Hopefully this will be the beginning of the end to use of by the US. As one who worked at both of the following schools what is particularly galling is that the first article that supported torture came from a Harvard Law professor and the legal justifications came from a Berkeley law professor. This disgrace is spread broadly through our society. In addition to the foreign indictments we can also do something and that is identify those who were advocates of the torture policies and shun them from civil society.

Cheney, when 'asked' about the use of torture said, "Sometimes we have to work the dark side."
There is really only one explanation for why he, Rumsfeld and others advocated the use of torture. Since it never elicits viable, usable, dependable information, its use can only be explained as a means of satisfying a sadistic streak in its champions. So much for the 'city shining on the hill.'

This is an important development. Rumsfeld is the first to leave his position in the administration. But Bush, Cheney and Rice deserve the same international accountability as soon as they leave office for trampling International law and treaties, starting an unprovoked, immoral, elective war on false pretenses, violating human rights and commiting major crimes against humanity. If the U.S. Congress is too cowardly to charge them, and our judiciary to compromised to bring them to trial , then let the administration of international justice at least charge them with war crimes and threaten them with arrest whenever they leave the USA.

I wonder how he would respond if asked about working the light side? A soldier friend of mine is quite politically conservative, but, when on urban patrol in Iraq, invariably followed in principle, but adapted to local customs, Mao's Rules of Discipline and Points for Attention:

The Rules

1. prompt obedience to orders


2. no confiscation of peasant property


3. prompt delivery directly to authorities of all items confiscated from landlords

1. Replace all doors when you leave a house


2. Return and roll up the straw matting on which you sleep


3. Be courteous and polite to the people and help them when you can


4. Return all borrowed articles


5. Be honest in all transactions with the peasants


6. Pay for all articles purchased


7. Be sanitary, and especially establish latrines a safe distance from people's houses

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

When I worked at the Library of Congress many moons ago, one of the experts in the Orientalia Division had a theory about what made Mao what he was. Apparently, Mao was a librarian very early in his career, at a time there was no standard collating sequence for Chines. My colleague insisted that it was only a matter of time before a librarian would become a revolutionary, just to establish the collating sequence.

Seriously, this goes to Cheney and the dark side. Again and again, with police and military, successful interrogators build a relationship with the subject. Stockholm Syndrome can go both ways. In one way I am amazed, but in another way I think I understand, when a condemned prisoner asks a guard or warden, whom they know well, to hold their hand until their heart stops.

In Stalin's Great Terror, the torturers and executioners frequently had to be replaced or executed because their personalities disintegrated. Even the Nazi killing squads during the Holocaust tended to break down after mass shootings; the gas chambers were to be merciful to the killers, not the victims.

While Milgram and Zimbardo have demonstrated that what can only be called evil lurks close to the surface, it can be controlled if the authority chooses to do so. Still, there appear to be relatively few natural mass murderers.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Thank you, Larry, for this excellent post.

  All torture is wrong.

The link did not show Lantos saying much of anything. It certainly did not show him justifying what anything being done at Guantanamo based on the Holocaust.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Oh so the Dutch parliamentarians were all "shocked" and "insulted" for no reason since Lantos didn't say anything. Right?

LOL! Come on - deal with it.

Rumsfeld is in Paris right now. He gave a speech on Oct. 26.

Oh my God, an actual fact to blow this whole thread away.

Re "all the instant experts who've popped up with their absolute perfect knowledge that torture never works":

In my reading, all those "instant experts" are quoting from reading actual experienced interrogators. I remember reading a blog comment thread between someone who had actually done interrogations for years, and actually taught the subject for a good portion of those years, versus someone who'd never dealt with the situation but had this favorite hypothetical that the wingers have stuck in their heads. Anybody who isn't damp behind the ears should be able to tell the difference between people with a developed skill at a diificult task and an utter amateur with an Opinion. Or somebody who unfortunately lucked into authority and went ahead putting his stupid Opinions into practice.

You're soooo tough, standing up as a lone proud voice saying... exactly what everyone else on the board is saying.

If you actually read what I posted, I am not advocating torture. I'm advocating not pontificating on message boards from a position of invincible ignorance. (Of which you supplied an amazing example. What a gasbag!)

For the record, here's what I think about torture.

I think it's bad. For us.

I think it's probably not all that effective.

I think undoubtedly, sometimes it is effective, and pretending it never can be is simply evading the salient points of the debate. It's making it too easy on yourself. (My point is, there's a lot of that in these debates, it's EASY to be against torture, FISA, etc. if you say that there could never be the slightest bad consequences from your position. How convenient.)

But I think our exquisitely-sensitive liberal community has redefined a lot of things as torture that have never been considered such. Waterboarding is a purely psychological method of coercion. Is all psychological coercion torture? It's honest to say there's a line and waterboarding's on the other side, and carefully articulate why, but I have no use for the people who say there's no room for psychological coercion at all. Is showing disrespect to the detainee torture? The ACLU and others would try to prevent interrogators from suggesting that prisoners might find themselves contaminated by a woman guard if they don't cooperate. If that's torture then there's little left that an interrogator can use at all. That's why I find the blowhardism and self-righteousness of the torture debate so useless, all about the preening vanity of the commenter (as, again, Valdron has demonstrated so exquisitely).

Leaving the parsing of the term "torture" to the Bush Administration, purely psychological methods are in fact torture.  Read Michael Foucault'a "Discipline and Punish" sometime. He wrote that the Elightenment shift in European penal practices were from punishing the body (i.e. drawn & quartered) to punishing the mind (i.e. Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon.)  What good are all your fingernails and toenails if you are released from prison a raving lunatic who will suffer the consequences of psychological torture for the rest of your life?  The Bush Administration is making a silly distinction, and you're upholding that nonsense.

Neoboho

I don't think it blows the whole thread away, I think Larry Johnson should call the French Surete and have him detained. Rumsfeld has committed war crimes, no two ways about it.

Somehow I think the Surete is perfectly aware that Rumsfeld is in the country and could give a flying shit what Larry Johnson thinks they should do. Anyone expecting a modern European country to walk the walk its mouth is talking is in for some major disillusionment.

Read today's Boston Globe's article about torture.

Good post, Howard.

Jormungand, please review the guidelines involving proper use of the rating system here:

http://www.tpmcafe.com/what_is_this_rating_system_all_about

Notably this:

the key point is that you do not give a 1 or 0 to someone's comment just because you think their comment is stupid or because you strongly disagree.

I don't make the same point to CVille Dem, because he has been reminded of the rules many times, and persists in trying to enforce ideological monotony here by using the system punitively and inappropriately.

I would ask how much of the techniques of torture came out of our “Legal System” from before 9/11 occurred?

How much has the pre-existing acts of torture in our jails been magnified today with the war on terror techniques?

Below is a documentary film about an innocent 15-year-old child tortured to close a case in 2000! It shows the abuse used on him and the trial that ended with the jury asking that the police and prosecutor be investigated. Of course that did not happen!

Remember a confession to police has no bearing in truth about guilt or incense. It only is a statement of the success of torture and other acts that would land the actors in jail if they were not employed by the legal system.

Murder on a Sunday Morning (2001)

Winner of a 2001 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
The genesis of this Oscar-winning documentary feature was one of the more appalling miscarriages of justice in recent American history. In May of 2000, Mary Ann Stephens, a 65-year-old tourist from Georgia, was shot and killed by a black assailant in Jacksonville, FL. Anxious not to damage their tourist trade, the Jacksonville police rushed out and picked up the first black "suspect" who happened to be available: 15-year-old Brendon Butler, who at the time of his arrest, was en route to a job interview. The grieving husband of of the murder victim, who had glimpsed the killer from a distance, was virtually coerced by the arresting officers into identifying Butler as the guilty party -- and later, thanks to the strong-arm tactics of his interrogators, and without benefit of counsel, the boy confessed to a crime which he did not commit. Brash, chain-smoking public defender Pat McGuinness, sensing that the prosecution's case stank to high heaven, proceeded to mount a courtroom defense for Butler which may well survive the decades as a textbook case of brilliant jurisprudence -- while the trial itself will undoubtedly forever serve as a cautionary example of the perils and pitfalls and prejudice of "swift justice." Assembled by French documentary filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, this 111-minute feature was originally released under the title Un coupable ideal. As Murder on a Sunday Morning, the film was afforded a Los Angeles theatrical showing in September of 2001 to qualify for the Academy Awards; most Americans, however, saw the film when it aired on the HBO cable network on April 2, 2002. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

-----------------------------------------------
Today, are we searching for I deals or Ideals?
-Thinking

RE:Taxi to the Dark Side:
an open letter
to Karen Hughes from Sidney Blumenthal:

"...invite you to a private preview in Washington on 18 October 2007. The film has been described by the New York Times as "a meticulous examination of American policy on the interrogation of prisoners. It traces the scandals at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere to official changes of policy originating in the vice president's office and approved by the secretary of defense. We see documents listing approved methods of interrogation, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning."
....will be aired this month on major television channels throughout Europe, is being shown by special request at the European Union's annual ministerial meeting, and will be distributed commercially by Think Films in theatres throughout the United States and Europe in January 2008, after which it will be broadcast on the Discovery Channel. The Times calls Taxi "devastating." The Guardian of London says its documentation is "irrefutable".
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/america_inside_out/taxi_to_the_dark_side

so people OUTSIDE the US will see it-- but most of us won't -- i don't know too many people who watch The Discovery Channel. Why isn't it going to be aired on a major network??? "American Idol" or some such show will be on and we can't pre-empt THAT now, can we??

i recommend watching PBS's "Cheney's Law" (if you haven't already) which shows how Cheney made sure a president had unrestricted powers in times of war.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/cheney/view/

Yes, how dare I suggest that there's torture and abuse going on at Gitmo - the Gitmo that Lantos justified by resorting to Holocaust guilt. Its all just a beach vacation resort there at Gitmo, full of lovely cute puppies.

Sheesh. Some people will do everything they can to avoid looking into what's staring them in their faces. You sheeple deserve rulers like Bush.

I don't understand your last comment. If Rumsfeld was given a diplomatic passport, he isn't completely private. I don't know if he was or was not, but, as a practical reason, there are any number of reasons why a cabinet or subcabinet official might well retain clearances and be an advisor for a time. There may be a review panel of some type where the individual can provide information. That's certainly not new to this administration.

Rumsfeld might be slime, but if he has information that may help extricate the US from the situation, he may be useful slime. I see no particular advantage, to the US, to having him in front of a French court. The French hardly have clean hands about covert operations, civil liberties, and the like.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Wow, you're all over the place, abdul.  Focus, lad, focus. 

Neoboho

Yeah whatever, I can't help it if you can't connect the obvious.

All the quote shows that Lantos was pointing out the hypocrisy of the Dutch and other Europeans. It still does not show Lantos justifying anything.

Your claims are just not accurate and restating them doesn't make them so. You increasingly look like someone who is hysterical and who lacks a grasp on reality.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

If the standard is "what causes a parent to complain," removing terrorists from a high school football team for bad grades would constitute torture.

I thought that diplomatic privilige is extended by the hosting country, not something that can be issued by the US to protect their choice of "diplomat". That's how countries get to withdraw the privilige and throw the intelligence ("business liaison") officers out when they feel like it.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Funny how torture can be justified by the holocaust, isn't it?

Oh Abdul-hass,

It's funny, but not in the way you think.

What's funny is how you've injected the Holocaust into a discussion that was not at all about the Holocaust.

The other posters are quite correct. You are twisting the context and meaning of Lantos's words to justify your own Holocaust obsession.

Perhaps that super secret Zionist decoder ring of yours, you know the one that you are so fond of, is in need of an adjustment. I think it's leading you astray.

The Holocaust ended more than 60 years ago. Perhaps you should move on.

And when it is known that your enemy employs torture, the clever commander will plant in the opposing army's path patsies filled with bad information, which is then tortured out of them and acted upon.

I've never understood the purpose of diplomatic immunity. Every example you've just given is a perfect example of why it should not be honored.

Do you have any examples of when it has been used for good, rather than protecting offical criminals?

The ACLU and others would try to prevent interrogators from suggesting that prisoners might find themselves contaminated by a woman guard if they don't cooperate.

Yes because cruel and degrading treatment are constituent parts of torture and inhumane treatment, methods that we have sworn to fore-go. The technique you mention, of course, has specific cultural relevance to Muslims (culture clash is also why Eminem and Christine Aguilera songs are effective to torment them). But what suspect is going to confess only because you have insulted their manhood? I assume interrogators have some success with degradation when combined with the other stress and psychological tortures or they wouldn’t continue them.

And it is not just the evil ACLU, whose sole mission is to uphold constitutional principles (what assholes!), that says this is torture. The U.S., as codified in its military regs and in the treaties and Geneva Convention articles that we’ve signed onto, largely developed those definitions. I believe you agree that water boarding is torture. After WWII, we sentenced a Japanese soldier to 15 years as a war criminal for using water boarding, so I don’t think it is in doubt. And any simulation of execution is considered torture under Geneva.

One thing is apparent from the leaks about enhanced interrogation by both the CIA and DOD; it is a systematic method to break the suspect. One part of it may seem inconsequential alone. But the method of interrogation is one of torture whether you’re engaged in harsh water boarding or the lighter techniques such as hanging people from ceilings, freezing people (some have died of hypothermia), beating on the legs with rubber hose type weapons (some have died) sleep deprivation (said to be the most excruciating), sensory deprivation, flushing Korans or rubbing menstrual-stained panties in the face of a devout Muslim.

These various methods are used in different combinations to torture useless confessions out of suspects, many of whom have been shown to be innocent in spite of the ralroading and secrecy. The way I see it, advocating these methods is advocating for torture.

The conduct of legitimate diplomacy needs secrecy to function. If an embassy or chancery is not inviolate, how do negotiations take place that might avert a war?

In hindsight, we know that the Japanese special envoys in December 1941 did not know about the impending attack. For technical reasons, we read their breaking of diplomatic relations before they did. How well can someone negotiate under threat of arrest or violence?

Diplomats, among other things, are legal spies. Keeping everything secret is often destabilizing; it may be better to let diplomats report back.

Actually, I find it difficult to come up with many examples of where it protected criminals in the conventional sense, espionage being a special case. Most fundamental is that diplomats know that they can work to the last minute to avert war, and, if they fail, they will go home.

Turn it around. You are the Ambassador of Germany to the United States of America. American agents block your car, take you to an unknown location, and show you very professionally manipulated pictures of your ostensibly killing underage Jewish children, in front of a portrait of Der Fuehrer. You are told that unless you, a prominent member of a political party, support the placement of US missiles in Eastern Europe, the pictures will be sent to every news medium in Europe.

Different cultures, different sins. It is said that the CIA set up some "honey traps" for Sukarno of Indonesia, essentially exhausting the Swedish Bikini Team. When confronted by intelligence agents, he smiled and said "my country will be so proud of my manhood." By the time he was asking for prints, but not sure what was most flattering, the agents were leaving.

Even worse, what if the Dark Forces photographed the French Ambassador eating a Big Mac?
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]