Child Abductions for Freedom

I just saw this on Glenn Greenwald's blog:

I see that Hilzoy this morning is discussing an amazing new report (.pdf) issued jointly by six human rights groups concerning 39 individuals whose whereabouts are unknown and at least some of whom, it seems quite likely, the U.S. has simply "disappeared," secretly holding in detention. Among the disappeared, Hilzoy highlights, are likely children as young as 7-9 years old. I have a lot to say about this issue -- as I hope everyone would -- but am unable to write anything now, but Hilzoy's post is superb and ought to be read widely.

We will undoubtedly hear at the next GOP debate from Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and company as they explain -- in the face of wild cheers from the "base" -- that they not only favor the disappearance of the children of Terrorists, but think the minimum age of detention ought to be halved from 8 to 4, and the number of secretly detained children doubled at least.

So, naturally, I went over to Hilzoy's post on Obsidian Wings and found more...

This report has gotten a fair amount of play, but in all the coverage I've read, only the Philadelphia Inquirer has mentioned what is, to me, the most awful allegation: that we disappeared young children. The report (pp. 24-26) lists five groups of family members; those who are discussed at greatest length are the sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

"In September 2002, Yusuf al-Khalid (then nine years old) and Abed al-Khalid (then seven years old) were reportedly apprehended by Pakistani security forces during an attempted capture of their father, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was successfully apprehended several months later, and the U.S. government has acknowledged that he was in the U.S. Secret Detention Program. He is presently held at Guantánamo Bay.

[Snip]

After Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s arrest in March 2003, Yusuf and Abed Al Khalid were reportedly transferred out of Pakistan in U.S. custody. The children were allegedly being sent for questioning about their father’s activities and to be used by the United States as leverage to force their father to co-operate with the United States. A press report on March 10, 2003 confirmed that CIA interrogators had detained the children and that one official explained that:

“We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children...but we need to know as much about their father's recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care.”

In the transcript of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal, he indicates knowledge that his children were apprehended and abused:

“They arrested my kids intentionally. They are kids. They been arrested for four months they had been abused.”"

Now, thinking back to that widely-reported confession by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a few months ago -- you know, the one where he confessed his responsibility for everything but the kidnapping of the Lindberg baby -- is there any chance that maybe, just maybe, some of that was coerced? I'm just speculating that, perhaps, 4 years of torture in Guantanamo Bay, combined the with the knowledge that his torturers had his children holed up in some similar undisclosed hell-hole, might have had the effect of coloring his testimony a bit. I'm just saying, I know KSM is a confirmed bad-guy and all, but this has to call his already-fantastical testimony into even more doubt.

Who needs evidence when we can threaten your kids?

I saw an episode of The Shield where the Russian mob acted the same way. But that was the Russian mob in a fictional TV show. This is the US government in real life.


See also:

• Off the Record: US Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the War on Terror

• The full report reference above (Adobe PDF file)

• Treaties banning the "disappearing" of civilians

• KSM: "I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation, from A to Z"

• KSM: "I beheaded American reporter"

• KSM: Read the long list of acts claimed by KSM in his secret military tribunal.

Wow, he makes Carlos the Jackal look like a Quaker.

This all further confirms for me what many have already suspected for a while. This whole torture program is designed, not to uncover intelligence on existing terror plots, but instead to create intelligence from whole cloth regardless of the existence of any plot. This manufactured intel is then used to incite fear and promote policies that have already been decided upon. The Iraq invasion, for example.

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Quotes of the Week

Here's a quick look at some selected quotes from this week that provide a very disturbing and sobering peek into the mindset of our current leadership. Let these statements stand as a monument to the ignorance, arrogance and moral bankruptcy of these men:

#1. President George W. Bush on the toll of the Iraq War as told to Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition":

"Yes, you see — you see it on TV, and that’s the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there’s also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people…. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there’s a strong will for democracy."

#2. Senator Trent Lott (R-MS):

“It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people. Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israeli’s and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me.“

#3. Senator Trent Lott again on whether he and and other Republican senators discussed Iraq in their meeting yesterday:

“No, none of that. You’re [the media] the only ones who obsess on that. We don’t and the real people out in the real world don’t for the most part.“

4. The Boston Globe reports that only 10% of congressmen, who voted yesterday to allow the use "enhanced interrogation techniques" (read torture) at the President's discretion, actually even know what techniques they were voting to allow. The report quotes Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as follows:

`I don't know what the CIA has been doing, nor should I know."

These speak for themselves.

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The Rebellion That Wasn't

Just quick update on the big "republican revolt" on torture. As predicted, the charade ended with these supposedly maverick senators selling us all and the constitution down the river for the price of cheap political points. Anyone sitting at home hanging all their hopes on the idea of this bunch standing up for the constitution, the rule of law and the moral conviction that shuns torture under any circumstance have been left all dressed up with no place to go... again.

When will we learn? These are conservatives without a conscience. When listening to them an excellent default position is to assume that if any of these folks are saying it there must be a scam in the works somewhere. This will be very effective even if you don't know the nuts and bolts of an issue before hand. For instance, if someday they tell you the sky is blue be sure to ignore the intuitive appeal of the assertion. Before you repeat it to someone take a quick look out of your window because, in all likelihood, that will be the day the sky turned orange with pink polkadots. Assume the are lying until proven truthful (and they wont be proven truthful).

And so it goes with all the grandstanding and media breathlessness over this charade of a Republican "revolt". The best writing I've found on the subject comes from Glenn Greenwald in his blog, Unclaimed Territory:

No matter where one stands on the ideological spectrum, there is nothing confusing or unclear or ambiguous about the so-called "compromise" on torture, nor is there a lack of clarity about who won. It couldn't be any clearer. On the interrogation issue, there was only one simple issue from the beginning -- the Bush administration, through the CIA, has been using an array of "interrogation techniques" (induced hypothermia, long standing, threats to harm families, waterboarding) which most of the world considers to be torture. The question was whether the U.S. would be a country that uses these torture techniques (as the administration wanted) or whether it would ban them. That was the only issue all along.

Just last week at his press conference -- does the media have any short term memory at all? -- the President said he cared about only one thing with regard to the torture legislation: "I have one test for this legislation. I'm going to ask one question, as this legislation proceeds, and it's this: The intelligence community must be able to tell me that the bill Congress sends to my desk will allow this vital program to continue. That's what I'm going to ask." By "this program," he means the CIA's torture program.

This legislation unquestionably allows the administration to continue to do exactly what it is was doing before. It legalizes those methods. It actually strengthens what the administration was doing because now it provides those activities with statutory authority. Why are the media and others pretending that these questions are murky? They're not.

It's true that the "compromise" takes the indirect, cowardly path towards legalizing torture by relying upon vague standards to define torture and then vesting in the President the sole power (unreviewable by courts) to determine what techniques are and are not allowed by those standards. It is the President who decides whether the "aggressive interrogation" program (i.e., the torture program) can continue, and he has already decided, obviously, that it will.

That is why the President and his senior advisers are celebrating the fact that the "program" can now continue. Because it can. Because the "compromise" allows that. Because the White House won. Because the principled, dissident Republican Senators capitulated entirely on the central question of whether the U.S. will continue to torture people.

I highly recommend the entire post as well as his other work on the subject. We the people have, once again, been hoodwinked (well, not me personally -- I tried to tell ya -- but I'm being generous).

See also Paul Waldman's post at The Gadflyer in which he rightfully calls out the Democrats also for their eerie silence on the subject. We already know we can't count on them to strongly oppose that useless war (or the next). We can't count on them stand against so-called "free trade" policies that are killing jobs in America and exploiting workers abroad. We can't look to them to fight against domestic spying or draconian "Patriot" acts. We can't depend on them to oppose the indefinite incarceration of American citizens without charge or due process. We couldn't count on them to oppose that awful bankruptcy reform law. Now we find that we can't even ask them to say a single peep against the legalization of torture. Please remind me why they exist again.

Their silence has allowed the unthinkable to happen. The Republicans have been allowed, via this staged-for-TV "revolt", to assume both the "get tough at all costs" posture and the mantle of conscientious opposition as their own private property, all while conspiring to legalize torture writ large. The Democrats have ceded both sides of issue to the war & torture mongers. It's political negligence that borders on criminal.

This is the American opposition party? Their philosophy seems to be to avoid a fight in order to live to not fight another day. I'm sorry, but any talk of the Democrats being "appeasers" of anyone should begin and end with their incessant appeasement of George W. Bush and his radical, authoritarian agenda for this country. They, even more than the GOP itself, make me despair for this country. It may already be too late.

But I digress. Good night.

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A Revoltin' Revolt

Don't Be Hoodwinked!

I've withheld comment on the supposed "revolt" a few Republican senators and Colin Powell are being credited with staging over the last few days, ostensibly in response Bush's push to unilaterally redefine the Geneva Conventions. I've felt from the start that it was all just a bit of made-for-TV melodrama for the amusement of us voters, deemed long ago too stupid to know the difference. But I didn't have the details to back my intuition. All I had was my knowledge that this Republican congress doesn't truly oppose Bush on anything and has engaged in this kind of charade before.

But even more than that, my suspicions were strengthened, not weakened, by the entrance of Colin Powell into the fray. For years Colin Powell has functioned as the GOP's human shield of credibility. If they met any resistance on an issue they'd trot him out and hide whatever stinking pile of dung they were pushing behind his carefully-cultivated image. In return, he has proven that he would never be goaded by principle or conscience into doing anything publicly that wasn't completely safe politically. His performance at the UN in February 2003 cemented that reputation in my mind. As I see it, Colin Powell's imprimatur on this "revolt" is a red flag, a warning sign that this is indeed a conservative strategy, not a revolt at all. But, that kind of stuff is just speculation, not evidence. So, held off on posting it.

Now, Joshua Holland at The Gadflyer has a post that pretty much confirms my well-earned cynicism.

This is... a terrible bill. It's an improvement over the House bill favored by the administration, yes, but a terrible bill nonetheless...

[snip]

Let's all just understand that both bills redefine war crimes under article three of the Geneva Conventions, both start us down a slippery slope towards something quite ugly and both will, in Colin Powell's words, cause the world to "doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."

Now why would he say something like that? Well, it turns out that this alternative bill, the one that these "revolting" senators are said to be "protecting the rule of law" with, is every bit as revoltin' as the house bill supported by Bush. Both bills unilaterally redefine Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Both bill immunize US officials or agents from penalties arising from the use of torture. Both bills provide such immunization retroactively (this bill is retroactive to 9/11, Bush's to 1978).

It also seems to me that both bills would allow for the use of evidence obtained by torture in military tribunals. I could be wrong there (I'm no lawyer) but follow me on this. The alternative bill does not say so directly like the house bill, but it's provisions for a) raising the bar as to what constitutes torture and b) prohibiting detainees from challenging the conditions of their captivity have the same effect. So, we can have a rule in place for military tribunals that explicitly prohibits evidence obtained by "torture". That's all well and good. But if we then implement other rules that dilute the definition of torture and prevents an individual's treatment from being formally declared as torture, then what's the net effect?

So, the thing I'm having trouble with is this. If John McCain and John Warner (and Colin Powell) are so concerned that the proposed house legislation will jeopardize US servicemen serving abroad and call into question the US morality on the issue, why would they support a second bill that effectively does the same thing?

Short answer: The are all full of... (ahem)... could use a laxative. They think you're stupid. This all being done in anticipation of the upcoming elections. The bogus use of this issue serves as a way to distance themselves, and the republican congress by extension, from Bush whose poll numbers are toxic. That would be all well and good if they were doing it to actually oppose him. But, ironically, their attempt to bait & switch us with this bogus "alternative" -- which does nothing to ease anyone's concerns about the use of torture and our compliance with the Geneva conventions -- shows just how cozy they really are with the Bush agenda and how far they're willing to go to advance it. Don't be hoodwinked.

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