The Results of Coercive Methods
by KevinSeptember 12th, 2006
This is what happens when people use coercive methods to interrogate prisoners:
Higazy agreed to a polygraph examination. He stuck to the truth, he said, until an FBI agent made veiled threats against his family in Egypt.
He broke down and responded with wild and contradictory tales: He found the radio in the subway. No, he stole it from the Egyptian military.
Citing his “confession,” federal authorities charged him on Jan. 11, 2002, with making false statements. Three days later, a private pilot who was staying one floor below Higazy at the Millennium on Sept. 11, returned to the hotel looking for his aviation radio.
Ferry recanted his story on Jan. 16, court papers said. The same day, with no explanation, a deputy U.S. marshal removed Higazy’s shackles and told him, “You’re free to go.”
If that security guard had not recanted his tale, who know when or if that innocent person would have been freed? He was being held on a confession that was coerced out of him using techniques that sound similar to those used by the CIA on the terrorist suspects Bush transferred to Gitmo this past week. It should be obvious that allowing such techniques will convict innocent people and make the US both a pariah and a laughing stock. No convictions will be believable if this kind of coercion is allowed. The terrorists will have a field day, using these kangaroo courts as evidence of America’s oppressive actions towards Muslims in general. And other nations will be much more reluctant to cooperate with a country that uses a legal system that would embarrass a banana republic.
That Bush cannot see these simple truths says some rather disturbing things about him.
Categories: Legal Issues, Terrorism |
“Citing his ‘confession,’ federal authorities charged him on Jan. 11, 2002, with making false statements.”
“He was being held on a confession that was coerced out of him”
Make up your mind. Was he charged with making false statements or was he being held because he confessed? You can’t have it both ways.
That you cannot see the danger posed by radical Islamists says some rather disturbing things about you.
“using techniques that sound similar to those used by the CIA on the terrorist suspects ”
Actually Kevin has no clue what the CIA is doing at Gitmo or anywhere else. For him to assert otherwise is ludicrous supposition.
The Truth: “Actually Kevin has no clue what the CIA is doing at Gitmo or anywhere else.”
Fred: That never gets in the way of a good rant.
Regarding CIA behavior, we certainly know what they are doing: we know what has been confessed by the torturers themselves, and others in the prison camps, and we know what Bush’s hand-picked personal advisor and now Attorney General wrote were acceptable methods of torture. They include:
- “waterboarding” (tying someone to a rigid board and holding their head underwater until they begin to drown, then pulling them out and repeating the process indefinitely)
- mock (and possibly real) electrical shocks
- systematic humiliation, including being stripped naked, being forced to touch each other’s naked bodies, being displayed and humiliated while naked in front of members of the opposite sex, being leashed and dragged by members of the opposite sex while naked, being exposed to nudity in violation of their religious beliefs, and on and on
- mock executions
- beatings and being held continuously in “stress positions”
- rape of female and male prisoners
- sleep deprivation for days on end
In addition, according to the Attorney General, anything is permissible that does not cause “organ failure [or] impairment of bodily function”.
The CIA has done all of these or has supervised interrogators doing them at Abu Ghraib and other facilities in Iraq. Those practices were instigated and encouraged by officers formerly engaged in torture at Guantanamo Bay, and it is impossible to imagine that nearly identical practices were not conducted there. In addition, the CIA is the agency engaged in “extraordinary rendition” (the “extraordinary” means “outside the law”) of prisoners to other countries explicitly for the purpose of torture. All this is well documented, confessed, and in many cases officially published policy.
But on to the real point . . .
In addition to having made the US one of the few countries in the world that not only uses torture extensively but has openly adopted an explicit policy of extra-judicial detention, trial without charge, representation, or evidence, and torture, Bush has gone further to make the US a country that threatens innocent family members, living in foreign countries, of “suspects” on whom it has no reliable evidence whatsoever.
They didn’t just charge him on somebody else’s ridiculous insinuation, they didn’t just coerce a confession out of him after days of pressure, they didn’t just ignore the results of their own evidence to the countrary, they didn’t just charge him with lying for giving the false confession they had forced out of him. They threatened his family to get him to confess to something he didn’t do.
America now does that - in fact, has done since at most a few months after 9/11, and less than 2 years into the Bush administration. America now threatents harm to the innocent, overseas family members of uncharged suspects. That is now acceptable, in America. That is now acceptable in any country aspiring to the legal standards prevailing in America. That is now acceptable for any country holding American citizens in their own systems. That is now acceptable treatment for American POWs. That is now the limit of the standards of decency America can urge upon the rest of the world.
Thanks, George.
What did I tell you?
“- systematic humiliation, including being stripped naked, being forced to touch each other’s naked bodies, being displayed and humiliated while naked in front of members of the opposite sex, being leashed and dragged by members of the opposite sex while naked, being exposed to nudity in violation of their religious beliefs, and on and on”
Poor wittle babies. Sob, sob. Now let’s save a few tears for their victims. Humiliating a terrorist to prevent the cries of fatherless and motherless children is a fair exchange.
Thank you Fred, Christian Extraordinaire.
You’re welcome. I am not accepting the premise that the things that KTK says is accurate. His track record is not too good. He mixes together things that may happen and things that are figments of the liberal imagination along with things that are not approved of by anyone and claims that it all is official policy. That is dishonest.
KTK wrote: “…has openly adopted an explicit policy of extra-judicial detention, trial without charge, representation, or evidence, and torture…”
And to what end? Even our own intelligence admits that the quality of information extracted under torture is not good. Bogus information gathered under torture does not prevent terrorist attacks, or make any of us safer. We should dispense with ineffective interrogation techniques and ridiculous color-coded alert systems in favor of, say, making our ports safer, increasing security at nuclear reactors, greater protection of drinking water systems etc.
Janutz, you are making the assumption that these ineffective methods are actually being used.
Uh… Fred, my comment was sarcastic.
I know. So was mine.
Need and expediency can’t overcome several damning truths about torture.
The information extracted isn’t reliable, according to intelligence experts and psychologists.
It does bad things to those who inflict the torture and they, in turn, might continue to do bad things when they’re back in society as civilians.
It provides incentive and justification for enemies to torture our people.
We’ve come to a disgusting state of affairs when Americans endorse torture and question the patriotism of people who refuse to join them in doing that.
“It provides incentive and justification for enemies to torture our people.”
So that’s why they have tourtured us in every war.
KTK - Are you in the CIA?
No “Truth,” you can’t draw staight-line causation that way. It’s subtler and less certain. It’s a matter of helping set the general tone for better or worse, with no guarantee about how any particular instance will turn out as a result.
I find it almost beyond belief that the US now practices/condones/promotes torture. History will not be kind on this.
Notwithstanding that, I would really be interested to see if KTK can cite a reference to where Gonzales wrote that rape is an acceptable method of torture.
Ted, I’m not surprised that Fred can’t understand a compound proposition, but I’m surprised you can’t.
I didn’t say Gonzalez ordered rape. I said that many abuses occurred under CIA supervision, including rape, and that Gonzalez argued that torture did not include any forms of abuse up to the point of “organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or death”.
The extensive use of rape in the prisons, both as casual crime and as a systematic method of torture, has been widely commented on, including in the investigative report by Gen. Taguba. The fact that abuses in the prison were committed under CIA supervision is documented in the same report.
In addition to the widely-publicized photos of torture at Abu Ghraib, there are many pictures that have not been released. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has said about these: “The American public needs to understand we’re talking about rape and murder here. we’re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience.”
Want more?:
KTK, I read what you wrote too quickly. My bad.