Ex-CIA executive director admits waterboarding is ‘torture’

Since, there's so much written about torture / "enhanced interrogation" techniques at Guantanamo Bay, there's nothing much left to comment on it. However, I would like to point out one thing this article mentions about these "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

As the article mentions that some of these torture techniques have been borrowed from the "torture book" of Nazi Germany.

So, it's all good & ok to vilify Nazis and describe Adolf Hitler as the most despicable human who ever lived, but it's all good and ok to copy the torture tactics from Nazis & apply them extensively on people who are still waiting for the lawful punishments for their alleged crimes.

Think of it like this; you hate that coworker at your workplace who bullies everyone & everyone is afraid of him/her. Would you, a nice person, copy & act like that bully & still think that you are not only a nice person, but people are respecting you because you are still being a considered a nice person by others?

Or what if your husband or boyfriend start copying tactics & methods of a rapist? Would you still think that he is a nice person with whom you are or willing to have a family?

Furthermore, perhaps, Nazis were using these "enhanced interrogation" techniques to extract info from Jews. They wanted to eliminate all Jews from lands they had occupied. Perhaps, they labelled "Jews" as "terrorists" & considered themselves & their nations / occupied lands to be threatened by Jews, & hence, wanted to extract info from captured Jews in any way they can, so they can exterminate all of them. Now, what if, we replace "Nazis" with "American military" & "Jews" with "Muslims". Lo and behold, we got Gitmo !!!

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https://www.rt.com/usa/311532-cia-torture-gitmo-interrogation/

The most senior CIA officer on record yet has said he’s “comfortable with saying” that waterboarding & related interrogation methods were “torture.” He was commenting on the post-9/11 “enhanced interrogation” tactics used by the Bush Administration.

The remarks by former executive director of the CIA, Alvin ‘Buzzy’ Krongard (2001-2004), were made to BBC’s Panorama. The third most senior former official at the agency was asked if he thought waterboarding & related tools amounted to torture.

“Well, let's put it this way, it is meant to make him (the suspect) as uncomfortable as possible. So I assume, without getting into semantics, that's torture. I'm comfortable with saying that."

The torture debate has never let up. President Barack Obama famously put an end to torture in 2009, but failed to prosecute senior Bush-era officials for running such programs.

In the past, the position of all Bush-era officials was overwhelmingly that the euphemistically-called “enhanced interrogation” is not torture, as it was approved by the White House at the time. Those techniques included, aside from waterboarding, sleep deprivation, forcing detainees into uncomfortable physical positions, slamming them into flexible walls, as well as cramming them into small spaces, beating them physically & subjecting them to ice-cold baths.

Guantanamo Bay, which Obama has several times promised to shut down, is still operating. Panorama writes how one detainee, Abu Zubayadh, accused of being a key Al-Qaeda recruiter, has been in detention there since 2002. During these 14 years, he has regularly been stuffed into a box barely larger than a square meter, sometimes for 29 hours at a time. The person is forced to sit in a crouched position, with no room to breathe or do anything else.

Another, upright, coffin-shaped box was also used. Abu spent more than 11 days confined in that.

All the methods were taken from the CIA’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance & Escape) handbook on resisting interrogation. Some of the torture methods date back to Nazi Germany.

SERE military instructor Malcolm Nance talked to Panorama, explaining how “these close confinement boxes were used by the SS… They would stuff these British and American agents into them and drive them mad.”

The practice was banned by the Geneva Conventions, but this ban didn’t prevent its use on Guantanamo Bay inmates.

A host of other methods thought to have been banned were uncovered in last December’s Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, which dealt with the interrogation of terror suspects in secret CIA prison facilities.

According to Krongard, any intelligence extracted that the Brits found interesting & “particularly represented a threat” was shared with them by the Americans. "I can't think of two intelligence services working in a more harmonious or closer [way] and that I think, had a lot to do with the relationship at the top," he added.

When asked if he thought the British knew or approved of the interrogation methods, Krongard said: “It’s hard for me to think that they didn’t, they’re professional intelligence people, I mean obviously.”

However, when the BBC approached the Foreign Office to ask whether accepting information gathered through torture was fine, it received an adamant reply: “We do not condone it, nor do we ask others to do it on our behalf."

The results of the Senate Intelligence Committee probe were published last December. Though much of the report was redacted, it contained shocking findings about what was euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including the admission that they were ultimately ineffective.

How the US fuelled the rise of ISIS in Syria & Iraq

Loved this opinion piece.

How can ISIS or any other terror group or terrorism can be wiped out by the same forces who helped flourish it in the first place? The Western countries have a habit of supporting a set of proxy fighters as long as those fighters help achieve the Western countries its objectives. As soon as those objectives are achieved, those proxy fighters or mercenaries are labelled "terrorists" & the West wants them to be eliminated asap. That may looks easy & good in Hollywood movies, but doesn't work in real life. As the author very nicely says that "terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – & allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call."

For instance, militant arm of the Kurdish party in Turkey, PKK, was labelled a terrorist group, for years, by US, UK, & their allies. Well, now, they are all supporting PKK because they are using them against ISIS.

Even the West wanted ISIS in Iraq & Syria. They wanted a Sunni group, which they can control, & which will keep Shiite Bashar Assad & its Shiite allies, Hezbollah & Iran, in check. But, when ISIS start slitting throats of westerners, they become a "terrorist" group, which needs to be bombed out of existence now.

The author very nicely ends the piece with "endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction & division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus."
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq

The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. ... the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.

The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead with the trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.

That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour & military vehicles), but training, logistical support & the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.

Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers & their security officials were up to themselves became too much. But it’s only the latest of a string of such cases. Less fortunate was a London cab driver Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence ... for taking part in 2007 in resistance to the occupation of Iraq by US & British forces. Armed opposition to illegal invasion & occupation clearly doesn’t constitute terrorism or murder on most definitions, including the Geneva convention.

But terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – & allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call.

For the past year, US, British & other western forces have been back in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian terror group Islamic State (formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq). This was after Isis overran huge chunks of Iraqi & Syrian territory & proclaimed a self-styled Islamic caliphate.
...

Some Iraqis complain that the US sat on its hands while all this was going on. The Americans insist they are trying to avoid civilian casualties, & claim significant successes. Privately, officials say they don’t want to be seen hammering Sunni strongholds in a sectarian war & risk upsetting their Sunni allies in the Gulf.

A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – & effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria & an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria & Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) & fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – & states that “western countries, the Gulf states & Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria.

Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq & Iran)”.

Which is pretty well exactly what happened 2 years later. The report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted & there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US & its allies weren’t only supporting & arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.

That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US & Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control.

The calculus changed when Isis started beheading westerners & posting atrocities online, & the Gulf states are now backing other groups in the Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. But this US & western habit of playing with jihadi groups, which then come back to bite them, goes back at least to the 1980s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which fostered the original al-Qaida under CIA tutelage.

It was recalibrated during the occupation of Iraq, when US forces led by General Petraeus sponsored an El Salvador-style dirty war of sectarian death squads to weaken the Iraqi resistance. And it was reprised in 2011 in the NATO-orchestrated war in Libya, where Isis last week took control of Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte.

In reality, US & western policy in the conflagration that is now the Middle East is in the classic mould of imperial divide-and-rule. American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria, & mount what are effectively joint military operations with Iran against Isis in Iraq while supporting Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. However confused US policy may often be, a weak, partitioned Iraq & Syria fit such an approach perfectly.

What’s clear is that Isis & its monstrosities won’t be defeated by the same powers that brought it to Iraq & Syria in the first place, or whose open & covert war-making has fostered it in the years since. Endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction & division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus.

The Western Premise on Vietnam was dead wrong

Great opinion piece by Eric Margolis.

As the saying goes, "those who forget the history are doomed to repeat it," because we, humans, always think that other man was stupid & I won't make that mistake, & ironically, he makes that same mistake (at least the net result is same).

Other man was stupid or not (we can only justify it if you are better educated or know more than that guy or have some kind of a better knowledge about the case at hand than that other guy); the primary problem is the person, who is currently in change of the situation, has never tried to understand the situation, old or new.

US wouldn't have gone into Afghanistan, albeit in a fit of rage like a little kid or a teen with raging hormones, or Iraq, if the leadership would've sincerely looked at why did we ever fail in Vietnam. What was the real underlying causes for that failure & then try not to repeat those actions.

But, since, US never looked / analyzed those failures with a critical eye, they went, guns blazing, in both countries & after sacrificing manpower & billions of dollars on countries, whose citizens still hate US (America never won their "hearts & minds"), & the end result is that one country (Iraq) is in complete chaos, while in the other one (Afghanistan), Taliban have amassed enough power that Americans have to negotiate with them (just so they can still come out of the country unscathed & claim that "adventure" as a "win").

So, in a way, just like the lives of 250,000 American soldiers were wasted in the Vietnam conflict, the lives of some 4,000 American soldiers are now wasted in the Afghanistan conflict. I don't even know how many died in Iraq conflict. And I am not going to even put the numbers here for the injured soldiers, who are injured physically & mentally (PTSDs etc.). American economy is also in shambles that billions are spent in those countries but American veterans & own patriotic citizens are going hungry & homeless.

So who actually destroyed America? Foreign terrorists or the hubris of its own leadership?
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http://www.khaleejtimes.com/article/20150503/ARTICLE/305039871/1098

LIFE CAN only be understood in retrospect. With the wisdom of hindsight, most people consider the 20-year long Vietnam War a terrible mistake, even a crime. But at the time, US military involvement in Indochina appeared to make sense. It certainly did to me. I was proud to wear my nation’s uniform.
General Douglas MacArthur warned Americans “never fight a land war in Asia.”

But that is exactly what the Kennedy administration foolishly did. At the time, US power was at its zenith. Washington was gripped by post-war arrogance & hubris.
 
There was also a very compelling geopolitical reason. At the time – the later 1960’s – it appeared certain that the Soviets & Red China were working together to dominate all of Indochina. “If we don’t make a military stand in SE Asia,” was the consensus, “the Reds will take the entire region.” So it looked in 1967. So we hear again today. Just replace “Reds” by Al Qaeda or Daesh.
 
But the basic Western premise back then – as now — was dead wrong. In one of history’s biggest intelligence failures, we failed to see the seismic split between the Soviet Union & Mao’s China, one so profound that the two super-powers almost went to war over their contested Manchurian borders in 1968-1969. Just as our intelligence services also missed the impending collapse of the Soviet Union three decades later.
 
Had the US been aware of the violent tensions between Moscow & Beijing, it would likely have avoided expanding the Vietnam War, or just left it to its own devices.
 
Instead, the US & its allies waged a long struggle against the Vietcong local guerillas & the battle-hardened North Vietnamese Army that had defeated some of France’s finest soldiers a decade earlier. President Lyndon Johnson drove the US deeper into the war by staging the phony Gulf of Tonkin naval incident.
 
It did not take long for US troops in South Vietnam to realise the war was a pointless bloodbath. Without the 24/7 support of US airpower, the American army & marines in Vietnam would not have been able to hold out. Today, without US airpower, American forces would be driven from Afghanistan. By the January, 1968 Tet offensive, it was clear to many of us in uniform that the war was lost (I was stateside at the time). The US won almost every battle thanks to air power, but it lost both the military momentum in the war, the strategic direction & the political struggle. America’s South Vietnamese allies often fought bravely but their political leaders were hopeless.
 
Much of Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia were ravaged by US bombing & toxic chemical defoliation. In the process, some 250,000 American soldiers were killed or wounded; 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died. At least three million Communist soldiers & Vietnamese civilians were killed, mostly by US air power. As I look back, it’s very painful to realise that the war was, to paraphrase the wicked Tallyrand, “worse than a crime, a mistake.”

The red hordes did not swamp Indochina nor did they march on Cleveland. Our side committed as many crimes as our enemies. The CIA-run Phoenix programme, for example, “liquidated” up to 41,000 communist cadres. Our “counter-terrorism” campaign today in Afghanistan, Iraq & Somalia follows the same pattern.
 
Today, the US & united Vietnam have $36 billion in bilateral trade & warm commercial & diplomatic relations. Vietnam is becoming an important ally for the US against China.
 
Alas, we seem to have forgotten everything about Vietnam & learned nothing. The new bogeyman is Iran instead of China, but the song remains the same.

Study accuses psychologists group of complicity in CIA torture program

It's funny how there was no noise in the media about this that how a major scientific organization, in fact, the largest professional scientific organization of its kind, collaborated with the US government in its torturous treatment of Guantanamo detainees.

It's funny how we rationalize even if we are doing something wrong. The whole group of psychologists apparently rationalized that those detainees are sub-humans, or not humans at all, & hence, torturing them is justified. Even though, that torture is not getting any results at all.

What happened to the organization's ethics?

What happened to the psychologists' morals?

What happened to the psychologists' ability to ask questions themselves that what are we doing?

What happened to psychologists' Hippocratic oaths to not harm fellow human beings, for apparently, no good reason?

Last, but not least, what happened to this news in showing up in major North American news outlets & media? If North America is such a paragon of democracy & free speech around the world, then why wasn't it got reported by major news outlets in North America?
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http://rt.com/usa/254677-apa-psychologists-cia-torture/

The American Psychologists Association, the largest professional scientific organization of its kind, was secretly complicit in the adoption of torturous interrogation tactics used by the US against detainees, a new report suggests.
 
A study released this week by noteable anti-torture critics reveals that an analysis of emails from the inbox of a deceased US government contractor demonstrates compliance on behalf of the APA with regards to the drafting of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, or EITs, developed under President George W. Bush.
 
APA officials was in cahoots with members of the Bush administration, including CIA employees & contractors, when the government struggled to codify policies for its torture program following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to the report – an effort led by psychoanalyst & anti-war activist Stephen Soldz as well as Nathaniel Raymond & Steven Reisner – two members of the group Physicians for Human Rights.

“The APA secretly coordinated with officials from the CIA, White House & the Department of Defense to create an APA ethics policy on national security interrogations which comported with then-classified legal guidance authorizing the CIA torture program,” the authors say.

“The complicity between APA & government entities appears to have directly influenced the APA ethics policy changes, codified into the June 2005 report of the APA’s Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics & National Security (PENS),” continues their report, aptly named “All the President’s Psychologists.”

Contrary to previous claims made by the world's largest association of psychologists, the study suggests that the APA was intimately aware of the torture program but did nothing to discourage its development. Further, its authors also allege that the behavior science advisor to Pres. Bush is reported to have drafted “language related to research” that the APA inserted into its official ethics policy on interrogations published in 2005 at the height of the US-led war on terror, & that the organization failed to disclose ties with doctors linked to the EIT program.
 
The PENS report, the authors behind the latest study say, permitted psychologists to monitor & evaluate the safety & efficacy of the “enhanced” interrogation program, albeit after direct collusion with the Bush administration.
 
Nearly 700 emails from the late Scott Gerwehr – a researcher for RAND Corporation & an “apparent CIA contractor,” the study says – show the APA had numerous contacts with Drs. James Mitchell & Bruce Jessen, the alleged architects of the torture program, beginning in at least 2003. Nevertheless, the APA has distanced itself from any affiliation with either, according to the study.
 
With more than 137,000 members, the authors of All the President’s Psychologists say the APA’s past actions, according to this week’s report, “undermines the fundamental ethical standards of the profession.”
 
“The analysis presented in this report raises serious concerns about the APA Board’s knowledge of, involvement in, & responsibility for allowing the US government to unduly influence & change APA policy on interrogations,” the authors say.

“The resulting policy facilitated the continuation of the Bush Administration torture program. Additionally, the Board’s rapid codification of the PENS report’s conclusions into APA policy was accompanied by a litany of obscurantist public statements issued by APA presidents, Boards, & the press office. These statements did not accurately portray the history of the APA’s connection with individuals & government entities involved in the ‘enhanced’ interrogation program.”

Rhea Farberman, a spokeswoman for APA, told the New York Times that there “has never been any coordination between APA & the Bush administration on how APA responded to the controversies about the role of psychologists in the interrogations program.”

Last year, the results of a long-awaited “torture report” penned by member of the US Senate on the use of EITs was published despite efforts from the CIA to stifle publication. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), the chair of the committee that conducted the four-year investigation, said there was “no evidence that terror attacks were stopped, terrorists captured or lives saved through use of EITs.”

"Torture Report" by Jen Sorensen

"Torture Report" - Jen Sorensen, US

"Drones vs Torture" by Rick McKee

"Drones vs Torture" - Rick McKee, Augusta Chronicle, Augusta, GA, US

Senate report on CIA torture on Gitmo prisoners

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2867111/CIA-torture-report-reveals-waterboarding-sleep-deprivation.html

 



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2867354/Competing-claims-torture-effectiveness.html