It's become more or less common knowledge that US forces have been using music as an operational tool for some time now, and I've begun seeing lists of the songs that are being used either to inflict pain, to demoralize, or to just generally disorient various people in various sorts of situations.
There are others, wiser than I, who will opine as to the questions of efficacy and the moral issues surrounding these kinds of operations; I will opine, instead, as to the quality of the songs used.
Frankly, had anyone asked, I could have put the torturers onto much better musical choices, just by selecting from my own "My Music" folder--which left me thinking: "hey, it's the weekend...why not do exactly that?"
Got any psychological warfare mission planned for the weekend? Expecting to have to direct amplified sound at an angry mob in a defensive maneuver Saturday night? Planning a Halloween haunted house that goes a bit...fuurther?
Come along with me then, soldier, and I'll provide you a playlist that should do the trick in almost any foreseeable emergency.
When last we met, Gentle Reader, it was to work through a series of legal precedents and statute law; the goal of the exercise being to determine if we could or could not define waterboarding as torture.
We have the kind assistance of Professor Jeffrey Addicott, who has provided us with his written testimony from his recent appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee and a personal interview, where he walked me through some of his thinking on the matter.
Today we’re going to take a look at the precedent that he has used to reach the conclusion that waterboarding is not torture.
It’s also possible that the analysis may result in the discovery of a bit of common ground...but as I noted in Part One, it’s common ground that neither one of us might have seen coming.
I can’t tell you the number of times I began a story with a plan for where it would go, only to discover that the plan isn’t going to work.
The stories sometimes seem to write themselves...but other times, the research seems to do the writing instead; this being one of those times.
When the production of this story began it was with the intention of trying to explain what should be the “controlling authority” in terms of defining torture, a precedent set by the European Court of Human Rights, or Title 18 of the United States Code.
Having reviewed both statute law and numerous judgments in law courts worldwide as well as the recent Senate Judiciary Committee testimony of Professor Jeffrey Addicott, and having conducted an interview with Dr. Addicott personally, I’ve come to two rather surprising conclusions:
It may not really matter whether waterboarding is torture...and although neither I nor Dr. Addicott might have seen it coming, it’s starting to appear that he and I might agree on one thing:
Waterboarding, whether it’s torture or not, is a war crime.
As of this morning I have heard from two qualified waterboarders and an EMT. Although just asking to have a doctor present flies in the face of Chetly's argument that waterboarding is just "pouring a little water in someone's face," which to me is an admission of the danger of being waterboarded, I am trying to meet Chetly's requests. The waterboarders and EMT were found through an ad I placed on Craig's List.
One of the waterboarders that contacted me gave me specific details of how the waterboarding needs to be performed in order to simulate what happens to detainees. First, the victim needs to be on a teeter-totter device so that he can be upside down. Apparently we do not always use water to do waterboarding. Sometimes we use gasoline or urine. I was also informed that if we do use water, it should be ice cold, not just cold, but just before it freezes cold, so as to induce a panic reaction similiar to jumping into a cold body of water.
I do not really expect Chetly to agree to be waterboarded. My goal is that he should admit that a) waterboarding is torture and b) George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and other high officials in the Bush administration are guilty of war crimes.
Activist Bruce Fealk, who dogged former U.S. Rep. Joe Knollenberg with a giant paper mache head, is now trying to whip up a waterboarding frenzy, and not at the Waterford Oaks water park: He's challenged Chetly Zarko, a Republican consultant and blogger, to a torture tete a tete: "I'd give $10 per second for every second Chetly could withstand being waterboarded."
I've been having a discussion with Chetly Zarko on his blog regarding torture.
In that posting Chetly refers to waterboarding "But Fealk's moral clarity that pouring a little bit of water on someone's face equilizes you to Adolph Hitler who put 6 million in gas chambers has its own logical consequences."
So, I've made a little challenge with Chetly along the lines of the challenge that Keith Olbermann made to Sean Hannity. For every second Chetly can withstand waterboarding, there will be a donation made of $10 to Folds of Honor. Folds of Honor provides scholarships to spouses and dependents of service members that have been killed or disabled as a result of their military service.
I'm hoping that you will pledge to make a donation to Folds of Honor. Please e-mail your pledges to bfealk@wideopenwest.com. Once you make a pledge, I will post your pledge on WaterboardChetly.com.
The next step is to get an acceptance from Chetly to be waterboarded and then we will set a time and location. This will all be recorded, of course.
a short diary agreed but I wanted to throw it up none the less...
And the Miami Mafia begot stopping the vote count and stopping the vote count begot a fraudulent election and begetting a fraudulent election made people think they could get away with anything they wanted and that begot ignoring terrorist threats to focus on getting Iraq and it's oil and that begot 9/11 and 9/11 begot as good a reason as any to go into Iraq and get it's oil and that begot the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq and when the deluded realized that WMD's weren't in Iraq to cover for the invasion for oil then that begot Chinese communist torture tactics to get FALSE information to use as propaganda (the Chinese never want the truth from torture it's about using the confessions, truth or false, for propaganda) and that begot continuing the mistake which was the Iraq war and that begot huge deficit spending to keep funding the war and that begot artificially low interest rates and that begot non-existent lending standards and that begot a huge, unsustainable, corrupt, pervasively fraudulent housing bubble and that begot a gigantic worldwide credit crisis and that begot the Great Recession and that begot the massive dislocation of millions of people throughout the world, unemployment, famine and despair and that begot a new beginning, now it's up to us...
Torture was right in the middle of the mess, right in the heart of it, an evil on top of the evil that perpetuated more evil and it most certainly wasn't the act of a few bad apples...we ignore investigating at our peril.
When American citizens, activists, or policymakers point fingers at other countries about their human rights records, many people in those countries simply retort, check yourself. According to an e-mail from Sen. Levin's campaign for reelection, this is one big reason he voted in the Senate last week to explicitly ban certain types of torture and to require U.S. intelligence officials to follow guidelines in the US Army Field Manual.
Levin provides this example:
Late last year in meetings with senior Saudi government officials, Congressional staffers raised concerns about the case of the Saudi rape victim who faced six months in prison and two hundred lashes because she spoke out publicly.
The Saudi officials responded by simply saying, "Guantanamo" and "Abu Ghraib". As if to say, "Who are you to lecture us about due process and human rights?"
When I was in the US Army I was an infantry soldier, and occasionally we talked about the treatment of prisoners. One Lt. I served under in South Korea was extremely concerned that we knew the Geneva Convention rules about capturing and handling prisoners. In addition to avoiding war crimes charges, he seemed particularly interested in helping us avoid turning into the brutes and criminals we often describe our enemies as.
He argued that we must treat prisoners the way we expect them to treat us. It wasn't just the "golden rule" idea; the point was if we brutalize our enemies, we have no ground on which to stake a moral claim to being right or in justifying our own actions. Indeed, other countries will use us as an example to legitimize their own atrocities, as the Saudis in Levin's example appeared to do.
This was a lesson that former Secretary of State Colin Powell appears to have tried to put forward unsuccessfully while serving in the Bush administration.
It was a concept that even John McCain used to believe in... up until last week, that is, when he decided that he in fact supports torture. In fact, the closer we get to election time, the more John McCain seems to be abandoning his "straight talk express" in favor of serving as Bush's surrogate in the next presidential term.
It is a concept the Bush administration and indeed most right-wing pundits and ultra-right noisemakers never learned. A significant reason for that fact is that most of them never served in the military, and if they did the lessons my old Lt. tried to ingrain in us rolled off their backs like water off a duck.
Today, the House of Representatives considered HR 2082, the Intelligence Authorization Act conference report, which reconciled the House and Senate versions previously passed. It reauthorizes funding for our intelligence-gathering agencies (at a cost of $2.00 per American). As far as I know, that part wasn't controversial, and I'm guessing that Congressman Walberg and most other members of Congress are fine with funding our intelligence agencies.
The House, in a 222-199 vote, passed annual policy legislation for intelligence agencies that included the ban on the use of simulated drowning in interrogations.
``This would mean no more torture and no more questions about what the CIA is allowed to do behind closed doors,'' said Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat.
U.S. interrogations emerged again as a controversial issue after Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden revealed on Dec. 6 that the agency destroyed videotapes of the questioning of alleged terrorists made in 2002.
(Emphasis added.)
That's right. The controversial part, apparently, is that the bill bans torture. That's controversial.
Dr. Bob Jones III, chancellor of the fundamentalist Christian university that bears his name, is looking past his religious differences with Gov. Mitt Romney and endorsing the Mormon for the Republican nomination for president, he told The Greenville News today. "This is all about beating Hillary," Jones said. ... "If it turns out to be Guiliani [sic] and Hillary, we've got two pro-choice candidates, and that would be a disaster." ...
Retired General James "Spider" Marks, who has just been named a new national security adviser to Mitt Romney's campaign, asserted in a 2005 interview that he would readily torture prisoners to save a soldier's life or stop a terror bomb, saying: "I'd stick a knife in somebody's thigh in a heartbeat." ... Contacted by Election Central, Romney spokesman Kevin Madden declined to comment on Marks' assertions or say whether Governor Romney agreed with them. Madden did, however, say that Romney opposes torture, though he also confirmed that Romney supports the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques." Madden declined to specify what techniques in particular Romney was referring to. At the GOP debate in May, Romney surprised a lot of people -- and drew applause from his audience -- when he said: "Some people have said, we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo."
Double your fun, huh. And we ain't talking bubblegum.
Old Man Romney (the "George W. 43" of Michigan) must be spinning in his grave. Maybe his boy Mitt will promote gas-guzzling Detroit cars with an electric cattle prod feature to use on heathens or something.
Pete Hoekstra never ceases to amaze. Just when I think he has said the most idiotic thing I can think of...he tops it!
More under the fold..
The pictures that we have all seen are too graphic to put here. These should work as a reminder to all, of what has been and is most likely still being done.
Restore Habeas Corpus and End Torture on June 26th!
For nearly seven years, our core values of freedom and fairness have been eroded, from the suspension of habeas corpus and due process, to shameful acts of torture, CIA kidnappings and secret prison programs.
On Tuesday, June 26, 2007, we will rally in Washington, D.C. and throughout Michigan as we call on Congress to restore habeas corpus, fix the Military Commissions Act, and restore all our constitutional rights.
Join the ACLU, Amnesty International, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and National Religious Campaign Against Torture around the state:
Michigan demonstrations:
Detroit:
Senator Debbie Stabenow's office
243 W. Congress, Detroit
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
East Lansing:
Senator Debbie Stabenow's office
221 W. Lake Lansing Rd., E. Lansing
12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Grand Rapids:
Calder Plaza, downtown Grand Rapids, between Ottawa and Monroe
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Traverse City:
Parkway and Division in downtown Traverse City
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
In the Upper Penninsula:
Call-in to Senator Debbie Stabenow's Marquette office on 6/26
906-228-8756
Buses to Washington, D.C. are almost filled. You may still register at http://www.juneactio.... Buses will leave on Monday, June 25th from these locations:
From Lansing:
Departs: Mon. 6/25, 7:30 p.m.
Okemos Park & Ride, behind
2285 Woodlake Drive, Okemos
From Ann Arbor:
Departs: Mon. 6/25, 9:00 p.m.
Behind Zingerman's Roadhouse
2501 Jackson Rd., Ann Arbor
From Detroit:
Departs: Mon. 6/25, 10:30 p.m.
ACLU of Michigan Office
60 West Hancock, Detroit
Former Army Chaplain James Yee tells his harrowing story from Guantanamo Bay
Former Army chaplain, James Yee is a Muslim that served our country honorably at Guantanamo Bay ministering to Muslim detainees. He received many commendations while serving there. He was detained, and put in solitary confinement at Guantanamo Bay after having been arrested when he landed in the U.S. for a 2-week leave. Please watch yourself and ask your friends, family and acquaintances to visit the site and watch this important interview. It could happen to you.
Next up on Michigan Progress, an important interview with James Yee, a former muslim Army chaplain. James Yee was detained for 76 days in solitary confinement on trumped up charges. He has an important story for all Americans to hear. Once it is posted, please share it with as many of you friends, family, acquaintances as you possibly can. What happened to James Yee could happen to anyone reading this or your families at any moment, especially the crowd that hangs out here at Mich Lib. Look for the James Yee interviw later today.
I also am excited to tell all my Mich Lib friends and the media reading this blog that I was able to interview Governor Granholm today in Lansing. I should be able to post it here by late next week.
Thank you, Governor Granholm, for allowing me to talk with you about the issues and solutions that you are working hard to make reality. I hope once the Senate returns from vacation we can get this budget crisis behind us.
