President Bush admitted over the weekend that he not only was informed of enhanced interrogation techniques for terrorist suspects like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but he also approved them. He thought they were necessary then and still are, though he fell short of actually calling these tactics “torture.” Deciding what constitutes torture has been a fairly frustrating game of legal semantics, until now.
In an interview with Bob Woodward out in the WaPo today, Susan Crawford, a Bush administration official who has been overseeing Gitmo practices and military commissions, used the word torture regarding the treatment of Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi national detained for allegedly planning to participate in 9/11. Crawford said:
“The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge” to call it torture, she said.
Now, I know Obama wants to move forward when he takes office, but how can our government not prosecute members of the Bush admin for war crimes now that it’s clear they were committed? As Jonathan Turley suggested, wouldn’t failure to do so make the new administration complicit?
ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero was downright exuberant on last night’s Colbert Report. You could see it in the way he stood to greet Colbert, then interrupted him before the interview could even get going to exclaim, “I’m so happy! This is an historic day.” Romero had good reason to be overjoyed.
Hours earlier, the Associated Press reported that President-elect Obama will issue an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility within his first week in office, possibly on his first day. By all accounts, this news is a major win for civil rights and the ACLU, which has spent the last few months calling on Obama to do just that.
Less than a week after Obama was elected, the ACLU launched its grassroots drive to Close Guantanamo and End Military Commissions. They took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, hosted a teleconference town hall meeting, and launched a series of videos produced by Brave New Foundation on everything from torture to the unconstitutional military commissions put in place by the Bush administration. The entire effort was geared toward urging the President-elect to make good on his campaign promise to shut down Gitmo — all it would take, they said, would be one stroke from his new presidential pen.
Word came today that President-elect Obama will close the Guantanamo Bay prison during his first week in office, possibly on his very first day. This is huge news, as it signals Obama will put an end to President Bush’s legacy of torture and human rights abuses. And it’s something we at the Brave New Foundation have been pushing for with the ACLU for the past few months.
But as great as this step is, it’s still just the first one toward restoring our nation’s moral leadership in the world. There’s still that question of the unconstitutional military tribunals — the kangaroo courts Bush used as legal proceedings for getting prisoners to confess. That is still a major concern that needs to be addressed. Maybe something we can hope to see in week two from Obama.
On the seventh anniversary of the first inmate arriving at Guantanamo Bay, protests took place around the world for its closure. In Washington DC a rally also marked the start of a nine day fast by 60 protesters, in support of US president-elect Barack Obama keeping is campaign pledge of closing the prison.
Al Jazeera spoke with one of the people participating in the fast — Bud Courtney of New York City. This is his view — in his own words.
The “enhanced interrogation tactics ” used in Guantanamo under orders from the Pentagon and the White House have been the subject of numerous hearings on Capitol Hill recently. The lawyers who approved the policies – which many call torture — are under increasing pressure to explain how it was possible for such methods to be ordered by the United States government. More hearings are on the way.
Not only has the Bush administration committed war crimes in plain sight, but now Dick Cheney is freely confessing it on national television. In an interview with ABC, Cheney admitted he directly authorized the CIA to use highly controversial enhanced interrogation tactics like waterboarding, as well as the torture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad.
Cheney showed no regret. In fact, he spoke with such insouciance it was almost as though the administration hadn’t repeatedly denied authorizing use of these tactics over the years. (Of course, Cheney still denies waterboarding constitutes torture.) What’s more, he actually praised the Guantánamo Bay prison facility. “Guantánamo has been very well run,” he said, claiming it should remain open indefinitely.
Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU with whom Brave New Foundation created the Close Gitmo campaign, had this to say:
“The current administration’s torture policies and fundamentally flawed military commissions make a mockery of the Constitution and violate America’s commitment to human rights. Contrary to the vice president’s opinion, these detainees should be prosecuted in U.S. military or civilian courts that are fully equipped to handle complex national security cases.”
I just stepped off an airplane from Gitmo last night and thought it would be a good time to offer an insider’s take on what really happened down there this week. Unlike the many stories that have been in the press, what follows is a view from the defense table that provides a fuller perspective on the proceedings than what’s been reported.
"What is abundantly clear is that no matter how hard the government tries to advance the military commissions, this process doesn't work…The only solution is to shut the military commissions down and start from scratch."
- Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union
Closing Guantanamo Bay will be a crucial first step toward restoring our moral leadership in the world, but President-elect Obama must also end the unconstitutional military commissions put in place by President Bush. These so-called "legal proceedings" are more akin to kangaroo courts for the unlawful ways in which they extricate confessions from abused prisoners forced to stand trial.
As former Gitmo prosecutor Lt Col Darrel Vandeveld told the BBC recently, "No justice will be obtained at Guantanamo. And if that entails moving [the detainees] temporarily to the US for trial: so be it." Watch the testimonies from those who have prosecuted and defended some of these prisoners, and see why we cannot continue to deprive them of their fundamental rights.
Send this video to all of your friends and coworkers in order to stress the importance of ending unconstitutional military commissions. If there are prisoners that still must stand trial, they should do so in U.S. civilian and military courts that abide by international human rights and humanitarian law. That is the only way to achieve real justice; the only way to break with the abusive past of the Bush administration; and the only way to show to the world that the Obama administration will faithfully follow the U.S. Constitution.
At a Harper's-NYU forum on how to deal with Bush-era war crimes, TPMtv caught up with renowned civil liberties lawyer Burt Neuborne, legal director at the Brennan Center For Justice, who has sued every president since Lyndon Johnson. Among the topics discussed: Neuborne's idea for a "shaming commission" that could make life uncomfortable for Bush officials as they flee for the private sector.
Despite Bill O'Reilly's delusional rantings, there is no debate that the U.S. military tortured detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Not when you have former Gitmo prosecutors like Lt Col Darrel Vandeveld coming forward to testify about the atrocities that occurred there.
Col Vandeveld told the BBC this week about the Gitmo detainees who had been mistreated in order to secure confessions. In one particularly brutal case, Col Vandeveld discovered "indisputable evidence" regarding the mistreatment of an Afghan named Mohammed Jawad, who had been accused of throwing a grenade at a U.S. military vehicle.
According to the BBC, "After Jawad had tried to commit suicide by banging his head against a wall at Guantanamo, Col Vandeveld says that psychologists who assisted interrogators advised taking advantage of Mr Jawad's vulnerability by subjecting him to specialist interrogation techniques known as 'fear up'." Interrogators then subjected Jawad to the sleep deprivation technique known as the "frequent flyer" program, in which prisoners were moved from cell to cell every few hours until they confessed.
The Pentagon, as you might expect, disputed Col Vandeveld's assertions and continues to push the mendacious claim that Bush's military commissions provide "full and fair trials to accused unlawful enemy combatants who are charged with a variety of war crimes." And there lies the biggest obstacle once President-elect Obama takes office and closes Gitmo: What to do with the prisoners who still need to be brought to trial, assuming there remains probable cause to believe they've committed a crime?
