army Field Manual’s directives to all government-wide interrogation efforts." That "good-faith attempt" included making via Executive Order Appendix M the law of the land.

Kleinman is on-record as criticizing the current AFM as being unscientific. He wrote a paper that supposedly elaborates on that with another current HIG official, psychologist Susan Brandon, and two other researchers. But according to Stone's Newsweek article, the 2010 review of AFM techniques was not publicly released for fear it "could have jeopardized the HIG’s relationship with the military." If releasing a critical article is too dicey for critics of DoD's Army Field Manual, what can one expect from any future reviews led by the Secretary of Defense?

Meanwhile, Brandon is under a cloud of controversy recently for her participation in activities with the American Psychological Association in regards to allegedly facilitating torture.

Brandon helped organize a workshop with the APA, CIA and Rand Corporation back in 2003 that looked at, among other things, "what pharmacological agents are known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior," and "sensory overloads on the maintenance of deceptive behaviors." One of her workshop discussion questions asked, "How might we overload the system or overwhelm the senses and see how it affects deceptive behaviors?"

In 2005, Brandon was an "observer" at an APA meeting that met to consider ongoing use of psychologists in national security investigations. She reportedly helped write the part of the report from the meeting that spoke to issues bearing on national security research, just the sort of research, it seems, that the HIG is either doing or proposing when it comes to interrogations. One of those research projects on "false confessions," as recently reported at Bloomberg, left some participants "angry," and one woman who "dissolves into tears."

Hence, there are ethical questions about the kinds of research being done, what can be accomplished in such research, and the fact that even if some kind of "evidence-based" interrogation protocols that don't involve "force" are suggested by research and then DoD-led review, there's no mandate or promise in the new legislation that it will ever be implemented.

Indeed, there is nothing in the new legislation that calls for the removal of Appendix M.

"Into the night, shadows fall"

A most interesting section of the amendment, unique in its hypocrisy and unstated cover for torture, concerns the FBI and other Federal law enforcement agencies:

"Nothing in this subsection shall preclude an officer, employee, or other agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or other Federal law enforcement agency from continuing to use authorized, non-coercive techniques of interrogation that are designed to elicit voluntary statements and do not involve the use of force, threats, or promises."

Anyone familiar with the work of the FBI, or other Federal agencies will find this presentation of "non-coercive" agents never threatening suspects something of a fairy tale.

A few years ago, I reported the case of Petty Officer Daniel King, who the Naval Criminal Investigative Service coerced into a false confession of treason, and with the assistance of a Navy psychologist, drove to such a degree of desperation he tried to kill himself. (See here and here.)

But the FBI probably has a lot more charges of abuse than most other Federal law enforcement agencies. None of these charges have been bigger than those surrounding the massive FBI investigation into the July 2010 World Cup bombings in Kampala, Uganda.

The FBI interrogated a number of prisoners from Kenya and other East African countries who were renditioned to Uganda. It was the largest foreign FBI investigation since the USS Cole attack in 2000. A 2011 report by Ian Cobain at The Guardian detailed accusations of abuse by FBI agents involved in the investigation.

A more recent case of FBI malfeasance and complicity in torture is the case of Yonas Fikre, a 36-year-old Eritrean-born American who charges the FBI had pressured him to collaborate with them, and when placing him on a no-fly list failed, had him "arrested, interrogated and tortured for 106 days in the United Arab Emirates," according to a report in The Guardian.

The issue of FBI torture deserves a lot more public examination, and in a subsequent article I plan to go into much more detail on the World Cup bombing case.

"Always something happening and nothing going on"

The issue of torture by proxy or liaison-country cover is also important, and was a major factor in the scandal surrounding extraordinary rendition, where CIA and DoD prisoners were turned over to U.S.-friendly intelligence agencies in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and other nations, where they were terribly tortured.

More recently, there are similar charges surrounding the World Cup bombing case, but better reported in the U.S. was Jeremy Scahill's 2011 report at The Nation concerning CIA-run black sites in Somalia. Ostensibly under the control of Somalia's National Security Agency, the sites were used to train Somali intelligence agents, while CIA interrogators are given direct access to prisoners held in the Somali secret detention sites.

In fact, as a recent FOIA release of a 1963 CIA interrogation manual shows, use of "liaison" or "host' countries as cover for torture is very old practice, honed during the Cold War.

It is a fact that the CIA chief of interrogations in the early years of its post-9/11 rendition and torture program was previously known (and supposedly chastised) for using a 1983 torture instruction manual -- "Human Resource Exploitation" -- the U.S. had distributed to Latin American police and intelligence forces for the purposes of instruction in torture. Nothing could better illustrate how the use of proxy or "host" countries for torture is on a continuum with the worst of the CIA's torture program.

But it is not the CIA or FBI alone who act this way. During the U.S.-instigated Iraq War, the Department of Defense notoriously issued a "Fragmentary Order" (FRAGO 242) that had U.S. armed forces turn prisoners over to Iraq security forces, even though they knew they would be tortured. In many cases, the Iraq security forces themselves had been trained by the U.S.

Nothing in the Feinstein-McCain amendment speaks to this long-practiced method of torture by proxy used by U.S. intelligence, military, and law enforcement agencies.

"Everybody knows the deal is rotten"

It is highly unlikely that most Americans will hear anything negative about the Feinstein-McCain Amendment, except perhaps from right-wing types who lust for the good old days of CIA's "enhanced" torture brutality. But for the record, this amendment does nothing to stop torture.

Despite all the caveats and evidence I've gathered here, the truth is almost none of it will reach the ears or eyes of American citizens. But then, only the simulacrum of a reasonable debate on this policy is expected. The Establishment of respectable citizens, who make up human rights organizations and government-academic merry-go-round that employs them, has already spoken. The consensus has already been drawn.

But that doesn't mean the amendment is worth a damn. While no one is held accountable for disgusting and barbaric forms of torture, from driving people insane with music and bright lights, to holding them in solitary for years, to waterboarding or water immersion, to injecting blood thinner drugs into them so they can be forced to maintain body positions for hours on end, and much more worse ("rectal feedings"? no, anal rape)... while no one is held accountable for this, an anemic and mostly window-dressing reform is dressed up as something significant and sold by hucksters. Backing them are those sincerely anti-torture individuals and groups who still trust the usual authorities to do the right thing.

But none of that can hide what this amendment is: fraud, trickery, deception, the most meretricious sort of sham. The fact that some of those supporting the amendment are sincere and good individuals doesn't change a thing.

Crossposted at Firedoglake.com

How the Press, the Pentagon, and Even Human Rights Groups Sold Us an Army Field Manual that (Still) Sanctions Torture

Originally published at AlterNet -- If you wish to repost this essay you can download a .txt file of the html here (right click and save). Permission granted.

A January 17 New York Times editorial noted that Attorney General designate Eric Holder testified at his nomination hearings that when it came to overhauling the nation's interrogation rules for both the military and the CIA, the Army Field Manual represented "a good start." The editorial noted the vagueness of Holder's statement. Left unsaid was the question, if the AFM is only a "good start," what comes next?

The Times editorial writer never bothered to mention the fact that three years earlier, a different New York Times article (12/14/2005) introduced a new controversy regarding the rewrite of the Army Field Manual. The rewrite was inspired by a proposal by Senator John McCain to limit U.S. military and CIA interrogation methods to those in the Army Field Manual. (McCain would later allow an exception for the CIA.)

According to the Times article, a new set of classified procedures proposed for the manual was "was pushing the limits on legal interrogation." Anonymous military sources called the procedures "a back-door effort" to undermine McCain's efforts at the time to change U.S. abusive interrogation techniques, and stop the torture.

A Forgotten Controversy

Over the next six months or so, a number of articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the L.A. Times described the course of the controversy. By mid-June 2006, the NYT was reporting that, under pressure from unnamed senior generals and members of Congress (including McCain, and Senators Warner and Graham), the Pentagon was rethinking its plan to have a classified annex to the AFM, which would include a different set of interrogation rules for "unlawful combatants," like the detainees at Guantanamo. Included in the discussion about these classified procedures were, reportedly, members of the State Department and various human rights organizations.

According to an article in the L.A. Times, this latest fight over the classified procedures went back at least to mid-May 2006. The manual itself had been written at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, roughly a year earlier, and then sent to the Pentagon for further evalution. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's right-hand man, Stephen Cambone, was put in charge of its final draft. According the L.A. Times article, members of Congress were "keen to avoid a public fight with the Pentagon." The announcement that the controversial and still unknown procedures might not be included in the manual was seen as a success by human rights groups.

Yet the proverbial chickens never hatched, and by early September 2006 the new Army Field Manual was finally released. The section on special interrogation procedures for "unlawful combatants" was included as a special appendix (Appendix M), and published in unclassified format. According to a L.A. Times story on September 8, Cambone was crowing that the new Army Field Manual instructions would give interrogators "what they need to do the job." The article noted:

The new manual includes one restricted technique that will only be used on so-called unlawful combatants – such as Al Qaeda suspects – not traditional prisoners of war.

That technique, called “separation,” involves segregating a detainee from other prisoners. Military officials said separation was not the equivalent of solitary confinement and was consistent with Geneva Convention protections.

As for the proposed secrecy surrounding the new techniques, the Pentagon had decided it couldn't keep them secret forever. Senator Warner was also on record as against any classified annex to the manual.

Not long ago, I wrote about what was included in Appendix M, which purports to introduce the single technique of "separation." In fact, the Appendix M includes instructions regarding solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, and, in combination with other procedures included in the Army Field Manual, amounted to a re-introduction of the psychological torture techniques practiced at Guantanamo, and taught by Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, or SERE psychologists and other personnel at the Cuban base and elsewhere.

The rewrite of the Army Field Manual included other seemingly minor changes. It introduced dubious procedures, such as the "False Flag" technique, wherein interrogators could pretend they were from another country. It also redefined the meaning of "Fear Up," a procedure meant to exploit a prisoner's existing fears under imprisonment. Now, interrogators could create "new" fears. The AFM rewrite was a masterpiece of subterfuge and double talk, which could only have been issued from the offices of Rumsfeld and Cambone.

One would think this turnaround of the Pentagon's position regarding a removal of these controversial procedures would have been a matter of some note. But there was no protest from Congress, no mention of the past controversy in the press, and only vague comments at first and then acceptance by human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Only Physicians for Human Rights protested the inclusion of the techniques listed in Appendix M. For the rest... silence.

DoD Rolls Out the New Model

On September 6, 2006, a news briefing was held by the Department of Defense, as part of the unveiling of the new Army Field Manual, in conjunction with the then-new Defense Department Directive for Detainee Programs (DoD Directive 2310.01E). Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Cully Stimson and Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (G-2) Lt. Gen. John Kimmons were the DoD presenters.

Much of the belief that the AFM provides an improvement over previous policies of the Department of Defense is likely due to a confusion between the two documents introduced that summer of 2006, the new Detainee Program Directive and the new Army Field Manual.

DoD Directive 2310.10E made a number of changes in regards to detainee operations and management. It made clear that "All persons subject to this Directive shall observe the requirements of the law of war, and shall apply, without regard to a detainee’s legal status, at a minimum the standards articulated in Common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949..." The same type of language appears in the text of the Army Field Manual itself.

During the press briefing on September 6, and a different one the next day for the foreign press, reporters were not so easily fooled.

One unnamed reporter at the DoD briefing challenged Lt. Gen. Kimmons on the "single standard" issue:

Q General, why was the decision made to keep these categories -- the separate categories of detainees? You have traditional prisoners of war and then the unlawful enemy combatants. Why not treat all detainees under U.S. military custody the exact same way?

Kimmons's answer gives us insight into the kind of convoluted legal thinking that went into the Pentagon's rationale for the acceptability of coercive interrogation -- for some (emphasis added):

GEN. KIMMONS: Well, actually, the distinction is in Geneva through the Geneva Convention, which describes the criteria that prisoner -- that lawful combatants, such as enemy prisoners of war -- which attributes they possess -- wearing a uniform, fighting for a government, bearing your arms openly and so on and so forth. And it's all spelled out fairly precisely inside Geneva.

Geneva also makes clear that traditional, unlawful combatants such as in the -- 50 years ago, we would have talked about spies and saboteurs, but also now applies to this new category of unlawful -- or new type of unlawful combatant, terrorists, al Qaeda, Taliban.

They clearly don't meet the criteria for prisoner of war status, lawful combatant status, and so they're not entitled to the -- therefore to the extra protections and privileges which Geneva affords.

But Kimmon's clarification was not very helpful. In fact, if a prisoner is judged not a "lawful combatant", then he or she immediately becomes covered by Geneva IV, the "Civilian Convention," which protects anyone "who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever find themselves" held prisoner. According to the International Red Cross Commentary on the Geneva Conventions:

Every person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third [POW] Convention, [or] a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention.... There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can fall outside the law.

Separation and Sensory Deprivation

One questioner took on the topic of the "Separation" technique. Wasn't it the same as solitary confinement, and wasn't solitary confinement "banned by Common Article 3 in the affront to human dignity, other provisions? "Are you confident," a reporter asked, "that separation is permitted under Common Article 3?"

The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs responded by denying that separation amounted to solitary confinement, even though the AFM describes the technique as, among other things "physical separation" "limited to 30 days of initial duration." Extensions for such physical separation must be reviewed and approved the General Officer or Flag Officer who initially approved the original "separation."

Kimmons' reply was even more disingenuous:

We have always segregated enemy combatants on the battlefield at the point of capture and beyond, to keep them silent, segregate the officers from the enlisted, the men from the women, and so forth. That's traditional; it goes back to World War II and beyond.

So, is "separation" a matter of segregating prisoners, or what? In the Army Field Manual itself, one gets that same kind of double talk. At first it is presented thus:

The purpose of separation is to deny the detainee the opportunity to communicate with other detainees in order to keep him from learning counter-resistance techniques or gathering new information to support a cover story; decreasing the detainee's resistance to interrogation.

This description sounds a lot like segregation for security purposes, although there is that phrase "decreasing the detainee's resistance." A page or so later, however, we find the following (emphasis added):

The use of separation should not be confused with the detainee-handling techniques approved in Appendix D [Guide for Handling Detainees]. Specifically, the use of segregation during prisoner handling (Search, Silence, Segregate, Speed, Safeguard, and Tag [5 S's and a T]) should not be confused with the use of separation as a restricted interrogation technique.

Furthermore, we learn that "separation" requires an interrogation plan, and medical and legal review, as well, of course, as "physical separation." If this is not solitary confinement for the purposes of breaking a prisoner down for interrogation, then the English language has lost all purpose in explaining things.

Another line of questioning took on the AFM's contention that it banned sensory deprivation. The entire exchange at the September 6 hearing is worth reproducing here. It represents, among other things, the most thorough line of inquiry I have seen by any reporter in quite some time. The following quote contains added emphases.

Q General, as an expert in interrogations, do you believe that sensory deprivation was abusive, or did it ever prove to be helpful in interrogation?

GEN. KIMMONS: Sensory deprivation is abusive and it's prohibited in this Field Manual, and it's absolutely counterproductive, in my understanding of what we have used productively. Sensory deprivation, just to be clear -- and we define it in the Field Manual, but basically, it comes down to the almost complete deprivation of all sensory stimuli, light, noise, and so forth, and to the point where it can have an adverse mental, psychological effect on a -- disorienting effect on a detainee.

Q So could there be deprivation of light alone for extended periods of time, as opposed to complete sensory deprivation?

GEN. KIMMONS: I think the total loss of an external stimulus, such as deprivation of light, would not fit what we have described here as -- for example, if you're hinting about separation, separation does not involve the darkness or lack of that type of sensory stimulation.

Q That wasn't the question, though. Would sensory -- would the deprivation of light alone be permitted under the current manual, as opposed -- because you described sensory deprivation as total deprivation --

GEN. KIMMONS: That's correction.

Q -- of all senses. So deprivation of light alone for extended periods would be permitted?

GEN. KIMMONS: I don't think the Field Manual explicitly addresses it.

It does not make it prohibited. And it would have to be weighed in the context of the overall environment. If it was at nighttime during sleep hours, then it would make personal sense to turn the lights off.

Q You know what I'm talking about. I'm trying to get at -- because you said specifically total sensory deprivation -- so deprivation of any one sense might be permitted. Like light, for example. They could be kept in the dark for extended periods of time beyond the usual nighttime hours.

This is really too specific and challenging for the DoD briefers, and they turn on their double-talk machine:

MR. STIMSON: Jim, questions like this are good questions to ask. And what's important to remember is that interrogation plans are put together for a reason so that not just one person can decide what he or she wants to do and then run off and do it. They're vetted. It's laid out how they're vetted. General Kimmons could go into that in exhaustive detail. Typically, there would be a JAG, as I understand it, General Kimmons --

GEN. KIMMONS: That's correct.

MR. STIMSON: -- that would have to review that. It goes up through various chains of command. And so, you know, types of questions like this would have to be asked and then vetted through that process.

Burying the Story

With all the hard questioning by the press, you'd think the issues would have been aired in the media in the days and weeks following the introduction of the Army Field Manual. As should be evident by now, that's not what happened.

Here's how the L.A. Times covered it (9/6/06), getting the story exactly backwards (emphasis added):

Bowing to critics of its tough interrogation policies, the Pentagon is issuing a new Army field manual that provides Geneva Convention protections for all detainees and eliminates a secret list of interrogation tactics.

The manual, set for release today, also reverses an earlier decision to maintain two interrogation standards – one for traditional prisoners of war and another for “unlawful combatants” captured during a conflict but not affiliated with a nation’s military force.

There is no mention of Appendix M or any controversy over techniques. Jumana Musa, an "advocacy director for Amnesty International, is quoted as noting, "“If the new field manual embraces the Geneva Convention, it is an important return to the rule of law.'"

The 9/7/06 article in the Washington Post was, if anything, even more laudatory of the new AFM:

Pentagon officials yesterday repudiated the harsh interrogation tactics adopted since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, specifically forbidding U.S. troops from using forced nudity, hooding, military dogs and waterboarding to elicit information from detainees captured in ongoing wars.

The Defense Department simultaneously embraced international humane treatment standards for all detainees in U.S. military custody, the first time there has been a uniform standard for both enemy prisoners of war and the so-called unlawful combatants linked to al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other terrorist organizations.

The article falsely claims the AFM bans manipulation of sleep patterns. Regarding any controversy, the article explains:

Three expanded techniques -- good cop, bad cop; pretending to be an official from another country; and detention in a separate cell from others -- are allowed but require approval from senior officers. Officials originally considered keeping those three techniques classified but decided to make them public for the sake of full transparency.

The Post article also briefly mentions the generally positive response of human rights groups:

"This is the Pentagon coming full circle," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "This is very strong guidance."

As for the human rights organizations, Amnesty International later essentially signed off on the AFM. In an article from the Winter 2007 issue of Amnesty International Magazine, Jumana Musa, quoted in the L.A. Times article above, had this to say about the new AFM:

AIUSA also worked with U.S. representatives and senators to introduce legislation to create a single, transparent standard for interrogations and to limit the CIA to approved interrogation techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual.

In a telephone interview for this article, Mr. Malinowski said he supported using the Army Field Manual as a replacement for the CIA "enhanced interrogation techniques," and described the question of abuse in Appendix M as not entirely clear. The language in Appendix M was "ambiguous," and open to criticism due to a "lack of clarity." He maintained, however, that using the current Army Field Manual as a model was merely a beginning, and that a new overhaul of interrogation techniques was on the agenda.

A call made to Amnesty International's press contact regarding this issue, and an e-mail sent to Jumana Musa, were both unreturned.

Conclusion

Two conclusions can be drawn from the above examination of the "selling" of the Army Field Manual to the American public in the late summer of 2006 and beyond. One is that reporters on the beat were very aware of the origins and implications of the issues surrounding Geneva and the AFM, and the controversies surrounding the use of isolation and other techniques under the rubric of "Separation." The extremely muted or non-existent discussion in the mainstream press of these issues after the AFM was introduced means that a decision to suppress these issues was made at an editorial level, and were not the result of laziness or dilatory reporting on behalf of reporters.

Secondly, the role of some human rights organizations in promoting the new Army Field Manual -- in particular, the actions of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch -- are curious, to say the least. Press reports and the interview with Malinowski show that inclusion of certain human rights organizations in the vetting of the AFM started at the very beginning. We may not be able to find out what went on in the editorial offices of the nation's top newspapers, but we should know more about the discussions within the human rights organizations on how they advised, or were fooled, by talks with Bush administration and Pentagon personnel.

Meanwhile, other human rights organizations, such as the Nobel Prize-winning Physicians for Human Rights, have criticized the language and techniques described in Appendix M of the Army Field Manual, and called for rescission of the offending text. In a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in May 2007, Leonard S. Rubenstein, Executive Director of PHR, and retired Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, MD, former Commanding General of the Southeast Regional U.S. Army Medical Command, wrote:

The new Army Field Manual on human intelligence gathering... explicitly prohibits several SERE-based techniques, yet Appendix M of the manual explicitly permits what amounts to isolation, along with sleep and sensory deprivation. The manual is silent on a number of other SERE-based methods, creating ambiguity and doubt over their place in interrogation doctrine....

PHR, therefore, respectfully urges you to take the following actions:

1. Fully implement the OIG’s recommendation to “preclude the use of Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape physical and psychological coercion techniques” in all interrogations. (Id, pp. 29-30.) This includes rescission of Appendix M of the new Army Field Manual and specific prohibition, by name, of each of the known SERE-based methods and their equivalents.

It seems likely that the Army Field Manual, whether by executive order (most likely) or by legislation, will become the new "single standard" for U.S. interrogation. Press reports hint that the Obama administration may yet allow a loophole for CIA interrogators. I don't know how that will sit with the many military lawyers and officers who have been instrumental in opposing Bush/Rumsfeld's torture policies from the beginning. I'm thinking of people like Alberto Mora and Antonio Taguba, or the new nominee for DoD General Counsel, Jeh Charles Johnson, who apparently intends to seriously change the policies set by his predecessor, Jim Haynes.

In any case, the full history and controversy behind torture and U.S. interrogation policy deserves a full airing. What happened, for instance, between June and September 2006, allowing for Pentagon acceptance of the Appendix M abusive procedures? When it comes to the implementation of a host of torture and cruel, inhumane interrogation techniques by the U.S. government, both an investigation and prosecutions are needed.

It will be a challenge for our society to bring out the full story, while also bringing to justice those individuals who broke both domestic law and international treaty. We will need both investigations and prosecutions in order settle scores with the past, to understand where we stand now, and what we need to change to move forward.

Senate Report Nails Rumsfeld, Sets Up War Crimes Trial

They may not have meant to do it, but the Senate Armed Services' Committee released a report by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain that gives us the best timeline to date on administration decisions to begin torturing detainees. The report, an Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody, also describes the means by which both the Pentagon and the CIA approached agencies within government, leading to the very top of the Bush Administration, and how the latter rushed in a series of presidential orders, and memos by the Office of Legal Counsel, to redefine torture law in order to provide legal cover for their blatant violation of the laws of war and those against torture.

The Washington Post article covering these developments, Report on Detainee Abuse Blames Top Bush Officials, is listed as the most viewed item of the day. And for good reason, for anyone who knows how to read such material can see the bombshell that resides within.

Those in the anti-torture community are fond of repeating the fact that torture is a jus cogens norm, that is:

"a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of States as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character." Link

But when it comes to the question of prosecuting Rumsfeld and others for the crime of torture, it's generally accepted (by the mainstream media and cable punditry) that the Bush Administration has created sufficient legal cover for themselves, and that we will have to look to international intervention, under the concept of universal jurisdiction, to prosecute these individuals.

But even by their own pathetic lights, the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld troika and their assistants failed to protect themselves, as their rush to cover their tracks came TWO MONTHS TOO LATE. They are still trying to keep certain documents secret, it seems, and we must demand they see the light of day, so we can proceed with the prosecutions. (By "we" I mean an Obama Justice Department.)

Here's the key paragraphs in the narrative of the report, at least when it comes to the most vulnerable part of their defense against prosecution. Keep in mind that Levin/McCain begin their narrative with the "Presidential Order [that] Opens the Door to Considering Aggressive Techniques."

On February 7, 2002, President Bush signed a memorandum stating that the Third Geneva Convention did not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda and concluding that Taliban detainees were not entitled to prisoner of war status or the legal protections afforded by the Third Geneva Convention. The President’s order closed off application of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees.

So, now they think they are covered against violations of the Geneva Convention. But they didn't think, or they forgot that they were seeking to break, or already breaking the Geneva Convention, and a host of other treaties and laws, at least as early as December 2001.

Again, from the report (emphasis added):

In December 2001, more than a month before the President signed his memorandum, the Department of Defense (DoD) General Counsel’s Office had already solicited information on detainee “exploitation” from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), an agency whose expertise was in training American personnel to withstand interrogation techniques considered illegal under the Geneva Conventions.

JPRA runs the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, or SERE program, under which military personnel considered at risk of capture are "tortured" under controlled circumstances, with the aim of inoculating them against confessing or revealing secrets under pressure. The SERE program specialized in exposing its recruits to waterboarding, nudity, stress positions, degrading behavior, and sensory overload and sensory deprivation. It was slam everything but the kitchen sink against a person to make them break. During training there are doctors and psychologists around to keep these things from getting out of control. But some of these doctors or psychologists evidently thought they could use their knowledge of the program to "reverse-engineer" it and provide interrogation expertise to the military when asked.

And they were asked first in December 2001:

Given JPRA’s role and expertise, the request from the DoD General Counsel’s office was unusual. In fact, the Committee is not aware of any similar request prior to December 2001. But while it may have been the first, that was not the last time that a senior government official contacted JPRA for advice on using SERE methods offensively. In fact, the call from the DoD General Counsel’s office marked just the beginning of JPRA’s support of U.S. government interrogation efforts.

The subsequent contact between JPRA, SERE, SERE psychologists, the CIA, and Guantanamo personnel make up the bulk of the rest of the report, and is definitely worth pursuing, and very important in its own right. (In fact, I've written much on this previously during the Senate Committee hearings.) But right now I'm concentrating on the critical first approach.

After discussing the December 2001 contact between the Department of Defense and JPRA, the narrative jumps ahead to Spring 2002. The reason for the jump will soon be clear (emphasis added):

Beginning in the spring of 2002 and extending for the next two years, JPRA supported U.S. government efforts to interrogate detainees. During that same period, senior government officials solicited JPRA’s knowledge and its direct support for interrogations. While much of the information relating to JPRA’s offensive activities and the influence of SERE techniques on interrogation policies remains classified, unclassified information provides a window into the extent of those activities.

(U) JPRA’s Chief of Staff, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Baumgartner testified that in late 2001 or early 2002, JPRA conducted briefings of Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) personnel on detainee resistance, techniques, and information on detainee exploitation.

(U) On April 16, 2002, Dr. Bruce Jessen, the senior SERE psychologist at JPRA, circulated a draft exploitation plan to JPRA Commander Colonel Randy Moulton and other senior officials at the agency. The contents of that plan remain classified but Dr. Jessen’s initiative is indicative of the interest of JPRA’s senior leadership in expanding the agency’s role.

We can quite clearly see the use of classification as a cover-up of culpability and probable war crimes. This is doubly true for the classification of any materials between December 2001 and February 7, 2002, the date of Bush's presidential order suspending Geneva rights, because ALL abuse and torture before that date has no cover that even the worst right-wing and pro-military wingnut could find a fig-leaf of bogus legal cover. And that's important because we don't want to win a formal argument about how international law covers Bush, Rumsfeld, et al.'s crimes, we want prosecutions, here, now, in this country. Frankly, I think there are more barriers to bringing charges abroad, for fear of confronting the United States, and we need to set an example for the world ourselves anyway, and try and undo the tremendous damage these individuals have done.

The report goes into succinct detail about the further descent into lawlessness by the administration, the military, and the CIA; how some fought back and tried to protest (military lawyers, CID investigators, etc.), but in the end the administration kept pushing their torture agenda, until the final paper reached Rumsfeld's desk:

With respect to GTMO’s October 11, 2002 request to use aggressive interrogation techniques, Mr. Haynes said that “there was a sense by the DoD Leadership that this decision was taking too long” and that Secretary Rumsfeld told his senior advisors “I need a recommendation.” On November 27, 2002, the Secretary got one. Notwithstanding the serious legal concerns raised by the military services, Mr. Haynes sent a one page memo to the Secretary, recommending that he approve all but three of the eighteen techniques in the GTMO request. Techniques such as stress positions, removal of clothing, use of phobias (such as fear of dogs), and deprivation of light and auditory stimuli were all recommended for approval....

(U) On December 2, 2002, Secretary Rumsfeld signed Mr. Haynes’s recommendation, adding a handwritten note that referred to limits proposed in the memo on the use of stress positions: “I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?”

In the next days and weeks I suppose (and hope) a lot more will be written on this. I have aimed this essay at what I feel is a key revelation in the Senate committee's investigation and report, one that can and should lead to the filing of charges against Donald Rumsfeld, William Haynes, and a number of others. Whether Bush can be prosecuted for his actions as president I leave to the legal minds to ponder.

Oddly, in the conclusions section of the report, the authors leave out the December 2001 solicitation to JPRA and return to a timeline wherein JPRA was approached in July 2002 for information on SERE techniques:

That solicitation, prompted by requests from Department of Defense General Counsel William J. Haynes II, reflected the view that abusive tactics similar to those used by our enemies should be considered for use against detainees in U.S. custody.

I don't know why the Committee would bury in their conclusions an aspect of the timeline that was especially culpable for the administration. Perhaps they felt that with the classification of certain documents they didn't have enough facts to back up their contentions. In that case it is even more essential to call for a declassification of all documents on the torture timeline, and the incoming Obama administration should make this a first priority, if their claims to government transparency are going to carry any weight.

In any case, there's plenty more in the report to keep any war crimes tribunal busy, and also assist those in writing a true history of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I will close with this statement by the committee shooting down the myth that the torture at Abu Ghraib was the result of bad training or a few "rotten apples":

The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own. Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions, and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at GTMO. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002 authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody. What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely.

No kidding!

Onwards to a prosecution of the war criminals and return to civilized norms in the United States.

Also posted at Daily Kos

Tinfoil or Purposeful Paranoia: Is There a Coup Being Planned in the U.S.?

Like so many obscure warning signs, in and of themselves possibly unrelated or ridiculous when placed in combination, the chaos that seems to be swirling around the U.S. elections in the final week of September is unsettling.

First, the U.S. ruling governmental clique announces that financial Armageddon is at hand, unless Congress hand over approximately a trillion dollars to the direct control of the executive branch, under the ostensible leadership of the Secretary of the Treasury. While met with much derision and suspicion, it appears some version of this demand is going to be met with bipartisan support this week or next. (As I write this, breaking news announces an agreement has been made in Congress for Bush's $700 billion bailout.) Meanwhile, even such stalwarts of the system as the top archbishops in the Church of England are blaming the capitalist system itself for this crisis.

Second, there is the strange maneuvering of GOP Presidential candidate, John McCain, and his ersatz VP candidate, Sarah Palin. Both are running to cancel their debates. Palin will barely even speak to the press. And now McCain took the opportunity of the financial crisis to announce a suspension of his campaign!

McCain's move is unprecedented, and raised eyebrows and fueled the rumor mills of Washington, D.C. From afar, the whole apparatus of the election starts to feel somewhat shaky, or as U.S. comedian/talk-show icon, David Letterman, put it, "This doesn't smell right."

State of Emergency?

So with the economy supposedly tanking, the GOP candidate ducking, and Congress staggering to satisfy their financial backers, while avoiding massive constituent anger at home, we get this third knock upon the door:

Thursday, September 25, 2008:: For the first time ever, the US military is deploying an active duty regular Army combat unit for full-time use inside the United States to deal with emergencies, including potential civil unrest.

Beginning on October 1, the First Brigade Combat Team of the Third Division will be placed under the command of US Army North, the Army's component of the Pentagons Northern Command (NorthCom), which was created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with the stated mission of defending the US homeland and aiding federal, state and local authorities.

Army Times reports it this way:

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

Now, active-units have helped out in emergencies before, such as during Hurricane Katrina, but this seems to be something very different. This is no hurricane deployment:

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack....

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

So this is no ordinary deployment, and the 1st BCT is no ordinary brigage. They are the "Raider Brigade"!

In March of 2003, the 1st BCT was the first element of the 3d Infantry Division to cross the border into Iraq. The Raiders moved quickly north, fighting around the clock with regular and unconventional Iraqi troops.

After weeks of constant fighting, the Raider Brigade captured the International Airport, the primary strategic objective of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The Brigade earned its reputation – Raiders First! – as the first unit to fight its way into Baghdad.

Bringing the war home

Where is this sense of governmental emergency coming from? There's been no attack. Only weeks ago, the government bigwigs were adamant the "fundamentals" of the economy were strong. They were certainly painting a pretty picture upon a far more grim canvas than they would admit, but Armageddon? the army deployed with beanbag bullets and huge "non-lethal" weaponry to subdue "civil unrest." I must ask... what the fuck?

The one common denominator in all this is the fact that Bush and the GOP stand to lose power, and a subdued citizenry may have an executive in power that, while Obama is clearly no revolutionary, may allow an empowered populace to go farther in taking control over events in this country than the financiers, generals, and politicians wish to let things go.

Are they ready to end democracy, even the figleaf of it that remains after stolen elections and infomertial campaigns have robbed democracy of most of its content and left it a brittle, empty shell?

One thing is clear. Nothing is sacred to those who hold power. Their greed and lust to hold onto power, and their fear of being held accountable even the tiniest bit, appears to have whipped up the ruling elite into a frenzy of fear-mongering, impulsive theft, and a trigger-finger when it comes to oppressing anything that could challenge their power in a real way. We only have to look to the massive police presence and crackdown during the national political conventions to see how intent the ruling class is on maintaining the facade of "order."

In modern terminology, anything that threatens that facade is "terrorism" -- even legitimate political dissent and protest. Maybe even a legitimate political campaign. If the country weren't transfixed by the Wall Street mega-drama, the population should be calling for the de-deployment of the 1st BCT from U.S. soil. We don't need them for civil unrest emergencies... or does the government know something we don't?

It's starting to smell really bad in this country. Something feels like it's afoot, something more than the ordinary electoral tomfoolery. Or maybe I'm just paranoid. Consider National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 51:

... [which] specifies the procedures for continuity of the federal government in the event of a "catastrophic emergency." Such an emergency is construed as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."

The directive specifies that, following such an [catastrophic] emergency, an "Enduring Constitutional Government," comprising "a cooperative effort among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government," coordinated by the President of the United States, will take the place of the nation's regular government, presumably without the oversight of Congress.[3] .... The directive specifies that the president has the power to declare a catastrophic emergency and does not specify who has the power to declare said emergency over.

I know this posting will forever classify me as a paranoid freak to those responsible types who like to pejoratively label their opponents and file them away. But if you think I like to think this way, then you're the one with a problem. I didn't like to think the country I live in could aggressively start a war, kill hundreds of thousands and make millions refugees, with minimal protest at home. I didn't like to think the U.S. government, in conjunction with many scientists and members of the medical and psychological establishment researched torture for decades, then saw to its implementation.

I just hope this is one nightmarish fantasy I don't have to live to dislike having come true.

[After posting this, I came across this article by Naomi Wolf over at AlterNet:

Has Sarah Palin Been Picked as the Titular Head of the Coming Police State?

You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order to understand "Palin Power." A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable, weak figurehead at the fore. Then they will hold elections -- but they will make sure that the election will be corrupted and that the next affable, weak figurehead is entirely in their control. Remember, Russia has Presidents; Russia holds elections. Dictators and gangs of thugs all over the world hold elections. It means nothing. When a cabal has seized power you can have elections and even presidents, but you don't have freedom....

Under the coming Palin-Rove police state, you will witness the plans now underway to bring Iraqi troops to patrol the streets of our nation. This is not McCain's fantasy: it is Rove's and Cheney's.

Fred Thompson's Big Lie to RNC on McCain POW Story

Nothing is more wrenching, more emotionally volatile than the story of prisoners of war, no matter what the country or the cause: the torture they endure (or endured), and the mind-numbing horror of contemplating the inhumanity of those who do the torturing. McCain is playing on his torture history as POW in his run for the presidency. On Tuesday night at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, also-ran former Senator Fred Thompson gave a speech lauding McCain, and describing the suffering of the GOP presidential nominee when he was held as a prisoner by the North Vietnamese from 1967-73.

There is much that could be made of the lies, exaggerations, and ordinary political mischief in Thompson's speech. But one big lie stood out. In his narration of McCain's torture story, he changed one important fact. And since it bears on the larger question as to whether torture "works," it's worth mentioning here.

In his speech, Thompson said the following:

On October 26, 1967, on his 23rd mission over North Vietnam, a surface-to-air missile slammed into John's A-4 Skyhawk jet, blowing it out of the sky. When John ejected, part of the plane hit him, breaking his right leg, his right knee, his left arm and right arm in three places.

An angry mob got to him when he fell to the ground. A rifle butt broke his shoulder. A bayonet pierced his ankle and his groin. They took him to the Hanoi Hilton, where he lapsed in and out of consciousness for days. He was offered medical care for his injuries if he would give up military information in return.

John McCain said, "No".

After days of neglect, covered in grime, lying in his own waste in a filthy room, a doctor attempted to set John's right arm without success and without anesthesia. His other broken bones and injuries were not treated. John developed a high fever and dysentery. He weighed barely a hundred pounds. Expecting him to die, his captors placed him in a cell with two other POWs who also expected him to die.

But with their help, John McCain fought on. He persevered. [Emphasis added]

Too bad for Fred Thompson that McCain's own narrative of his torture and incarceration is online and available for anyone to read. "It originally appeared in the May 14, 1973, issue of U.S. News & World Report. It was posted online on January 28, 2008."

Truth and Lies

Thompson maintains McCain refused to give up military information to his captors in exchange for medical treatment, despite a broken shoulder, arms, right knee and leg, and also despite being pierced by a bayonet in his ankle and his groin. That's quite a hero, John McCain, to withstand such pain and terror. Except he didn't, and in his own words:

For the next three or four days, I lapsed from conscious to unconsciousness. During this time, I was taken out to interrogation—which we called a "quiz"—several times. That's when I was hit with all sorts of war-criminal charges. This started on the first day. I refused to give them anything except my name, rank, serial number and date of birth. They beat me around a little bit. I was in such bad shape that when they hit me it would knock me unconscious. They kept saying, "You will not receive any medical treatment until you talk"....

They wanted military rather than political information at this time. Every time they asked me something, I'd just give my name, rank and serial number and date of birth.

I think it was on the fourth day that two guards came in, instead of one. One of them pulled back the blanket to show the other guard my injury. I looked at my knee. It was about the size, shape and color of a football. I remembered that when I was a flying instructor a fellow had ejected from his plane and broken his thigh. He had gone into shock, the blood had pooled in his leg, and he died, which came as quite a surprise to us -- a man dying of a broken leg. Then I realized that a very similar thing was happening to me.

When I saw it, I said to the guard, "O.K., get the officer." An officer came in after a few minutes. It was the man that we came to know very well as "The Bug." He was a psychotic torturer, one of the worst fiends that we had to deal with. I said, "O.K., I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital." [Emphasis added]

A doctor came, but, in this interview, McCain said his physician was "completely incompetent," and that he was only taken to a hospital in the last analysis because it was discovered his father was an admiral. As we shall see, McCain changed the story somewhat in his 1999 autobiography.

An article by Ted Rall earlier this year said this about McCain's shoot-down over Hanoi:

McCain is lucky the locals didn't finish him off. U.S. bombs had killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians, many in Hanoi. Ultimately between one and two million innocents would be shredded, impaled, blown to bits and dissolved by American bombs. Now that one of their tormentors had fallen into their hands, they had a rare chance to get even. "About 40 people were standing there," On later recalled. "They were about to rush him with their fists and stones. I asked them not to kill him. He was beaten for a while before I could stop them." He was turned over to local policemen, who transferred him to the military.

Rall also notes that an Arizona Republic article from 2007 covered the issue of McCain's collaboration (I unfortunately could find no original link to the AR article):

After his capture, wrote the Republic, "He was placed in a cell and told he would not receive any medical treatment until he gave military information. McCain refused and was beaten unconscious. On the fourth day, two guards entered McCain's cell. One pulled back the blanket to reveal McCain's injured knee. 'It was about the size, shape and color of a football,' McCain recalled. Fearful of blood poisoning that would lead to death, McCain told his captors he would talk if they took him to a hospital." [Emphasis added]

Giving Up Information

There's also this article from Newsmax, dated November 29, 2005, titled "John McCain: Torture Worked for Me":

In his 1999 autobiography, "Faith of My Fathers," McCain describes how he was severely injured when his plane was shot down over Hanoi - and how his North Vietnamese interrogators used his injuries to extract information.

"Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I did not cooperate," he wrote.

"I thought they were bluffing and refused to provide any information beyond my name, rank and serial number, and date of birth. They knocked me around a little to force my cooperation."

The punishment finally worked, McCain said. "Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant."

Recalling how he gave up military information to his interrogators, McCain said: "I regret very much having done so. The information was of no real use to the Vietnamese, but the Code of Conduct for American Prisoners of War orders us to refrain from providing any information beyond our names, rank and serial number." [Emphasis added]

McCain is also on the record having broken under torture in other circumstances, even to the point of giving what he felt was false recantation of his actions as a U.S. pilot.

But this is not really an article meant to document the totality of Senator McCain's torture history. It is an article about historical falsification and the control of narrative by politicians today. It is also an article that I think highlights the mendacity of the McCain of 2008, a man who will let lies like Thompson's be told about him, who will change his position against torture to one that backs Bush's gleeful endorsement of "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the CIA, not excluding waterboarding.

There is even more harm done than the twisting of historical narrative in the service of political opportunism. That happens all the time. But the larger societal debate about torture is often discussed in terms of whether it "works" or not. Does torture produce reliable information? Can torture be reliably used to "break" individuals?

CIA on Whether Torture Works

McCain used to be an honest man. He was on record as saying torture can break a man down. He admits that, even though he tried to minimize the revelations, some information can be obtained via torture. Often enough that information is unreliable, or only partly true. And the CIA is certainly aware that torture is not the best way to get information from a captive. They say as much in their infamous Kubark torture manual:

Psychologists and others who write about physical or psychological duress frequently object that under sufficient pressure subjects usually yield but that their ability to recall and communicate information accurately is as impaired as the will to resist. This pragmatic objection has somewhat the same validity for a counterintelligence interrogation as for any other. But there is one significant difference. Confession is a necessary prelude to the CI interrogation of a hitherto unresponsive or concealing source. And the use of coercive techniques will rarely or never confuse an interrogatee so completely that he does not know whether his own confession is true or false. He does not need full mastery of all his powers of resistance and discrimination to know whether he is a spy or not. Only subjects who have reached a point where they are under delusions are likely to make false confessions that they believe. Once a true confession is obtained, the classic cautions apply. The pressures are lifted, at least enough so that the subject can provide counterintelligence information as accurately as possible. In fact, the relief granted the subject at this time fits neatly into the interrogation plan. He is told that the changed treatment is a reward for truthfulness and an evidence that friendly handling will continue as long as he cooperates.

The profound moral objection to applying duress past the point of irreversible psychological damage has been stated. Judging the validity of other ethical arguments about coercion exceeds the scope of this paper. What is fully clear, however, is that controlled coercive manipulation of an interrogatee may impair his ability to make fine distinctions but will not alter his ability to answer correctly such gross questions as "Are you a Soviet agent? What is your assignment now? Who is your present case officer?" [Emphasis added]

In any case, as recent events from Baghram and Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib indicate, the U.S. government certainly doesn't want to release torture from its arsenal. This is what the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which received strong backing from John McCain, was largely about. As to the empirical "success" of torture, we really don't know (unless the secret police agencies of the world open up their archives). But it's important to remember that fear of torture is a better elicitor of information than torture itself, and an interrogator wants something to present to the prisoner that makes that fear seem legitimate, that communicates total control and a dependent status to the captive. (Other interrogators rely on building rapport, a technique the CIA also embraces, while maintaining coercive techniques as part of the interrogator's arsensal.) For better or worse, this is one way to make a person talk, if they do talk or not. And not everyone does.

But most do. John McCain did. He is not to be criticized for this. It is only human, and the guilt he feels over it is far worse than any punishment he would merit for such "talking."

2008 Election and the Falsification of History

This leaves us with one glaring question: why did Fred Thompson lie so brazenly about John McCain's experience? The answer seems clear. They cannot handle the truth about torture. They are trying to present a hero-like image of their candidate that resonates with what their supporters know from human nature as gleaned from comic-book movies, video-games, and TV shows like 24, where the hero is beaten and shot repeatedly, but is always able to get back up and take on the bad guy.

Such pandering to the adolescent omnipotent fantasies of the electorate is dangerous. It threatens to cheapen what is a profound human experience -- being tortured -- and just at a time when the government is pushing to legitimate this brazen practice of inhumane criminality. It also sets up a dynamic in the electorate that emphasizes the irrational and the ignorant. It is an attack upon a reasoned discussion of the issues. It is a big lie, and it should be exposed and denounced.

McCain, POWs, & the Stab in the Back

I have never been tortured. But I have worked clinically with those who have, including U.S. POWs. I can tell you it breaks the mind and the body, the soul and the spirit, in a way that can never be forgotten.

Now John McCain cites his experience as a POW and torture victim as an anodyne to every mildly injurious political attack. While his painful experience as a POW matters in the history of the man, in our nation's history, what matters now is that McCain has betrayed that experience, and the lives of thousands he could both know and not know. In doing so, he also betrayed the ideals of American fair-play and justice, going back to George Washington (who forbid his revolutionary army to engage in torture, even if the British did). As everyone should know, those ideals were not realized fully, and we are still fighting for them today. But McCain has trampled them in the mud.

This is about how John McCain, a victim of years of incarceration and of torture during the Vietnam War, helped pass the Military Commissions Act, working to leave prisoners, including prisoners he knew were innocent, in solitary confinement as "enemy combatants", and subjected to CIA torture, which was the diabolical program of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Only a few months ago, one could find McCain railing against a Supreme Court decision that gave Guantanamo detainees the right to challenge their detention in a U.S. court. For McCain, who languished for years in prison, it is okay if America's prisoners rot in jail forever.

McCain betrayed the rights of prisoners established by the Geneva conventions, maybe rights he did not enjoy fully as a POW himself, so all the more awful when he betrayed them and turned captives of American military power into long-term prisoners and victims of torture.

One can honor the suffering of an individual, any individual, for no man is an island, and every person's suffering diminishes me. Therefore, one can honor John McCain's suffering and the hell he endured -- as we would any human being who experienced what he did.

But no one can honor the machinations of a shameless politician who prostitutes his own suffering, turns the moral lessons of his own torture on its head, and sells out all those who would endure what he endured... for the modern equivalent of thirty pieces of silver -- electoral office.

McCain stabbed his fellow POWs in the back. This isn't about whether he confessed under torture, or whether he funded veterans issues, or not. This is about how he took the lessons it was his sad destiny to suffer, and turned them into their opposite.

In pushing and voting for the MCA, with its provisions against habeas corpus, and its endorsement of so-called "enhanced" interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, McCain has committed a great moral sin. He has done this in the name of pride and power.

His defeat, his fall should be a lesson to all who would cynically pander their own hard suffering, and abandon those brothers and sisters in pain and loss, his fellow prisoners, captured in war or during civil conflict, held captive in nation after nation, by guerrilla or terrorist group, by the West or the East, by believer or infidel, prisoners both male and female, of all religions, creeds, and nationalities.

In the end it all comes down to this. When all eyes were upon him, McCain supported torture. And in doing so, he stabbed all prisoners in the back.

Also posted at Daily Kos

McCain/Scalia/WSJ Rally to Support Tyranny, Torture at Guantanamo

"No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed, or outlawed, or banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor send upon him, except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” 1

"One of the worst decisions in the history of this country.” 2

"The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." 3

"In considering both the procedural and substantive standards used to impose detention to prevent acts of terrorism, the courts must accord proper deference to the political branches. However, security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom’s first principles, chief among them being freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers." 4

"Boumediene concerns habeas corpus – the right of Americans to challenge detention by the government. Justice Kennedy has now extended that right to non-American enemy combatants captured abroad trying to kill Americans in the war on terror. We can say with confident horror that more Americans are likely to die as a result." 5

"The game of bait-and-switch that today’s opinion plays upon the Nation’s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed." 6

The Supreme Court decision to render unconstitutional the provisions of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that curtailed use of habeas corpus by detainees deemed "enemy combatants" by the Pentagon and held at the Guantanamo U.S. military base in Cuba has unleashed a spurt of vitriol from the right-wing establishment. As can be seen above, the Wall Street Journal has picked up the hysterical standard set forth by right wing ideologue Scalia in his blistering dissent to the Boumediene decision, accusing his fellow justices as nothing less than accomplices to murder. With John McCain jumping on the bandwagon, the GOP agenda for the fall campaign is thus established: a liberal Supreme Court, along with an ostensibly too-liberal and inexperienced Democratic candidate for President, are threatening our troops abroad, and making terrorist attacks at home a near certainty.

This demagogic assault on civil liberties is dangerous. Setting up your political opponents as criminals is a half-step away from indicating they are outside the pale of appropriate discourse. Such opponents can be targeted themselves by those who are only too ready to carry out the wishes of those they serve. But I consider even more ominous the likelihood that such outlandish statements represent the opinions of the military establishment, who have constructed the Guantanamo hell-hole, and wish to do their best to keep the torture and abuse there as secret and unnoticeable to citizen awareness as possible.

Suspension of Habeas and Techniques of Torture

Few understand, nor is it hardly ever mentioned, that indefinite detention is an integral part of the U.S. torture program. This program, no matter what its day-to-day contingencies (today waterboarding is in, tomorrow it's out... today hooding is in, tomorrow it's out) relies on three essential components: the inculcation of debility, dread, and dependency in prisoners held for torture and interrogation.

By debility, one means the breaking down of physical and psychological stamina. Common forms of effecting debility include the use of isolation, sleep deprivation, diet reduction, lack of access to needed medical procedures, stress positions, and sensory overload or deprivation -- all of which have been practiced at Guantanamo and other sites in Bush's "war on terror" prisons.

Dread is self-explanatory: it means making prisoners afraid, and the use of phobias and fear of the worst happening are two ways to produce this. (For instance, inducing fear of waterboarding is much more efficient than using waterboarding itself.) By dependency, the torturers mean producing a state where, as the CIA once put it:

Prisoners "... have reduced viability, are helplessly dependent on their captors for the satisfaction of their many basic needs, and experience the emotional and motivational reactions of intense fear and anxiety.... Among the [American] POW's pressured by the Chinese Communists, the DDD syndrome in its full-blown form constituted a state of discomfort that was well-nigh intolerable."

We might call this a smashing of hope in the prisoners' mind, an acceptance that his or her entire fate, his life, perhaps the lives of his or her family, rests with the incarcerating power.

If you allow prisoners the right to petition a court for their freedom, and to challenge the tyrannical exercise of executive authority, then you reduce the sense of total dependency that the torturers intend to perpetuate in their victims. This is why you hear the squealing from the apologists for U.S. torture, from right-wingers on the Supreme Court, to ostensible "moderate" on torture John McCain, who was tortured himself once, long, long ago. McCain has made an identification with the torturers of his own government, and this is not in itself so unusual, from a psychological point of view.

The particular reason for McCain's apostasy on torture is unknown to us -- perhaps it's guilt for talking under torture back in Vietnam, perhaps it's pure ambition and opportunism -- but one thing is certain, his current posture is anathema to anyone who opposes the use of torture and attacks on civil liberties, not to mention a militarist agenda that blithely suggests a war lasting for 100 years or more.

Make Torture a Central Issue

As much as Obama and his supporters like to keep the campaign against torture as something rolled out for special speeches and the like -- you won't find a word about torture by the Bush administration at Obama's campaign website -- the fight against torture is at the center of the struggle against Bush's war drive abroad and attack on civil liberties at home. Guantanamo's prison, which sits on a leased piece of land in Cuba, is a toehold for fascistic policies of torture and suspended civil rights to be implemented in the United States if and when the government deems it necessary. Already, the U.S. Naval Brig at Charleston, South Carolina has been the site of inhumane torture practices against U.S. citizen Jose Padilla.

The rhetoric is heating up. Bush and his backers fear that their untrammelled campaign projecting U.S. military power and influence abroad is threatened by the upcoming elections. They are desperate and will do anything to paint their opponents as traitors and criminally negligent adventurers. The miserable economy may make it impossible to effectively spread their message, but I wouldn't be too sure. The Democratic Party had best consider taking on the jingoistic, yellow journalism rhetoric of the right, if it is serious about defeating the right-wing agenda in this country.

Were the last, best defenders of democratic rights in this country five relatively old judges and a handful of constitutional attorneys? I know a lot of money is flowing into Obama's campaign coffers now, but that won't necessarily be enough to defeat Bush and Cheney's heir apparent. And even if McCain goes down in flames, a much bigger obstacle lies ahead for progressives in this country in the form of the myriad connections and influence of energy, technology, financial, information and military industries with the institutions of the army, navy, air force, and intelligence agencies... a tremendously larger obstacle.

1 Magna Carta, quoted in Boumediene et al. v Bush, Justice Kennedy's Opinion, p. 9

2 John McCain, GOP presumptive nominee for President, at a speech in New Jersey, commenting upon the Boumediene v Bush ruling, in "McCain Condemns Supreme Court Guantanamo Ruling", Wall Street Journal, June 13, 2008

3 U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2

4 Boumediene et al. v Bush, Syllabus [of Majority Decision], p. 8

5 Editorial, Wall Street Journal, June 13, 2008

6 Boumediene et al. v Bush, Dissent by Justice A. Scalia, p. 2