The Moral High Ground

The CIA's favorite form of torture

According to news reports, the White House is preparing to issue an executive order that will set new ground rules for the CIA's secret program for interrogating captured al-Qaida types. Constrained by the 2006 Military Commissions Act, which contains a strict ban on abuse, it is anticipated that the order will jettison waterboarding and other brutal interrogation techniques.

But President Bush has insisted publicly that "tough" techniques work, and has signaled that the CIA's secret program can somehow continue under the rubric of the Military Commissions Act. The executive order will reportedly hand the CIA greater latitude than the military to conduct coercive interrogations. If waterboarding goes the way of the Iron Maiden, what "tough" techniques will the CIA use on its high-value detainees?

The answer is most likely a measure long favored by the CIA -- sensory deprivation. The benign-sounding form of psychological coercion has been considered effective for most of the life of the agency, and its slippery definition might allow it to squeeze through loopholes in a law that seeks to ban prisoner abuse. Interviews with former CIA officials and experts on interrogation suggest that it is an obvious choice for interrogators newly constrained by law. The technique has already been employed during the "war on terror," and, Salon has learned, was apparently used on 14 high-value detainees now held at Guantánamo Bay.

The Salon article goes on to describe how sense-dep has already been used and the potential side effects (hallucinations, psychosis, etc).

Also, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch released some documentaton on America's gulags:

In the most comprehensive accounting to date, six leading human rights organizations today published the names and details of 39 people who are believed to have been held in secret US custody and whose current whereabouts remain unknown. The briefing paper also names relatives of suspects who were themselves detained in secret prisons, including children as young as seven.

[...]

The 21-page briefing paper, “Off the Record: US Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the ‘War on Terror,’” includes detailed information about four people named as “disappeared” prisoners for the first time. The full list of people includes nationals from countries including Egypt, Kenya, Libya, Morocco, Pakistan and Spain. They are believed to have been arrested in countries including Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan, and transferred to secret US detention centers.

[...]

“Off the Record” highlights aspects of the CIA detention program that the US government has actively tried to conceal, such as the locations where prisoners may have been held, the mistreatment they endured, and the countries to which they may have been transferred.

It reveals how suspects’ relatives, including wives and children as young as seven years old, have been held in secret detention. In September 2002, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s two young sons, aged seven and nine, were arrested. According to eyewitnesses, the two were held in an adult detention center for at least four months while US agents questioned the children about their father’s whereabouts.

Similarly, when Tanzanian national Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was seized in Gujarat, Pakistan, in July 2004, his Uzbek wife was detained with him.

The human rights groups are calling on the US government to put a permanent end to the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program, and to disclose the identities, fate, and whereabouts of all detainees currently or previously held at secret facilities operated or overseen by the US government as part of the “war on terror.”

What makes the U.S. a better nation than Pakistan, Iran or Afghanistan under the mujahdeen? Its secular tradition? Its respect for human rights? Its sterling civil liberties record? Its adherence to the Western Enlightenment tradition?

What about the United States is worth defending?

Giuliani Emerges From His 9/11 Cryostasis Chamber

People ask us sometimes why we don't vote.

Reuters:

Asked by a moderator if he was suggesting the United States invited the [September 11th] attacks, [Ron] Paul said: "I'm suggesting we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it. And they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said: I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier."

An irate Giuliani interrupted and asked for a chance to respond.

"That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq," said Giuliani, who leads national polls in the Republican race.

"I don't think I've ever heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th," Giuliani said to wild applause, asking Paul to withdraw the comment [emphasis mine]

(A) What could your having lived through the World Trade Center razing have to do with your ability to judge its geopolitical causes? How would the sheer historical accident of you having been in New York City on a certain day grant you special, magical insight into the history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East? Why does your surviving the attack give you a supernatural glimpse into the past at its cause?

The answers, of course, are "nothing," "it doesn't," and "it still doesn't," respectively. But the 9/11 reflex has been rubbed so raw in Mayor-for-life Giuliani that it's his response to everything. Even when it's irrelevant, as it is here.

In case it wasn't obvious: Giuliani is no more qualified to speak to the causes of September 11th than any other pundit, wonk or noodnik. Having been in Manhattan on the day of the attacks does not bestow upon him special awareness of the mind of the mystic Arab.

(B) So Giuliani has never before heard the notion that U.S. involvement in the Middle East - the presence of troops in Saudi Arabia, our enforcement of a no-fly-zone over Baghdad, the Battle of Mogadishu and all that jazz - enraged Osama bin Laden into stirring up an attack? He's never heard that theory? He's never read any of the fatwahs that bin Laden has issued? Never cruised a rightwing webjournal and read the author railing against "failure-obsessed leftists" who want to blame America for all global terrorism? Never? Not once ever?

Because we're pretty sure we started hearing that on September 12th, 2001. And have heard it with moderately increasing volume ever since.

Now it makes perfect sense to us that Giuliani wouldn't believe this theory in a million years. It flies in the face of the Right's five-year narrative ("they hate us for our freedom"), a story that's grown more and more tattered in the time being. So we see no problem - save a certain bizarre fantasism - with Giuliani insisting it Just Ain't So.

But to claim never to have heard the idea? "So you say people download music off the Internet now? And play it on portable machines, no larger than a Walkman? Well, God bless 'em, but I'd have to see that to believe it myself."

(C) This is (part of) why we don't vote. Not just to avoid legitimizing an illegitimate system, not just because there's no candidate even within a hair's breadth of our key issues, but because it's a waste of our time. For every one person who studies the issues, checks the candidates' actual voting records and comes to an informed conclusion, there's two hundred meatheads who break into "wild applause" whenever someone mentions 9/11, Saddam Hussein, the flag or our troops.

We can't outreason two hundred fools' gut reactions, so why bother?