After the release of secret Bush documents outlining anti-terror plans, we learned some nasty things about the Bush administration.
"First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully," Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo wrote, adding later: "The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically."
Even broader exercises of federal power? Yep. They happened.
“I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck; they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room.”
The prisoner was then put in a coffin-like black box, about 4 feet by 3 feet and 6 feet high, “for what I think was about one and a half to two hours.” He added: The box was totally black on the inside as well as the outside.... They put a cloth or cover over the outside of the box to cut out the light and restrict my air supply. It was difficult to breathe. When I was let out of the box I saw that one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. From now on it was against this wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my neck. I think that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of the impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury.”
That was from Abu Zubaydah's tale at the hands of the CIA. In 2006, Red Cross officials visited Guantánamo to interview prisoners and monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions. Zubaydah's story is just one of the many.
“On arrival at the place of detention in Afghanistan I was stripped naked. I remained naked for the next two weeks.... I was kept in a standing position, feet flat on the floor, but with my arms above my head and fixed with handcuffs and a chain to a metal bar running across the width of the cell. The cell was dark with no light, artificial or natural.”
This forced standing, with arms shackled above the head, seems to have become standard procedure. It proved especially painful for Mr. bin Attash, who had lost a leg fighting in Afghanistan:
“After some time being held in this position my stump began to hurt so I removed my artificial leg to relieve the pain. Of course my good leg then began to ache and soon started to give way so that I was left hanging with all my weight on my wrists.”
Cold water was used on Mr. bin Attash in combination with beatings and the use of a plastic collar, which seems to have been a refinement of the towel that had been looped around Abu Zubaydah’s neck:
“On a daily basis during the first two weeks a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room. It was also placed around my neck when being taken out of my cell for interrogation and was used to lead me along the corridor. It was also used to slam me against the walls of the corridor during such movements.
“Also on a daily basis during the first two weeks I was made to lie on a plastic sheet placed on the floor which would then be lifted at the edges. Cold water was then poured onto my body with buckets.... I would be kept wrapped inside the sheet with the cold water for several minutes. I would then be taken for interrogation.”
That was Walid bin Attash. Apparently, wrapping something around a guy's throat and banging him into walls like a rag doll was standard operating procedure.
Now don't misunderstand. I recognize that these two men did or intended to do bad things. Abu Zubaydah was a senior member of Al Qaeda. Walid bin Attash was involved in planning of the 1998 attacks on American embassies in Africa and the 2000 attack on the Navy destroyer Cole. These aren't saints. But that is no excuse for our government to use torture.
And make no mistake...it
was the U.S. Government. Not just a couple of guys who acted alone and got out of hand. Not at all.
“It wasn’t up to individual interrogators to decide, ‘Well, I’m going to slap him. Or I’m going to shake him,’” said John Kiriakou, a C.I.A. officer who helped capture Abu Zubaydah, in an interview with ABC News.
Every one of the steps taken with regard to Abu Zubaydah “had to have the approval of the deputy director for operations. So before you laid a hand on him, you had to send in the cable saying, ‘He’s uncooperative. Request permission to do X.’”
He went on: “The cable traffic back and forth was extremely specific.... No one wanted to get in trouble by going overboard.”
In a similar vein Seymour Hersh has come forth with some startling revelations about the CIA. Hersh exposed the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. He later reported on the Abu Ghraib prison. This is not some untalented talking head. Hersh is a real journalist.
In an event at the University of Minnesota featuring Hersh and former Vice President Walter Mondale, Hersh remarked:
After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.
"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...
"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.
"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us..."
Assassinations and domestic spying and activities against people considered to be enemies of the state. The Church Committee was supposed to have ended shit like this back in the 1970's. Of course...Bush and Co. were just
protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order.
Does that last phrase seem familiar? That was the FBI's defense for
COINTELPRO. Another illegal and screwed up secret domestic counterintelligence program.
This should terrify you. At the very least, it should piss you off. None of that "if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear" crap. In a free country you shouldn't be spied on, period. It is irrelevant if you have nothing to hide. You shouldn't have to have that mentality. You should be free.
America shouldn't torture. Period. When you give someone a reason to hate you...they will.
Back in January,
I pointed out that violence begets violence and wars simply beget more wars.
Mohammed Abu Hassanin may be a young boy, but he's old enough to know he's scared of the attacks being launched by Israel in Gaza.
"When the Jews bomb us when we are asleep, [Hassanin] says 'We get scared,' " a translator says....
.... They are images Hassanin says he will never forget. He'll keep them stored away until he's old enough to do something about it.
"When we will grow up, we will bomb them back," a CNN translator quoted the boy saying on Hamas TV.
Too often, Bush and Co. spoke of winning hearts and minds. This cannot be done with violence. When you throw a stone at a man, he will find a bigger stone to throw back at you. This, of course, will set you off to find an even bigger stone. The cycle will be endless.
We, as Americans, need to send the message to the new administration that this is done. No more. Let the world know that what Bush and Co. did shouldn't reflect on all Americans. Bush kept this a secret for a reason: he knew that most Americans would find this behavior abhorrent.
We have to push Obama to rectify these past actions and never repeat them again.
As Howard Zinn recently said of Obama:
...With his foreign policy, unfortunately, he shows no signs of departing from the traditional militarism of the Democratic and Republican parties. The idea of sending more troops to Afghanistan is disastrous, really absurd. I mean, almost as soon as he came into office he sent missiles into Pakistan. Civilians were killed. The whole tone of foreign policy, adding more soldiers, leaving 50,000 in Iraq even after withdrawing them in 16 months, all of this is very bad. And, therefore, he's going to need a great big push -- protest, really. He's going to need demonstrations and protest and letters and petitions. He's going to have to face the kind of agitation that Roosevelt faced when he came into office.
Every great President was great not because he was born great, but because the people made him be great. Everyone in America who disagrees with torture, assassinations, and domestic spying needs to make his or her voice heard.
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