Today President Barack Obama ordered four key Bush-era torture memos released in response to an ACLU FOIA lawsuit. To the surprise of many, the formerly top secret memos are almost entirely unredacted.
Among various other torture methods, the memos describe waterboarding in excruciating detail, matter-of-factly noting: “the subject’s body responds as if the subject were drowning.” Amazingly, the conclusion is reached that “the use of waterboarding constitutes a threat of imminent death,” but is nonetheless permissible and legal because it does not result in “prolonged mental harm.”
Of course, as we all know by now, a waterboarding victim actually is drowning, and can die if the torture is not stopped in time. Waterboarding was prosecuted as a war crime in U.S. courts for a century before the Bush administration took office.
The memos also provide a detailed description of “walling,” a practice in which detainees were thrown against walls as part of the interrogation process (one detainee said his neck was tied with a towel and thrown against a plywood wall in a recently leaked Red Cross report).
Senate Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy:
These legal memoranda demonstrate in alarming detail exactly what the Bush administration authorized for “high value detainees” in U.S. custody. The techniques are chilling… We cannot continue to look the other way; we need to understand how these policies were formed if we are to ensure that this can never happen again. This is why my proposal for a Commission of Inquiry is necessary.
In the United States, what Obama did yesterday is simply not done. American Presidents do not disseminate to the world documents which narrate in vivid, elaborate detail the dirty, illegal deeds done by the CIA, especially not when the actions are very recent, were approved and ordered by the President of the United States, and the CIA is aggressively demanding that the documents remain concealed and claiming that their release will harm national security. When is the last time a President did that?
UPDATE: From Talking Points Memo:
Here’s a taste of the Bush administration’s legal rationale, exemplified in one excerpt from the 2002 OLC memo written by Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, about the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, a high-ranking al Qaeda member:
Sleep deprivation may be used. You have indicated that your purpose in using this technique is to reduce the individual’s ability to think on his feet and, through the discomfort associated with lack of sleep, to motivate him to cooperate. The effect of such sleep deprivation will generally remit after one or two nights of uninterrupted sleep. You have informed us that your research has revealed that, in rare instances, some individuals who are already predisposed to psychological problems may experience abnormal reactions to sleep deprivation. Even in those cases, however, reactions abate after the individual is permitted to sleep. Moreover, personnel with medical training are available to and will intervene in the unlikely event of an abnormal reaction. You have orally informed us that you would not deprive Zubaydah of sleep for more than eleven days at a time and that you have previously kept him awake for 72 hours, from which no mental or physical harm resulted. (our itals)
UPDATE: According to Think Progress, in one of the four legal memos released yesterday, a footnote (page 41) revealed that waterboarding was employed more intensely and more often than the Bush administration has admitted. They lied, what a surprise.
Previous One Utah posts:
“Ugly” Bush Torture Memos Will Be Declassified Soon (March 23, 2009)
We Can Say With Certainty… (March 17, 2009)
#1 by cav on April 18, 2009 - 10:16 am
Mark Danner Smacks Down Gergen on CNN.
COOPER: Do we know how many people died in U.S. custody? I have read reports of more than — more than 100, or about 100. Maybe about a quarter of those were being investigated as actual homicides.
DANNER: I think the rough figure is slightly more than 100, and 30 — 29 or 30 were actually investigated as homicides.
I think you’re quite right that the interrogation — the general interrogation program after 9/11 was a complete disaster. And it worked against what was supposed to be its ultimate goal, which is finding intelligence that would help protect the country.
I have to take strong issue with what David Gergen said a moment ago, that President Obama, in making public these documents, in some way nodded toward the argument that these techniques were helpful to national security.
I should point out that, on his first full day in office, he signed executive orders renouncing, in the strongest terms, the use of these techniques. He closed the black sites. He declared that he would close Guantanamo.
This is very odd behavior for a newly elected president who is trying to protect the country and who believes that torture, according to David Gergen, is useful.
He clearly doesn’t believe that. I understand that there were politics within the administration. Obviously, the CIA now is his CIA. He can’t go around denouncing it. Nonetheless, he made these memos public.
And these memos confirm, in minute terms, what the International Committee of the Red Cross report told us when it was made public a couple of weeks ago. American citizens can look at the memos. They can look at the ICRC report on the “New York Review” Web site. They can see for themselves what was done, because in effect, these memos came out of the Justice Department.
They confirm, in detail, what exactly was done, the torture that was applied.
I have to make one other point. David Gergen and I are both old enough to remember the Church Committee. What we have here is a haunting, in a sense, from the Church Committee. The Church Committee made deniability impossible. It made it necessary for the president actually to sign findings for covert action.
When President Bush came to the CIA after 9/11 and said, we want to use these harsh techniques, the CIA, remembering the Church Committee of the ’70s, said, you know what? If you want us to do this, you are going to have to make it legal. We need a document that will show us it’s legal.
And we are now at that point. We’re looking at legal documents that purport to make what is plainly illegal legal. And they make — supposedly make legal activities carried out over years that plainly were illegal.
COOPER: Yes.
DANNER: And this is the new deniability. And something has to be done about it, I’m afraid.
COOPER: … David?
GERGEN: Well, I just want to say briefly, I think Mark Danner made a useful correction. And I think I went too far in saying that-
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0904/17/acd.01.html
#2 by Richard Warnick on April 18, 2009 - 2:30 pm
I watched that exchange. Definitely rose above the usual intelligence level of cable news. Danner, of course, is the guy who made the ICRC report public.
#3 by Larry Bergan on April 19, 2009 - 1:43 am
Gergen is the worst kind of shill, but he’s smart enough to know when he’s been had; and he WAS had! As far as I’m concerned, he’s already had his three strikes as far as the media is concerned. But who hasn’t?
Yer…out! Go directly to the unemployment line.
#4 by cav on April 19, 2009 - 7:08 am
Of course the process described, of providing documents, that make illegal things legal occurred in the wire-tapping / surveillance fronts as well. Sometimes even retroactively, with the help of congress. Sometimes by simple omission.
It’s also no surprise that some of those providing ‘unbiased news’ were not only shills, but paid shills – bought and paid for by those whose efforts they were reporting on / promoting.
Given our ‘morality and lust for responsible democratic process, it stuns me to see our representatives buckle so often to the perverse, then expect ‘We the Sheep’ to eat it with a smile on our faces.
#5 by A little background on Jay Bybee on April 21, 2009 - 11:39 am
I posted this to Glen Warchol’s blog … it was deleted.
#6 by Richard Warnick on April 21, 2009 - 12:21 pm
And, pretty soon we can add:
“In 2009, Bybee was impeached and removed from his seat on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals because Congress eventually became aware of his secret role in writing memos that purported to justify violations of the laws against torture during the Bush administration.”
#7 by cav, on April 21, 2009 - 1:10 pm
Can BYU be held accountable or even reflect pride?
Not mormon bashing – just wondering about the responsibility an institution can have for not red-flagging a future perp. What did the school psychologist file in his / her report?
#8 by cav, on April 21, 2009 - 1:12 pm
I suppose someone asked him to pen those docs. Wonder who that could have been?