I've been reading about intelligence and sabotage efforts by the UK and US before and during WW II. What is clear is that when people are desperate, as were the British during the first year of war, they will do the unthinkable without compunction.

But it's hard to portray the US as facing an existential challenge. England was hearing that Hitler planned to invade, and had been suffering through vicious bombing of civilian targets for months without relief.

On top of that, the British never tried to paint their bloody hands white; they didn't codify torture and assassination in law, they simply did it as they felt necessary.

Institutionalizing torture is a purely imperial move.

Torture, assassination and domestic warrantless spying on citizens justified by terrorists who were aided and abetted by figures in this administration at some point in their careers as terrorist, it's like really bad “B” rate movie that has come to life.

Pelosi and Reed ought to be removed from leadership positions as they are obviously too related to what is going on (representatives on the instutionalized take, profiting from government contracts, tied to government lobbyists), to be free to do the right thing which is to instigate serious, top priority hearings into a criminal administration leading to the impeachment and removal of Bush and Cheney and criminal prosecutions against several of the treacherous Neo-Cons employed by Bush Inc. who have played hob with our democratic system and helped rob the treasury.

There is no excuse for not acting against this administration (regardless of consequences) except complicity in the nefarious acts any wide-awake informed citizen can plainly see are being daily committed. This crowd running the country are a pack of greedy corrupt men and women who are completely without scruples or respect for the Constitution and the rule of law. I’m sick of these moral midgets trying to justify their fanatical ideology and monumental greed by claiming pragmatic patriotism, it is enough to make William James or even Dewey let alone any real patriot puke…

~

Is this America?

Not in my wildest nightmares . . .

That type of America only exists if one has bought in by hook, line and sinker to the tactics and bill-of-goods being sold by the current authoritarian Amerofascist regime . . .

~OGD~

... and what does our glorious Congress do - give Bush six more months of enhanced power with even fewer safeguards. This is disgustingly unbelievable.

Tom

You're right, OGD, that this nightmare has been created by the WH. "Enhanced interviewing techniques" like waterboarding can only come from the minds of those compassionate conservatives. And I understand that the Republicans in congress are responsible, too, since they have only acted as lapdogs for Bush and Cheney's power grab.

Still, I see the Dems stumble over themselves this week to pass Bush's FISA "improvements," legalizing much of the warrantless spying, and I wonder where the check on this unitary executive is. I see the Dems allow the Iraq war to continue unconditionally and wonder how much it emboldens this omnipotent war president. I see the Dems allow the Military Commissions Act codifying some of this torture and denial of due process instead of filibustering it and wonder if the administration is only as authoritarian as they're allowed to be.

Where is the opposition party? The only authority that can stop this undermining of democracy is congress and they don't seem inclined to do so.

In sum, torture doesn't work. It creates liars, willing to tell their captors what they want to hear, or it creates martyrs to inspire others to disrupt the common peace, or both.

 Torture also creates liars, willing to tell their captors what their captors want them to say. That and the disruption of "the common peace" may well be the intention.

Impeach.

I've read about this piece a couple of places today. One thing struck me in particular. It was said that what was done at the black sites was completely different than the stuff that went on at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. But, it was explained, where the interrogators "went too far" at the black sites, it was because they were inexperienced in the techniques.

Wellllll, it seems to me that the explanation for what went on at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo was exactly the same: Where they went too far, it was because they were inexperienced in the techniques. Oh, and they were a few bad apples.

No bad apples at the black sites, I take it. Thanks, I feel better already.

... and convict.

Tom

The New Yorker article is very well put together. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Unfortunately the United States is in worse shape than you imagine would be possible. The opposition party to the torturers are fully corrupted and impotent to make changes. They sacrifice treaties for a chance at votes in 2008.

The Democrats prefer playing political Lotto to upholding their oaths of office.

The investigations so far have been for show and will continue to be for show. They don't care if Cheney authorizes torture. Unless they can get a vote out of it, it doesn't matter to them.

It will be up to the lazy and fat citizens of the US to get off their couches and make their government listen, and I don't see that happening in the next decade.

What if there were incontrovertible evidence that torture (as commonly defined) was effective in gaining intelligence on critical matters? Would there then be some question as to whether the state should employ it? No, of course not. The state can in no way, ever be allowed to trespass beyonds the bounds set by such articles of enlightenment such as the U.S. Constitution. It is inherent in the nature of the relationship of the governed and the government that such acts should be strictly taboo.

Agreed as well. I would also suggest that beyond any moral restrictions there is an existential reason that the state cannot engage in torture. The covenant you speak of is part of the source of power of the state in a democracy. Should that covenant be broken so is that source of power, democracy then dies.

Churchill, writing in the aftermath of WW I:

"Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian states had been able to deny themselves."

Down to one, now, but he was writing before WW II, which saw plenty of torture (which he approved). This is the risk of entering a war, or even calling something a war, that expedience will call for desperate measures.

What disturbs me about the Black Sites article is - well, the devil is in the details.  I don't know about Guantanamo, but looking at the actions of those responsible at Abu Ghraib I see a striking similarity to the torture details that Mayer's maps out in her description of CIA torture.  It suggests to me that what happened at Abu Ghraib was in fact part and parcel of the same MO that the Black Sites are using, which in turn suggests that the CIA was pulling command strings there (or at least participating in a morbid technology transfer program - which would have required a lot of cooperation with junior, field and general grade military officers.  

I think its comparable to how the Latin American "Death Squads" operated.  The evidence was always the same - dead bodies found outside town dressed in underwear, showing signs of physical torture.  There were many other comparable MOs, and it seemed to all come out of the training manuals of the School of the Americas...or did it? The "science and art" of torture and terrorism may have been a French export - remember the OAS (Organization armée secréte) in Algeria in the early sixties, who not only defied Charles de Gual, but attempted on more than one occasion to assassinate him.  After they lost Algeria, they couldn't return to France, so they fled to Franco Spain and Latin America.  Colonel Jean Gardes, for example, arrived in Argentina in 1963, and taught counter-insurgency at ESMA (the Navy Mechanics School) - ESMA became the torture center in Argentina's "Dirty War" and it was there that concepts such as "disappearances" were theorized and taught - the "Death Flights" which had originated in the Algerian war.  One OAS fugitive became Pinochet's advisor in Chile.  Prior to Brazil's military coup in 1964, Death Squad activity began appearing in Brazilian cities.  The MO was the same as it was in El Salvador, Nicarauga and Guatemala decades later.  This stuff is obviously being taught, and I think it's likely that OAS criminals wrote the books that the School of the America used.

Neoboho