In the News

Torture has gotten this administration in trouble again. Because of the use of torture the military trials at Guantanamo may never take place.

Salim Hamdan, who evidently was a driver for Osama Ben Ladin is the first to be tried before the new military commissions on Guantanamo. The administration admits that he was tortured while in detention. The judge in the case, Captain Keith J. Allred has ruled that the General supervising the courts Thomas W. Hartmann has acted improperly and ordered that General Hartmann cease involvement with any Guantanamo prosecutions.

Every time I think that U.S.-sponsored torture has dropped off the national radar, new information or analysis comes to the forefront. A few magazines have taken up torture in recent issues, offering invaluable insight into the national debate over the use of waterboarding and other so-called "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

The smoking gun has finally been revealed. Responding to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act request, the Justice Department has released a previously classified document it authored in 2001 which argues that the use of harsh interrogation methods does not constitute torture.

It is sometimes hard to figure out who are allies and who are opponents of efforts to stop torture. The United States Senate which has found it difficult to get any controversial legislation passed the filibuster blockade has finally passed an amendment to the intelligence authorization bill requiring all governmental agencies, including the CIA, to comply with the directives on interrogation in the army field manual.

After having danced around the issue for years, the White House has finally admitted that it did use torture. In an astonishing statement, the White House Press officer, Tony Fratto, asserted that that the CIA had used waterboarding in the past and may use the technique again in the future.

As far as can be traced, waterboarding is a technique first employed by the Inquisition in Spain to force confessions from converted Jews and others who were suspected of not being true Christians. The prisoner’s face is pushed down into water and he or she begins to choke as the victim gasps for air. Those who have experienced the technique have no doubt that it constitutes torture.

Yesterday, in a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Mukasey once again refused to call the practice of waterboarding illegal, and did not rule out its future use. Under questioning from Senator Joseph Biden, Mukasey stated that the cruelty of torture must be balanced against the potential benefits of the information to be obtained. He is willing to engage in this balancing act even though he admitted that if he were waterboarded, he would consider that to be torture!

Anti-torture legislation is once again reaching the Senate floor. In the next few days, the Senate will be taking up the Intelligence Authorization Bill (H.R. 2082) which contains a provision (section 327) that would require all interrogations of detainees to conform to the guidelines set out in the Army Field Manual (those are the ones that Senator McCain fought for). You will recall that the CIA has been exempted from following these guidelines. This legislation is the product of a joint Congressional committee and is therefore in the very last stage of final passage.

Somehow they always blame the little guy. The Generals, the Defense Secretaries, the higher-ups see no evil and do no evil. It’s the few bad apples at the bottom that cause all the problems. At least that is what they keep telling us.The latest example is a new report by the British military that no commander was responsible for the crimes of British troops; it was just the fault of the common foot soldier. The report follows the investigation of abuses that took place during the British occupation of Basra including six deaths of detainees.

In one case Baha Mousa, a hotel receptionist, died of asphyxiation 36 hours after being detained by British soldiers. According to the New York Times, six of the seven British soldiers charged in Mr. Mousa’s death were found innocent and one received a sentence of a year in prison. The report concluded that the problem was entirely that of a individual soldiers.

As the 2008 election heats up, you have an opportunity to take action and help stop the use of torture by the CIA. As the candidates court your vote, you can ask them about their stand on torture.

As you may know, anti-torture legislation has come before the House and Senate and President Bush has threatened to veto such legislation, so our opportunity to turn the tide on the issue of torture may have to wait for the next administration to act. It is therefore important that each of the candidates who would be President be queried about their stand on torture and whether they would sign such legislation.

On Monday, January 14, Admiral Mike Mullin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs stated that he would "like to see [Guantanamo] shut down" as soon as possible. Adm. Mullin added that he thinks closure is warranted because he sees negative publicity worldwide about thr American treatment of terrorist suspects as "pretty damaging" to the image of the United States. He emphasized, however, that the decision of whether or not to close Guantanamo was a political decision and therefore not his to make. For more information, please see this article from the AP: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Calls for Closing of Guantanamo.