memo calls into question repeated assertions: WE DO NOT TORTURE

December 8, 2005 latimes.com : Print Edition : A Section Print E-mail story Most e-mailed Change text size

Pentagon Memo on Torture-Motivated Transfer Cited
A court filing describes a classified proposal to send a detainee away for information extraction.

By Ken Silverstein, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON — Although Bush administration officials have denied that they transfer terrorism suspects to countries where they are likely to be abused, a classified memorandum described in a court case indicates that the Pentagon has considered sending a captured militant abroad to be interrogated under threat of torture.

The classified memo is summarized — its actual contents are blacked out — in a petition filed by attorneys for Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmad, a detainee held by the Pentagon at its Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility.


The March 17, 2004, Defense Department memo indicated that American officials were frustrated in trying to obtain information from Ahmad, according to the description of the classified memo in the court petition. The officials suggested sending Ahmad to an unspecified foreign country that employed torture in order to increase chances of extracting information from him, according to the petition's description of the memo.

The precise contents of the Pentagon memo on Ahmad were not revealed, but the memo was described in the petition by New York attorney Marc D. Falkoff, who contested the transfer of Ahmad and 12 other Yemenis in U.S. District Court in Washington this year.
http://atrios.blogspot.com/
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-torture8dec08,1,5157053.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

we knew but it's nice to see there is a paper trail.

http://www.witnesstorture.org/

We need your support! Please sign a solidarity letter, attend a vigil, or make a donation.

Marchers to Reach Guantánamo Tomorrow

Friday, 7pm - After camping out last night, today the marchers continued their trek through the Santiago de Cuba Province -- the second most populated province in the island of Cuba. Tonight they are staying in a hotel in Niceto Pérez. Tomorrow, International Human Rights Day, the marchers plan to arrive in the city of Guantánamo, about 12 miles from the detention centers.

update read more
Why is it called violent extremism with “they” do it to us?
In an interview with the BBC yesterday, the host asked me how we as Christians could walk to visit the prisoners at Guantanamo, many of whom had been picked up on battlefields throughout the world and were commited to killing Christians.

frida's blog =Why I Am Marching to Guantánamo

By Frida Berrigan, AlterNet. Posted December 10, 2005.

As a U.S. citizen and a Christian, this International Human Rights Day I am marching against torture, and for humanity. Tools
:kick:

LYING RAT BASTARDS

<>

As a U.S. citizen and as a Christian, when the prisoners in Guantánamo began their first hunger strike this summer, I was forced to think more seriously about how to say no to torture and yes to humanity. I had to think about the depth of powerlessness and despair as well as the intensity of will and defiance that goes into the decision to starve oneself. It is an act against biology. But refusing to eat is the prisoners' only way of drawing attention to their predicament. They have no other tools except deepening their own suffering.

Jesus commands that we visit the prisoner and comfort the afflicted, and reminds us that what you do to the least among us, you do to me. I am marching as a person of faith trying to apply these mandates to an ever more violent world.

These fathers and brothers and sons now imprisoned a Guantánamo Bay have been swept up in indiscriminate raids, bound and blindfolded and shipped to an arid military base that is off the map of international law, a wasteland of injustice, a modern heart of darkness. Most of these men have done nothing wrong, nothing illegal. The Bush Administration has denied every fundamental right afforded by international law or American law to allow the inmates to defend themselves. It has even denied charging them with any crime beyond looking the part of the villain in Bush's war on terrorism.

Why are these men now starving themselves and being savagely force-fed? They are crying out for the world to hear their suffering. We 25 Catholic Workers have committed ourselves to responding to their cry, reaching out human to human, across battle lines, borders, religion and ethnicity to simply say- we hear you and we are with you.

Our group includes professors, activists against the death penalty, people who run soup kitchens, a nun, a priest. We are all marching to Guantánamo with a simple request -- a request coming from the mandate to Christians to perform the Works of Mercy -- to visit the prisoners. We believe our own dignity and humanity are bound to the dignity and humanity of all people, and we want the prisoners to know that as Christians, we condemn their treatment. Pope John Paul II reminds us that practices such as the torture abuses perpetrated at Guantnamo are "'incapable of being ordered' to God" and therefore are "'intrinsically evil.'" Would that our leaders who profess to be Christian hear his words.

But I am not marching just because Jesus commands us to perform works of mercy, or because the late Pope names torture as evil. On June 20, at a European Union event, President Bush invited me, and anyone else in the world community to inspect Guantánamo. Countering questions about torture and the United States' commitment to human rights, President Bush said, "You're welcome to go down there yourselves ... and take a look at the conditions."

But he was disingenuous. A few weeks ago a United Nations Panel of Experts declined a rigorously scripted "inspection" of Guantánamo, saying U.S. officials "did not accept the standard terms of reference for a credible, objective and fair assessment of the situation of the detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility."

Just last month, in Panama on November 7, President Bush said emphatically, "We do not torture." Is he telling the truth?

I am trying to see for myself, and it will be hard. The U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo is not easy to get to. It is no accident that the prisoners were put there, so ordinary Americans like me would not see them, or the inhuman and illegal treatment under which they suffer. So, while we walk for the works of mercy, we also walk to tell the story of how hard it is for Americans to get to the place where these men are being held, deliberately hidden from the American people and the world.

In my name and with my money, my government is committing immoral and illegal acts, mocking and ignoring international law -- all at a place it is illegal for me even to visit. I march to say no. Will you join me? Visit WitnessTorture.org to learn how.

Frida Berrigan is a member of the National Board of the War Resisters League.

Rights and Liberties Tools: http://www.alternet.org/rights/29336/

Before I Voted Against It". And they called Kerry a "flip-flopper".

The evidence is right there in front of us. They've been torturing my sensitivities ever since the "blanker" was selected.

Handing detainees off to "contractors" to "interrogate." That way the legalism is at least partially true--"We"--the U.S. government--"don't torture." We hire others to do it for us. Depends what the definition of "we" is.

When Dubya says "We don't torture" the unspoken addendum to that statement is "but, like the good MBA/CEO that I am, we *ahem* outsource those projects"

No controlling legal authority indeed.
The REALLY f*cked up thing about it is: The rules lawyers have probably gone over it with the proverbial fine toothed comb.
Shipping folks off to be "interrogated" in countries that are a little more, shall we say "relaxed" in their attitude toward treatment of prisoners may be immoral, but I'll bet it's still perfectly LEGAL.

THIS is why everyone here at DU needs to get to the polls in 2006.
Grab as many people as you can and get to the voting booth.
If you don't see anyone you like on the ballot RUN FOR OFFICE YOURSELF.
If enough people gather together, the PNAC fascists won't be able to "Diebold" their way into keeping power.
A Dem majority can bring out the four "eyes"
Investigate.
Indict.
Impeach.
Imprison.

--MAB

Lying bastids.

Here's my comments in cartoon form on it.

Right?

We send these guys to places like Egypt, where they are tortured while our people watch.

When 9/11 happened, the play by Bush took all the governors off the restraint that we as a nation have imposed on ourselves for decades, if not centuries.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/...k/ L0998570L.htm

Red Cross in intense talks with US over secret jails
09 Dec 2005 18:56:25 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA, Dec 9 (Reuters) - The Red Cross is pushing the United States to give it access to prisoners held in secret jails as part of the U.S. war on terror, it said on Friday.

"We have said that undisclosed detention is a major concern for us," Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told a news conference.

"We are already visiting very many detainees under U.S. authorities in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan ... We continue to be in an intense dialogue with them with the aim of getting access to all people detained in the framework of the so-called war on terror," he said.

Human rights groups accuse the CIA of running secret prisons in eastern Europe and covertly transporting detainees. They say incommunicado detention often leads to torture.

John Bellinger, the U.S. State Department's legal adviser, acknowledged to reporters in Geneva on Thursday that the ICRC does not have access to all detainees held by U.S. forces, but refused to discuss alleged secret detention centres.

The ICRC has been pressing the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush for two years for information about and access to what the agency calls "an unknown number of people captured as part of the so-called global war on terror and held in undisclosed locations".

Words do not mean what they did mean...The Republicans use words that have little relationship to the standard useage...you must suspect everything they say, because they usually mean something else...and they lie, lie, lie.

Good post needs to be recommended for everyone to read.

http://www.witnesstorture.org/signletter

==Solidarity letter
Using the form below, please add your name to show your solidarity with Witness Against Torture.

December 4, 2005

Captain Mark M. Leary, USN
Commander, U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay
and Commanding Officer, U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay
U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay Public Affairs Office
PSC 1005, Box 25
FPO, AE 09593-0025

Donald Rumsfeld
Secretary of Defense
Department of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Sirs,

I write to you with a heavy heart. As a person who is concerned about justice and human rights, I am heartbroken at what my government is doing in my name, and in the name of my security. Along with millions of other Americans, I believe that torture is terrorism. Torture does not work. It is cruel and inhumane, and as Amnesty International has said, torture degrades us all.

The detention center at the United States Naval Base at Guantnamo Bay, Cuba was made for the purposes of secrecy, unaccountability and impunity. I hear the reports of prisoners - men who are fathers, sons and brothers - without contact with their families, very little or no contact with attorneys, enduring interminable detention without legal charge. I hear the reports of rendition, of kidnapping and the sale of prisoners to U.S. authorities, of the desecration of the Quran, and of unconscionable prisoner humiliation and abuse.

These reports have put the base with its counterpart in Iraq, Abu Ghraib prison, at the center of serious charges of U.S. torture. Despite U.S. government and media attempts to hide it, there is every reason to believe such horrific practices are routine there and in other facilities around the world.

It has to stop. I write to tell you that a small group of people, inspired by the nonviolent tradition of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker, are now marching to the U.S. Naval Base to state their rejection of torture and abuse, and to loudly proclaim their stance in defense of human dignity. I walk with them.

I ask youthe men with the power to determine so much in the lives of so manyto let this Witness Against Torture group into the base to visit the prisoners.

Sincerely,

Name:

Today activists will gather in the New York City Subways to spread the word about the Witness against Torture on International Human Rights Day.

Location
Start on South Side of Union Square
The Subway
New York City, NY, 10003
United States

=I sign all the petitions I can and write Congress and the media. I will alert as many people as I can to your very brave work. I hope that, like Cindy Sheehan, you will be a rallying point for so many Americans who are sickened by this continuation of MK-ULTRA torture and the atrocities committed by CIA trained at SOA in South and Central America.

God bless you all and your mission to restore decency to America

http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ccr/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=831

PLEASE SEND YOUR EMAIL AGAINST TORTURE AT ABOVE URL!
Shut Down Guantánamo

It’s time to shut down the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay once and for all. Guantánamo has become a symbol world-wide of the Bush Administration’s arrogant disregard for the most basic of human rights. In a hard-hitting editorial on Sunday, June 5, The New York Times wrote: “The best thing Washington can now do about this national shame is to shut it down. It is a propaganda gift to America's enemies; an embarrassment to our allies; a damaging repudiation of the American justice system; and a highly effective recruiting tool for Islamic radicals, including future terrorists.”

Please write your representatives in Congress and the members of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees and tell them to shut down Guantánamo and demand that the Administration come forward to justify the detentions in federal court or release the prisoners. The Center for Constitutional Rights was the first to launch the fight against Guantánamo from the day the government made clear they planned to ship prisoners there to keep them beyond the reach of law, indefinitely, and without any chance to challenge the legality of their detention. CCR won the fight in the Supreme Court one year ago and is leading a team of more than 400 attorneys from around the country representing the detainees in the courts, but the Bush Administration has defied the ruling of the highest court in the land and stonewalled detainees’ access to the courts and to counsel.

We urgently need your help. Please contact your representatives in Congress and tell them the time has come to shut down the Guantánamo prison camp once and for all and to end the Administration’s policy of indefinite detention in any facility without due process of law. And please help if you can with a donation to help us keep at this critical fight: CCR does cutting edge work, and we couldn’t do it without you.

In response to increasing documentation of abuse and the now admitted intentional desecration of the Koran, Senator Arlen Spector (R-Pennsylvania) will be holding hearings in June on the treatment of the detainees, and Senator Joseph Biden, (D-Delaware) has proposed an independent commission to investigate the situation. CCR has long called for an independent special prosecutor with the power to prosecute the human rights abuses being committed in our name as Americans. And now we’re calling for the immediate closing of the Guantánamo prison camp....