Thomas Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College"

Reposted via The Poetry Foundation:

Ye distant spires, ye antique tow'rs,
That crown the wat'ry glade,
Where grateful Science still adores
Her Henry's holy Shade;
And ye, that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below
Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowr's among
Wanders the hoary Thames along
His silver-winding way.

Ah, happy hills, ah, pleasing shade,
Ah, fields belov'd in vain,
Where once my careless childhood stray'd,
A stranger yet to pain!
I feel the gales, that from ye blow,
A momentary bliss bestow,
As waving fresh their gladsome wing,
My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And, redolent of joy and youth,
To breathe a second spring.

Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen
Full many a sprightly race
Disporting on thy margent green
The paths of pleasure trace,
Who foremost now delight to cleave
With pliant arm thy glassy wave?
The captive linnet which enthrall?
What idle progeny succeed
To chase the rolling circle's speed,
Or urge the flying ball?

While some on earnest business bent
Their murm'ring labours ply
'Gainst graver hours, that bring constraint
To sweeten liberty:
Some bold adventurers disdain
The limits of their little reign,
And unknown regions dare descry:
Still as they run they look behind,
They hear a voice in ev'ry wind,
And snatch a fearful joy.

Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed,
Less pleasing when possest;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,
The sunshine of the breast:
Theirs buxom health of rosy hue,
Wild wit, invention ever-new,
And lively cheer of vigour born;
The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light,
That fly th' approach of morn.

Alas, regardless of their doom,
The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day:
Yet see how all around 'em wait
The ministers of human fate,
And black Misfortune's baleful train!
Ah, show them where in ambush stand
To seize their prey the murth'rous band!
Ah, tell them they are men!

These shall the fury Passions tear,
The vultures of the mind
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,
And Shame that skulks behind;
Or pining Love shall waste their youth,
Or Jealousy with rankling tooth,
That inly gnaws the secret heart,
And Envy wan, and faded Care,
Grim-visag'd comfortless Despair,
And Sorrow's piercing dart.

Ambition this shall tempt to rise,
Then whirl the wretch from high,
To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,
And grinning Infamy.
The stings of Falsehood those shall try,
And hard Unkindness' alter'd eye,
That mocks the tear it forc'd to flow;
And keen Remorse with blood defil'd,
And moody Madness laughing wild
Amid severest woe.

Lo, in the vale of years beneath
A griesly troop are seen,
The painful family of Death,
More hideous than their Queen:
This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That ev'ry labouring sinew strains,
Those in the deeper vitals rage:
Lo, Poverty, to fill the band,
That numbs the soul with icy hand,
And slow-consuming Age.

To each his suff'rings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan,
The tender for another's pain;
Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.

-- Thomas Gray, 1742

Andy Worthington on Obama's False Guantanamo Promises (Video)

Andy Worthington has posted a video at his website highlighting his comments at a recent rally to free Shaker Aamer. The July 18 rally, called by the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, was held outside the UK Parliament building in London.

Besides talking about the just cause of discharging Shaker from Guantanamo, the last British prisoner held at the US military prison, who has been cleared by two administrations for release, yet still held indefinitely with dozens of others similarly cleared, Worthington concentrated on the recent promises Obama made to address the prisoners' situation.

Worthington wrote:

It is, of course, outrageous that Shaker is still held, as he was cleared for release under President Bush in 2007, and again under President Obama in January 2010, along with 85 of the other 166 men still held. Opportunistic opposition to the release of prisoners by lawmakers in Congress, and shameful inaction on the part of President Obama are responsible for keeping these 86 men in Guantánamo.

Moreover, there are still no signs that any of the men will be released, even though they have been on a hunger strike to highlight their plight since February, and two months ago President Obama, responding to unparalleled criticism internationally and domestically, promised to resume releasing prisoners.

I can scarcely express my disappointment with President Obama, who should not have promised to resume releasing prisoners if he had no intention of doing so, and who will be remembered for his cowardice and hypocrisy unless he is true to his word.

Andy's disappointment at the machinations over Shaker and the rest of the prisoners, and the ongoing obscenity that is Guantanamo is shared by many human rights workers and attorneys, but evidently not by the Obama administration, which has been been talking a good game (when pinned down) about closing Guantanamo and the need for humane treatment, but since taking over the reins of the prison from the Bush/Cheney administration in January 2009 has done next to nothing to act upon their empty rhetoric.

Here's Andy's video:

SOUTHCOM Commander Spins Latif Death Investigation to Justify Groin Searches

As reported by Kevin Gosztola in the 17 July Dissenter, a panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals stayed Judge Royce Lamberth's ruling overturning a search protocol at Guantanamo that included groin searches of detainees as much as four times in a single day.

Key to the panel's ruling was a written declaration by JTF-GTMO's parent command (SOUTHCOM) top officer, Marine General John F. Kelly. See detailed press coverage of the legal issues at The Public Record, the Miami Herald and the Washington Post, as well as a new report by the UK charity Reprieve, which details the controversy over the hunger strikes and the abusive practices of the Guantanamo military authorities. (Reprieve attorneys represent a number of Guantanamo detainees.)

Kelly's declaration presents a dishonest picture of the reasons underlying the changes in search protocols, and other policies, at Guantanamo in recent months. He does, however, note that the reason for the changes was the purported suicide of Adnan Latif last September, in addition to a more recent purported discovery of a stash of prisoner contraband. Kelly points out, an Army investigator found that Latif's death was due to an overdose of the antipsychotic medication paliperidone, also known as Invega.

The SOUTHCOM report was declassified and released thanks to a FOIA request from Jason Leopold, who also wrote a deep analysis of it for Al Jazeera. My own analysis of the report was posted at The Dissenter on June 29. An NCIS investigation into Latif's death has not been completed.

Kelly uses Latif's death to spin the conclusions from the SOUTHCOM report, conducted under Army regulation AR 15-6, to make it appear that Latif died because he was able to hide medications in his groin area. He ignores other conclusions and facts enumerated in the report. Let us look at what he says and what the report says.

What Contributed to Latif's Death?

According to Kelly's declaration, the AR 15-6 report "found that Latif hoarded medications and ingested them shortly before he was found unresponsive. Several factors, to include the prohibition against searching a detainee's groin area contributed to the ability of Latif to hoard the medications. The report found that the prohibition against searching a detainee's groin area created 'extraordinary opportunities for detainees to conceal contraband should they choose.'"

Kelly cites a recommendation in the report to reconsider the search policy that prohibits guards "from conducting searches of the area from the waist to above the knee of the detainees."

The declassified report had actually redacted the information about the groin searches, including the recommendation cited, so I am grateful to Kelly for updating us. But he artfully elides much of the content of the report, with the effect that the issue of groin searches is given much more weight than it deserves. The recommendation on searches, for instance, never is mentioned in the reports Executive Summary.

Kelly also gives tremendous credence to the testimony of Col. John Bogdan, the commander of Guantanamo's Joint Detention Group, which runs the prison. This is problematic because the AR 15-6 report blasts Bogdan's regime.

Even more, the report suggests that there was more to Latif's death than has been heretofore suggested by any military source. In the end, the report's conclusions, its failure to seek testimony from other prisoners, and its failure to recommend any accountability measures, mar the work fatally. But as is often the case, the devil we seek is in the details, and those do not bear out Kelly's claims. (I would like to know also where Kelly got the time reference that says Latif ingested the drugs "shortly" before he died. That's not in the declassified section of the report.)

According to the SOUTHCOM report, written by an anonymous "objective senior officer in the rank of Colonel," a number of factors were implicated in Latif's death. Among the various factors listed in the report's Executive Summary none of them included failure to adequately search prisoners.

The Executive Summary lists the following issues (emphases added):

* Guards and medical personnel "repeatedly violate" Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

* Guards failed to follow "line of sight" and medication SOPs, "and failed to take remedial measures after ISN156 [Latif] appeared to be sleeping an unusual amount of time. Medical personnel also violated the medication SOP

* Latif's ability to hoard medications (if we accept that is in fact what happened) was due to "inconsistent JDG [Joint Detention Group] and JMG [Joint Medical Group] SOPs" with respect to medication administration; "confusion on the part of guards, corpsmen, leadership (camp, JDG, and JMG) regarding what the SOPs require; and failure to follow medication administration SOP requirements

* Flawed training and procedures for medical personnel.

* The JDG commander (Col. Bogdan), and the JMG senior leadership (presumably including its Commander, Captain Richard Stoltz and Senior Nurse Executive), seemed "largely removed from several aspects of what is going on at the tactical level at the Behavioral Health Unit/Detainee Hospital and the camps.

* Poor communication by leadership "to ensure that their respective detainee operations practices and policies are consistent and synchronized."

* Failure of JTF-GTMO leadership to implement previous recommendations after other detainee deaths.

Later in the report, the SOUTHCOM investigator cites the various failures noted above and directly states, "These failures contributed to the death of ISN156 in that they permitted ISN156 to hoard medications" (p. 66) Nothing similar is said about hiding or hoarding medications in one's private parts. Instead, the report notes various failure to follow SOPs as contributory to Latif's death, as when guards failed to act when Latif supposedly used food to obscure the camera lens used to observe him electronically.

Perhaps General Kelly would like to explain to the full D.C. panel of judges why a more rigorous and intrusive search policy is necessary after Latif's death when the hoarding of drugs is not attributed to search policy in the investigatory report (at least the part publicly released, and summarized without redaction in the Executive Summary). Instead the report attributes the death, at least in large part, to failure to follow SOPs, lax discipline, poor coordination, and an out-of-touch or negligent leadership.

Who Wrote the Email Predicting Latif's Death?

All of that would be damning enough -- indeed, Leopold's article described how the AR 15-6 investigation found that a "widespread breakdown of safeguards" and a "systemic breakdown" contributed to Latif's death. But the report describes other incidents that are not fully explained, and indicate we do not yet have the full story about Latif's death.

The narrative around the failure to maintain the line of sight surveillance of Latif -- an order that encompassed both direct (eyeball) and electronic line of sight observation -- is never adequately explained in the report, seemingly because the crucial sections are highly censored. Indeed, even investigators may have been stymied in finding the truth, as the report notes how a failure by the Watch Commander "to make the line of sight entries into [camp database] DIMS as required by SOP.... did make it difficult after the fact to re-create the immediate events leading up to the point that the guards found ISN156 unresponsive."

In addition, while we know that drugs were simply left in Latif's cell tray (or "splashbox") the day he died, supposedly he never took those drugs as he had already overdosed. But the report notes this kind of SOP violation (leaving drugs unsupervised for a detainee) may have occurred numerous times before. "Similar failures by medical staff over time, to follow the SOP may have contributed to ISN156's ability to hoard medications," the report states.

All of the above would be more than enough to throw grave doubt upon the conclusions of the report, but we also must consider the fact an internal email warning that if Latif was moved he would commit suicide was sent to Col. Bogdan on September 7, 2012 -- the day Bogdan ordered Latif's move from the detainee hospital to a isolation punishment cell in Guantanamo's Camp V. (A medical officer okayed the move at Bogdan's request, even though, as it turned out, Latif suffered from pneumonia and never should have been moved, no matter what his psychiatric condition.)

The report states on September 7, "around 1400, a [one word redaction] analyst from the [four or five word redaction -- possibly Behavioral Science Consultation Team?] arrived with a Force Protection Report indicating [one word redaction] was saying that ISN156 was suicidal and was going to kill himself. [One or two word redaction] recalled asking the analyst whether he knew what method ISN156 intended to use to kill himself. The analyst indicated that he did not know and followed up the exchange with an email."

A footnote notes it was this very warning that prompted the order to place Latif on both direct and electronic line-of-sight surveillance.

The report continues (p. 20): "the JTF-GTMO Cultural Advisor ([three or four words redacted]) also received the same Force Protection Report, in a high priority email at 1430 on 7 September 2012. [One or two words redacted] forwarded the email to COL Bogdan, [two or three words redacted] (the Deputy JDG Commander), and others in a high priority email, adding that 'pushing 156 to the corner never works to our advantage.' COL Bogdan indicated he was not aware of the email until sometime the following day, Saturday."

Elsewhere in the report, returning again to the 7 September "high-priority" email, the report continues: "Although COL Bodgan did not receive the email until the following day, he stated that it would not have affected his decision to transfer ISN156 to Camp V, because ISN156 was known to make 'melodramatic' statements. In this instance, COL Bogdan acted reasonably as he had to address the frequent misconduct by ISN156. On balance, the suicidal ideation did not stand out compared to any of the other instances" (p. 64).

But SOUTHCOM's own report suggests otherwise. Indeed, just how many "high-priority emails" were sent to COL Bogdan or his predecessors warning of a detainee's suicide? It's also worth noting that other news reports describe Latif saying camp authorities were pushing him "towards death every moment." Latif also complained to his attorney David Remes that guards were leaving contraband in his cell by which he could hurt himself. To my knowledge, no investigation into this charge has ever taken place.

SOUTHCOM must release the relevant emails and indicate exactly who sent and received them.

Conclusion

There are other aspects to the Kelly declaration that do not fit what SOUTHCOM'S own investigators found. For instance, Kelly says that he discussed changing the search protocols with Bogdan after he arrived at Guantanamo in November 2012. But the AR 15-6 report stated, "The OIC (Officer-in-Charge) of teh BHU/DH and Camp Iguana indicated that COL Bogdan called the Camp OICs into his office on 24 September 2012 to discuss a modified search program and an implementation process."

We don't know if Bogdan addressed that in his own declaration to the court on the search issue, and Kelly's own declaration ends with a plea to the court not to release Bogdan's statement. Jason Leopold has filed a suit for the release of Bogdan's declaration.

For many years now the military, including its authorities posted to Guantanamo, have shown themselves unable or unwilling to be truthful about events. It seems likely that the SOUTHCOM report went as far as they are generally willing to go to issue criticisms, yet even then it remains what Latif's attorney called it, "a whitewash." It is worth reminding ourselves that no officer in charge has ever been held accountable for promulgating a policy of torture or abuse of prisoners.

We don't know what really happened to Adnan Latif. Congress seems totally uninterested in pursuing it. Mainstream reporters cover mostly the government's spin. Progressive bloggers have abandoned the subject nearly entirely. Human rights attorneys battle on, but fatigue and demoralization lie ahead if the American people continue to ignore the pressing issues of abuse and non-accountability. In an age when domestic drones are operating in U.S. skies, and hunger strikes and onerous conditions of imprisonment spread within U.S. borders, the fight over Guantanamo isn't about only Adnan Latif, or the 166 detainees remaining at the prison, half of whom languish though cleared for release, it's about the fight for human dignity and the rule of law.

Originally posted at The Dissenter/FDL

Book Review - Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

It's been 15 years since author Allen Hornblum's landmark book on unethical human experimentation in U.S. prisons, Acres of Skin, was published. His new book, written with co-authors Judith L. Newman and Gregory J. Dober, is a worthy follow-up to the earlier book. Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America should become a standard work in the fields of medical ethics and history of science. It has received favorable reviews by the Associated Press, the Boston Globe, the Spectator," and other publications.

Against Their Will is an extraordinary work, a plea for humanist ethics in science and medicine as against political and economic expediency. It takes us into even darker places than Hornblum's earlier book as it examines the long history of unethical experiments done on children in America. Hornblum and his co-authors trace the hideous practice of using children, even infants and pregnant women, as guinea pigs, back to the ideology of the eugenicists in the early 20th century.

Ostensibly practicing science in the heroic mold -- science was to cure all of mankind's ills -- doctors and scientists turned to the youth warehoused in orphanages, children's homes and hospitals as apt subjects for medical and other experiments. The children, who could not make any informed consent, were often labelled "feeble-minded," or were children with Downs Syndrome or cerebral palsy, or were just too poor and illiterate to make any fuss. Their parents often were not notified of the experiments, or they were overtly or subtly coerced to give consent.

The result was a series of experiments in hospitals and children's homes -- like Vineland, Willowbrook, or Wrentham -- seeking cures or treatments for pellagra, ringworm, hepatitis, diphtheria, and any number of ills. But the experiments wreaked untold and possibly still unreported havoc on the young children involved. One child subject the authors interviewed years later in adulthood insisted that some victims at Fernald State School in Massachusetts were "buried out there in paupers' graves... They killed them" (p. 146). Some of the experiments involved treatments for birth control, including use of forced sterilization and castration.

The children used as experimental subjects were often deliberately infected with diseases, and then given experimental treatments (many quite dangerous), or even no treatment at all, the better to observe the natural course of the disease for science's sake. Dr. Albert Kligman, a key figure in Hornblum's Acres of Skin, reappears in this new book, deliberately introducing ringworm fungus into experimentally induced wounds on retarded children, and withholding treatment to observe the course of the disease.

Between the early negative eugenics inspired experiments and the later use of children as experimental subjects, the monstrous example of Nazi science and bizarre and deadly medical experiments cast a shadow across the subsequent decades. Hornblum et al. describe the rise and rapid fall of the Nuremberg protocols, which were generally ignored by U.S. doctors and scientists. These professionals eviscerated the ethical commands around informed consent. One doctor, associated with the Army Epidemiological Board, is quoted as criticizing "the Nuremberg specter", which drives out "rational approaches" to using children as human subjects in medical research (p. 66).

But as the title of the book suggests, it was Cold War exigencies that gave medical and scientific researchers seeming carte blanche to conduct experiments on children (and prisoners, and elderly patients, and even prostitutes' clients), and all in the name of national security and protection from communism. Hornblum and his co-authors do an excellent job in explaining this complex history, and showing how the Department of Defense, the Atomic Energy Committee and the CIA funded experiments, including use of electric shock and LSD.

The book describes the work of noted child researcher Lauretta Bender, known for her famous Bender Gestalt Test, taught to generations of psychologists, who used both electric shock and LSD on children deemed schizophrenic or behaviorally disordered. Many of these experiments were reported in medical or psychological journals, discussed at public conferences. (Hank Albarelli and I explored some of this history as well in a 2010 article at Truthout.) In the Cold War environment that prevailed, few saw any problem with using children this way. Few objected they represented a vulnerable population.

The authors repeatedly show that these kinds of experiments were not isolated instances of medical or scientific malfeasance, but were part of science's mainstream culture. A radiation experiment on children conducted at the Wrentham State School for "feebleminded" and "defective boys" in Massachusetts, where children were injected with radioactive iodine, "was coordinated by researchers from Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Boston University School of Medicine, and it was supported by the Radiological Health Division of the US Public Health Service" (p. 145). Behind the Cold War and eugenicist rationalizations, the authors demonstrate that careerist ambitions and stubborn narcissistic self-aggrandization were contributory causes to the sorry history they describe.

The revelations surrounding such celebrated cases of medical experimentation -- especially the Tuskegee experiments on African-American men and the Radiation experiments by the AEC and others -- led to the rise of more stringent ethical safeguards and the rise of institutional review boards, and some of the worst practices fell into disuse. Yet the authors document use of medical or psychological experiments on children even into the 1990s. They warn, as well, that much of the experiments on children have been placed off-shore, to other countries with less oversight, far away from the prying eyes of U.S. media.

This is a hard book to read. Not because it is difficult to read. On the contrary, it is quite well written. It is hard because the subject matter is so harrowing. The character of Albert Kligman loomed over most of Acres of Skin, and to a certain extent, helped unify that book. While Kligman briefly is mentioned in Against Their Will, the new book has no such unifying figure. Instead, there is a long list of doctors and scientists whose practices are made understandable by linking them to the larger themes around eugenics and the aims of the Cold War.

There is a happy myth propagated by educators and the media. It begins with the horrors of Nazi medicine -- of Mengele and the Nazi concentration camp doctors, of euthanasia and inhumane experiments -- and ends with justice at Nuremberg, and the formation of humane ethical protocols recognized by all humanity. The truth, however, is sadly quite different. The Tuskegee experiments turn out not to have been an abherration.

Whether it was the U.S. amnesty to the Nazi-like doctors of Japan's Unit 731, or the kinds of experiments Allen Hornblum has described in U.S. prisons, orphanages and state hospitals, or the recent revelations of post-World War II U.S. Public Health syphilis experiments on illiterate women in Guatemala, or even revelations about the "battle lab in the war on terror" that was experiments on interrogation and torture at Guantanamo, the reality of what was revealed at Nuremburg challenges our myth of being a "civilized" or humane world.

I imagine this book took a lot out of its authors. I imagine it will powerfully affect its readers as well. It should. When such reaction to terrible crimes and callous disregard for human welfare, especially for those most powerless among us, disappears, then we should be very, very afraid.

[Full Disclosure: I spoke briefly with Allen Hornblum during the period he was researching Against Their Will, and am listed in the Bibliography as someone interviewed for the book. Truly, my contribution was miniscule, speaking with Mr. Hornblum for a few hours one evening, and exchanging some emails. Still, I wish to state for the record that no one associated with this book made any input into this review, nor did I receive anything for writing it. I did, however, receive a free review copy of the book from the publisher, but without any formal agreement I would write any review of it.

This review has been expanded from an earlier review posted at Amazon.com.]

Crossposted from MyFDL

New DoD Report Details Nightmare Leading to Gitmo Detainee's Death

In response to a September 2013 FOIA request by Jason Leopold filed with the Department of Defense, U.S. Southern Command released an official Army Regulation 15-6 investigation into the "facts and circumstances" surrounding the September 8, 2012 death of Guantanamo detainee Adnan Farhan Abd Latif.

The tenor of the report is captured in the fact that after the report's first page, Latif is almost never referred to by name but only as a number: ISN156. Additionally, the stressors of indefinite detention, "forceful cell extractions" (beatings), isolation, and other forms of abuse and torture are practically never mentioned, while camp medical authorities are quick to label the young traumatic brain injury victim someone who is personality disordered and antisocial.

Last December, U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) stated that Latif died from a suicidal overdose of a prescription drug, complicated by acute pneumonia. The current report details what drugs were found in Latif's body, and provides the military's version of the events surrounding the Yemeni detainee's death.

The report states that 24 tabs of the antipsychotic drug Invega, or paliperidone, a drug similar to risperidone, were found in the dead man's stomach at the time of his death. Latif was given two tabs each day of the powerful antipsychotic (one tab of 6mg, one tab of 3mg), supposedly for agitation related to manic states of bipolar disorder.

Other drugs were found in his system as well, including another antipsychotic drug, Seroquel. Both drugs are known to cause a cardiac condition that can lead to dangerous heart arrhythmias, and even cardiac arrest, especially when combined as they were. There is no mention in the report of the possible effects of mixing and changing these drugs. Other drugs found in Latif's body included the powerfully sedating antidepressant Remeron, the antidepressant Celexa (which he was supposedly being weaned from), the tranquilizer Ativan, and various painkillers, including Percocet and codeine.

The report confirms that there was an attempt to switch Latif to monthly injections of Invega, "administering the medication against ISN156's will," as the report puts it. The plan was submitted to a "Healthcare Ethics Committee" at the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Virginia. The committee approved the plan in late August 2012, but it appears the changeover to injections had not taken place before Latif died.

Contradictory SOPs, Lax Enforcement

The report confirms statements reported in a Truthout article by Jason Leopold last January that "long-standing standard operating procedures" (SOPs) at Guantanamo were not being followed or enforced.

But the report goes farther than that and states that differences between how SOPs are formulated between Guantanamo's medical and detention/guard commands cause confusion among camp personnel. The report cites failure to adequately train personnel, failure to hold anyone accountable for not following standard procedures, and failure to do anything about this even when similar problems were specified in earlier reports as needing remediation.

The lax protocols on drug administration were particularly dangerous, as drugs would at times be left out on trays and it was not observed if Latif had taken the drugs or not. The report hints Latif was not alone as the recipient of such lax methods. Still, portions of the report that describe how Latif could have hidden drugs despite searches, were heavily censored. The same censorship affected portions of the report that described what happened with the so-called line-of-sight surveillance of Latif the day he died.

The report describes a health care and guard-detention regime at the Cuban-based US military base that is unprofessional, sloppy, confused, and subservient to military command. But even worse is the Joint Task Force - Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) command, who failed to implement what SOUTHCOM investigators described as "many of the required changes identified in previous detainee death investigations."

The failure was fatal to Adnan Latif, a traumatic brain injury victim falsely labelled a terrorist, and only years later cleared for a release that never came. Instead, it seems, his conditions of confinement and despair over ever being released led him to make numerous suicide attempts and suicidal statements, and carried him into the far reaches of psychosis.

Poor medical practice surely played a role as well, as the report noted that an outstanding request for Latif's records for his head injury from Jordanian authorities remained unmet at the time of his death.

Latif's bizarre and obscene behaviors under the stress of incarceration were known to be too difficult for guards to long witness. "Another guard noted it was 'horrible' to be on line of sight duty for ISN156" because of behaviors so awful or strange they were redacted in the report.

The stress induced on Latif must have been incredible. Beyond the interrogations and the torture, this new report details that he was "moved from camp to camp over 67 times." In other words, his living quarters were changed on average over two times a month for ten-and-one-half years! SOUTHCOM felt it had to address this, and stated (without any supplied proof) "the moves themselves did not contribute to the detainee's death." But they were less sure about the final move, the third move for Latif in the two weeks before his death.

Bogdan Orders the Move

When Latif was told to return to Alpha Block in Camp V, an unnamed detainee told them it would result in Latif committing suicide, due apparently to bad experiences Latif associated with a previous incarceration there.

Instead of raising concerns, the report states Col. John V. Bogdan, the Commander of JTF-GTMO's Joint Detention Group, requested Latif be moved from the Behavior Health Unit at the Detainee Hospital to Camp V for "discipline" three or four days before the Senior Medical Officer and an unnamed official (though most likely either Latif's psychiatrist, psychologist, or primary care doctor) had planned a return of the beleaguered prisoner to a communal section of Camp V.

As the report describes it, on the morning of September 7, the day before he died, Latif refused his medications. He reportedly was quite unhappy because his portable urinal had been taken from him, because in throwing it, he had supposedly splashed a guard with urine. Furthermore, there allegedly had been a long history of such behavioral infractions.

So on the morning of September 7, Latif wrote a note to the Watch Commander that "[redacted]" (from the sense of the report his psychiatrist or another female medical official) was "'rushing him towards death' and that she was the 'cause of the problems in the detainee hospital.'" Latif asked the note be sent to Col. Bogdan.

The report does not say what the Watch Commander did with the note, but that same morning, Col. Bogdan contacted an unnamed medical official (again, I surmise the psychiatrist, but it could have been a different person) and asked "whether there was a  medical or psychiatric reason that would prevent ISN156 from serving his discipline time" right away. Seeming to bow to the pressure from a senior officer, the unnamed medical officer responded that Latif's behavioral infractions were "'very volitional behavior' and there was "no psychiatric reason" to prevent ISN156 from serving his discipline time."

Nevertheless, the report also cites a "Force Protection Report" an "analyst" brought to officials the afternoon of September 7 "saying ISN156 was suicidal and was going to kill himself." Apparently, JTF-GTMO's Cultural Advisor got the same report and sent it to Bogdan "and others" in "a high-priority email." Bogdan supposedly never saw it, but indicated to investigators that even if he had it wouldn't have made any difference to him.

Meanwhile, both medical and guard personnel were so worried about Latif's transfer to a solitary cell in Camp V's Alpha Block they took special precautions to move him in such a way "so as not to alert other detainees of ISN153's pending transfer."

The SOUTHCOM investigators stand by Bogdan's decision. "In this instance, COL Bogdan acted reasonably as he had to address the frequent misconduct by ISN156. On balance, the suicidal ideation did not stand out compared to any of the other instances."

Missing Data, "Emergency Medication"

The report notes Latif was put in his cell under line-of-sight surveillance, including by closed circuit camera. According to the report, Latif smeared food to cover the camera lens, but nothing was done about this. Two other detainees in Camp V were reportedly able to see right into Latif's cell, but there is no indication that they were interviewed by Army investigators, leading Latif's attorney to call the new Army investigation "a whitewash." (A separate investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service is still said to be underway.)

According to the AR 15-6 report, confusion over how to implement the line-of-sight protocol, due to lack of training and a generally lax attitude about following SOPs with detainees, and especially with Latif, "contributed to the death of ISN156." Unremarked by mainstream press accounts thus far, the report also notes a disturbing failure to enter crucial data into the Detainee Information Management System (DIMS) the day of Latif's death, even though there is a specific SOP that governs the entry of such data during line-of-sight observation.

No guard stated they saw Latif take medications. They also thought it was strange, in retrospect, that Latif would be sleeping for 12 hours or more.

But elsewhere in the report, investigators describe an August 2012 incident when a period of reported agitation by Latif led to a forceful takedown with "emergency medication." This consisted of three shots, one each of the tranquilizer Ativan, the antipsychotic haldol, and the sedating antihistamine Benadryl, which is applied to counter the negative side effects of the haldol.

Last year a DoD Inspector General report on the drugging of detainees, also released to this author via FOIA, detailed the use of "chemical restraints" upon detainees, and it is likely that such "chemical restraints" and the "emergency medication" used on Latif are one and the same thing.

In any case, the new report describes how Latif "slept from 12 to 14 hours" after the "emergency" sequence of injections. So it is possible guards had good reason not to find it so strange that a detainee might be asleep for 12 hours or more after such chemical "discipline."

The report also details how the final "downward spiral" for Latif began after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the reversal of his habeas appeal for release in June 2012. Latif was "furious" and "saying 'crazy stuff'" after a phone call with his attorney David Remes, who broke the terrible news to him. Yet this insight by the military investigators is saved for a footnote, while medical authorities describe the depressed prisoner as "manipulative" and "wilful," a behavioral management problem for the guards.

What About the Pneumonia?

In December 2012, an official SOUTHCOM statement concluded, "Mr. Latif died of a self-induced overdose of prescription medication. The medical examiner also concluded that acute pneumonia was a contributing factor in his death."

But in the new SOUTHCOM report, while the cause of death is specified as "paliperidone [Invega] toxicity resulting from an overdose," the autopsy is now described as saying the Armed Forces Medical Examiner "is uncertain to what extent the acute pneumonia contributed" to Latif's death. Accordingly, the report never asks or comments on how Latif was shifted from the Detainee Hospital to solitary confinement in a disciplinary cell in Guantanamo's Camp 5 without anyone noticing he had "acute pneumonia."

The medical regime at Guantanamo appears to reproduce the worst kinds of practices of U.S. managed care. So while the report states the Camp V Officer-in-Charge told investigators she fields "five to seven Code Yellows per week" -- that is, "a potentially life-threatening medical condition requiring an immediate response" -- the Detainee Hospital does not staff doctors on weekends. Latif died on a Saturday.

In a final strange aside to the Army's report, it's revealed that "coincidentally" Latif's mother died on the same day as her son. The report does not state her cause of death.

Originally posted at The Dissenter/FDL

Homer Quincy Smith: "I want Jesus to walk with me"

The mysterious, unknown Homer Quincy Smith walked out of the black American South and recorded two unforgettable performances, then drifted back into the anonymous depths. "I want Jesus to walk with me," an African-American spiritual was one of them. (The title of the song says "talk with me," but the lyrics, and Smith sings accordingly, says "walk with me".)



As commenter Chris Alvarez states:

Why don’t they have music like this in church anymore? This negro spiritual confronts the same post-modern landscape as No Church in the Wild. Along with the strains of a haunted house organ, Homer Quincy Smith pleads for Jesus to walk with him:

I want Jesus to walk with me
I want Jesus to walk with me
All along my pilgrim journey
I want Jesus to walk with me

As night is falling, Lord, walk with me
As night is falling, Lord, walk with me
When the shades of evening fall o’er me
Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me

What the evangelicals with their guitars and drums and the Baptists with their frenetic gospel and the Presbyterians with their acoustical majesty and the Episcopalians with their choral Bach seem to have totally forgotten is that to ask Jesus to walk with you is an act of insane desperation, because the pilgrim journey is really fucking hard, and there’s no guarantee you’re going to get what you want.

Keep on marching my sisters and brothers.

If this music touched you, check out Smith's other haunting masterpiece, "Go Down Moses."

Hunger Striker Younus Chekhouri Describes the "Nightmare" Inside Guantanamo

The following is reposted with permission from Andy Worthington's blog. They represent notes from an attorney for the UK charity Reprieve, taken while on the telephone approximately three weeks ago with Younus Abdurrahman Chekhouri, a Moroccan detainee held without charges at Guantanamo since 2002.

In a previous article, Worthington described Chekhouri's background:

Chekhouri is accused of being a founder member of the Moroccan Islamic Fighting Group (or GICM, the Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain), who had a training camp near Kabul, but he has always maintained that he traveled to Afghanistan in 2001, with his Algerian wife, after six years in Pakistan, where he had first traveled in search of work and education, and has stated that they lived on the outskirts of Kabul, working for a charity that ran a guest house and helped young Moroccan immigrants, and had no involvement whatsoever in the country’s conflicts. He has also repeatedly explained that he was profoundly disillusioned by the fighting amongst Muslims that has plagued Afghanistan’s recent history, and he has also expressed his implacable opposition to the havoc wreaked on the country by Osama bin Laden, describing him as “a crazy person,” and adding that “what he does is bad for Islam.”

Chekhouri has with 84 others been cleared for release from Guantanamo, yet he remains incarcerated indefinitely due to current U.S. policy that appears stuck on maintaining the status quo at the U.S. military prison, which has long been associated with abuse and torture of prisoners. A hunger strike against conditions at the camp has been going on for months now, with over 100 of the 166 detainees participating, and dozens being force-fed. The force-feeding continues even though the AMA and world medical associations condemn this action as unethical.

Indeed, the World Medical Association states, "Forcible feeding is never ethically acceptable. Even if intended to benefit, feeding accompanied by threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment. Equally unacceptable is the forced feeding of some detainees in order to intimidate or coerce other hunger strikers to stop fasting."

In his phone call with the Reprieve attorney, Chekhouri describes what happened on April 13 when Guantanamo guards raided the prison's Camp 6, where many prisoners had been living communally, to force them into isolation cells as punishment for the hunger strike. Guantanamo authorities have said they had to do this because of acts of resistance from prisoners, such as covering up the omnipresent video cameras. Pentagon officials stated there were "clashes" with prisoners.

The following notes present a voice from within Guantanamo itself, so that the world can hear what is happening. Meanwhile, Andy Worthington reminds us, "If you have not done so, please also sign and share the petition to President Obama on Change.org, launched by Col. Morris Davis, which has secured over 185,000 signatures in just over a week!"

Notes from a phone call with Younus Chekhouri, April 18, 2013

“What has happened here now is real nightmare. Nobody dreamed that what has happened would happen. After our peaceful demonstration, on Sunday morning the guards came in with guns. They used shotguns and three people were injured. Used gun with small bullets.”

“The guards came in, closed all of our cells, [removed us from our cells and] told us to get on the ground. We lay there on our belly for three hours or more. They took everything. Cells empty, nothing left. They moved us into another empty block and after a while they gave us blanket and that is all. They said it’s punishment.”

“History repeats itself, like it was seven years ago. [All we can have now are] blankets and clothes [on our backs]. [The cell I am in now] is really cold.”

Younus said he is now in pain as a result of having to sleep on the concrete floor: “Pain starts immediately when I’m on the floor. Pain in my neck, pain in my chest. No pillow. Punishment for everybody. Punishment because we hide cameras in cell and so this is what happened. They took everything, left cell empty.”

Younus is still not eating. He has Ensure and Metamucil but that is it. He said others who are worse off than him are getting nothing at all.

When asked to give a chronology of how things happened on Sunday, Younus said: “I was sleeping on Sunday. At almost 5am guards came in with shotguns. There was no confrontation that prompted it. When I woke up I heard them using guns on the detainees in the block next door. The detainees didn’t have anything. The guards used force to control some of the detainees, to force them out of the cells. Used tear gas [as well]. 5-6 ERF team would come in and throw detainees to the floor.” [Note: ERF is a reference to the Extreme Reaction Force, an armoured five-man team responsible for punishing infringements of the rules -- or perceived infringements of the rules].

“[For hours on Sunday morning the detainees were forced to lay on their stomachs]. We had no right to move, no right to go to the bathroom.”

They shackled detainees’ hands and feet and moved them into individual isolation cells. “Finally at night they gave blankets. It was very cold in the empty cells.”

In terms of the number of guards that “invaded” the block: “More than 50 came in on my block and there were only 13 detainees on my block. Nobody [no detainees] thought to fight. What do we have to fight with? [Plus] we were outnumbered. Guards were scary, they were ready to use guns, use force. It was very scary.”

More about how Younus was awoken on Sunday: “Sunday I was sleeping. I heard people yelling outside, so I came outside of cell. Then I saw guards closing outside doors and the guards with guns. They used tear gas to keep detainees away. Heard sound of gun next door. Said three were injured: one on belly, one on hand, one on body. They were taken to hospital. Not sure how they are doing. Everyone is traumatized by what happened.”

“To be treated this way after 11 years is not right. They are using the same rules as first day of opening Gitmo.”

“Water now is privilege. There is no right to have water and they tell you that they can cut it at any time. I suffer all day. We don’t know when this will end. They said this is just the beginning. We were calling for things to get better, but things are worse.”

Younus is still in Camp 6, but in isolation.

“Nightmare has started again. I feel distress, anxiety, disease, anger. In the future no one knows what could happen, what to expect now that this has happened. Camp 6 now isolation. Everyone in his cell. Only 2 detainees can have rec at a time. Same rules as when Camp 6 was opened for first time in 2007. It’s like we are starting again from the beginning, like a game.”

Younus would like to “thank everyone who can save me from this hell. I have German connection. I would be grateful for them to help me be free. I am in a helpless place, I have lost hope in the democracy of the United States. I thought my torture had ended, but what is happening now is horrible. I feel like a slave in Gitmo. Thank anyone who can do anything to help people in Gitmo. I really need your help. My wish is that nice people around the world can help.”

On conditions now in camp 6: Younus is sleeping on “concrete, hard floor, very cold. Knees, head, body hurts. No pillows, hard to sleep. My shoes are my pillows. Pains in back. Cannot move, cannot pray, cannot get to toilet because I am in pain.”

“My dream is one day I will leave this place.” Younus seemed very anxious because of what happened Sunday and said that he’s “afraid that I will be punished and they will take everything I have now.” A blanket is all he has.

They have gone “back to 2002-2003.” Younus believes they did this so that detainees would “stop complaining or requesting things to be better.” He said they said: “You have no right to ask for your release and better treatment.”

Younus knew they were using the detainees blocking the cameras as a so-called justification for the raid because “when they invaded the block, they told us get on floor, lay on belly, don’t cover camera. Now using old rules, start practicing old rules. When you ask why, they say it’s because people were hiding cameras. They say they don’t know when things will get better.”

“No one [guards] will give answers why this [Sunday’s raid and loss of everything] has happened. Will it stay forever, or short time? No one says anything, just that this is punishment for hiding cameras. No way to negotiate now, we just have to obey.”

“People are old, sick and they cannot deal with this.” He said in many ways it’s worse now than when these same tactics were used 11 years ago because the men have aged and have been through hell in Gitmo all these years. “Unfair that they are back to treating us like animals.”

Younus has “now lost 35 lbs. Going down. Taking Ensure but weight is still going down.” He will continue to take Ensure himself because he “doesn’t want tubes in nose.”

Again, before the call ended, Younus wanted to “please say thank you to everyone out there.”

Also posted at The Dissenter/FDL

The Torture Memo Obama Never Rescinded

Nearly a year ago, I asked If Obama Withdrew the Yoo, Bradbury Torture Memos, What Goverment Opinion Now Covers The AFM and Appendix M? The question has direct relevance today, because the Army Field Manual on interrogation (FM 2-22.3) and its Appendix M governs current interrogation policy at Guantanamo, where a major hunger strike of over 100 detainees has paralyzed operations. Detainees are protesting the hopelessness of indefinite detention, and the harassment they must endure, including searches of their holy book, the Koran.

This article answers the question I asked earlier. It documents the fact the Obama administration never rescinded a Bush-era memo on the use of controversial interrogation tactics for use by the U.S. military. The memo concerned concerned "restricted" techniques to be included in the 2006 revision of the Army Field Manual.  As a result, today torture and abuse remain a part of U.S. military interrogation doctrine.

The April 13, 2006 memo was written by Stephen Bradbury, who was also author of two 2005 memos on the CIA torture-interrogation program that were subsequently withdrawn.

According to LTC Todd Breasseale in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), Obama's January 2009 Executive Order EO 13491, "Ensuring Lawful Interrogation," widely understood and cited as voiding the Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel torture memos, "did not cancel Mr. Bradbury's legal review" of a rewritten Army Field Manual and its controversial Appendix M.

The latter, with its provisions for use of isolation, sleep deprivation, and forms of sensory deprivation, has been denounced as torture or abuse by a number of human rights and legal groups (see here and here, for example).

LTC Breasseale explained in an email response to my query last year:

Executive Order (EO) 13491 did not withdraw "'All executive directives, orders, and regulations... from September 11, 2001, to January 20, 2009, concerning detention or the interrogation of detained individuals.'" It revoked all executive directives, orders, and regulations that were inconsistent with EO 13491, as determined by the Attorney General.... [bold emphasis added]

One last point - you seem suggest below that EO 13491 somehow cancelled Steven Bradbury's legal review of the FM. EO 13491 did not cancel Mr. Bradbury's legal review of the FM."

When I then asked the Department of Justice to confirm what Breasseale had said for a story on the Bradbury memo, spokesman Dean Boyd wrote to tell me, "We have no comment for your story." The fact Boyd did not object to Breasseale's statement seems to validate the DoD spokesman's statement.

Breasseale also described DoD's view that both the current AFM and Appendix M were "not inconsistent with EO 13491," which "expressly prohibits subjecting any individual in the custody of the U.S. Government to any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation, that is not authorized by and listed in the FM. In addition, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 expressly prohibits subjecting any individual in the custody of the U.S. Department of Defense to any treatment or technique of interrogation that is not authorized by and listed in the FM. In short, both the President and the Congress have determined that the interrogation techniques listed in the FM are lawful," Breasseale said.

But just how "lawful" were these interrogation techniques in the new AFM and Appendix M? A look at the history of their development belies DoD's assurances.

Double-talk on Interrogation Executive Order

It is somewhat understandable that most people believe President Obama cancelled all the Bush-era torture memos by executive order soon after taking office. The following is from the January 22, 2009 background briefing on the subject by the White House (emphases added):

Executive Order revokes Executive Order 13440 that interpreted Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. It requires that all interrogations of detainees in armed conflict, by any government agency, follow the Army Field Manual interrogation guidelines. The Order also prohibits reliance on any Department of Justice or other legal advice concerning interrogation that was issued between September 11, 2001 and January 20, 2009. [italics added for emphasis]

But the blanket prohibition on reliance on "any" DoJ advice regarding interrogation is not what Obama's Executive Order stated. EO 13491 states (emphases added):

Section 1.  Revocation.  Executive Order 13440 of July 20, 2007, is revoked.  All executive directives, orders, and regulations inconsistent with this order, including but not limited to those issued to or by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from September 11, 2001, to January 20, 2009, concerning detention or the interrogation of detained individuals, are revoked to the extent of their inconsistency with this order.  Heads of departments and agencies shall take all necessary steps to ensure that all directives, orders, and regulations of their respective departments or agencies are consistent with this order.  Upon request, the Attorney General shall provide guidance about which directives, orders, and regulations are inconsistent with this order.

So this is not a blanket but a conditional prohibition, with a determination on what will be revoked dependent upon advice from the Attorney General. Eric Holder is President Obama's attorney general.

While the famous torture memos written by John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Stephen Bradbury and others were revoked, one of Bradbury's memorandums was not revoked. This was the memo that authorized the rewritten Army Field Manual on interrogation and its Appendix M.

History of the Bradbury Memo on Appendix M

In April 2006, Stephen Bradbury, who wrote the 2005 torture memos that replaced earlier Office of Legal Counsel approvals for "enhanced interrogation" by John Yoo and Jay Bybee, signed off in a "Memorandum for the Record" on interrogation techniques in then soon-to-be-published new edition of the Army Field Manual guidelines on human intelligence gathering. The conclusions from Bradbury's analysis were sent by letter to Department of Defense (DoD) General Counsel William Haynes on the same date as the memo was filed.

The previous OLC approvals of DoD interrogation methods had a more confusing background than did even those for the CIA. In March 2003, the Department of Justice (DoJ) had released a memo approving various torture techniques for DoD. The memo was written by John Yoo. But by December 2003, OLC chief Jack Goldsmith had said the 2003 Yoo memo should be rescinded as too flawed. Yet it appears it was not finally withdrawn until June 2004. The entire narrative remains murky, as explained to the best of our current knowledge by Marcy Wheeler in an article a few years back.

It appears that OLC thought it had covered itself on approval of DoD techniques by referencing a briefing by Associate Deputy Attorney General Patrick Philbin given to the House Select Committee on Intelligence on July 14, 2004. Certainly by the time Bradbury was writing his memo signing off on Appendix M and the new AFM, he referenced the Philbin testimony as evidence that the DoD techniques did not amount to torture.

While Bradbury did not indicate when the AFM underwent revision, a major revision was already being circulated for comment by the JAG corps as early as summer 2004. It's drafting, speculatively, was a reaction to the slow-motion withdrawal of the March 2003 Yoo memo.

For its part, the Philbin testimony noted that 17 of the 24 DoD techniques previously approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had been in use for some years, and that only seven of the 24 techniques were "new" and in question. They were: 1) placing detainee in an "les than comfortable environment"; 2) "altering his diet"; 3) changes in environment to cause "moderate discomfort", such as temperature changes; 4) adjusting the sleep cycle, "for example by requiring him to sleep days instead of nights, but without depriving him of sleep"; 5) convincing the detainee he is held by a country other than the U.S. ("False Flag"); 6) physical isolation, no longer than 30 days; and 7) "Mutt and Jeff", or the good cop/bad cop routine.

In his testimony, Philbin essentially reiterated that under current U.S. law and judicial precedents, none of these techniques amounted to torture. In his AFM/Appendix M memo, Bradbury turned to the question of whether the techniques proposed in Appendix M violated laws against cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, laws rooted in the UN Convention Against Torture treaty signed by the United States, and reiterated at that time in the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act.

According to Bradbury, the Philbin testimony had taken the torture issue off the table. But there were differences between what would be in Appendix M and the techniques listed by Philbin, though Bradbury falsely minimized them.

"Although the restricted techniques described in Appendix M differ in certain minor respects from those submitted in the Philbin testimony," Bradbury wrote, "we do not think those differences are sufficient to alter the conclusions previously reached that the techniques comport with the general criminal statutes, the prohibition on torture, and the War Crimes Act."

Many of the descriptions of the restricted techniques are censored in the released Bradbury AFM/Appendix M memo. But Bradbury did understand and made a point of stating that some of the techniques wouldn't pass muster "if they were permitted in interrogation of all DoD detainees, regardless of their combatant status and without regard to the level of intelligence they might possess" [italics in original]. Bradbury also would not verify the Appendix M techniques would be lawful "if used in the criminal justice process as a means of obtaining information about ordinary crimes."

While Appendix M has "Mutt and Jeff" and "False Flag" techniques, it also includes, according to Bradbury, three "Adjustment" techniques "designed to change the detainee's environment," though not supposedly in a torturous fashion.

"Separation"

Bradbury also discusses the "Separation" technique, admitting it amounts to isolation "not to exceed 30 days without express authorization from a senior military officer." Philbin had not discussed extensions to isolation beyond 30 days, but Bradbury doesn't mention that. He cites the senior officer authorization, and the fact that detainees would "continually be monitored by medical personnel" as safeguards against harm to the detainee. It is clear, too, that such isolation is not merely for safety purposes, as Bradbury notes "the important role isolation can play in conditioning detainees for interrogation."

Bradbury never mentions that unlike the Philbin memo authorizations, the AFM was approving use of limited sleep deprivation (no more than 4 hours of sleep allowed per day for up to 30 days, with extensions allowed by senior officers) and sensory deprivation (use of black-out goggles in so-called "field expedient separation").

In his memo, Bradbury explained that DoJ/OLC had "not been asked to assess the consistency of those [Appendix M] techniques with the requirements of the Uniform Code of Military Justice" [UCMJ]. Hence, Bradbury said he assumed that DoD had "determined that the authorized use of the techniques, consistent with the applicable safeguards, accords with" the requirements of the UCMJ.

When asked if DoD made such a legal determination, LTC Breasseale said the new AFM "was scrutinized via a very thorough legal review at the highest level in the Pentagon prior to publication, so it is absolutely inconceivable for such a review not to have considered all legal aspects of the manual, including its adherence to the UCMJ." He was not more specific about who specifically reviewed it, nor was there a reference to any particular document citing this adherence. Breasseale did note the manual has had no changes made to it since its publication in September 2006.

One Sentence Reviews Bulk of Army Field Manual

One of the most egregious aspects of Bradbury's memo occur right at its very beginning. There, he states that the differences between the new AFM and its previous 1992 version (FM 34-52) amount to only "modest revisions" that are "fully consistent with... historical practice and thus do not require us to undertake a more detailed analysis of these issues."

Thus in one sentence does Bradbury dismiss a number of significant changes to protections and policies of the old field manual. The sweep of his dismissal is breathtaking.

In fact, changes to the new AFM included significant revisions to how a controversial technique called "Fear Up" was used. In the new manual, interrogators were now allowed to produce "new phobias" for exploitation in the prisoner, something forbidden previously. Using phobias to produce stress and fear in detainees was a "Category II" interrogation technique in a list of techniques proposed to DoD based on SERE counter-resistance interrogation school methods.

The main text of the new AFM also included the excision of prohibitions against sleep deprivation and stress positions. The former was necessary to allow the use of sleep deprivation in Appendix M.

Former military interrogator Matthew Alexander wrote in a 2010 New York Times op-ed about the abuse inherent in the changes on sleep allowed in Appendix M:

The manual also allows limiting detainees to just four hours of sleep in 24 hours. Let’s face it: extended captivity with only four hours of sleep a night (consider detainees at Guantánamo Bay who have been held for seven years) does not meet the minimum standard of humane treatment, either in terms of American law or simple human decency.

And if this weren’t enough, some interrogators feel the manual’s language gives them a loophole that allows them to give a detainee four hours of sleep and then conduct a 20-hour interrogation, after which they can “reset” the clock and begin another 20-hour interrogation followed by four hours of sleep. This is inconsistent with the spirit of the reforms, which was to prevent “monstering” — extended interrogation sessions lasting more than 20 hours.

Finally, there were changes in the language concerning the drugging of detainees, as I have discussed in detail elsewhere. Use of drugs on detainees was not previously prohibited in the earlier AFM, citing language disallowing use of any drugs that produced "chemically induced psychosis." In the new AFM, drugs could be used as long as they did not "induce lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage," a lower standard, requiring evidence of significant "lasting or permanent" harm.

Our understanding of exactly how DoD has used drugs on detainees is still evolving (see DoD's IG report and analyses of it here and here). As a matter of reference, according to a September 2004 Congressional Research Service report on "Lawfulness of Interrogation Techniques under the Geneva Conventions," even the allowance of drugs in the 1990s version of the AFM was a change from earlier doctrine, which prohibited the use of drugs entirely for interrogations.

According to an article cited by CRS, "any attempt to extract information from an unwilling prisoner of war by the use of chemicals, drugs, physiological or psychological devices, which impair or deprive the prisoner of his free will without being in his interest, such as a bonafide medical treatment, will be deemed a violation of Articles 13 and 17 of the [1949 Geneva POW] Convention."

Most recently, The Constitution Project's Task Force on Detainee Treatment, in a 560-page report documenting the use of torture by U.S. government agencies, noted:

The Army Field Manual on Interrogation should be amended so as to eliminate Appendix M, which permits the use of abusive tactics and to allow for the legitimate use of noncoercive separation. Language prohibiting the use of stress positions and abnormal sleep manipulation that was removed in 2006 should be restored.

Part of the problem in tackling the issue of torture and interrogation abuse in the current Army Field Manual concerns the misrepresentations concerning the steps actually taken in rewriting that document, as well as a myth that has grown up around Obama's Jan. 2009 Executive Order on interrogations. With the recent admission by DoD that the Bradbury Appendix M memo was never rescinded by Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama, we are closer to the day when such inhumane treatment is banished from official U.S. military intelligence doctrine.

Cross-posted at The Dissenter/FDL

British Press: US Conspires with UK & Saudis to Hold Detainee w/Evidence on Iraq War Lies

Cross-posted from Daily Kos

Once upon a time, Daily Kos had numerous diaries on the ongoing use of torture by the United States, or on the false evidence, much of it wrung from tortured prisoners held by the US or by foreign countries via rendition, that was used to start the Iraq War. But today, such diaries are the exception rather than the rule.

The general turning away from the torture issue follows the policy of the very popular US president Barack Obama who has famously said that the country must look forward and not backwards when it comes to the torture scandal. By that he means, no investigations or prosecutions for torturers.

But he never told the American people it would mean making deals with torturers in the Saudi government, or with allies, who would seek to hold one Guantanamo detainee in particular indefinitely, or ship him to the Saudi dungeons, all so evidence he could supply in an ongoing investigation could be suppressed.

If proven true, this obstruction of justice is a crime. But more than that, it is an attempt to falsify history, and that may be its real legacy. More immediately, it is destroying the life and family of an innocent man, British resident Shaker Aamer, cleared for release from Guantanamo by both Bush and Obama administrations, but still held in indefinite detention by the U.S.

Via his attorney, Aamer was able to get heard via an op-ed that was published April 20 in The Guardian:

Have you ever tried going without food for 24 hours? Today, I am on my 68th day....

In truth, while I am horrified by the suffering around me, I am also encouraged. There is more solidarity among the prisoners than ever before. The military is not being honest about the number of men on strike: most of us are refusing to eat. The military responds with violence, as if that will break us; it draws us all together.

Now they are sending in the goon squad (the Forcible Cell Extraction, or FCE, team) to beat me up every time I ask for something, whether it is my medicine, a bottle of water or the right to shower. That only reinforces my resolve....

I hope I do not die in this awful place. I want to hug my children and watch them as they grow.

A UK petition to free Aamer has reached over 100,000 signature, and according to Andy Worthington reporting from Britain, "on 15 April 2013 the Leader of the House of Commons passed this petition to the House of Commons Backbench Business Committee to consider for debate.” But it may be almost too late, as Aamer's attorney has indicated the likelihood that Aamer may die in Guantanamo.

Aamer's assertions of ongoing brutality by Guantanamo's "Emergency Reaction Force" ("goon squads") was documented in a well-received 2009 article by Jeremy Scahill. Many thought that President Obama would never let such tactics continue. Sadly, they were wrong.

Aamer's Secrets Embarrass UK and US

Unlike the vast majority of detainees held at Guantanamo, Aamer speaks very good English. He is intelligent and motivated. That makes him dangerous to the authorities running Guantanamo. While President Obama's administration and DoD officials maintain Guantanamo is run humanely, a blue-ribbon panel assembled by The Constitution Project, including former GOP officials, have determined that abuse still occurs, and have pointed out the the Army Field Manual's Appendix M, a prime culprit in ongoing abuse, should be excised from that document and from DoD practice. (Link to the long and fascinating report.)

But it apparently is not only testimony about being tortured or seeing others tortured that Aamer can supply. That alone would probably not be enough to hold him forever. Instead, exposes this past weekend in the British press have indicated Aamer is being held indefinitely, or considered for "repatriation" to Saudi Arabia, because he can testify to the presence of British counter-terrorism agents from MI5 and MI6 at his own torture... and the torture of Ibn Shaikh al-Libi.

Al-Libi famously was tortured to give false evidence about Saddam Hussein's pursuit of chemical weapons as part of the doctored evidence presented to US and world public opinion to justify the unprovoked invasion of Iraq by the US-dominated coalition in 2003. The invasion was responsible for the deaths of an untold number of Iraqis (estimates ranging from 100,000 to well over a million), an untold number of injured, produced millions of refugees, and generally destabilized the region.

In a recent Guardian expose, the culpability of high US officials in the organization and operation of death and torture squads by the Iraqis was documented. But in the United States, there appeared to be almost no interest in these developments.

The latest developments in the the Shaker Aamer case have been documented in the Guardian/Observer and the Mail.

From the Guardian/Observer story:

Aamer's lawyers increasingly fear his chances of being allowed home to London are actually diminishing. Reprieve say Aamer is alone among the 779 who have been detained in Guantánamo Bay in having purportedly been cleared for release, but to only one country – Saudi Arabia. Repatriation to Saudi Arabia would, they warn, see Aamer detained indefinitely, his access to media and his lawyers hugely curtailed. Aamer has repeatedly protested against the possibility of forced repatriation to Saudi Arabia.

According to Stafford Smith: "The sole reason for the US to send Shaker to Saudi Arabia is to have him silenced, most likely by sentencing him to a long imprisonment after a sham trial."

Meanwhile, a massive hunger strike at Guantanamo continues, as prisoners protest the disrespect accorded to them by treatment of their Korans, and the generally brutal conditions under the psychologically debilitating regime of indefinite detention.

It would be not just a crying shame if the Daily Kos readership were to continue with their general neglect of this issue, but the deterioration of human rights at Guantanamo are meant ultimately to affect you, as the assault on individual rights and liberties are bleeding back into the US criminal justice system, as this article by Emptywheel explains.

In the end, I consider this to be a moral and ethical question. Ask yourselves if you are okay living in a country that can routinely destroy the lives of innocent people and align themselves with the most reactionary regimes on the planet, all in the name of supposedly protecting people, but really to cover the asses of the crimes of governments.

You may ask why me? Why today? Why should I put myself out? The answer is not to save your soul, though some may put it that way. It is to save the world for your children and your children's children. There is no end to evil when good people refuse to step forward and do what is right.

Men today suffer in small rooms, isolated, beaten when they ask even for a bottle of water, "chemically restrained" (as a recent DoD IG report admitted) if the authorities decided it, and for what? I ask you for what? Well, now we know. Are you okay with that?