White House approved torture-America's Shame Examined
was appropriate and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should stay open until 'the end of the war on terror.'http://www.commondr
Cheney says president could start a nuclear war, and wouldn't have to ask for anyone's approval.
But Cheney expressed no regrets in today's interview, vigorously defending the Bush administration' s war and counterterrorism policieand saying he was untroubled by opinion polls showing that he and Bush are among the most unpopular White House occupants in modern times. "Eventually you wear out your welcome in this business, but I'm very comfortable with where we are and what we've achieved substantively,
he said.
http://www.commondr
Rumsfeld blamed in detainee abuse scandals
"I was a Rumsfeld man. I'd helped recruit him and I thought he did a good job for us."
- Dick Cheney
A bipartisan Senate report calls decisions made by the former Defense secretary a 'direct cause' of inhumane treatment of prisoners of war. Other Bush officials also are faulted.
By Greg Miller and Julian E. Barnes / Los Angeles Times
December 12th, 2008
Reporting from Washington — A bipartisan Senate report released Thursday concludes that decisions made by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were a "direct cause" of widespread detainee abuses, and that other Bush administration officials were to blame forcreating a legal and moral climate that contributed to inhumane treatment.
The report, endorsed by Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is the most forceful denunciation to date of the role that Rumsfeld and other top officials played in the prisoner abuse scandals of the last five years.
The document also challenges assertions by senior Bush administration officials that the most egregious cases of prisoner mistreatment were isolated incidents of appalling conduct by U.S. troops.
"The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own," the report says.
Instead, the document says, a series of high-level decisions in the Bush administration "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody."
The document aims its harshest criticism at Rumsfeld's decision in December 2002 to authorize the use of aggressive interrogation techniques at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Although the order was rescinded six weeks later, the report describes it as "a direct cause for detainee abuse" at Guantanamo Bay, and concludes that it "influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques, including military working dogs, forced nudity and stress positions, in Afghanistan and Iraq."
The report also criticizes President Bush, although less harshly. In particular, it cites a presidential memorandum signed Feb. 7, 2002, that denied detainees captured in Afghanistan the protections of the Geneva Conventions, which ban abusive treatment of prisoners of war.
Bush's decision to bypass an international law that had been observed by American troops for decades sent a message that "impacted the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody," the report says.
That message was bolstered by a series of memos from the Justice Department, the report says, that "distorted the meaning and intent of anti-torture laws" and "rationalized the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody."
The Senate report represents the culmination of an 18-month investigation by the committee's staff. It is the latest, and in many respects the most comprehensive, in a series of government investigations started after photographs surfaced in April 2004 of prisoners at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq being stripped of their clothes, piled in pyramids and strapped to what appeared to be electrical wires.
Those abuses "cannot be chalked up to the actions of 'a few bad apples,' " said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, referring to a line used by former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz in an attempt to downplay the scandal.
Levin said it was "both unconscionable and false" for Rumsfeld and others to blame troops and escape accountability. Even so, the report does not call for further investigation or punishment.
The findings were approved last month by the 17 committee members in attendance, indicating the report had the support of at least four of the panel's Republicans. Committee officials did no identify which senators on the 25- person panel were not present for the vote.
Among the panel's members are several GOP senators who have criticized the administration'
Levin said the committee had reviewed thousands of documents and conducted interviews with more than 70 people, and received written responses from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The investigation did not focus on the CIA's treatment of detainees, or the agency's operation of a network of secret prisons.
But the inquiry turned up new information showing that the Defense Department had consulted with the CIA on interrogation matters, and that White House officials had reviewed CIA methods earlier and in more detail than previously acknowledged.
Most of the findings had been disclosed in the panel's interim reports or in other investigations. But the report released Thursday traces the origins of aggressive interrogation techniques to U.S. military survival training programs. It follows the use of coercive methods as they migrated from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan, then to Iraq and Abu Ghraib.
The techniques -- based on practices detailed in military courses on survival, evasion, resistance and escape, known as SERE -- included stress positions, the removal of clothing and the exploitation of phobias, including fear of dogs.
One month after Rumsfeld issued his order approving such methods at Guantanamo, they were part of a presentation witnessed by Army Capt. Carolyn Wood at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, the report says. Wood has been criticized by human rights groups for her role in U.S. interrogation techniques, and was singled out in one investigation as failing to properly oversee interrogators.
The committee said the Afghanistan techniques eventually became standard procedure for all U.S. forces in Iraq. And by summer 2003, Wood, then serving in Iraq, proposed that the practices become the interrogation policy at Abu Ghraib.
After Wood proposed extending the use of the techniques and pressure mounted to acquire intelligence about the insurgency, the top commander in Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, authorized interrogators on Sept. 14, 2003, to use stress positions, "sleep management" and dogs when questioning detainees.
A month later, he rescinded permission to use the techniques.
"The new policy, however, contained ambiguities with respect to certain techniques, such as the use of dogs in interrogations, and led to confusion about which techniques were permitted," the Senate report says.
http://www.michaelm
--- In NOWAR_Alliance_
james_patton@
New Videos Proving Bush Administration'
- See PBS videos on proof of administration'
- Please, pass this around to everyone, so this injustice may be ended.
- This info was forwarded by Walter Burien of cafr1.com.
- Good Day. Lloyd
--- In NOWAR_Alliance_
'Taxi to the Dark Side' Examines Torture by U.S.
Afghan taxi driver Dilawar was considered an honest and kind man by the people of his rustic village.
Five days after his arrest Dilawar died in his Bagram prison cell.
The conclusion: he died due to sustained injuries inflicted at the prison by U.S. soldiers.
The movie shows how decisions taken at the pinnacle of power in the Bush Administration led directly to Dilawar's brutal death.
You can watch 'Taxi to the Dark Side', which includes interviews with several soldiers who admit to using unorthodox techniques such as waterboarding, ceiling handcuffing, sexual abuse and more, here:
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Taxi to the Dark Side
Must Watch Award-Winning Documentary
The film documents how Rumsfeld, together with the White House legal team, were able to convince Congress to approve the use of torture against prisoners of war. Taxi to the Dark Side is the definitive exploration of the introduction of torture as an interrogation technique in U.S. facilities, and the role played by key figures of the Bush Administration in the process.
Over one hundred prisoners have died in suspicious circumstances in U.S. custody during the "war on terror". Taxi to the Dark Side takes
an in-depth look at one case: an Afghan taxi driver called Dilawa who was considered an honest and kind man by the people of his rustic village. So when he was detained by the U.S military one afternoon, after picking up three passengers, denizens wondered why this man was randomly chosen to be held in prison, and, especially, without trial?
Five days after his arrest Dilawar died in his Bagram prison cell. His death came within a week of another death of a detainee at Bagram. The conclusion, with autopsy evidence, was that the former taxi driver and the detainee who passed away before him, had died due to sustained injuries inflicted at the prison by U.S. soldiers.
The documentary, by award-winning producer Alex Gibney, carefully develops the last weeks of Dilawar's life and shows how decisions taken at the pinnacle of power in the Bush Administration led directly to Dilawar's brutal death.
Watch Taxi to the Dark Side here:
http://www.informat
Taxi to the Dark Side is as shocking and disturbing as its title. Its subject matter is torture as a weapon of choice in the war against> terror. There are pictures and videos from Abu Ghraib.But most distressing is how readily the U.S. government turned to torture.
NPR Morning Edition, January 18, 2008
http://www.npr.
HBO INVESTIGATES AMERICA'S POLICY ON TORTURE WHEN 'TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE' PREMIERES SEPTEMBER 29th 2008 ON HBO
AMERICA'S SHAME EXAMINED: Watch Trailer
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Veteran's Today
In the period following 9/11, the Bush Administration'
A sobering investigation into the reckless abuse of power, Taxi to the Dark Side uses the death of Dilawar, the innocent taxi driver at the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan as a starting point to expose America's increasingly ruthless policy of detention and interrogation.
This disturbing and often brutal film dissects the progression of the Administration'
http://www.veterans
name=News&file=
Taxi to the Dark Side has earned numerous awards including:
2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature,
2008 Peabody Award,
Best Documentary Screenplay at the 2008 Writers Guild of America Award and Best Documentary at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
--- In anti-allawi-
<lrprice@> wrote:
News Updates from Citizens For Legitimate Government
http://www.legitgov
Bush White House 'endorsed torture'
Bush White House 'endorsed torture' --CIA sought explicit consent from Bush Administration to continue practices 15 Oct 2008 The Bush Administration explicitly endorsed torture techniques used by the CIA on 'al-Qaeda' suspects, according to secret memos obtained by The Washington Post. The Post has identified two documents sent by the White House to then CIA Director George Tenet in 2003 and 2004, endorsing controversial interrogation techniques such as 'waterboarding'
CIA Tactics Endorsed In Secret Memos --Waterboarding Got White House Nod
"'We don't want to continue unless you tell us in writing that it's not only legal but is the policy of the administration.
All items are here:
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Please forward this update to anyone you think might be interested. Those who'd like to be added to the Newsletter list can sign up:
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Please write to: signup@ for inquiries.
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"I like Donald Rumsfeld ... On a personal level I enjoyedDonald Rumsfeld's company and I will in the future"- Former Australian pm, warmonger and serial liar John Howard
(Yeah, let's hope they're good chums in jail together!)