[Vision2020] Habeas Corpus at Bagram

[Andreas Schou]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 6:25 AM, g. crabtree <jampot at roadrunner.com> wrote:

>  And you are deliberately conflating the mistreatment of prisoners by
> individuals with administration policy regarding interrogation techniques.
>

Nothing that occurred at Abu Ghraib was illegal under the interpretation of
torture advanced by the Office of Legal Council. Remember, under the OLC
definition, torture must cause pain similar to that caused by death or organ
failure; even if it does cause that pain, it isn't torture unless it also
inflicts suffering, which is to say, ongoing effects that last for several
years. S

Use of dogs, sexual humiliation, hooding, sensory deprivation, use of
insects and coffinlike spaces, hypothermia, mock executions, use of nudity
in interrogation, facial and body slaps, hypothermia and sleep deprivation
were all techniques approved for use on Guantanimo prisoners; techniques
which were carried over and used in Abu Ghraib (though to a greater degree)
when military police were brought in to conduct interrogations.  These
techniques were only banned as elements of "fear up harsh" in 2006. The use
of these techniques has made the Guantanamo terrorists incapable of being
tried in any civilian court, or, indeed, even military courts.

Even if abuses were not approved, they continued with the full knowledge of
the relevant parties. The FBI interrogators' 2003 report to the FBI's Office
of Internal Council was received before Geoffrey Miller left Guantanamo. The
White House had to have been aware that the FBI had flat-out refused to
continue to participate in abusive interrogations, as most of the US's
experienced terrorist interrogators were FBI Special Agents. Indeed, well
after the submission of the 2003 FBI report, Geoffrey Miller, the general
responsible for the interrogations at Guanatanamo, was reassigned to oversee
and "Gitmoize" the main American prison in Iraq. Abu Ghraib.

Do you think it's a total coincidence that FBI interrogators complained of
the same techniques later discovered to have taken place at Abu Ghraib? Do
you think it's a total coincidence that those same techniques -- temperature
control, nudity, sensory and sleep deprivation, mock executions -- were the
techniques later used at Abu Ghraib? Do you think it's a coincidence that
the same man oversaw both interrogation regimes -- and was promoted from
running one interrogation program to running the other? What do you think
the verb "to Gitmoize" means, if not to make one facility more like the
other?

You keep telling me that you don't believe that there was a policy of
torture. But you won't tell me, even having the evidence right in front of
you, what you think the policy was. And while I'm at it, even under your
interpretation, I've got another question for you: if you think the
Guantanamo practices did constitute torture, would you approve of life
sentences (the applicable punishment) for Geoffrey Miller and the Guantanamo
interrogators?

-- ACS
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