Torture, Lies, and Videotape
    By Arlen Parsa
    t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

    Wednesday 03 January 2007

    Not long before Christmas Day 2002, a young man was being held in a US facility known as the Bagram Collection Point, in Afghanistan. Like many other Afghan nationals, he had only one name: Dilawar. He led a simple, quiet life. He had a wife, a young daughter, and one friend. He was 22 years old, and weighed only 122 pounds. He had become a cab driver because he couldn't feed his family as a farmer anymore. Most of his captors believed he was not guilty of anything and had "simply driven his taxi past the American base at the wrong time." He died on December 10th. The incident was covered up by the Pentagon. They told inquiring reporters that he had died from natural causes. His family had no idea what really happened.

    It turns out he was tortured to death by American guards and interrogators. They were using interrogation techniques they had learned back home in New Jersey from an Army instructor at Fort Dix. The New York Times ran a front page article on Dilawar's story in 2004. The Pentagon was shamed into conducting a fresh investigation, in which they found one individual guilty of pushing Dilawar one time; he was sentenced to two months in prison.

    The United States has been involved in President Bush's so-called "War on Terror" longer than it was involved in World War I, World War II, or even our own Civil War. During that time, top administration officials such as the attorney general, the secretary of defense and President Bush himself have personally authorized interrogation techniques and other military practices that violate both US domestic law and international human rights law to an extent unprecedented in American history. Surprisingly, this has been done openly for the most part, and without judicial or Congressional oversight.

    While the president himself is rarely asked about the human rights abuses he has authorized (he usually insists that the US acts in accordance with international law and moves on to the next question), Vice President Dick Cheney and former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld have been more open about it. Cheney has been quite blatant about advocating torture. Rumsfeld has been over-zealous in his support of techniques that violate the fundamental principles of international law, according to Human Rights Watch, an international non-profit advocacy group based in New York. For example, when Cheney (who was once branded "The Vice President for Torture" by the Washington Post) was asked about the validity of torture as an interrogation technique in the "War on Terror" in fall of 2006, the VP replied that it was "a no-brainer."

    In an "Action Memo" dated November 27, 2002, Pentagon Chief Legal Counsel William J. Haynes outlined several techniques that could be used by US forces against "unlawful enemy combatants" as part of a strenuous new interrogation program. The thrice-stapled 14-page document, which included forwarded copies of memos by generals and an extensive legal brief, was marked "SECRET/NOFORN" - a high-level classification status indicating that it would be a threat to national security if any non-Americans laid eyes on the document. Among the techniques (many of which are formally recognized as torture by both US domestic law and international human rights law) was one provision that suggested prisoners be made to stand in forced stress positions for up to four hours at a time. Under his approval signature, the secretary of defense scrawled a single complaint. "I stand for 8-10 hours a day," the 72-year old Rumsfeld bragged, perhaps exaggerating a bit. "Why is standing limited to [only] four hours?"

    This unanswered question has been largely representative of the administration's approach to torture. Rumsfeld did not ask about the legal status of the more intensive interrogation techniques, but instead wanted to know why one of the seemingly more benign interrogation techniques was not more harsh.

    Among the memo's pages of recommendations was the suggestion that the US military can deny "unlawful enemy combatants" their right to practice the religion of their choosing. For instance, it states, religious items (like a copy of the Holy Bible or the Quran) can be taken away from prisoners, because in the view of the administration's legal experts, freedom of religion is merely an unnecessary "comfort" consideration. However, the memo states that "the issue of removing published religious items or materials would be relevant if these were United States citizens with a First Amendment right. Such is not the case with the detainees." Recent statements made by lawyers of at least one American citizen being held prisoner by the Defense Department indicate that their religious items have been removed as well. It would seem that even the administration's own lawyers consider this tactic unconstitutional, according to this previously classified memo.

    Among the other techniques the memo sought approval for was something called "waterboarding." Though the memo did its best to describe the practice in the most vague, inoffensive terms possible ("use of a wet towel and dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation"), the technique is extremely dangerous and controversial. Former CIA officers and anonymous government sources describe the procedure as a horrific ordeal, in which a victim's legs and arms are strapped to a tilted bench so that his head is below the rest of his body. The victim is then manually restrained further by interrogators, who place a piece fabric or light plastic over his nose and pour water over his head. The process severely limits or cuts off the victim's supply of oxygen; it can cause permanent injury to the lungs as well as brain damage. According to Human Rights Watch, the technique can even be lethal. According to one report, hardened CIA operatives can only endure an average of 14 seconds of the technique during counterinterrogation training.

    Obviously this technique would be illegal if practiced in the United States, though it is also explicitly banned under all sorts of international human rights statutes the United States is a party to: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UN Convention Against Torture, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Geneva Convention, to name but a few.

    More than that: the US State Department considers the procedure a war crime. Shortly after World War II, it was determined that a Japanese officer had participated in waterboarding an American citizen. He was subsequently sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. Yet President Bush has personally approved the waterboarding technique as an acceptable interrogation practice for use against so-called "unlawful enemy combatants."

    Although the term "unlawful enemy combatant" (UEC) has existed with historical precedent since at least 1942, when the US Supreme Court first used it in a ruling related to sabotage (it has since typically been used to describe spies or assassins), the Bush administration has redefined the term. According to the White House's interpretation of executive power, President Bush has the right to brand anyone he likes an "unlawful enemy combatant," regardless of lack of evidence against them, or their citizenship. Unlawful enemy combatants do not have human rights, in the view of the present administration.

    This view of executive power has been roundly criticized by international human rights groups as well as American legal groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights, but the administration has ignored such complaints. After an embarrassing Supreme Court rebuke to the administration's treatment of detainees, the Republican-controlled Congress quickly sought, in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, to formally grant the executive branch the power to designate anyone a UEC and treat him accordingly. A short time afterwards, a federal judge again ruled that the Bush administration had been acting unconstitutionally in its unilateral "terrorist" or UEC labeling. The administration has not changed its behavior, however.

    Another type of interrogation technique affectionately dubbed by administration officials "Torture Lite" is called "Cold Cell." Cold Cell, which would be more accurately labeled "induced hypothermia," is another extremely dangerous interrogation technique. Although there are several different variations on the practice, the goal is essentially to reduce the victim's body temperature to the point where he is in extreme physical pain and feels the effects of hypothermia. That is, if he can feel anything at all. The theory is that if he is numb, or in extreme pain, he will then be more willing to share secret information helpful to the United States as part of the "War on Terror." That is, if he is able to share anything at all at that point.

    One manner in which this technique is employed is to send a naked detainee out to stand in the rain on a cold day. Call that the low-budget way. Other applications of Cold Cell involve putting the victim in an actual cell that is cold (at or below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, typically). The victim is then periodically splashed with cold water over several hours. The Navy SEALS practice the most sophisticated and brutally efficient variation of this technique, according to one former US Army interrogator. In the SEALS' version, the victim is placed in a tub, which is then filled with ice and cold water until the victim's body heat is dramatically and dangerously reduced. As with normal hypothermia, the victim's becomes numb, shakes violently and eventually turns stiff, incapable of controlling his muscles. President Bush and former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld have both personally approved this technique, which is banned under international law and would never be legally admissible in the United States.

    Which is exactly why it doesn't happen in the United States.

    On November 2nd, 2005, the Washington Post published a lengthy 2,700-word front-page article titled "CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons." The reporter who penned the piece, Dana Priest, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting several months later, and the article received widespread media attention at the time. The article revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency had been secretly - and illegally - operating a series of secret prisons in Europe, where it would bring UECs it had secretly - and illegally - kidnapped from all over the world. According to a subsequent report, the CIA conducted more than 1,240 secret flights crisscrossing throughout Europe, picking up terror suspects and transporting them to the secret prisons. Secret prisons where they are invariably tortured.

    How does the Bush administration justify this type of behavior? They clearly act outside the bounds of international law - such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (by denying UECs the right to trial), the UN Convention Against Torture (by using torture), and the 3rd Geneva Convention (which dictates how prisoners of war must be treated). Through a series of leaked memos and declassified documents, the administration's legal justification has been made clear. If the administration brands you an "unlawful enemy combatant," (and it has branded American citizens UECs), you do not have human rights - even if the United States is bound by international law to provide you with those human rights.

    In 2002, then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo wrote a 40-page memo entitled "Re: Application of Treaties and Laws to al-Qaeda and Taliban Detainees." Although it is unlikely that Yoo will be remembered for writing this memo, he will be remembered for authoring some of the most explosive portions of the USA PATRIOT Act, which have since been struck down as unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. Let's just say that Yoo has a liberal approach to the amount of executive power that the administration can legally wield.

    In his memo, which has never been officially released and which was leaked more than two years after it was originally written, he outlined what would later become the administration's legal basis to justify treating prisoners outside the bounds of international law. Yoo argued that since groups like al-Qaeda are non-state actors they could not be a party to international human rights law (like the Geneva Convention or the Convention Against Torture), since only states can sign and ratify such treaties under UN stipulation. This much is true, and this argument is largely agreed upon by the human rights community: non-state actors (like al-Qaeda) cannot be held accountable for violating international human rights law, because as non-state actors, they cannot legally be a party to such law even if they wanted to.

    However, Yoo took this logic a step further. No, Yoo took this logic several steps further - the deputy assistant attorney general argued that because members of groups like al-Qaeda could not legally be held accountable for violating international human rights treaties to which they were not legally bound by, then the US should therefore not be held accountable for violating the same human rights treaties by which it is legally bound. Of course, this did not just apply to al-Qaeda, it also applied to anyone the administration merely accused of being a terrorist. Yoo's argument was as simple as it was bogus: if they don't have to play fair, then we don't have to play fair. Never mind the fact that they aren't legally bound to "play fair" and we are, by our Constitution and by international law we have signed, ratified and agreed to abide by.

    This, however, was not the most outrageous part of Yoo's memo. Later on, Yoo spent page after page trying to convince the reader that the government of Afghanistan that the US overthrew in 2002 was not actually a government. Why? Because Afghanistan is a party to the Geneva Convention, and has been a party to the UN Convention Against Torture for longer than the US has been. Therefore, by Yoo's own logic, the US would have to treat them in accordance with the human rights law that bound both entities. We both had to "play fair." But Yoo argued that since the government of Afghanistan was not a government at all, they should not be given the privilege of being treated in accordance with law.

    However, it is sad to say, this was still not the most outrageous part of Yoo's secret memo. The most outrageous part of Yoo's memo came buried at the very end - after thirty-some-odd pages of legalese, and twisted, contradictory, self-defeating backwards logic. Near the end of the document, the deputy assistant attorney general became truly Orwellian, arguing that even though (according to him), the United States does not have to be bound by international human rights law, and even though groups like al-Qaeda were not entitled to rights under international human rights law - they could be punished for breaching that same law.

    In other words, the United States can hold terrorists (or people it accuses of being terrorists) accountable for violating international law to which they are not subject - even though the United States is subject to that exact same law and has decided that it need not abide by it. Writes Yoo: "While this result may seem at first glance to be counterintuitive, it is a product of the President's Commander in Chief Executive powers to prosecute the war effectively.... We do not believe that these courts would lose jurisdiction to try members of al-Qaeda ... even though we have concluded that the laws of war have no binding effect ... on the President." Stunningly twisted logic, to say the least. Criminally hypocritical logic, to say the most.

    In early 2004, a series of short videos taken by a digital camera were leaked to the Washington Post. The Post put a short excerpt from the videos on their web site. Two years later, the Australian television channel SBS broadcast longer portions of the videos, revealing more gratuitous abuse and torture than the Post thought appropriate for American audiences to see. They showed Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison who had been stripped naked in a group and hooded, as is allowed under interrogation techniques approved by Donald Rumsfeld in the November 27 Action Memo (referenced earlier). They were apparently forced to masturbate in front of a group of guards.

    Humiliation of detainees is considered one of the "softening" techniques commonly used against "unlawful enemy combatants," who are considered fair game by military interrogators. Military documents, however, have never explicitly outlined correct or incorrect ways to humiliate detainees in order to "soften" them - a dangerous ambiguity that left interrogators to interpret orders to soften a prisoner in whatever way they saw fit.

    Some time after the fall of Baghdad, an Iraqi civilian named Satar Jabar was arrested for car-jacking. He was held as a terrorist at Abu Ghraib prison. Abu Ghraib, ironically enough, happened to be a facility where several personnel had been transferred from the Bagram Collection Point where Dilawar had been tortured to death years earlier. Jabar was stripped naked, hooded, and made to stand on a box for hours at a time. Wires were attached to his hands and genitalia. He was told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted. Several photos were taken of him in this position, and one of them ended up on a "60 Minutes" broadcast in mid-2004. The Pentagon was once again shamed into an investigation. They found one individual guilty of treating Jabar in a cruel and inhumane manner. He was sentenced to six months and given a dishonorable discharge.

    One month after the trial, the November 27, 2002, "Action Memo" was declassified by the Department of Defense. Originally, DOD officials thought that by declassifying the memo, they would put concerns that the United States was violating human rights to rest. Obviously this did no such thing.

    Instead, the memo explicitly approved every single technique that the US Army admits Jabar was subjected to. Prisoners could be stripped naked, and hoods could be used during interrogations and transit. The memo allowed the use of forced stress positions like standing, which the secretary of defense had years earlier thought should be less regulated. The memo also allowed what it called "techniques of deception." The memo's author elaborated, suggesting specifically the "use of scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death or severely painful consequences are imminent for him and/or his family." In Jabar's case, he was told that if he fell off the box he was forced to stand on, he would be electrocuted.

    Each of the techniques US military prosecutors said Mr. Jabar was subjected to had already been approved by the secretary of defense and passed on to intelligence officers. Had anyone noticed this disclosure, it might have given them cause to reconsider the legal defense used by the US Army Specialist convicted in the case. She had argued that intelligence officers told her that the techniques being used had been approved at higher levels.

    In one last ironic twist, the final interrogation technique approved in the November 27 memo signed by the Rumsfeld allowed interrogators to push a detainee - the very crime that the one soldier had been imprisoned for in the Dilawar case, years earlier.

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