The torture amendment that was agreed upon today by the White House does nothing to stop torture and abuse in US prisons.
Hopefully, everyone knows by now that torture and abuse is authorized and the troops are being trained how to committ war crimes and torture and abuse prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions, long-standing army regulations and International law.
The McCain amendement does nothing to stop the abuse and torture as it leaves the enforcement of the bill up to the White House and denies prisoners judical review (habeas corpus rights). More below the fold:
In the attached article Bruce Ackerman discusses the issue.
philly inquirer
America is reaching a turning point on torture.
Congress will soon consider two amendments that threaten a descent into hypocrisy. Both have been tacked onto the defense authorization bill. A provision by Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) is an unconditional bar on torture - a prospect President Bush finds so damaging he is threatening to veto the entire bill.
But he won't have to, thanks to a recent amendment by Sen. Lindsay Graham (R., S.C.). This one bars Guantánamo detainees from going to federal court to enforce the rights that McCain would declare sacrosanct.
A shabby compromise is in the making. Bush removes his veto threat - as long as Graham's amendment remains in the bill - to transform McCain's principles into a hypocritical gesture: Listen up, world, we are against torture at Guantánamo - as long as nobody can complain about it.
To deflect critics, Graham has created an exception to allow Guantánamo inmates their day in court once they are finally convicted of a crime by a military tribunal. But this exception creates more perverse incentives. If a detainee has been victimized, the best way to cover it up is to hold him indefinitely as an "enemy combatant" and never send him before a military tribunal. That way, he will never get access to a federal court.
At present, only nine of the 500 Guantánamo detainees have been charged with crimes, and none have yet been convicted. How long will it take for Americans to learn what is really going on inside?
Graham's amendment poses even greater damage. The Supreme Court has recently decided to hear a case from a Guantánamo inmate who insists that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires a judicial hearing immediately. Graham's rider may require the court to drop this case in midstream.
Congress has made a similar assault on judicial independence only once before. After the Civil War, a Union Army commander threw a Mississippi newspaper editor in jail for agitating against Reconstruction. When William McCardle petitioned for habeas corpus, the Supreme Court seemed about to free him. But Congress intervened to strip the case from the court's docket, and the justices caved, leaving McCardle in military prison.
Perhaps the modern court will show more backbone this time around. If it doesn't, it will gravely weaken its authority. The Graham rider threatens to reverberate far beyond Guantánamo, endangering the constitutional rights of all Americans.
Despite the high stakes, Graham did not even give Congress a fair chance to consider the matter. He made an end run around the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.), and persuaded the Senate to accept his court-stripping rider as a floor amendment.
Specter eloquently protested, but he was outvoted in the rush to push the matter into a conference committee.
The Senate leadership plans to continue its rush tactics this week. It will ask the Senate to rubber-stamp the final conference bill before it begins its Christmas recess. But Specter should stand firm against a cynical compromise that will defang McCain's anti-torture initiative.
Given the grave issues raised by the Graham amendment, a filibuster is entirely appropriate to give the judiciary committee a chance to expose the Graham amendment to sober second thought. It would be tragic if McCain's admirable proposal becomes an occasion for yet another assault on the fundamental principles of the American Constitution.
The Washington Post reports that the Pentagon is set to add its torture techniques to the army field manual as a torture addendum.
Washington Post
It's reported that the Army is forwarding a classified addendum to the new Army Field Manual on interrogation operations. According to these reports, the 10-page addendum provides dozens of examples of what procedures may and may not be used by interrogators, and it informs commanders on the circumstances for their employment.
This move amounts to an attempt by the Army to use the back door to establish secret interrogation techniques at the same time the new Field Manual on interrogation operations is coming out (later this month). It sends exactly the wrong message to the world and, more important, fosters the same kind of confusion and contradictory policies that have contributed to the abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
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Most significantly, the current Army Field Manual provides little guidance on what are appropriate and legal interrogation techniques under U.S. and international law.
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An addendum to the Field Manual that details secret techniques and sets out secret rules for their employment undermines this entire effort. A secret list such as this contradicts our efforts to demonstrate that we are an open society governed by the rule of law and that the U.S. military respects human rights.
If the reported secret addendum becomes part of the Army Field Manual, we can expect the same confusion in future operations. This is a time and an opportunity for the Army to set a clear, open policy on proper interrogation operations and to train commanders and soldiers at all levels to one standard on how to legally and humanely conduct interrogations. This is not a time to send a mixed message to our allies and enemies and sow seeds of confusion in the ranks.
In the extremely difficult and dangerous operational environment that exists in the global war on terrorism, the Army needs to be clear on this issue, and commanders and soldiers need to know that there is one set of legal rules governing their actions. If the Army establishes two sets of rules and keeps one secret, it will be setting up commanders and soldiers for failure.
Well there is one standard already in place and that standard has been in place for nearly 50 years and we are responsible to adhere to it.
Here is a comment that includes quotes from the courageous Captain Ian Fishback on the outing of systematic abuses and violations of the Conventions and international law.
Daily Kos
He (Fishback) concluded that violations of the Geneva Convention were "systematic, and the Army is misleading America."....
A former soldier close to Fishback, who asked not to be identified out of respect for Fishback's own decision not to talk to the media, said Fishback "really doesn't care what happens to him."
"He wants to stay in the Army. But he also says, 'This is bigger than me. I've got to do the right thing here.' "
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Central to Fishback's reasoning in pursuing the abuse matter is the "Cadet Honor Code" he studied before graduating from West Point in 2001. It says, "A cadet shall not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do."
In his personal chronology, he wrote, "Bottom line: I am concerned that the Army is deliberately misleading the American people about detainee treatment within our custody."
Here is a diary I wrote previoiusly regarding international law and the lawful treatment of detainees.
Daily Kos
What is torture:
Torture is the infliction of severe physical or psychological pain as an expression of cruelty, a means of intimidation, deterrent or punishment, or as a tool for the extraction of information or confessions. Although the most obvious dimension of torture is that it achieves its goal through physical pain (or threat of pain), in fact many of its most devastating effects come from the psychological effect of the extremes inflicted upon its victims.
Although torture is usually thought of in terms of its physical impact (pain and damage), the psychological impact is often greater and tends to remain with the victim long after the actual activity is discontinued.
Torture is the ultimate act of perverted intimacy. The torturer invades the victim's body, pervades his psyche, and possesses his mind. Deprived of contact with others and starved for human interactions, the prey bonds with the predator. "Traumatic bonding", akin to the Stockholm syndrome, is about hope and the search for meaning in the brutal and indifferent and nightmarish universe of the torture cell.
The process of psychological torture is designed to invade and destroy the belief of a victim in their validity as a human being, to destroy presumptions of privacy, intimacy, and inviolability assumed by the victim, and to destroy their unspoken trust that these things can save them.
The abuser becomes the black hole at the center of the victim's surrealistic galaxy, sucking in the sufferer's universal need for solace. The victim tries to "control" his tormentor by becoming one with him (introjecting him) and appealing in vain to the monster's presumably dormant humanity and empathy.
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Torture combines complete humiliating exposure with utter devastating isolation. The final products and outcome of torture are a scarred and often shattered victim and an empty display of the fiction of power. It is about reprogramming the victim to succumb to an alternative exegesis of the world, proffered by the abuser. It is an act of deep, indelible, traumatic indoctrination. The abused also swallows whole and assimilates the torturer's negative view of him and often, as a result, is rendered suicidal, self-destructive, or self-defeating.
In summary, torture victims suffer from a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Their strong feelings of anxiety, guilt, and shame are also typical of victims of childhood abuse, domestic violence, and rape. They feel anxious because the perpetrator's behavior is seemingly arbitrary and unpredictable -- or mechanically and inhumanly regular.
They feel guilty and disgraced because, to restore a semblance of order to their shattered world and a modicum of dominion over their chaotic life, they need to transform themselves into the cause of their own degradation and the accomplices of their tormentors.
Inevitably, in the aftermath of torture, its victims feel helpless and powerless. This loss of control over one's life and body is manifested physically in impotence, attention deficits, and insomnia. This is often exacerbated by the disbelief many torture victims encounter, especially if they are unable to produce scars, or other "objective" proof of their ordeal. Language cannot communicate such an intensely private experience as pain.
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Kenneth Pope in "Torture", a chapter he wrote for the "Encyclopedia of Women and Gender: Sex Similarities and Differences and the Impact of Society on Gender", quotes Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman:
"It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering."
This amendement does nothing to prohibit torture. The prisoners are denied the right to protest their treatment and the torture will continue to go on and on and on until it is stopped.
Anybody who thinks that we can fool the world into believing that we are following the law and not torturing indiviuals is plain wrong.
This amendment keeps the torture door open. If the administration wants to use aggressive interrogation techniques then spell them out in the open and allow folks to debate them and analyze the legality of the techniques.
However, the army field manual 1992 edition is considered to be in compliance with the conventions and that manual is supported by long-standing army regulations.
If additional techniques are needed for individuals not covered by the conventions sleep management and forced standing (mild stress positions) are the two techniques that can be found on the UN website as legal under international law.
Furthermore, many of these issues have already been settled by the international criminal court in war crimes trials in Africa and Eastern Europe as well as by treaties that we have signed.
Anything less than fully legal treatment is putting our troops at risk, hurting our reputation and simply not legal.
Furthermore, the techniques being used are making us less safe not more safe and the Iraqi's and others know what is going on.
Daily Kos
People become suicide bombers because it is a vengeful end to a life no longer worth living- a life probably violently stripped of its humanity by a local terrorist- or a foreign soldier.
This war has redefined `conventional'. It has taken atrocity to another level. Everything we learned before has become obsolete. `Conventional' has become synonymous with horrifying. Conventional weapons are those that eat away the skin in a white blaze; conventional interrogation methods are like those practiced in Abu Ghraib and other occupation prisons...
Quite simply... conventional terror.
If we really want to win hearts and minds the best way is to respect peoples individual liberties and detain prisoners in accordance with long-standing army regulations/international law.
The FBI is well positioned to handle the lions share of
interrogations and they can do so in a legal
and non-abusive manner and we should let them do it.
Why is it so difficult for this administration to refrain from torture and uphold the rule of law and human rights? I don't get it and it is killing this country's reputation and degrading human rights and it is not worth it.