Professor: Detainees' accounts confirm White House authorized torture

[L. Coyote]

Source: Raw Story

David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Wednesday March 18, 2009

ACLU renews call for special prosecutor
A leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross on treatment of detainees held at CIA "black sites" describes a variety of interrogation techniques which the report says "constituted torture." UC-Berkeley journalism professor Mark Danner, who has published excerpts from the report in a lengthy article for the New York Review of Books, told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Tuesday that he regards the detainees' accounts as completely credible.

Danner pointed out that the fourteen prisoners interviewed by the Red Cross had been "kept rigorously isolated throughout their detention" and "had no chance to compare their stories," and yet their accounts were "strikingly similar in almost every minute detail."

Maddow commented that the similarity of the stories also implies that "this was a very organized situation. This is not rogue CIA officers taking the gloves off and deciding what to do in the moment. "

"What do we know about the level of coordination between officials at these black sites and officials in Washington?" she asked.

.............

Read more: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Reporter_found_matching_torture_stories_from_0318.html

---

US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites by Mark Danner
Volume 56, Number 6 · April 9, 2009
ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA Custody
by the International Committee of the Red Cross
43 pp., February 2007
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22530

VIDEO: US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites by Mark Danner = C-SPAN
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x285111
Series: "Conversations with History"
Conversations Host Harry Kreisler welcomes writer Mark Danner for a discussion of the Iraq War
and foreign policy in the Bush administration. Informed by history, Danner's analysis includes
comparison of Bush and Reagan, draws attention to change in U.S. policy on torture, and examines
the options for future U.S. policymakers.

[pleah]

1. K&R

[SpiralHawk]

2. Wake up, America

The Republicons were just a freaking perverted pain & torture B & D machine under Commander AWOL Bush and VP Dickie 'Five Military Deferments' Cheney, violating the Family Values set forth by Christ, who was tortured by the Republicons of his era 2,000 years ago...

[bottomtheweaver]

3. From today's Democracy Now interview with Mark Danner, the professor

who published extended excerpts of the secret International Committee of the Red Cross report in the NY Review of Books:

So, I think anyone who looks at the report or reads the extracts in the New York Review of Books article can have no doubt, first of all, that the United States tortured prisoners and, secondly, that this activity was illegal and constituted a breach of international and domestic law.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Mark Danner, did President Bush lie?

MARK DANNER: Yes. Yeah, he did.

Video and transcript: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/18/mark_danner_bush_lied_about_torture

[L. Coyote]

4. Thanks for the link. This story is exploding in Bush's face.

Did he manage to escape Canada?

[sohndrsmith]

5. Unfortunately, this HUGE information is not getting the attention it deserves, at least

it isn't today - it's all AIG and only AIG (not that this isn't an important matter - it is). I only hope that this doesn't get buried and forgotten. Am I wrong to think the Red Cross and Danner's info is a really, REALLY big deal???

Well, regardless of what the national (or global) answer is to that, I think it is and I hope we can get back to it post haste.

PS: forgot to add my 'thank you' for the link to Danner's NYB article. I wasn't sure it was available, generally).

[bottomtheweaver]

6. I think it's a big deal.

The details and motives of the depraved CIA "torture curriculum" have been out there since at least last year, when Jane Mayer published her articles about them the New Yorker, but this is the first I've heard that the Bush admin actually had ICRC reports in hand explicitly identifying it as torture, and then continued doing it.

[chill_wind]

7. K & R n/t