Huge NYTimes AD! Conservatives Running Scared on Torture?

You can see the full ad pictured here:
http://www.jenniemaria.com/?p=296
May 14, 2009, 12:48PM

Calling itself a "grassroots plea" - a HUGE one page ad in the New York Times this morning (page 19 in my print edition), by the Conservative "media watchdog" group, Accuracy in Media, seems to be part of a new push by the Torture lovers to shut down Media reports on torture.

Right-Wing propaganda machine in full Panic Mode!

Are we making progress in getting media attention? Apparently so! These folks must be really running scared to pay for a full page in the Times. Is this ad in other newspapers?

Here's the ad (as best I can reproduce it) but you have to imagine the word, TORTURE, in two-inch high letters at the top of the page!

TORTURE

Throughout the Entire World
The Word 'Torture' means Intense,
Lasting, Brutal Physical Agony

Why is the U.S. News Media Eagerly
Spreading An Incalculably Harmful Lie
That Can Only Motivate Terrorists To
Further Attacks On America?

A Grassroots Plea To
The U.S. News Media

Stop Misleading The World
That Our Country Condones Torture

* You now know as a result of the recent release of what you
choose to call "The Torture Memos" that these are the
14 interrogation techniques permitted by the United States:

* Sleep deprivation... Dietary manipulation... Abdominal
slaps... Facial slaps... Attention grasps... Facial holds...
Forced nudity... Water dousing... Stress positions not designed
to produce pain... Cramped confinement in a dark space...
Confinement with insects such as a caterpillar... Pushing
against a wall... Wall standing... Pouring water on a person's
face to induce the feeling of drowning (waterboarding).

* As you know, waterboarding has not been used for 5 years and
was used on only 3 detainees. Our own troops are subjected to
waterboarding as part of their training.

* By your continual use of the word 'Torture' to describe these
interrogation techniques you have been misleading the world that
the United States condone techniques of barbarous cruelty. The
consequences could be horrendous.

It's Time For The Truth

We are losing the goodwill of people across the
world and you are aiding al Qaida in recruiting
terrorists for future attack on America.

Torture Truth Project

A project of Accuracy in Media Inc., 4455 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20008 / (202) 364-4401

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

http://www.jenniemaria.com/?p=296

Update I:

The group that sponsored the ad in the Times, Accuracy in Media, is part of a Right Wing effort to attack the Times (and other institutions they view as spreading propaganda, through their sister arm, Accuracy in Academia, connected with Lynn Cheney). Efforts to trace their project, Torture Truth Project, lead back to this very post. Accuracy in Media has previously attempted to start a "grassroots" movement to Boycott the NY Times . (N.B. Their website says their annual report is "coming in May 2008")

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

In short, they appear to be trying to rattle the Times. But in my humble opinion, they are only throwing flames on the fire of investigating torture. Karma!

Torture Truth: Indeed!
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/05/huge-nytimes-ad-conservatives.php?ref=recmuck

There is no way out of this, no way at all, and they know it.

There is only one way out for them.

They must own up to what they did and take the punishment
like adults.

...due to WORLD WIDE EXPOSURE.

Quackies

It is over for them.

We tortured people but we redefined the meaning of the word torture and chose to use another phrase so if you use the word torture you're giving us a bad name.

Reading that was torture. Fuck them

:applause:

tell me is this. If those pictures are so 'not torture' than why did Andrew McCarthy, among dozens of other GOP hacks, write, " American soldiers, American civilians, and other innocent people are going to die because Pres. Barack Obama wants to release photographs of prisoner abuse."

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzkxYTE3ODI4YjAyOWY2YTUyMmJkOTAxZGZlOWZmMjg=

so its interesting they've gone into print and put there hands up to 3 occasions.

(For the greater good, that is)!

ARTICLE 15-6 INVESTIGATION OF THE 800th MILITARY POLICE BRIGADE
<pdf:> http://www.npr.org/iraq/2004/prison_abuse_report.pdf

BREAK THEM DOWN: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces
Documents released by the government pursuant to the FOIA confirm the use of
prolonged isolation at Guantánamo in 2002. A letter from an FBI official to an Army official
about highly aggressive interrogation techniques being used against detainees at Guantánamo
reports that ... in November 2002, FBI agents observed Detainee REDACTED after he had been subjected to intense isolation for over three months. During that time period, <detainee> was totally isolated (with the exception of occasional interrogations) in a cell that was always flooded with light. By late November, the detainee was evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to non-existent people, reporting hearing voices, crouching in a corner of the cell covered with a sheet for hours on end) ...
<pdf:> http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/documents/reports/break-them-down-the.pdf

LEAVE NO MARKS
ENHANCED INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES AND THE RISK OF CRIMINALITY
<pdf: http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/documents/reports/leave-no-marks.pdf>

BROKEN LAWS, BROKEN LIVES: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact
... his head was hit against wooden columns and he was beaten so mercilessly that three of his teeth fell out and a fourth was later removed at Guantánamo. A similar experience was reported by another individual; upon his arrival at a Kandahar detention facility, this individual recalled being beaten
with sticks and fists, while being kicked repeatedly in his genitals .... findings from bone scans of six individuals corroborate the history of beatings described by the former detainees .... US personnel routinely threatened to severely harm the detainees. One former detainee reported that in Kandahar prison he was threatened with electric shock, and in Guantánamo the guards threatened to shoot him .... Three were sodomized at Abu Ghraib. Three were subjected to electric shock at detention facilities, two in Iraq and one at Kandahar in Afghanistan ... http://brokenlives.info/?dl_id=5

Their arguments becoming increasingly, well, tortured.

Within an internet forum it's easy for some to castigate those who want this govt held accountable as 'crazy conspiracy theorists who just want the pics released so they can get their jollies,' but once a chorus of other voices weigh in leveling the same accusations, it gets harder to remain in the safe zone.

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/ICRC_Report_on_the_Treatment_of_Fourteen_%22High_Value_Detainess%22_in_CIA_Custody,_14_Feb_2007

Volume 56, Number 6 · April 9, 2009
US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites
By Mark Danner
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

Report Calls CIA Detainee Treatment 'Inhuman'
By Joby Warrick and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 7, 2009; Page A06
... In addition to the coercive methods -- which the ICRC said "amounted to torture" and a violation of U.S. and international treaty obligations -- the report said detainees were routinely threatened with further violence against themselves and their families. Nine of the 14 prisoners said they were threatened with "electric shocks, infection with HIV, sodomy of the detainee and . . . being brought close to death," it said ... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040603654.html

By mcc in Politics
Fri Oct 07, 2005 at 01:52:52 AM EST

If you look at the Army Field Manual's section on interrogation techniques, you will find an enlightening little passage on the subject of "coercive" interrogation, which says in part: The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind is prohibited by law and is neither authorized nor condoned by the US Government. Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.

Here is the short version of the article which follows from this point: Early in the "War on Terror", the Bush Administration made a decision that the U.S. military would not be bound by the Geneva Convention in the fights that were to come. When the fights came, the "detainees" that the military picked up were met with treatment that some supporters of the Bush Administration called "coercive" and some other persons called "torture".

Yesterday evening, John McCain passed an amendment to the next military appropriations bill which if followed would end such practices by simply requiring the treatment of detainees to be held to the standards in the Army field manual. Bush claims he's going to veto it. This would mean the first, and so far only, veto of Bush's entire presidency would be performed in support of torture. http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/10/6/43412/4301

Published on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 by Inter Press Service
Detainee Offered Freedom for Silence on Torture
by William Fisher
NEW YORK - A British court ruled Monday that U.S. authorities had asked a Guantanamo Bay detainee to drop allegations of torture in exchange for his freedom ... http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/03/24-6


February 10, 8:52 AM, 2009
Secret Crimes
By Scott Horton
Binyam Mohamed is a 30-year-old Ethiopian who was granted political asylum in Britain in 1994. In 2002, he was seized by Pakistani authorities and turned over to American intelligence officials in connection with the Bush Administration’s extraordinary renditions program. He was shuttled between CIA-operated facilities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Morocco. During this period of American-sponsored detention, according to court papers, Binyam Mohamed was “routinely beaten, suffering broken bones and, on occasion, loss of consciousness. His clothes were cut off with a scalpel and the same scalpel was then used to make incisions on his body, including his penis. A hot stinging liquid was then poured into open wounds on his penis where he had been cut. He was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution, and death” ... http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-90004374

By Andy Worthington, AlterNet. Posted October 16, 2008.
Mohamed was brutally tortured after being rendered by the CIA to Morocco. "We're going to change your brain," one of his captors said.

The Washington Post recently reported that the U.S. Justice Department has dropped the key allegation against British resident and Guantánamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed -- that he was involved, with American citizen Jose Padilla, in a plot to detonate a "dirty bomb" in a U.S. city ...

Binyam explained that, between the savage beatings and the razor cuts to his penis, his torturers "would tell me what to say." He added that even towards the end of his time in Morocco, they were still "training me what to say," and one of them told him, "We're going to change your brain."

As it happens, one of the confessions that was tortured out of Binyam is so ludicrous that it was soon dropped, but not before Clive Stafford Smith had learnt of it and had been able to use it to demonstrate the extent to which it indicated that all of Binyam's "confessions" were untrustworthy. As he explained in his book The Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side, "he U.S. authorities insisted that Padilla and Binyam had dinner with various high-up members of al-Qaeda the night before Padilla was to fly off to America. According to their theory the dinner party had to have been on the evening of April 3rd in Karachi … Binyam was meant to have dined with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, Sheikh al-Libi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Jose Padilla." What made the scenario "absurd," as Stafford Smith pointed out, was that "two of the conspirators were already in U.S. custody at the time -- Abu Zubaydah was seized six days before, on 28 March 2002, and al-Libi had been held since November 2001" ...

http://www.alternet.org/rights/103289/%22dirty_bomb%22_charges_dropped_against_gitmo_prisoner_binyam_mohamed/

and expose the torture. NOW.

wrapping a towel around detainees head, and swinging it into the wall. no doubt the cause of a few of the 100+ DEATHS!

Thursday, 18 May 2006, 23:05 GMT 00:05 UK

A US court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a German citizen who says he was kidnapped and beaten by the CIA .... the district court judge in Virginia rejected the challenge, saying Mr el-Masri's "private interests must give way to the national interest in preserving state secrets" ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4996140.stm

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/etn/dic/index.asp

... During his final interrogation, Mowhoush was shoved head-first into the sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord, and rolled from his stomach to his back. Welshofer sat on Mowhoush’s chest and blocked his nose and mouth. At one point, according to Loper, Mowhoush started to clinch and kick his legs, “almost like he was being electrocuted.” It was at this point Mowhoush gave out, dying (according to the autopsy report) of asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression. The day after his death, the U.S. military issued a press release stating that Mowhoush had died of natural causes ...
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/etn/dic/mowhoush.asp

Guest Column | By Joan Swirsky | November 25, 2008
... legions of identifiable, verifiable and credible sources .. for months have been investigating the disturbing allegation that Barack Obama is ineligible for the presidency because he has failed to meet one of the three requirements that the U.S. Constitution mandates, specifically that he provide proof of his “natural born” U.S. citizenship ... http://www.aim.org/guest-column/the-great-birth-certificate-scandal-cover-up-of-the-2008-election/

Let’s Declassify Obama’s Birth Certificate Along With the ‘Torture’ Memos
Guest Column | By Pamela Meister | April 27, 2009
http://www.aim.org/guest-column/lets-declassify-obamas-birth-certificate-along-with-the-torture-memos/

:rofl:

There's much more of the same at AIM's website, but who really has the stomach for it?