David Cole assembles some devastating criticism from Yoo’s former colleagues: [Read more →]

From TNR’s excellent review of The Killer Trail, a history of  one murderous French expedition into the heart of 19th century Africa (emphasis mine):

The Europeans, Taithe notes, never recognized African kingdoms as states, and never interpreted the Geneva Convention as applying to these colonial wars. “Against the uncivilized,” the historian writes, “‘no need to be civilized’ seemed to be the argument.”

And here’s Donald Rumsfeld (emphasis mine):

Rumsfeld replied that the Geneva Convention applies to all prisoners held in Iraq, but not to those held in Guantanamo Bay, where detainees captured in the global war on terror are held.

Any al-Qaeda or Taliban personnel taken prisoner are to be treated consistent with the Geneva Convention, under a decision made by Bush, Rumsfeld added.

He said the distinction is that the international rules govern wars between countries but not those involving groups such as al-Qaeda. “Terrorists don’t comply with the laws of war. They go around killing innocent civilians,” Rumsfeld added.

And John Yoo (emphasis mine):

Al Qaeda is not a nation-state, and its members–as they demonstrated so horrifically on Sept. 11, 2001–violate the very core principle of the laws of war by targeting innocent civilians for destruction. While Taliban fighters had an initial claim to protection under the conventions (since Afghanistan signed the treaties), they lost POW status by failing to obey the standards of conduct for legal combatants: wearing uniforms, a responsible command structure, and obeying the laws of war.

As a result, interrogations of detainees captured in the war on terrorism are not regulated under Geneva.

And Thomas Sowell (emphasis mine):

The argument is made that we must respect the Geneva convention because, otherwise, our own soldiers will be at risk of mistreatment when they become prisoners of war.

Does any sane adult believe that the cutthroats we are dealing with will respect the Geneva convention? Or that our extension of Geneva convention rights to them will be seen as anything other than another sign of weakness and confusion that will encourage them in their terrorism?

No one has suggested that we disregard the Geneva convention for people covered by the Geneva convention. The question is whether a lawless court shall seize the power to commit this nation to rules never agreed to by those whom the Constitution entrusted with the power to make international treaties.

I remain confident that there’s no possible connection between refusing to abide by the Geneva Conventions and subsequent human rights abuses.

On a practical level, Mark Thiessen’s case for capturing and torturing suspected terrorists in place of bombing them is pretty unpersuasive, mainly because he doesn’t have any proof that we lose a chance to interrogate Al Qaeda operatives every time they’re assassinated. Maybe Thiessen has some evidence to the contrary and the military really is sitting on a terrorist-capturing contingency plan, but absent an explanation of how we’d go about detaining terrorists in rural Yemen or Pakistan’s tribal provinces, I think it’s a safe bet that we use drone strikes because the alternatives are totally impractical. As I understand it, one of the benefits of drones is that they’re not as intrusive as a larger US military presence, which makes their use less offensive to the host country’s sensibilities than other military options (emphasis mine):

By early 2008, the Bush administration had tired of the Pakistani government’s unwillingness or inability to take out the militants in the FATA, and in July the president authorized Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults in the tribal regions without the prior permission of the Pakistani government. On September 3, 2008, a team of Navy SEALs based in Afghanistan crossed the Pakistani border into South Waziristan to attack a compound housing militants. Twenty of the occupants were killed, most of them women and children. The Pakistani press picked up on the attack, and the assault sparked vehement objections from Pakistani officials, who protested that it violated their national sovereignty. Army chief of staff Afshaq Parvez Kayani bluntly said that Pakistan’s “territorial integrity … will be defended at all costs,” suggesting that any future insertion of American soldiers into Pakistan would be met by force.

In the face of the intense Pakistani opposition to American boots on the ground, the Bush administration chose to rely on drones to target suspected militants.

Thiessen also suggests that the Obama Administration is deliberately avoiding efforts to capture terrorists because high-level interrogations would force “hard decisions” about what’s “needed to protect the United States.” By “hard decisions,” Thiessen is presumably referring to the use of torture, a cause he’s championed tirelessly in recent months. This is a clever insinuation, but it’s worth noting that the Obama Administration opposes torture not only on moral grounds, but also because it’s not particularly effective. If we take the Administration at its word that conventional interrogation techniques work better than torture, there’s no real political incentive for Obama to deliberately avoid capturing terrorists.

Despite his enthusiasm for mistreating prisoners, Thiessen does raise one important point. Namely, the moral contradiction between opposing torture and endorsing targeted airstrikes:

The president has claimed the moral high ground in eliminating the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program, saying that he rejects the “the false choice between our security and our ideals.” Yet when Obama orders a Predator or Reaper strike, he is often signing the death warrant for the women and children who will be killed alongside the target — individuals whose only sin is that they are married to, or the children of, a terrorist. Is this not a choice between security and ideals? And why is it a morally superior choice? Is it really more in keeping with American ideals to kill a terrorist and the innocent people around him, when the United States might instead spare the innocent, capture the same terrorist alive, and get intelligence from him that could potentially save many other innocent lives as well?

My intuition is that airstrikes are appropriate if the military takes all reasonable precautions to avoid civilian casualties. My thoughts on this issue are pretty unformed, however, so I thought I’d throw these questions at the commentariat: Why does the status of terrorists change so dramatically after they’ve been captured? Is it because we can afford to treat enemies better once they’re detained and rendered harmless? Or does being held in captivity fundamentally change a detainee’s moral status?

The one single refrain we’ve heard (especially from Broderists) over the last few years when it comes to those who claim nothing should be done about Bush-era “enhanced interrogation techniques” is that prosecutions or a tribunal would prove to be too divisive and distracting for our country.  At root, this argument only makes sense if there’s some question as to whether “enhanced interrogation techniques” constitute torture – there’s no dispute that the “techniques” were used, and with the possible exception of President Bush himself, there’s not much dispute as to who was involved in authorizing the use of those techniques.  If everyone agrees that those techniques were illegal and torture, then what could possibly be divisive about prosecuting someone who acknowledges committing an illegal, unconstitutional, and unconscionable act?

In other words, the “too divisive” argument against prosecution hinges entirely on the notion that it would be “too divisive or distracting” for us to conduct trials or tribunals aimed at determining, once and for all, whether “enhanced interrogation techniques” are torture.  To be sure, this argument is pretty weak to begin with.  But it also assumes that a failure to prosecute will not be divisive or distracting, that if we ignore the issue, it will just go away.

It has now been almost four and a half years since the legality and morality of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and specifically waterboarding first entered the public eye.  Yet we’re still having the debate.  Four and a half years of debating one simple question that could be answered in a short trial.  Whatever the results of such a trial, how long would it take for everyone to get on with their lives and for our public discourse to begin to focus on other issues?  In our 24-hour news cycle, ADD culture?  A few months?  A few weeks?  Even a few days?  But certainly not four and a half years. 

Would such prosecutions really tear the fabric of our country asunder so desperately as to endanger the Republic or at least cause even more long-term problems (which is to say almost none) than impeaching a sitting President for lying in a private capacity lawsuit about sex did?  I rather doubt it.  But certainly, ripping the band-aid off at once is generally preferable to slowly peeling it off, which is what we’ve been doing, and continue to do. 

These techniques, allegedly, are no longer in use.  The only potential long-lasting national impact from a finding that the techniques are torture is that there will be zero possibility that they will be brought back, as opposed to a minimal possibility that they will.   But without any finding, we just seem to keep revisiting the question, continuing to use it as a wedge, and failing to advance our public discourse at all.  Prosecute them and be done with it, whatever the results.  The country will survive.  No, really, it will.

The Washington Post has an interesting article up today outlining some illegal activities in which the FBI engaged in the collection of phone records in the counter-terrorism fight by failing to adhere to their own procedures and, “technically violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act when agents invoked nonexistent emergencies to collect records.”

Of course, the whole article is worth a read, but a line from the beginning caught my eye in particular,

Bureau officials said agents were working quickly under the stress of trying to thwart the next terrorist attack and were not violating the law deliberately.

I believe that that is true and, in fact, I believe that under the vast majority of recent cases involving improper to illegal behaviour, those involved were not intending to do wrong and were labouring under the sincere belief that their actions were designed specifically to avoid a greater potential wrongdoing. The sincerity of that belief is why I find it so dangerous and, in no small part, why I think a healthy skepticism about the actions of government, especially in those recesses of those dark corners of gray, isn’t just warranted — it is mandatory. [Read more →]

From the new Harper’s piece featuring Sergeant Joe Hickman on three Guantánamo “suicides”, this particular bit chilled me to the bone (emphasis mine),

The pathologists place the time of death “at least a couple of hours” before the bodies were discovered, which would be sometime before 10:30 p.m. on June 9. Additionally, the autopsy of Al-Salami states that his hyoid bone was broken, a phenomenon usually associated with manual strangulation, not hanging.

The report asserts that the hyoid was broken “during the removal of the neck organs.” An odd admission, given that these are the very body parts—the larynx, the hyoid bone, and the thyroid cartilage—that would have been essential to determining whether death occurred from hanging, from strangulation, or from choking. These parts remained missing when the men’s families finally received their bodies.

I actually have an incredibly difficult time wrapping my head around the degree of dehumanization that goes into making the decision to simply remove the “neck organs” of men who have died in US custody from being strangled and  having rags stuffed down their throats. It’s as though the line of logic took a sort of “out of sight, out of mind” track: if we get rid of any evidence of wrongdoing, we can wipe the very event from the record oand carry on as if nothing is awry.

Andrew is, I think, right to suggest that this story, “really takes you into the realm of totalitarian states”. Overused a characterization as it is, the kind of sociopathic belief that reality, history, and the course of events can be shaped to meet the needs of the centres of power by the crude and blatant erasure of inconvenient facts (like necks organs) is terrifyingly Orwellian in nature.

If there is any wonder why I have railed so hard against my own country’s tacit involvement in enabling torture, this is more than reason enough. The institutionalization of this kind of damaged mindset, then, is the logical culmination of finding ways of justifying the use of torture, regardless of the circumstances. Not only do the ground rules of right and wrong become elastic, but the very notion of what did and did not happen becomes a matter of debate — trading the elimination of words for body parts.

Anyone who thinks that such a cancer won’t eventually spread to decisions involving the everyday lives of citizens has a distinctly more rosy outlook than I.

Its been a little bit since last I did this, but here you go:

Divided We Stand, United We Fall provides a thorough overview of the Brown-Coakley race in Massachusetts.

Kyle Cupp looks at coercion versus torture.

Over at NeoMugwump, Dennis Sanders takes a critical look at the conservative inclination towards a healthy skepticism of government metastasizing into deep contempt.

At City of Brass, Aziz Poonwalla calls out Pat Robertson’s un-Christian and cruel comments towards Haiti.

D.A. Ridgley of Positive Liberty reviews The Book of Eli.

Joe Carter has written an excellent post on torture, pacifism, and the moral legitimacy of “enhanced interrogation.”

The news that Canadian National Defence Minister Peter McKay does not intend to resign over mounting allegations that he either did know or should have known that Afghan detainees transferred by Canadian forces were likely being subject to torture, in spite of top Canadian commander Walter Natynczyk’s blockbuster confirmation that a detainee who was transferred by Canadian forces was tortured, should surprise no one. [Read more →]

Last Friday, I wrote a post about the Afghan detainee transfer scandal that is currently gripping Canadian politics and allegations that Canadian Armed Forces and the Canadian government were complicit in handing over detainees into conditions in which torture of those detainees by Afghan authorities was likely from former senior diplomat to Afghanistan Richard Colvin.

Since I wrote that post, former Chief of Defense and high profile Canadian Rick Hillier has claimed that Colvin’s memos and concerns didn’t raise any flags for him, saying, “[t]he guy said some things and, really, nothing ever caught my attention based on what he perceived he said or perceived he sent[.]” Additionally, the federal government has come out and said that it halted detainee transfer on three separate occasions in 2009 due to concerns over prisoner treatment and access to facilities. And now, a high-level federal bureaucrat who used to run the government’s Afghanistan Task Force, David Mulroney, is set to rebuff the charges.

On the other side of the coin, recently surfaced documents support Colvin’s claims that Canadian officials have been slow in alerting the Red Cross to prisoner transfers and today Amnesty International has issued a call for a full public inquiry into the matter (video from a reporter who attended the press release here).

My own thoughts are that the waters have been muddied enough and that the allegations are of a serious enough nature that the only responsible thing to do is to coordinate a full public inquiry. In my original post and in other posts at the League I have lamented the state of Canadians’ interest in their own politics and talked about the need for, lacking a better phrase, a grassroots resurgence of civil and political engagement by Canadians from across the spectrum. Given how important this issue is and how much its potential ramifications concern me, I have decided that now is the time for me to put my money where my mouth is and lead by example. [Read more →]

While spending 118 days in an Iranian prison accused of being a “Western spy”, Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, who at the time was in Iran working for Newsweek, tells of the most bizarre moment of his captivity and torture at the hands of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,

One day my interrogator told me that, ‘We have video evidence of you working as a spy,’ and then when he put the DVD of The Daily Show in the laptop, I just thought, ‘Oh my God.’

The myriad of arguments against torture aside, do pro-torture advocates really want to place themselves in the same camp as folks who can’t tell that The Daily Show is satire? If there is a more relevant argument to demonstrate why the mindset of folks who support torture is not worthy of American ideals and values, I’ve not seen it.

In all seriousness, though, Bahari’s full interview with CBC’s Nancy Durham (sorry, not able to embed it) is well worth the thirty-eight plus minutes of your time.

The comment that most caught my attention was when Bahari said that it was important that the West engage Iran so Iran understands there are consequences to its decisions. Think about that for a moment: a man who was imprisoned and tortured for 118 days on clearly fictional charges of espionage, who was told regularly that he would be executed without ever having the chance to see his unborn child, whose mind and spirit became so strained that he seriously contemplated suicide thinks that engagement with Iran is the right course of action.

Perhaps the “Obama is an appeaser because he wants to engage countries like Iran” meme will ease up a bit in light of Bahari’s commentary. Or perhaps they think Bahari himself is a pro-appeasement Manchurian candidate set loose by the Iranian government. Maybe they saw it on the Colbert Report…

I’m a little stunned at how dismissively and cavalierly the Conservative government of Canada is handling the current Afghan detainee scandal it has on its hands. Though, upon reflection, I probably shouldn’t be.

On Wednesday, former senior Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin testified in front of a House Commons committee saying that it was his opinion that, and I quote,

According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured. For interrogators in Kandahar, it was a standard operating procedure.

Colvin was testifying in regards to the multiple year inquiry into the complicity of the Canadian government and Canadian Armed Forces in delivering Afghan detainees into environments run by Afghan forces that likely involved torture of those detainees. The government is responding to Colvin’s claims by questioning Colvin’s credibility and calling his claims unsubstantiated. I quote Defense Minister Peter McKay,

There has not been a single, solitary proven allegation of abuse involving a transferred Taliban prisoner by Canadian forces.

The CBC further reports that, “Conservative MPs dismissed Colvin’s testimony as being based on second- and third-hand information and suggested his allegations were part of a disinformation campaign.”

These kinds of tactics are all too familiar for Canada’s Conservative government. It seems like any time any concern is raised, the inevitable response from Harper et al is to wave it off as obvious partisan politicking from the Opposition parties that is hardly worth government’s time. And, to be certain, there is an element of truth to that hand waving some of the time, this is, afterall, politics.

But Colvin’s claims are serious and Colvin himself is hardly a source lacking credibility, contra McKay, neither is he part of the Opposition. I mean, not only was he a senior diplomat in Kandahar, but Colvin is currently First Secretary and Liaison Officer in the Intelligence Liaison Office of the Embassy of Canada in Washington. Titles aside, the point is that Colvin has a pretty distinguished career of service to the country at a pretty high level and he ought not to be written off like some inconvenient nut off the street.

That remains especially true given that there are reasonable questions about how government has acted towards Colvin’s concerns prior to this point. Allegations include instructions to diplomats like Colvin advising they, “hold back information in their reports to Ottawa about the handling of detainees” after one of Colvin’s seventeen memos on the topic made its way, “to one of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s senior security advisers.”

[Read more →]