Senate Report: Torture was Brutal and Ineffective

 Today the Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by Senator Dianne Feinstein released the unclassified version of its report on "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" used during the Bush Administration.  A detailed synopsis of the more brutal methods can be found here.  Suffice it to say some of the techniques employed killed detainees and many would constitute torture by the definitions of the Geneva Convention, of which the United States is a signatory.  The report also finds that CIA lied to Congress about the methods employed and the effectiveness of the intelligence obtained.  The report's investigation determined that no important actionable intelligence was garnered by the use of these barbaric practices, and that indeed much misinformation was "fabricated" by detainees in their efforts to make the agony stop.  One of President Obama's first acts after his inauguration in 2009 was to ban this barbarism. 

 Senate majority leader Harry Reid weighed in to back the report. “Today, for the first time, the American people are going to learn the full truth about torture that took place under the CIA during the Bush administration,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “The only way our country can put this episode in the past is to confront what happened.”  "Not only is torture wrong but it doesn’t work,” said Reid. He said torture “got us nothing except a bad name.”

Most Republicans, including former President George W. Bush, criticized the report, but Senator John McCain, a victim of torture himself as a prisoner in Vietnam, had this to say: "What might cause a surprise not just to our enemies, but to many Americans is how little these practices did to aid our efforts to bring 9/11 culprits to justice and to find and prevent terrorist attacks today and tomorrow. That could be a real surprise since it contradicts the many assurances provided by intelligence officials on the record and in private that enhanced interrogation techniques were indispensable in the war against terrorism." (Source)

I don't always agree with Sen. McCain on many things, but on this issue he has always had it right.  He well encapsulated the importance of a moral stance with this statement: "But in the end, torture's failure to serve its intended purpose isn't the main reason to oppose its use. I have often said and will always maintain that this question isn't about our enemies, it's about us. It's about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be." (Source)

How Accurate is the Movie "Zero Dark Thirty?"

I saw "Zero Dark Thirty" Wednesday night with Visalia Times-Delta Entertainment Editor James Ward.  You can see his review of the film here.  He asked me along to look into the movie's historical accuracy.  When investigating a movie like “Zero Dark Thirty,” which depicts secret operations like the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the mission that killed him, there are unavoidable problems from the historian’s point of view.  There are some sources, but not a great many, and not from many different perspectives.  The official records remain classified.  Also, personal and political controversies still swirl around some facets of the events, especially including the means by which information may have been gathered to piece together the master terrorist’s whereabouts.

The film moves like a story within a documentary.  Director Kathryn Bigelow measures time for the viewer by making references to world events, especially to some of the al-Qaeda terrorist operations that took place between the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001 and the killing of bin Laden on May 1, 2011.  These are all historically accurate in the dates and in the characterizations of what took place.  In the movie these include the al-Khobar massacre of 22 victims on May 29, 2004, the London bus and subway bombings that killed 52 on July 7, 2005, the truck bombing of the Islamabad, Pakistan Marriott Hotel that killed 54 on September 20, 2008, the suicide bombing that took eight CIA personnel at Camp Chapman in Afghanistan on December 30, 2009, and the attempted car bombing of Times Square, New York on May 1, 2010.       

The culminating raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan, is rendered with exacting detail and remarkable faithfulness to the accounts we have.  “Zero Dark Thirty” portrays the raid in real time, taking precisely eighteen minutes from helicopter touchdown to the shots that felled the al-Qaeda chief.  The sequence correctly shows the SEALS and their actions in bringing down first bin-Laden’s principal courier Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, Kuwaiti’s brother Abrar, Abrar’s wife Bushra, one of Bin Laden's sons, Khalid, and finally Osama bin Laden himself, in addition to wounding one of bin Laden’s wives, Amal al-Fatah. 

There are a few inaccuracies in the raid depiction.  In the real raid, after killing bin Laden the SEALS had twenty minutes to gather intelligence.  The movie gave them four.  The SEALS brought a Belgian Malamois dog named Cairo along to sniff for explosives; he was portrayed as a German shepherd in the film.  A fluent Pashto-speaking operative was part of the mission in case they needed to speak to the local Pakistanis.  The movie shows many locals approaching the compound during the raid, and the operative having to threaten to have the SEALS shoot them if they did not leave.  In reality, he wore a Pakistani Army cap, only a few neighbors came by to see what was going on, and he easily got them to leave by telling them a security operation was underway and to go home and turn off their lights.          

Certainly the most controversial part of “Zero Dark Thirty” is its depiction of the use of torture to get information from detainees at secret CIA sites, and the importance of that torture in obtaining the crucial information that enabled the movie’s agent Maya, played by Jessica Chastain, to locate bin Laden’s courier and have him tailed to his master’s hideout.  Most sources that have come out so far take issue with that view, though not all. 

Former CIA chief supervisor of interrogations Jose Rodriguez says, “No one was bloodied or beaten in the enhanced interrogation program which I supervised from 2002 to 2007,” and that “written authorization from Washington” was needed even to give a prisoner a slap across the face.  He says they did use sleep deprivation or “in rare cases, waterboarding,” which was discontinued in 2003.  Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin, along with Leon Panetta, CIA Director from February 2009 to June 2011, strongly maintain that no information useful to the bin Laden operation was obtained by the enhanced techniques, including the identity of the courier. 

In opposition to that, former Bush Administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey has claimed that the waterboarding of al-Kaeda’s number three leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, (captured in 2003) provided information “that led to bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.”  He says this even though it wasn't found until seven years later.

The historian has to take special care to reserve judgment in the case of sources who may be trying to justify controversial political positions in their recounting of events.  Though the preponderance of those who have spoken so far tends to discredit the torture depictions of the film, the definitive verdict may have to await the declassification of the relevant documents.  That, of course, might not be for several years.  

McCain Comes Around

I received a pleasant surprise this morning while watching Bob Schieffer interview Senator John McCain on Face the Nation. The surprise was the reappearance of the candid and honest John McCain we used to know before the 2008 presidential election campaign. It reminded me of the McCain of the 2000 "Straight Talk Express" days, of the man who used to be my favorite Republican. It was good to see him back.

There he was, telling Schieffer that torture is not only illegal, but immoral and ineffective. "Under torture, a prisoner will tell you anything he thinks you want to hear," said McCain, sounding like either a peacenik or a man who knows something about torture first hand.

He spoke of going to Iraq with his friend, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. There they were allowed to talk to a man McCain referred to as, "an al Qaeda operative." The Arizona lawmaker related how he had asked the man how al Qaeda had begun making inroads in Iraq. "The first opportunity came in the general chaos after the American invasion, when there was no law and order in the country." "The second," he said, "came after the news about Abu Ghraib reached the people. Suddenly, there were thousands of young men eager to join our ranks." By relating this story it is clear that McCain gets it.

During the election campaign this McCain was nowhere to be found. The former proponent of American morality and adherence to international law and civilized behavior had adopted a strategy founded on appealing to the conservative base of the Republican Party alone. That group refuses to hear of anything the country might be able to improve upon, so during the election race McCain turned to backing the Bush-Cheney "enhanced interrogation" regime and ridiculing Obama's promise to abide by U.S. law and common decency.

It is good to see that now out of the grip of his campaign team of Rove-trained pols and an imagined need to draw distinctions with Obama even where he was clearly right, McCain has returned to sense and to his ethical center. It does not say much for the Republican base when its candidate feels he must cater to its mythologies at election time to win its votes, even when he knows they are not only erroneous but against his own principles as well. Those who will not hear the truth can never face reality and correct mistakes.

Welcome back, John. It was good to see you again.

Dick Cheney: Darth Sinister

A pattern of increasing desperation on the part of the perpetrators is evident in the ever-unfolding drama over the Bush Administration's torture policies. It should be clear by now why former Vice President Dick Cheney is out in front of a camera seemingly every day now. He is trying to save his tail from the slammer.

The principal question regarding the issue of torture has gone through several stages, each based on the rationalizations or alibis dreamed up by the war criminals themselves in the face of each successive revelation. At first the issue was whether it was happening. After Abu Ghraib that became whether it was the work of a few bad apples. After it became clear senior officials gave the go-ahead the next dodge was whether it was illegal. Of late that one has morphed into whether it was effective. The latest is a question of the date Nancy Pelosi first knew about it for certain.

The one thing these excuses all have in common is their irrelevance to the matter at hand. The United States Constitution, U.S. statutes and the United Nations Charter (as a ratified treaty it has the full force of U.S. law) have all been violated. If we are a nation of laws under the rule of law we cannot pick and choose the laws to follow when it is convenient to do so.

The excuses offered are strikingly reminiscent of the same kinds of sorry devices I heard from adolescent miscreants as a middle school teacher for seventeen years: I didn't know it was against the rules. I was just holding it for somebody else. It was somebody else's fault. You're lucky it wasn't something worse. Everybody else is doing it. So-and-so saw me and didn't say anything. My other teacher said it was okay. This other guy told me to do it.

The more they try to explain and excuse their way out of it the deeper into trouble they get. The more lies they have to tell to cover up previous lies the more obvious everything becomes. What a sinister creep Dick Cheney is. So are his fellow travelers, people like David Addington, John Yoo, David Bybee and so on. They remind me of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and his cabal. The world canot afford a United States of America run by people like that. It is time to clean out the rot--all of it.

Obama Disappoints on Torture Memos

Today President Barack Obama ordered the Office of Legal Counsel to release memos from the years between 2002 and 2005 relating to interrogation techniques then approved for use against terrorism suspects. He also issued a statement outlining his reasons for the release, explaining the principles the U.S. will follow from now on and giving his view of what the legal system should do from here. The President's reasons for making the documents public are acceptable. His statement of principles is welcome. But his vision for legal action is little but a disappointing rationale for justifying political expediency over law and principle.

You can read the documents themselves as first released here. They allowed for such procedures as depriving detainees of sleep for a week, throwing them against a wall as many as thirty times, and of course, waterboarding. There is no question such practices violate the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners. You can see them here, particularly Article 3, Section 1 clauses a) and c). The United States has ratified this Convention, making it American as well as international law.

In discussing his decision to come forward with the material and his views on related matters, here is President Obama's statement as printed in the New York Times.

Obama said he is making the documents public because the "techniques described in these memos have already been widely reported," the "previous Administration publicly acknowledged portions of the program," and, "I have already ended the techniques described in the memos." The President spoke of maintaining a true and accurate "accounting of the past." The first two reasons are disappointing. They seem to say that since the world already knows the truth there is no sense trying to keep covering it up. The intimation seems to be that if the world had not found out then maybe Obama would think it a good idea to keep the truth hidden. He seems worried about being criticized for revealing U.S. secrets by hardliners, whether they are justifiably secret or not. That does not sound like "change we can believe in." The last reason, to set the record straight, is the one saving part of this section of the statement, along with his assertion, "their release is required by the rule of law." (emphasis added)

The part of Obama's statement outlining his perspective on torture is the most sensible and humane. After recalling his prohibition of these practices "in one of my first acts as President," Obama went on to assert his stance that, "they undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer," and rejected excusing torture as a "false choice between our security and our ideals." This is all well in keeping with the standards of the United States and the kind of conduct that will attract allies and partners rather than the abhorrence of civilized people while it swells the ranks of our adversaries.

The President, however, ends on an unsatisfactory note in his desire to sweep the unpleasantries of the past under the rug. He states, "This is a time for reflection, not retribution." He says, "nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past." It is enough, he says, to, "right its course in concert with our core values," but then to, "come together on behalf of our common future." Obama closes by saying of the memos, "we have taken steps to ensure that the actions described within them will never take place again."

It is here that I would disagree. He has taken but halfhearted steps to prevent them from happening again, even on his watch. He has issued an Executive Order. Since there is apparently to be no consequence for those who flouted U.S. law before in this regard, there is little to suggest a sterner approach if it happens again. As for letting the past fade away without resolution other than "reflection," that is what led to this problem in the first place. The fall of the Nixon Administration but the pardon of its leader led at least two of its young lions, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, to plot for nearly thirty years to get back into power and be part of an Administration unfettered by moral or legal constraints in pursuit of its hardline "realpolitik" views.

President Obama has a lot on his to-do list, to be sure. In addition to inheriting a terrible economy, two wars and an impending environmental crisis, new problems continue to arise. The Mexican drug war, Indian Ocean piracy and reforming the tax system stand as examples of the growing list of serious challenges. From what he said today, that looks to be one of his concerns in deciding not to go after the "misguided zealotry" at best, or sadistic criminality at worst that these memos unleashed. But expedient yielding to wrong is never a good idea. It tends to invite more of it, sooner or later.

Proffered Deal Delays AG Confirmation

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) is on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee, at the behest of Republicans, has kept putting off a vote on the confirmation of Obama Attorney General nominee Eric Holder. Whitehouse has now lost patience with the holdup and has released a statement revealing, to his understanding, what is behind this. He feels the Republicans are quite afraid Holder may wind up prosecuting people for breaking U.S. and international law by torturing people, and they do not want any investigations into such activities to take place.

On January 23 Whitehouse released the following statement. You can see the original on his website here.

"Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have asked Eric Holder to make a commitment, before he is even confirmed, that he will not prosecute any Bush Administration officials for their involvement in acts of torture during the last administration.

Anyone familiar with the criminal justice system - especially those with experience as prosecutors or judges - should know that a prosecutor should make no determination about who to prosecute before he or she has all the facts, and particularly in response to legislative pressure.

After all we have recently been through at the Department of Justice, I would hope and expect that upon calm reflection, no one on our Committee would expect the Attorney General of the United States to make prosecutorial decisions based on legislative pressure."

Or make deals promising that certain criminals will have nothing to fear as long as he is on the job. Hopefully, Mr. Holder will have the integrity to refuse to make any such deal. Some of the members of this committee seem not only to have missed the memo that they lost the election, they also seem to remain clueless as to some of the reasons why they lost.

Tortured Logic

On Saturday President Bush vetoed legislation that would have prohibited the CIA from using waterboarding and other coercive interrogation methods beyond the 19 techniques approved in the Army Field Manual. On Tuesday the House of Representatives voted 225-188 to override the veto, a 37-vote majority but 51 votes short of the 2/3 necessary to overcome the president's veto.

Because of the bill's failure, the intelligence authorization contained in it will not go into effect. Television ads quickly appeared blaming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for leaving America unprotected against terrorists. The ads called on citizens to contact their congressional representatives to urge passage of an intelligence bill without the restrictions.

In his Saturday radio address Bush explained, "I cannot sign into law a bill that would prevent me, and future presidents, from authorizing the CIA to conduct a separate, lawful intelligence program, and from taking all lawful actions necessary to protect Americans from attack."

Bush's logic is specious on two counts here. First, it was not congressional Democrats who scuttled the Intelligence Authorization bill. It was Bush's veto that did that. They passed a bill that continued U.S. intelligence efforts except for the banned practices. He decided he would rather have no bill than agree to one that does not let him torture.

Second, U.S. law already specifically bans waterboarding. It is not lawful. His use of the term "lawful" twice in one sentence does not change that fact. Congress passes the laws. Bush's opinion that something ought to be lawful does not make it so.

In terms of the presidential race, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supported the ban. John McCain, who was tortured himself as a prisoner of war and who used to oppose torture, sided with Bush. When told earlier in the Iraq War that Americans should torture captives because insurgents there sometimes did so, McCain famously said, "It's not about who they are. It's about who we are." Who we are has apparently changed, in his view.

As columnist Eugene Robinson points out, if Osama Bin Laden were to perform such dangerous and sadistic practices on Americans it would be regarded as evil. Bush asks us to believe, however, that if we do it it is moral. His tortured logic is as unpersuasive as it is hypocritical.