14 December 2005 (# 9)
Scanning the European press on the topic of CIA rendition and secret prisons, made considerably easier by blogger Fran’s
European Breakfast (
http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2005/12/13/235927/93), I noticed an interesting excerpt from
Spiegel Online:But the Americans were mistaken if they thought that they would be getting rid of al-Masri by sending him back to the German countryside. Last Tuesday, the Lebanese-German was beamed in via satellite to join a press conference given by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Washington. When the pony-tailed al-Masri appeared on the screen at 9:39 p.m. wearing a suit jacket, his shirt open at the collar, the major US television networks were on hand with their cameras rolling. When the devout Muslim described his brutal treatment at the hands of CIA agents, it was immediately clear that the press conference would be a PR disaster for the US government.
Even some Bush supporters are beginning to feel that their country's war on terror has gotten out of hand. Despite its complexities and the fact that some of the details remain unresolved, the al-Masri case has exposed one important reality:
The CIA, America's overseas intelligence agency, has behaved just as ruthlessly on the sovereign territory of its allies as anywhere else. Germany, for one, isn't just a cooperative partner for the CIA.
Germany is also an operations region, sometimes with and sometimes without the knowledge of German authorities -- even when this violates German law.
Quiet German tolerance German intelligence officials estimate that more than 100 CIA officials are currently working in Germany, although only the Americans know the exact number. They work at the US Embassy in Berlin, but also in Frankfurt, Munich and Hamburg and, together with German intelligence agencies, at the German counterterrorism center in Berlin. Some of their work is as mundane as writing reports and discussing analyses, but they also recruit sources and observe suspects. And whenever the US agents, operating in Germany under the title "Joint Intelligence Services," become too conspicuous,
German officials don't seem to have any qualms about looking the other way. "When these kinds of problematic cases land on our desks," says an interior minister of one of Germany's states, "we keep one eye tightly shut, so that we don't end up having to do something that would be very embarrassing."
More at the link: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,390084,00.html Gov. Dean, the irony is dwarfed by an obsequiousness that is both illegal and tragically forgetful of one of history’s clearest lessons.
Our country's leaders, including those who represent us in Congress -
indeed, all of us - must open our eyes and step out of what Nazi war criminal Albert Speer called
"moral contamination." We are only too willing to let our institutions do our sinning for us.At the Nuremberg Trial, Speer, number three in the wartime Nazi hierarchy,
was the only defendant to accept full responsibility not only for his own actions but also for those of the regime.
Speer said he had become "inescapably contaminated morally":"I did not see because I did not want to see ... there is no way I can avoid responsibility ...
It is surprisingly easy to blind your moral eyes. I was like a man following a trail of bloodstained footprints through the snow without realizing someone had been injured."
Link: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/121405I.shtmlNo ambiguity exists in the minds of most of us regarding the difference between interrogation of a suspect and torture. No ambiguity exists in the minds of most of us why
habeas corpus must be the right of
any detained person. It is not as if we don’t have more than adequate lessons from history of the dangers to society of closing even one eye to any form of government that practices torture and other illegal acts.
Thirty-three retired US intelligence officers wrote the following to Senator McCain on December 9, 2005:As retired professional intelligence experts and interrogators, we understand how vital accurate intelligence is to US efforts to combat terrorist violence by groups like Al Qaeda. We have seen first-hand the central role that human intelligence gathering has played in countering the threats posed by these radical groups operating in the Middle East, South Asia, and other regions, as well as here at home.
We are proud to have served our country, and we remain deeply committed to supporting efforts to confront the serious terrorist threats facing the nation.
In our view, the use of torture and other cruelty against those in US custody undermines this fight. Such tactics fail to produce reliable information, risk corrupting the institutions that employ them,
and forfeit the ideals that attract others to our nation’s cause.In the public debate over your amendment, some have argued that CIA interrogators should be exempt from the standards of decency and law that guide the actions of our military in battle and reflect our national values. They argue that the US must retain “flexibility” to act outside accepted standards in dealing with hardened enemies, on the presumption that violent and abusive tactics are the best way to successfully interrogate these prisoners.
We reject this view.Carving out authority for the CIA to abuse prisoners in its custody does a disservice to those brave men and women who serve the agency, and
increases the risks to their safety in an already dangerous environment. In addition, it is wrong to assume that abusive treatment can be contained within a bureaucracy without corrupting the institution itself. Even where the intention is to limit abusive treatment to only a narrow category of prisoners or circumstances, other governments that have experimented with such “controlled abuse” have found that employment of violent tactics invariably spreads, becoming more the norm than the exception.
There are already signs this is happening in our own interrogation practices, with devastating impact to our nation’s reputation.Those who press for the “flexibility” to abuse prisoners have been willing to forsake both effectiveness and our values as a nation on the misguided belief that abusive treatment will produce vital intelligence. But interrogation in the real world rarely resembles what we see on television or in the movies. Serious efforts to extract intelligence from captured prisoners are not the stuff of television drama. This task requires research, native language skills, and developing sustained relationships with the targets of interrogation. Abusive tactics make developing these relationships more difficult; instead, they tend to induce a subject to tell an interrogator whatever he or she thinks the interrogator wants to hear. Once these barriers are built up, opportunities for obtaining reliable information from a target usually all but disappear, and vital information is permanently lost.
Thankfully, the choice between our values and success against the terrorist enemy is a false one.
Link: http://www.humanrightsfirst.info/pdf/051209-etn-cia-mcain.pdfOne of the author’s of that letter is national security expert, Richard Clarke. Another author of the letter is Ray McGovern who served America as a distinguished CIA professional for 27 years. Mr. McGovern brings each of us to our shared responsibility in what our government does:
The Supreme CrimeThe use of torture before and after the invasion of Iraq points to an even larger crime - the attack on and occupation of Iraq for reasons other than those given.
The war is, pure and simple, a war of aggression. The post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal, largely a creature of the United States, declared:
"To initiate a war of aggression ... is the supreme international crime differing from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called the war illegal, as have the International Commission of Jurists and the preponderance of legal experts around the world. As for the "accumulated evil of the whole," torture comes immediately to mind.
There is no getting around it. Torture is a war crime; a crime against humanity. And, assuming the polls have it right, part of that accumulation is
the fact that a majority of our fellow citizens have been frightened into believing that it is permissible to dehumanize others to the point of torture.Link: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/121405I.shtml How permissive is the use of
“fear” to drive our Republic into a totalitarian state. Let’s read carefully what former Republican Congressman and CIA official, Ron Barr, has to say:
"Even when the leaders in Washington say we're not going to let the terrorists change our way of life,
they are implementing policies that do precisely that. … They're using people's fear of another terrorist attack to move forward with various government programs that the government has wanted to gather and put in place for many many years.
They're using the fear which is now driving public policy in this country which is very unfortunate and very un-American. Our leaders are shamelessly playing on that fear to implement and grab power."Link:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/5573Gov. Dean, we all must
“open our eyes and step out of … the "moral contamination" that Bush and his neoconster regime have infused into American society and into much of our government. We are enmeshed in a lethal crisis as we confront lawless, treasonous men and women strangling the last remaining breath from our America.
At some point in the future, if someone were to read this letter and reflect on what each of us did, I hope their response will be something like -- "They got it and they did something about it." That is not the response I have when I read books like Sebastian Hafner's
"Defying Hitler."We have one way to save the America of our Declaration of Independence, the America of our Constitution -- by bringing the criminals before suitable Tribunal to face just prosecution.
If we have to await other Nation's enacting sanctions and other penalties against the United States to halt our manifest and vast crimes against humanity (and our own citizens), then America is dead.
Sure, the geo-political entity called America today may still have the same name, but the meaning, the soul of America will be gone.
No other Nation began as did America.
No other Nation, prior to America, was launched with the mandate explicit in our Declaration of Independence.
No other Nation, prior to America, began with a legal structure proclaimed by "We the People ... ."
The words of Jefferson ring loud and clear today because the threat he feared is currently engaged in destroying America:
"Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless ... the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion." -- Thomas Jefferson in "Notes on the State of Virginia", Query 17, p. 161, 1784
"Our rights" are being systematically destroyed. America is being systematically destroyed.
The whole world knows it.
The one way we can not just restore America, but move it to a special place of hope for every person on the planet is if we act now to bring the criminals to justice.
We must not await others to do our job for us.Every person who has taken the oath to defend our Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic is hereby called to duty. Every member of the legal and law enforcement profession, truly dedicated to defending America, must bring forth, through every available mechanism, the charges required to prosecute those who have aided and abetted Bush and Cheney.
This is not a matter of elections and politics-as-usual -- because we have every reason to expect the election process of 2006 will be just as corrupt as those in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2005 (OH in particular).
”We the people ...” must be the vectors of justice.
”We the people ...” must be the beacons of hope to those elsewhere who suffer injustice, by virtue of the fact that beginning in late 2005 we made justice stick in America.
The responsibility is ours and we have no excuses (
http://missionnotaccomplished.us/WTPv17n.pdf).
The decision is ours:
America, or Not?What will someone read about America in a year, or five, or more from now? The decision is ours.
Remarkably, many of our fellow citizens have begun the process. I urge you to communicate directly with the Bush Crimes Commission and determine how best you and every responsible member of the Democratic Party leadership can support their efforts. Details on the Second Session to be held on 20-22 January, 2006, in New York City can be found here:
http://www.bushcommission.orgThank you for your continued leadership,
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