Documents confirm U.S. hid detainees from Red Cross

[HuskyCaucasian]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/41394.html

 

The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.

 

"We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who's since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting that were made public Tuesday. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility — Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan — were using sleep deprivation to "break" detainees well before then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique. "True, but officially it is not happening," she is quoted as having said.

 

A third person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world.

 

"In the past when the ICRC has made a big deal about certain detainees, the DOD (Defense Department) has 'moved' them away from the attention of the ICRC," Fredman said, according to the minutes.

Edited June 18, 2008 by Athomeboy_2000

[FlaSoxxJim]

A number of revelations have come out of the Senate investigation, and unfortunately the MSM is not going to pick up any of them. As damning as the evidence of a premeditated strategy to hide worked over detainees from the Red Cross should be, so too should the uncovering of the fact that torture was a top-down strategy and not the work of a couple of bad apple enlistees as the Pentagon wanted the public to believe.

 

A Senate investigation has found that “top Pentagon officials began assembling lists of harsh interrogation techniques in the summer of 2002 for use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay and that those officials later cited memos from field commanders to suggest that the proposals originated far down the chain of command.” It provides evidence that the policies were “not the work of out-of-control, lower-ranking troops.”

 

But none of this will get any significant media play and at the end of the day it won't matter. Because America is better than its enemies (except that it isn't), and America doesn't torture (except that it does).

 

The damage this administration has done to our standing in the world is going to take 20 years to undo.

[Cknolls]

A number of revelations have come out of the Senate investigation, and unfortunately the MSM is not going to pick up any of them. As damning as the evidence of a premeditated strategy to hide worked over detainees from the Red Cross should be, so too should the uncovering of the fact that torture was a top-down strategy and not the work of a couple of bad apple enlistees as the Pentagon wanted the public to believe.

 

 

 

But none of this will get any significant media play and at the end of the day it won't matter. Because America is better than its enemies (except that it isn't), and America doesn't torture (except that it does).

 

The damage this administration has done to our standing in the world is going to take 20 years to undo.

 

 

Even with Barry as President. He'll gather the world at the U.N. and we'll all sing KUMBAYA.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Even with Barry as President. He'll gather the world at the U.N. and we'll all sing KUMBAYA.

 

20 years is a lot of f***ing Kumbaya.

[southsider2k5]

A number of revelations have come out of the Senate investigation, and unfortunately the MSM is not going to pick up any of them. As damning as the evidence of a premeditated strategy to hide worked over detainees from the Red Cross should be, so too should the uncovering of the fact that torture was a top-down strategy and not the work of a couple of bad apple enlistees as the Pentagon wanted the public to believe.

 

 

 

But none of this will get any significant media play and at the end of the day it won't matter. Because America is better than its enemies (except that it isn't), and America doesn't torture (except that it does).

 

The damage this administration has done to our standing in the world is going to take 20 years to undo.

 

Tim Russert had some feelings on that...

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1213751874...in_commentaries

 

Russert Took Media Bias Seriously

By BERNARD GOLDBERG

June 18, 2008; Page A15

 

There have been millions of words written and spoken in the past few days about Tim Russert -- words about how Tim knew his beat better than almost anyone in Washington, about how hard work was in his blue-collar DNA, and about what a decent guy he was. All true.

 

But days later another reality has finally sunk in: that while his colleagues loved and admired Tim, I'm not at all sure they really understood him, not the part that made him so important in American journalism, anyway.

[Russert Took Media Bias Seriously]

 

Knowing politics as well as he did was part of it, for sure. But a lot of people in Washington know politics. Asking probing questions was part of it, too. But again, Tim didn't have a patent on tough questions. And it wasn't just that (unlike too many others) he was fair to both sides. No, what made Tim Russert different, and better, I think was his willingness to listen to -- and take seriously -- criticism about his own profession. He was willing, for example, to keep an open mind about a hot-button issue like media bias -- an issue that so many of his colleagues dismiss as the delusions of right-wing media haters. (Trust me on this one, I worked at CBS News for 28 years and know Dan Rather personally.)

 

In 2001, my first book, "Bias," came out. It was an insider's look at bias in the media. Not one network news correspondent would have anything to do with me. I couldn't get on any of their morning news shows to talk about the book (which was a national best seller), or their evening shows or their weekend shows or even their middle-of-the-night news shows. No one in network television wanted to discuss the issue, no matter how many Middle Americans thought it was important.

 

Russert was the lone exception.

 

He had me on his CNBC interview show, and we talked about bias for a full hour. He had me on his show two other times. About five years ago, we turned the tables and I interviewed him for a book I was writing on the arrogance that I believe pervades too much of American journalism.

 

Tim was a big proponent of diversity, but he wanted to go further than the usual stuff. "I am for having women in the newsroom and minorities in the newsroom -- I'm all for it. It opens up our eyes and gives us different perspectives. But just as well, let's have people with military experience; let's have people from all walks of life, people from the top-echelon schools but also people from junior colleges and the so-called middling schools -- that's the pageantry of America . . . You need cultural diversity, you need ideological diversity. You need it."

 

Tim understood that without that kind of diversity, journalism would be in trouble. He knew it wasn't good for journalism or America if almost all the people reporting the news lived and worked in the same bubble.

 

"There's a potential cultural bias. And I think it's very real and very important to recognize and to deal with," he told me. "Because of backgrounds and training you come to issues with a preconceived notion or a preordained view on subjects like abortion, gun control, campaign finance. I think many journalists growing up in the '60s and the '70s have to be very careful about attitudes toward government, attitudes toward the military, attitudes toward authority. It doesn't mean there's a rightness or a wrongness. It means you have to constantly check yourself."

 

"Why the closed-mindedness when the subject comes around to media bias?" I asked him.

 

"That, to me, is totally contrary to who we're supposed to be as journalists. . . . If someone suggested there was an anti-black bias, an anti-gay bias, an anti-American bias, we'd sit up and say, 'Let's talk about this, let's tackle it.' Well, if there's a liberal bias or a cultural bias we have to sit up and tackle it and discuss it. We have got to be open to these things."

 

His many friends in journalism -- the ones who spend their lives inside that comfortable, elitist bubble -- would do well to take those words to heart. Facing up to their biases and making a conscious effort to get rid of what Tim called "preferred positions" on important social issues (for abortion and against guns, for example) would be a lasting tribute to Tim.

 

We ended our conversation that day with an exchange about the criticism he took from some on the political left for wearing a red, white and blue ribbon on his lapel when he interviewed Vice President Dick Cheney on Sept. 16, 2001. He told me a good friend of his died at the World Trade Center on 9/11, and that the friend's family had asked if he would wear the ribbon, "and I never thought for a second about it."

 

"I want a debate about national security and who defines national security," he said. "I understand all that. But in the end, you have to make judgments, and on that day I made a judgment that five days after the most horrific event of my lifetime and of my journalistic career, that for me to say to the country I too am part of this, I too have experienced this gut-wrenching pain and agony, and I too have enormous remorse and sympathy, with not only the people who died in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in the field in Pennsylvania, but all of us -- we're in this together. This isn't covering Democrats and Republicans or the Bills versus the Redskins; this is us. The Taliban doesn't believe in the First Amendment."

 

"But what about those who say journalists shouldn't wear red, white and blue ribbons, that by doing that somehow you're taking the government's side in some debate or another," I asked him.

 

"It is imperative," he told me, "that we never suggest that there's a moral equivalency between the United States of America and the terrorists. Period. I'll believe that until the day I die."

 

Which was way too soon.

 

Mr. Goldberg, a correspondent at CBS News from 1972 to 2000, is the author of "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News" (Regnery, 2001) and, most recently, "Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right" (HarperCollins, 2007).

[lostfan]

I don't really think that was what FlaSoxx was getting at - it would be ludicrous to suggest that the things the terrorists do or believe are morally acceptable. That was more focused on the fact that we as Americans can't just act with impunity, and assume that no matter what we do it's automatically going to be morally superior by default just because we're Americans. We're supposed to be holding ourselves to a higher standard. Because, simply, we are better.

[Balta1701]

In congressional testimony yesterday, Colin Powell's former chief of staff testified under oath that the number of detainees who had died in U.S. custody was over 100, and 25 of those were flat out murders, most of which haven't been punished.

NADLER: Colonel Wilkerson, in your prepared testimony, you write that “as I compiled my dossier for Secretary Powell, and as I did further research, and as my views grew firmer and firmer I had to reread that memo (of February 7, 2002), “I needed to balance in my own mind the overwhelming evidence that my own government had sanctioned abuse and torture, which at its worse had led to the murder of 25 detainees and at least 100 detainee deaths. We have murder at least 25 people in detention. That was the clear low point [lower end of the range] of the evidence.” Your testimony said 100 detainees have died in detention; do you believe the 25 of those were in effect murdered?

 

WILKERSON: Mr. Chairman, I think the number’s actually higher than that now. Last time I checked it was 108, and the total number that were declared homicides by the military services, or by the CIA, or others doing investigations, CID, and so forth — was 25, 26, 27.

 

NADLER: Were declared homicides?

 

WILKERSON: Right, starting as early as December 2001 in Afghanistan.

 

NADLER: And these were homicides committed by people engaged in interrogations?

 

WILKERSON: Or in guarding prisoners, or something like that. People who were in detention.

 

NADLER: They were in detention, not trying to escape or anything, declared homicides by our own authorities.

 

[HuskyCaucasian]

Many will say "well, the president and his people had nothing to do with this. they didnt know anything" And it might be true!

 

I just got a thought... the Bush administration kinda acts like the mob. "take care of it. I dont want to know how. just take care of it".

Of course they didnt know because they never actually SAID to do anything, they just never told them what NOT to do.

[FlaSoxxJim]

I don't really think that was what FlaSoxx was getting at - it would be ludicrous to suggest that the things the terrorists do or believe are morally acceptable. That was more focused on the fact that we as Americans can't just act with impunity, and assume that no matter what we do it's automatically going to be morally superior by default just because we're Americans. We're supposed to be holding ourselves to a higher standard. Because, simply, we are better.

 

And more to the point, the administration, the Pentagon, the CIA interrogators, the Gitmo lawyers. . . are not America. Not the Americas I grew up believing in. They don't speak for the America I grew up believing in, they don't act on behalf of the America I grew up believing in, and, they are an insult to the America I grew up believing in.

 

And Tim Russert's statement, sincere in time of tragedy though it was, is a fatally flawed comparison. Comparing the whole of America to "the terrorists" is about as meaningful as comparing America to "the child rapists" or "the death row murderers". That's called an unfair comparison and it doesn't mean anything. Certainly it shouldn't mean that individuals within the government or the military can concoct, approve of, and commit the equivalent of war crimes and think that it's ok because we're America and the rest of the world is not.

[Balta1701]

In the foreward to an upcoming book, General Anthony Taguba, the man who led the Army's investigation in to the Abu Ghraib disaster, calls for prosecution of members of the current administration for war crimes.

The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, we can see the full scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has inflicted—both on America’s institutions and our nation’s founding values, which the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to defend.

 

In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.

 

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.