1/27/17: Trump spent his campaign talking about bringing back waterboarding and harsh interrogation techniques to defeat ISIS. General James Mattis, his Defense Secretary, explains why torture doesn’t work and warns that Trump’s plan violates the Geneva Convention.
The president says “never mind.” Mattis’s opinions will “override” his own. Big fans of torture are miffed.
BLOGGER’S NOTE (November 1, 2021): A military tribunal
convenes at Guantanamo Bay to sentence Majid Khan. Khan, “a suburban Baltimore
high school graduate turned Qaeda courier,” who plead guilty to terrorism
charges in 2012, uses the hearing to offer graphic testimony regarding CIA
enhanced-interrogation tactics. (The hearing was long-delayed because the CIA
wanted to keep its tactics secret.)
The eight judge-panel sets punishment for Khan at
26 years, starting in 2012, but, as allowed under military rules, seven judges
write a letter to the senior official who will review the case, urging clemency
for the prisoner.
The New York Times notes,
Before sentencing, Mr. Khan
spent two hours describing in grisly detail the violence that C.I.A. agents and operatives inflicted on him in
dungeonlike conditions in prisons in Pakistan, Afghanistan and a third country,
including sexual abuse and mind-numbing isolation, often in the dark while he
was nude and shackled.
“Mr. Khan was subjected to
physical and psychological abuse well beyond approved enhanced interrogation
techniques, instead being closer to torture performed by the most abusive
regimes in modern history,” according to the letter, which was obtained by The
New York Times.
The panel also responded to Mr.
Khan’s claim that after his capture in Pakistan in March 2003, he told
interrogators everything, but “the more I cooperated, the more I was tortured,”
and so he subsequently made up lies to try to mollify his captors.
“This abuse was of no practical
value in terms of intelligence, or any other tangible benefit to U.S.
interests,” the letter said. “Instead, it is a stain on the moral fiber of
America; the treatment of Mr. Khan in the hands of U.S. personnel should be a
source of shame for the U.S. government.”
…
The clemency letter also
condemned the legal framework that held Mr. Khan without charge for nine years [he was first arrested in 2003] and denied him
access to a lawyer for the first four and half as “complete disregard for the
foundational concepts upon which the Constitution was founded” and “an affront
to American values and concept of justice.”
We have known, as human beings, at least since
the invention of the rack and wheel, that torture “works.”
If you want to get people to confess – to anything
– yes. Torture works.
Torture Donald J. Trump right now, and he’ll admit
he lost the 2020 election (which is true). He’ll also admit to banging a porn
star (true), to being a witch (false), and having sex with dolphins while vacationing
at Mar-a-Lago (false.)
Hey there, sexy.
No comments:
Post a Comment