The Sheikh and the Torture Senator (truthout) By Ann Wright:
(Article also available at scoop.co.nz)
I was in the audience February 12, 2007 during the Washington, DC, screening of the new HBO documentary, "The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib." After watching the documentary, panelists Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) discussed prisoner abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib.
To the amazement of the audience, Graham said with a twinkle in his eye that "Americans don't mind torture; they really don't." Then he smiled broadly, almost gleefully, and said that the US had used certain interrogation techniques on "Sheikh Mohammed, one of the 'high-value' targets" - techniques that "you really don't want to know about, but they got really good results."
So we know that Senator Levin (D-Michigan) thinks it's likely that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was abused, and that he and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C), after viewing Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's Combatant Status Review Tribunal at Guantanamo through closed circuit television, released a joint statement that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's allegations of torture must be investigated.
Source Levin: Terrorist abused? (Michigan senator said the confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks was probably mistreated while in custody.) by Gordon Trowbridge and Mark Hornbeck / The Detroit News:
"I think he was abused; I think it's likely," Levin, D-Detroit, [sic] said in an appearance here. Past incidents of mistreatment of detainees "give credence" to the allegation, he said.
....
From their Washington offices Friday, Levin and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., released a joint statement on the hearing, which they viewed by closed-circuit television from a nearby room.
We know that it's "widely reported" that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was waterboarded. (And also that the Bush administration assuring congress that some of these methods have been dropped is a tacit administration that torture has been used.)
Source: Editorial (Wapo) Top-Secret Torture (What's stopping the Democrats in Congress from investigating? Tuesday, March 20, 2007; Page A18:
The government claims that this looking-glass policy is necessary to prevent al-Qaeda members still at large from learning of the CIA's methods so that they can train against them. Yet some of the harshest action taken against Mr. Mohammed has already been widely reported: He was treated to "waterboarding," or simulated drowning, an ancient torture method that every U.S. administration prior to this one has considered illegal. CIA detainees are also known to have been subjected to temperature extremes and sleep deprivation. The administration has assured Congress that it has dropped some of these methods, including waterboarding. If that's true, Mr. Mohammed's statement will not alert future detainees, but it will open a debate about whether the CIA's past practices were legal or morally justifiable.
But this, surely this must be the highest level out-right admission...
I was in the audience February 12, 2007 during the Washington, DC, screening of the new HBO documentary, "The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib." After watching the documentary, panelists Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) discussed prisoner abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib.
To the amazement of the audience, Graham said with a twinkle in his eye that "Americans don't mind torture; they really don't." Then he smiled broadly, almost gleefully, and said that the US had used certain interrogation techniques on "Sheikh Mohammed, one of the 'high-value' targets" - techniques that "you really don't want to know about, but they got really good results."
According to truthout:
Ann Wright is a 29-year retired US Army Reserve colonel and also a 16-year US diplomat who served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. She was on the team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in December 2001. She resigned from the US diplomatic corps in March 2003 in opposition to the war in Iraq.
In their concluding line they state:
P.S. HBO filmed the senator's remarks. Please watch the HBO video and see his comments for yourself.
There is footage of Graham's statement admitting that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was tortured!?...
Anyone have the footage of this!?...
Transcripts?...
(Crossposted from the NION frontpage)
Update [2007-3-23 19:55:26 by kraant]:: Possible Confirmation...
Some conflicts...
Sen. Lindsey Graham and Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (Huffington Post) by Janis Karpinski:
I stand by my remarks about him being a coward. A coward condemns people in public ONLY when he believes there will be no opposition. What a pitiful example of a Senator. At one point, he was acknowledging the need for torture and told us we did not even want us to know what all of what they did to Khalid Shiek Mohammed because it was just so awful, but he assured us Khalid Sheik Mohammed provided "really great" information. Then, unbelievably, he tried desperately to assure us "most Americans think this is an unfortunate necessity in the global war on terrorism." Where is he taking the survey??
I could really do with an actual transcript, or footage of the event...