Farewell, the American Century

Published on Thursday, April 30, 2009 by TomDispatch.com

Rewriting the Past by Adding In What's Been Left Out

by Andrew J. Bacevich

In a recent column, the Washington Post's Richard Cohen wrote, "What Henry Luce called 'the American Century' is over." Cohen is right. All that remains is to drive a stake through the heart of Luce's pernicious creation, lest it come back to life. This promises to take some doing.

When the Time-Life publisher coined his famous phrase, his intent was to prod his fellow citizens into action. Appearing in the February 7, 1941 issue of Life, his essay, "The American Century," hit the newsstands at a moment when the world was in the throes of a vast crisis. A war in Europe had gone disastrously awry. A second almost equally dangerous conflict was unfolding in the Far East. Aggressors were on the march.

With the fate of democracy hanging in the balance, Americans diddled. Luce urged them to get off the dime. More than that, he summoned them to "accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world... to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit."

Read today, Luce's essay, with its strange mix of chauvinism, religiosity, and bombast ("We must now undertake to be the Good Samaritan to the entire world..."), does not stand up well. Yet the phrase "American Century" stuck and has enjoyed a remarkable run. It stands in relation to the contemporary era much as "Victorian Age" does to the nineteenth century. In one pithy phrase, it captures (or at least seems to capture) the essence of some defining truth: America as alpha and omega, source of salvation and sustenance, vanguard of history, guiding spirit and inspiration for all humankind.

In its classic formulation, the central theme of the American Century has been one of righteousness overcoming evil. The United States (above all the U.S. military) made that triumph possible. When, having been given a final nudge on December 7, 1941, Americans finally accepted their duty to lead, they saved the world from successive diabolical totalitarianisms. In doing so, the U.S. not only preserved the possibility of human freedom but modeled what freedom ought to look like.

Thank You, Comrades

So goes the preferred narrative of the American Century, as recounted by its celebrants.

The problems with this account are two-fold. First, it claims for the United States excessive credit. Second, it excludes, ignores, or trivializes matters at odds with the triumphal story-line.

The net effect is to perpetuate an array of illusions that, whatever their value in prior decades, have long since outlived their usefulness. In short, the persistence of this self-congratulatory account deprives Americans of self-awareness, hindering our efforts to navigate the treacherous waters in which the country finds itself at present. Bluntly, we are perpetuating a mythic version of the past that never even approximated reality and today has become downright malignant. Although Richard Cohen may be right in declaring the American Century over, the American people -- and especially the American political class -- still remain in its thrall.

Constructing a past usable to the present requires a willingness to include much that the American Century leaves out.

For example, to the extent that the demolition of totalitarianism deserves to be seen as a prominent theme of contemporary history (and it does), the primary credit for that achievement surely belongs to the Soviet Union. When it came to defeating the Third Reich, the Soviets bore by far the preponderant burden, sustaining 65% of all Allied deaths in World War II.

By comparison, the United States suffered 2% of those losses, for which any American whose father or grandfather served in and survived that war should be saying: Thank you, Comrade Stalin.

For the United States to claim credit for destroying the Wehrmacht is the equivalent of Toyota claiming credit for inventing the automobile. We entered the game late and then shrewdly scooped up more than our fair share of the winnings. The true "Greatest Generation" is the one that willingly expended millions of their fellow Russians while killing millions of German soldiers.

Hard on the heels of World War II came the Cold War, during which erstwhile allies became rivals. Once again, after a decades-long struggle, the United States came out on top.

Yet in determining that outcome, the brilliance of American statesmen was far less important than the ineptitude of those who presided over the Kremlin. Ham-handed Soviet leaders so mismanaged their empire that it eventually imploded, permanently discrediting Marxism-Leninism as a plausible alternative to liberal democratic capitalism. The Soviet dragon managed to slay itself. So thank you, Comrades Malenkov, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and Gorbachev.

Screwing the Pooch

What flag-wavers tend to leave out of their account of the American Century is not only the contributions of others, but the various missteps perpetrated by the United States -- missteps, it should be noted, that spawned many of the problems bedeviling us today.

The instances of folly and criminality bearing the label "made-in-Washington" may not rank up there with the Armenian genocide, the Bolshevik Revolution, the appeasement of Adolf Hitler, or the Holocaust, but they sure don't qualify as small change. To give them their due is necessarily to render the standard account of the American Century untenable.

Here are several examples, each one familiar, even if its implications for the problems we face today are studiously ignored:

Cuba. In 1898, the United States went to war with Spain for the proclaimed purpose of liberating the so-called Pearl of the Antilles. When that brief war ended, Washington reneged on its promise. If there actually has been an American Century, it begins here, with the U.S. government breaking a solemn commitment, while baldly insisting otherwise. By converting Cuba into a protectorate, the United States set in motion a long train of events leading eventually to the rise of Fidel Castro, the Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and even today's Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The line connecting these various developments may not be a straight one, given the many twists and turns along the way, but the dots do connect.

The Bomb. Nuclear weapons imperil our existence. Used on a large scale, they could destroy civilization itself. Even now, the prospect of a lesser power like North Korea or Iran acquiring nukes sends jitters around the world. American presidents -- Barack Obama is only the latest in a long line -- declare the abolition of these weapons to be an imperative. What they are less inclined to acknowledge is the role the United States played in afflicting humankind with this scourge.

The United States invented the bomb. The United States -- alone among members of the nuclear club -- actually employed it as a weapon of war. The U.S. led the way in defining nuclear-strike capacity as the benchmark of power in the postwar world, leaving other powers like the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, and China scrambling to catch up. Today, the U.S. still maintains an enormous nuclear arsenal at the ready and adamantly refuses to commit itself to a no-first-use policy, even as it professes its horror at the prospect of some other nation doing as the United States itself has done.

Iran. Extending his hand to Tehran, President Obama has invited those who govern the Islamic republic to "unclench their fists." Yet to a considerable degree, those clenched fists are of our own making. For most Americans, the discovery of Iran dates from the time of the notorious hostage crisis of 1979-1981 when Iranian students occupied the U.S. embassy in Tehran, detained several dozen U.S. diplomats and military officers, and subjected the administration of Jimmy Carter to a 444-day-long lesson in abject humiliation.

For most Iranians, the story of U.S.-Iranian relations begins somewhat earlier. It starts in 1953, when CIA agents collaborated with their British counterparts to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh and return the Shah of Iran to his throne. The plot succeeded. The Shah regained power. The Americans got oil, along with a lucrative market for exporting arms. The people of Iran pretty much got screwed. Freedom and democracy did not prosper. The antagonism that expressed itself in November 1979 with the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran was not entirely without cause.

Afghanistan. President Obama has wasted little time in making the Afghanistan War his own. Like his predecessor he vows to defeat the Taliban. Also like his predecessor he has yet to confront the role played by the United States in creating the Taliban in the first place. Washington once took pride in the success it enjoyed funneling arms and assistance to fundamentalist Afghans waging jihad against foreign occupiers. During the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, this was considered to represent the very acme of clever statecraft. U.S. support for the Afghan mujahideen caused the Soviets fits. Yet it also fed a cancer that, in time, exacted a most grievous toll on Americans themselves -- and has U.S. forces today bogged down in a seemingly endless war.

---

---

Watch the video

---

---

Act of Contrition

Had the United States acted otherwise, would Cuba have evolved into a stable and prosperous democracy, a beacon of hope for the rest of Latin America? Would the world have avoided the blight of nuclear weapons? Would Iran today be an ally of the United States, a beacon of liberalism in the Islamic world, rather than a charter member of the "axis of evil?" Would Afghanistan be a quiet, pastoral land at peace with its neighbors? No one, of course, can say what might have been. All we know for sure is that policies concocted in Washington by reputedly savvy statesmen now look exceedingly ill-advised.

What are we to make of these blunders? The temptation may be to avert our gaze, thereby preserving the reassuring tale of the American Century. We should avoid that temptation and take the opposite course, acknowledging openly, freely, and unabashedly where we have gone wrong. We should carve such acknowledgments into the face of a new monument smack in the middle of the Mall in Washington: We blew it. We screwed the pooch. We caught a case of the stupids. We got it ass-backwards.

Only through the exercise of candor might we avoid replicating such mistakes.

Indeed, we ought to apologize. When it comes to avoiding the repetition of sin, nothing works like abject contrition. We should, therefore, tell the people of Cuba that we are sorry for having made such a hash of U.S.-Cuban relations for so long. President Obama should speak on our behalf in asking the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for forgiveness. He should express our deep collective regret to Iranians and Afghans for what past U.S. interventionism has wrought.

The United States should do these things without any expectations of reciprocity. Regardless of what U.S. officials may say or do, Castro won't fess up to having made his own share of mistakes. The Japanese won't liken Hiroshima to Pearl Harbor and call it a wash. Iran's mullahs and Afghanistan's jihadists won't be offering to a chastened Washington to let bygones be bygones.

No, we apologize to them, but for our own good -- to free ourselves from the accumulated conceits of the American Century and to acknowledge that the United States participated fully in the barbarism, folly, and tragedy that defines our time. For those sins, we must hold ourselves accountable.

To solve our problems requires that we see ourselves as we really are. And that requires shedding, once and for all, the illusions embodied in the American Century.

© 2009 Andrew Bacevich

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His most recent book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, is just out in paperback.

An Anti-Torture Memorandum for President Obama

Published on Thursday, April 30, 2009

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM:  Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT:  Torture 

This memorandum is VIPS' first attempt to inform you on a major intelligence issue, as we did your predecessor; thus, some background might be helpful.  Five former CIA officers established Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) in January 2003, when we saw our profession being corrupted to justify an attack on Iraq.  Since then, our numbers have grown to 70 intelligence professionals, mostly retired, who have served in virtually all U.S. civilian and military intelligence agencies. 

In our first Memorandum for the President (George W. Bush), dated February 5, 2002, we provided a same-day commentary on Colin Powell's U.N. speech.  We warned the president that "an invasion of Iraq would ensure overflowing recruitment centers for terrorists into the indefinite future [and that] far from eliminating the [terrorist] threat, it would enhance it exponentially." 

We strongly urged the former president to widen the discussion on Iraq "beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."  VIPS' second pre-war Memorandum for the President was titled, "Forgery, Hyperbole, Half-Truth: A Problem"-a reference to the bogus intelligence we saw being ginned up to "justify" war. 

President Bush ignored our warning and the warnings of other informed individuals and groups.  The corporate media uncritically echoed the Bush administration's misuse and misrepresentation of the intelligence, despite the questions raised-including those raised by our unique movement.  (It was the first time an alumni group of intelligence officials had formed expressly to chronicle and to halt the corruption of intelligence.) 

The cheerleading for war had begun-a war that would fit the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal's description of a "war of aggression."  Nuremberg defined such a war as "the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." 

Torture: An Accumulated Evil

Torture is one of those accumulated evils.  Violating domestic laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is another.  You were right to unceremoniously jettison former CIA director Michael Hayden, who betrayed the thousands of NSA professionals who, until he directed that domestic law could be ignored, had adhered scrupulously to the 1978 FISA law as NSA's "First Commandment"-Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans Without a Court Warrant. 

In contrast, we believe you were badly misguided in giving a prominent White House post to former CIA director George Tenet's protégé John Brennan, who has publicly defended "extraordinary rendition" in full knowledge that its purpose was torture.  Brennan also had complicit knowledge of the lengths to which Tenet conspired with the Department of Justice to distort history and the law in drafting opinions that attempted to "justify" torture. 

With all due respect, Mr. President, it would be another mistake for you to believe what you are hearing from the likes of Brennan and Hayden and the journalists they have fed and domesticated.  Please do not be deceived into thinking that most intelligence officials, past and present, condone torture-still less that they are angry that you have put a stop to such techniques.  We are referring, of course, to what President Bush called "an alternative set of procedures" involving cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment that violates domestic and international law.  We focus on torture in the VIPS statement that follows these introductory remarks.

The Senate Armed Services Committee recently concluded that it was President Bush himself who, by Executive Memorandum of February 7, 2002 exempting al-Qaeda and the Taliban from Geneva protections, "opened the door" to the abuse that ensued.  You need to know that the vast majority of intelligence professionals deplore "extraordinary rendition" and the other torture procedures that were subsequently ordered by senior Bush administration officials. 

Sadly, President Bush was not the first chief executive to find a small cabal of superpatriots, amateur thugs, and contractors to do his administration's bidding.  But never before in this country were lawless thugs given such free rein.  The congressional "oversight" committees looked the other way. 

Tenet and his acolytes successfully ingratiated themselves with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the faux lawyers who devised what actually amounts to a very porous "legal" shield for those who carried out the torture.  It was a shield designed for and applied exclusively to those "just following orders" at the CIA black sites, and not for the low-ranking soldiers doing similar things at Abu Ghraib. 

Some of the latter have done time in prison; one is still there.  It would appear that some are less equal than others. And, to this day, the organizers and apologists for torture have managed to escape the consequences of their actions. 

No doubt you appreciate better than anyone that the official Department of Justice memoranda you insisted be released last week are a national disgrace.  Worse still are the first-hand accounts by young soldiers at Guantanamo of perversions like "rape by instrumentality."  You should be aware that this was a practice adamantly defended by former White House lawyers when Congress attempted to draft legislation expressly prohibiting it.  Asked to explain their objection, Bush administration lawyers acknowledged that they were worried that such legislation might subject practitioners to prosecution under state and federal criminal statutes. 

* * *

Statement of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity on Torture

Interrogation Abuses and Those Responsible Must Be Fully Exposed

Inasmuch as we have gone on record as strongly opposed to torture, both on moral and practical grounds, from the first public awareness that the Bush administration had decided to violate international and domestic law, treaty provisions, and American tradition;  

As former intelligence officials we understand that unless intelligence is "actionable"-accurate, specific, and timely enough to be acted upon with some confidence-it is ineffective.  Equally important, we acknowledge our responsibility to expose fallacious reasoning regarding the utility of torture in acquiring actionable intelligence.  This issue comes to the fore especially in the celebrated, but specious "ticking time-bomb hypothetical"-a regular feature of Jack Bauer TV fiction. 

The fact that the exploits of Jack Bauer have injected a dangerous level of fiction and fear among impressionable viewers, and have misled not only interrogators at Guantanamo but also the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes-not to mention Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia-leaves no doubt that such illusionary scenarios need to be addressed by professionals with real-life experience. 

Inasmuch as the recently released legal memos that comprised part of the "golden shield" constructed by Bush Administration lawyers do shed some light but also provide inadequate information on "harsh interrogation tactics," and that the memos sow confusion regarding which officials were responsible for institutionalizing those methods-not to mention whether they were actually effective, as former vice president Cheney continues to insist;  

Inasmuch as it has come to light that two detainees were waterboarded at least 266 times, throwing strong doubt on various rationalizations regarding the effectiveness of waterboarding in providing timely actionable intelligence (in a "ticking time-bomb" scenario, for example); 

Whereas CIA Director Leon Panetta has insisted that the "harsh interrogation tactics that some officials have declared to be torture" (the circumlocution now in vogue in the corporate media) might again be used in a future "ticking time-bomb hypothetical;" 

Whereas, when the torture technique of waterboarding, a practice with antecedents in the Spanish Inquisition was applied by Japanese troops in WWII to American and British prisoners-Japanese officers were later tried and executed; 

Whereas there has been no better system devised- despite some shortcomings-to ascertain the truth of potential wrongdoing than the criminal investigative and judicial adversary process, which provides the right to attorney and right to jury and is governed by judicial rules which attempt to ensure fairness; 

Whereas we recognize that the criminal justice process serves the important goal of stopping and deterring criminal actions and cannot be dismissed as merely "retribution;"      

Whereas 92 videotapes showing application and results of the "harsh interrogation tactics that some officials have declared to be torture" have already been destroyed, and there is understandable concern that other evidence is being destroyed as the days go by; 

Whereas other civilian and military intelligence professionals have also gone on record (see attached Annex) with respect to how torture tactics are not only ineffective in terms of getting reliable, actionable intelligence but have fueled recruitment by Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to the point that, arguably, more U.S. troops have been killed by terrorists bent on revenge for torture than the 3,000 civilians killed on 9/11; 

Whereas the false confessions that were elicited by the torture of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, for example, were used by the president, vice president, and the secretary of state (at the U.N.) to claim that proof existed of operational ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and whereas such false confessions also diverted limited investigative resources to pursue bogus leads; 

We of VIPS call for a full, truthful, and public fact-finding process to begin without delay.  We ask that you give careful consideration to Senator Carl Levin's suggestion that the attorney general appoint retired judges with solid reputations for integrity to begin the process.  Another viable possibility would be the appointment of an independent "blue-ribbon commission," perhaps modeled on the Church Committee of the mid-Seventies, to assess any illegal or improper activities and make recommendations for reform in government operations against terrorism.

We commend the administration for releasing the Department of Justice memos attempting to legalize torture.  We believe the remaining relevant information must be released promptly so that the citizenry can make informed judgments about what was done in our name and, if warranted, an independent prosecutor can be appointed without unnecessary delay.  We believe strongly that any judgments regarding amnesty, forgiveness, or pardon can only be made on the basis of a fully developed, public record-and not used as some sort of political bargaining chip.  Finally, we firmly oppose the notion that anyone can arrogate a right to ignore the Nuremburg Tribunal's rejection of "only-following-orders" as an acceptable defense.

(signatories are listed alphabetically with former intelligence affiliations)

Gene Betit, US Army, DIA, Arlington, VA

Ray Close, National Clandestine Service (CIA), Princeton, NJ

Phil Giraldi, National Clandestine Service (CIA), Purcellville, VA

Larry Johnson, CIA & Department of State, Bethesda, MD

Pat Lang, US Army (Special Forces), DIA, Alexandria, VA

David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council, Linden, VA

Tom Maertens, Department of State, Mankato, MN

Ray McGovern, US Army, CIA, Arlington, VA

Sam Provance, US Army (Abu Ghraib), Greenville, SC

Coleen Rowley, FBI, Apple Valley, MN

Greg Theilmann, Department of State & Senate Intel. Committee staff, Arlington, VA

Ann Wright, US Army, Department of State, Honolulu, HI 

*****

Annex

We list below other experienced intelligence personnel, who have spoken out publicly about the inefficacy and counter productiveness of torture:

FBI:  Ali Soufan, Dan Coleman, Jack Cloonan 

CIA:  John Helgerson (former Inspector General), Bob Baer, Haviland Smith 

Military: Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora; Major General Antonio Taguba (who probed Abu Ghraib and concluded that Bush officials committed war crimes: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/41514.html); Air Force Col Steven M. Kleinman; Rear Admiral (ret) and former Judge Advocate General for the Navy John Hutson; former Naval Intelligence officer and Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration Lawrence Korb; former U.S. military interrogator (pseudonym) Matthew Alexander; and former military intelligence officer Malcolm Nance, 

Links

FBI  

Ali Soufan  Op-Ed Contributor; My Tortured Decision; Reclaiming America's Soul - NYTimes.com  Apr 23, 2009 www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23soufan.html

Soufan was an F.B.I. supervisory special agent from 1997 to 2005. 

Dan Coleman; The Torture Memos Are Not Just Sick, They're Full of Lies:
Coleman was with the FBI; says "I can give you two reasons why Cheney wants more torture memos..." www.alternet.org/rights/.../the_torture_memos_are_not_just_sick,_they're_full_of_lies:_a_closer_look_at_the_bybee_memo/

Jack Cloonan: How to Break a Terrorist
Foreign Policy: FPTV
Cloonan is a veteran FBI interrogator who spent 25 years as an FBI special agent and interrogated members of al Qaeda
www.foreignpolicy.com/extras/torture

CIA

CIA IG John Helgerson:  CIA official: no proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks Washington - The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped. www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66895.html

Ray Close (VIPS) and Haviland Smith, both are retired CIA Station Chiefs who served in various senior positions in the Operations Directorate, including in Europe, the Middle East and (Smith) as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.

Two former top CIA officials on the efficacy of torture, by Stephen Soldz   
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Two-former-top-CIA-offical-by-Stephen-Soldz-090425-265.html

Military

Former Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora: Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are ‘first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq.' http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/17/mora-abu-ghraib-and-guantanamo-are-first-and-second-identifiable-causes-of-us-combat-deaths-in-iraq/

Air Force Col Steven Kleinman, senior intelligence officer: 
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6222229/
Senate-Testimony-Col-Steven-M-Kleinman 

Malcolm Nance: Why the Bush torture architects must be prosecuted
Nance is a former military intelligence officer and the Founding Director of the International Counterterrorism Center for Excellence at Hudson N.Y. and author of "The Terrorist Recognition Handbook - A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activity."
www.nydailynews.com/opinions/.../2009-04-19_why_the_bush_torture_architects_must_be_prosecuted_a_counterterror_expert_speak...  Also at:  http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/004617.php

Former U.S. Interrogator Matthew Alexander (pseudonym) author of Torture Policy Has Led to More Deaths than 9/11 Attacks
"I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802242_pf.html;

Sunday, November 30, 2008. 
Also on http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/12/hbc-90004036  and
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/109792/former_u.s._interrogator:_torture_policy_has_led_to_more_deaths_than_9_11_attacks/

© 2009

Two Mormons & Two Different Ethics on Torture

Published on Thursday, April 30, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Assistant Attorney General Bybee and Army Specialist Peterson

by Ann Wright

As a Bush administration political appointee Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice, Jay Bybee, a Mormon, wrote one of four torture memos released last month.  Bybee's August 1, 2002,  20 page memorandum laid out in excruciating detail the interrogation techniques he was authorizing the Central Intelligence Agency to use on al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah.

Bybee authorized ten "enhanced interrogation techniques" to encourage Abu Zubaydah  to disclose "crucial information regarding terrorist networks in the United States or in Saudi Arabia and information regarding plans to conduct attacks within the United States or against U.S. interests overseas."  The torture techniques authorized were (1) attention grasp, (2) walling, (3) facial hold, (4) facial slap, (5) cramped confinement, (6) wall standing, (7) stress position, (8) sleep deprivation, (9) insects placed in a confinement box, and (10) waterboarding.

The current Attorney General of the United States Eric Holder has stated that waterboarding is torture, while the previous Attorney General Judge Mukasey refused to comment on whether waterboarding is torture.

From recently released CIA documents we know the CIA waterboarded Abu Zubaydah 83 times and Khalid sheik Mohammed 183 times.

But, we know that from March through June, 2002, according to FBI interrogator Ali Soufan in an Op-Ed to the New York Times on April 23, 2009, FBI interrogators had already gotten "actionable intelligence" from Zubaydah using traditional, non-torturing interrogation techniques, including that Khalid sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11 and that Jose Padilla was planning to be a "dirty bomber."

90 of the 92 interrogation videotapes the CIA admits it destroyed were interrogations of Abu Zubaydah. Zubaydah's British attorney Brent Mickum in the most detailed account the public has had of Zubaydah's life, states that after all the waterboarding and other torture methods used, the CIA finally recognized Zubaydah was not the senior al-Qaeda leader they had portrayed him to be.  According to Mickum, the Military Commissions at Guantanamo are now "airbrushing" his name from the charge sheets of other Guantanamo prisoners.  Mickum reveals Zubaydah was severely wounded in Afghanistan in 1992 while fighting communist insurgents after the withdrawal of Soviet forces.  He has two pieces of shrapnel in his head which have affected his memory to the extent that "he cannot remember his mother's name or face." Mickum states that Zubaydah was shot and severely wounded when he was picked up  in Pakistan, His life was saved by a John Hopkins  surgeon flown to the region.  After being saved from death, he was almost tortured to death by CIA operatives. Mickum says that Zubaydah is a stateless Palestinian with no country to argue on his behalf and a United States government now embarrassed at being caught in its own illegal conduct.

We know that combinations of the other nine techniques authorized by Jay Bybee can be classified as torture, as the Convening Authority of the Military Commissions at Guantanamo Susan Crawford declared when she dismissed the charges against Guantanamo prisoner Mohammed al-Qahtani, in January, 2009, in the last days of the Bush Administration.

Crawford said that for 160 days al-Qahtani's only contact was with the interrogators and that 48 of 54 consecutive days he was subjected to 18-to-20-hour interrogations. He was strip searched and had to stand naked in front of a female agent. Qahtani was forced to wear a woman's bra and had a thong placed on his head during the course of his interrogation and was told that his mother and sister were whores. With a leash tied to his chains, he was led around the room "and forced to perform a series of dog tricks.  He was threatened with a military working dog named Zeus. The interrogations were so severe that twice Qahtani had to be hospitalized at Guantanamo with bradycardia, a condition in which the heart rate falls below 60 beats a minute and which in extreme cases can lead to heart failure and death. At one point Qahtani's heart rate dropped to 35 beats per minute, the interrogation records showed.

The torture techniques Jay Bybee authorized in 2002 migrated to Iraq in 2003. Major General Geoffrey Miller travelled to Iraq from Guantanamo to demonstrate to soldiers in Iraq the techniques the military and CIA were using in Guantanamo.

In September, 2003, another Mormon, a woman soldier, U.S. Army Specialist Alyssa Peterson, said refused to use the interrogation techniques that Bybee had authorized on Iraqi prisoners. An Arabic linguist with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division at Tal Afar base, Iraq, 27 year old Peterson, refused to take part in interrogations in the "cage" where Iraqis were stripped naked in front of female soldiers, mocked and their manhood degraded and burned with cigarettes, among other things.  Three days later, on September 15, 2003,  Peterson was found dead of a gunshot wound at Tal Afar base.  The Army has classified her death as suicide.

Jay Bybee, in thanks for his being the loyal soldier to the Bush administration's policies of torture, was nominated and confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where he sits to this day in his lifetime appointment.  Jay Bybee, an author of torture, reportedly has a placard in his home for his children "We don't hurt each other."

Alyssa Peterson, for saying no to torture, is dead, perhaps by her own hand.

To help Army Specialist Alyssa Peterson rest in peace, I say we should demand accountability from our officials and IMPEACH the torture judge, Jay Bybee.

Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq.  She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia.  In December, 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.  She is the co-author of the book "Dissent: Voices of Conscience."  (www.voicesofconscience.com) 

Spruced Up And Lookin’ In Me Prime

Published on Thursday, April 30, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

by Christopher Cooper

The young woodcutter soon enough paid in the currency of public humiliation for the great feast of laughter he and his brother and their older-but-no-wiser troop leader had enjoyed when, just as a car appeared around the corner, there at the edge of the ditch, in the full and revealing light of a brilliant late April morning, I suddenly mounted him as though we were salamanders in a vernal pool, clasping and squeezing his body even as he squealed and squirmed and would have run away into the woods had I not exercised the tenacity and wiliness with which Providence so often sees fit to equip the experienced that they may overcome the admittedly greater strength of youth so as to instruct those leaders of tomorrow's world in proper behavior and right thinking.

You may picture as you are able and can tolerate the vile filmstrip your thoughts unspool, with what vigor I drove home my superior understanding of the finer points of our recent discussion, and how wildly and futilely the young man sought to escape the logic of my penetrating arguments. The consensus among the several sawmen, brush-draggers, chipper-feeders, and the excavator operator (perhaps the lone respectable businessman among the loose confederation assembled, and even he not necessarily someone you'd be comfortable eating next to at the counter at Moody's Diner) was that I had well made my point. No one thought to inquire if the motorists had enjoyed our spectacle.

Road Commissioner Trask, having inherited his father's delight in making a small hurt sink deeper and last longer (as well as all of the old man's municipal titles) warned the object of my instruction: "You guys want to watch out for Cooper-he could put you in the newspaper!" And so, if my allusions and allegations withstand the objections of my stern and unforgiving editor and her advisory committee on moral rectitude, I shall.

Because the rain falls and the sun shines and God has instituted among plants the miracle of photosynthesis, trees grow. And when they grow adjacent the roads of our town they shade and restrict and corrupt the full, free and safe passage of motor traffic, and this, as President George Herbert Walker Bush said about a less material matter, "Will. Not. Stand." So Commissioner Trask The Younger (and now sadly the only, his dad. having moved on to run a road crew beyond the River Styx, where the hot top is always hot and he can bulldoze sinners aside as casually as he once plowed down mailboxes), hired (he, the son) a cutting crew.

Our spiritual leader was the redoubtable Herman Lovejoy, bringing more years of woods experience into camp than our two youngest members had amassed years of living between them. They, the boys, twins so alike I cannot be sure which of them I molested in paragraph one, gave us enthusiasm and an image of how we ourselves might have appeared long ago, before mistakes and bad judgments and wrong turns ruined our lives and health and prospects for regular employment. Commissioner Trask chose our work site (The Rabbit Path, starting at the Dresden line) and cursed us as Kipling cursed poor old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din, though he knew better than to belt and flay us. David Seigars, just elected selectman, was comfortable working with Fire Chief Trask in the AVFD, although perhaps as yet slightly uncomfortable associating with him in the loftier realm of the town office complex. I am as capable a stem and branch handler as I am essayist. And Jon Bardo and his excavator pushed over the difficult trees and fed whole logs into the fourteen inch chipper, taking so much of the work load as to afford the rest of us ample time for jocularity and nature study and consideration of current events.

The most current (and alarming) event in the minds of the three employees who remember neither the Tet Offensive nor the Summer of Love turned out to be the possibility that gay marriage might take hold in Maine as it has in Iowa.

You've heard the arguments: When men are allowed to marry men, "The Family As We Know It" will be irrevocably undermined. A wedding with two brides will likewise ruin "The Traditional Family." Worse, when homosexual persons of whatever sex stand before a judge or notary and proclaim their intentions to love and honor until Death intervenes, one often hears, the courts will be forced to honor marriages between men and dogs. Given the high rate of divorce and the number of enduring but unhappy marriages in the land, and knowing something of the constancy and devotion of dogs, I wonder how this would be a bad thing. (And a dog will eat cheap dry food from a bag, unwarmed, and like it, never expecting a night out for dinner. In the unlikely event your chosen proves to be growly and disagreeable, a decade or so should set matters right-you'll simply outlive the bitch.)

State Representative Philip Curtis, a Republican from Madison, testified that "we will become a society governed by man rather than a righteous, holy God." To this statement those of us who have some small acquaintance with the Constitution might only add, Amen.

But that's the corner our Republican party has pretty much wedged itself into these days, isn't it? Not enough God in our courthouses and schools. Too much love and commitment among the wrong sorts of citizens.

My brush chipping friends, as we sat on a poplar log, shoulder to shoulder, thigh against thigh, exchanging opinions on the desirability of passing drivers (female), did not degrade themselves with arguments invoking God's plan for man or the inevitability of cross-species matrimony. They simply, clearly, and most vulgarly said how icky they found the prospect of sex with a man. And so, truth to tell, do I, although I recognize that there are a great many men who would find me to their liking, and some have even told me so. On the other hand, I've only, in my whole life, met one man who didn't salivate at the idea of a couple of attractive women enjoying each other, and he died recently, so perhaps there are now none so conflicted.

But let every man who wants a man marry one, every woman whose proposal is agreed to wed her female lover, let a thousand thousand gay couples in perverted, ungodly California, socialist Vermont and heartland Iowa say "I do", let our timid governor sign the bill making it so in Maine (this being by no means certain-he's a Democrat after all, a member of a party long unaccustomed to taking a stand or doing the right thing) and the Rockies will not crumble, Gibraltar will erode at its historic rate, and neither I nor any man I know will ever wed a dog. It just ruins them for hunting.

Let me say now a few words in support of my own representative, Mr. Leslie Fossel, as newly elected as Selectman Seigars. He has introduced a bill that would effect all the privileges and legalities of marriage without applying the term marriage. He says he believes this would reduce the objections from the defenders of traditional marriage camp. I doubt it, but let's say it might. So then we'd have stopped just short (or, if you're gay, perhaps considerably short) of full equality to preserve the tender sensibilities of some persons who perhaps spend just a little too much time wallowing in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

I do think my neighbor's bill is offered with the best of intentions, but I hope the legislators realize the time is behind us now for partial measures. We need to do this, whether it brings us good feelings or mixed, gives us great joy or the crawling heebie-jeebies, and blame our failed marriages on the fact that, as the great Ogden Nash succinctly said, "He's a sot and she's a shrew."

But I heard Les Fossel on the radio last week say to anyone listening, "I'm a liberal Republican" When, I ask you, has any member of either party been forthright and unafraid enough to say he or she was a liberal? Every person of whatever sexual proclivity in Maine can take renewed hope from that. I've had too many years of craven fools like Harry Reid running from the hint of possible contact with the words liberal, a good and proper word and a point of view most Americans agree with, when they shut off Rush Limbaugh long enough to think for themselves.

If the Catholics and the Pentacostalists won't perform gay marriages, the Unitarians will welcome the chance. No religions will unravel, no solid families dissolve, no tear appear in the fabric of the universe.

And I, inveterate heterosexual, liberal, atheist, vegetarian, iconoclast part-time essayist and occasional road gang worker, shall continue to hump the unwary young men who wear their nervousness so openly and proclaim their certainties so loudly, just because it feels good to so profoundly affect one's fellows, to make them recoil perhaps, but also eventually to think. And thinking, considerable efforts by the Republican party to outlaw it and the Democrats to avoid it notwithstanding, is still our right, our privilege, and our solemn duty. This I believe. So help me God.

Did you ever see a thirty foot hemlock tree stuffed whole, butt end first into a chipper? It is a beautiful, awe-inspiring sight. Any man, gay or straight, must be moved by the fierce beauty of such loud and violent destruction.

Mr. Cooper believes that while only God (or several billion years of evolution) can make a tree, a couple guys with a Morebark chipper can pretty quickly turn one into mulch. He will read your thoughts on tree grinding, homosexual marriages and  the suitability of dogs as wives at coop@tidewater.net.  And although he suspects he does not often enough tell her so, he appreciates the leeway Editor Gibbs gives him in slipping his condemnations of the conventional wisdom and pretty much everybody's version of god into his lengthy bucolic essays.

Torture and Treason

Published on Thursday, April 30, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

by Robert C. Koehler

None dare call it . . . what is that word again?

It's a word I associate with the McCarthy era and patriotic fanaticism; its commission is the cardinal sin against the nation-state and, as such, not only too easily flung at an ideological opponent but a frayed, simplistic concept, in that humankind ought to be reaching beyond national identities for global allegiance and a security that doesn't devalue life anywhere on the planet. It's a word I avoid. Certainly I've never accused anyone of it. Till now.

But as I have pondered the recently released torture memos and the sudden, long-delayed trickle of national soul-searching they have provoked over the crimes of the Bush era, I find myself shocked into new emotional territory.

Consider this little item from a McClatchy Newspapers story last week: "The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees" - commonly known as torture - "in part to find evidence of cooperation between al-Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist."

Indeed, Guantanamo interrogators, in 2002 and early 2003, were under pressure from way high up to "produce evidence" - can you feel the moral drift here? - that Saddam Hussein helped bring down the Towers so we could go to war with Iraq. This was when Khalid Sheik Muhammed was being waterboarded 183 times and Abu Zubaydah 83 times.

"The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results," the psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators, according to the McClatchy story.

Let us pause the news cycle here and strip away the desperate delicacy of this language. The Gitmo intelligence crew was being told, from the highest levels of the Bush White House and the Pentagon - think Cheney, think Rumsfeld - to keep slamming these guys' heads against the wall, to keep pouring water down their throats, to keep tormenting them with dogs and insects, until they blubbered, in their pain and terror, a word or two that would justify the long-planned (and completely pointless) invasion of Iraq.

This drags the torture "debate" out of the fog that mainstream pundits are paid to generate - does it work? is it legal? is it cruel? is it counterproductive? - and exposes something that is troubling at the level of the soul, and begs only one question.

Is it treason?

As I say, this is not a word I use with any comfort or certainty. It's a word I distrust. But I use it now, summoning not its legal or constitutional meaning (though I don't doubt that the U.S. Constitution was flushed down the toilet along with the Koran); but rather, the emotional core of the word as it bubbled up from Latin and French into the English language in the 13th century: to hand over, to betray a sacred trust. That was an age that, if nothing else, was serious about its values. Are we serious about ours?

Raise your hand, stand up, step forward if you think a deep moral violation has occurred in this scenario: An American president, or at least his primary advisors, circumvent international and domestic law to permit the use of cruel and occasionally fatal interrogation techniques on Muslim detainees (sometimes randomly arrested and completely innocent), not for the purpose of mining them for actual information, which might have national security value, but to get them, sheerly, to lie as instructed.

The question of the moment is now, no longer: Is torture un-American? It is: Are we, as a nation, bigger than our transgressions? Can we establish a commission or an investigation with a moral force greater than the trust that has been debased? Can we face up to what has been done in our name, establish accountability and find a way to atone and change?

Politically, the answer is no. Politics as we practice it these days - as the Democrats practice it, I should say - is just another form of market-based consumerism. It is trend-focused and desirous most of all of not offending. While the Republicans are masters at creating wedge issues and harnessing hatred in order to govern, the Dems lack the skill to harness the opposite force, compassion and empathy, so they govern without clarity or fervor. In the words of Michael Dukakis, they aspire to "manage."

As citizens who are sick of the treasonous assault on our values, we can't let up in our demand for a serious investigation into torture and other crimes of "the war on terror." Finding and addressing the root causes of what we have done is the psychological equivalent of sustainability.

Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.

The Battle of Azamgarh

By Amaresh Misra

Right now, a new kind of a battle is going on in India. For the first time since Independence, Muslims of a whole region right in India’s heartland—the district of Azamgarh in Poorvanchal (East Uttar Pradesh)—have launched an Independent mass movement. Till date, from its own resources, the Ulema Council, an umbrella organization of leading Muslim clerics of the district, has succeeded in bringing hundreds and thousands of ordinary Muslims to Delhi, and then Lucknow in protest rallies. Several of the young boys and men from middle, lower and working classes arrived in trains booked in advance by the Ulema Council.

For the first time in the history of mass movements in India, railways were used as a means and a mode of protest. The issues the protestors raised included a judicial enquiry into the Batala House encounter, an end to Police atrocities and terror, picking of boys without warrants by the UP-ATS from villages of the district, the maligning of boys from a whole district as terrorists, and the refusal of `civilized’ citizens in Mumbai and Delhi to give houses on rent to students and residents of Azamgarh.

It is difficult to conceive that any other district of India would have risen en masse on these issues—in Azamgarh, till October 2008, just a month after the Batala House encounter, and two months after Abu Bashar, the main accused in the July 26^thAhmedabad Blasts was picked up from the Sarai Meer village, the situation was so bad that any ATS man in plainclothes could enter a village and harass and torture Muslims at will. Azamgarhis were practically lynched in Delhi by blood thirsty fascist crowds on at least two occasions.

Formed in September 2008, the Ulema Council fought back and in a very short time, by December 2008, the tide began to turn. The aggressive stance taken by the Ulema Council leaders forced the local Police and the ATS to put a stop to the open beating and harassment of Muslim youth. At several places, where the ATS arrived to take boys into custody, villagers came out in hordes—the ATS had to retreat. The issue against police atrocities became one of self-respect and human dignity.

Poorvanchal is the area where the BJP-VHP-RSS saffron brigade has also unleashed a reign of anti-Muslim terror. Presenting a deadly mixture of Hindutva politics and mafia activities under police protection, Adityanath and his son Yoginath, the BJP MP from Gorakhpur, are virtually a law unto their own. Recently, they even had the gumption to kill a Muslim Police Inspector in broad daylight.

After the Batala House encounter, BJP leaders of Azamgarh were talking openly about turning Azamgarh into another Gorakhpur or even Gujarat. In fact, the BJP and VHP leaders gave a slogan—Azamgarh shuruaat karega, UP Gujarat banega. To counter this, the Ulema Council gave the slogan:Azamgarh shuruaat karega, poora Bharat swarg banega.

This basic spirit of Muslim led Indian secular nationalism, in which instead of a Hindu-Muslim or even a police Vs Muslim fight the Azamgarh battle has become part of the larger war for secularism in India, has surprised armchair liberals—unlike other such initiatives undertaken by other social forces, the Azamgarh phenomenon has some very specific features. For one, it is in tune with the post 26/11 mood of national secular unity and decline of communal feeling. It has nothing to do with Muslim League type exclusive Muslim assertion. It includes a vast majority of Pasis, Chamars, Rajbhars, Musahars and Nonias, other Most Backward Hindu Castes and poorer sections from amongst the upper castes, who too have borne the brunt of police and mafia-Hindutva atrocities.

Secondly, this movement has deep roots in Azamgarh’s history. In 1857, this was the district which provided the British with one of the fiercest resistance in Eastern India.  Most of the sepoys of the East India Company Bengal Army came from Avadh and Poorvanchal (east UP).  An entire infantry regiment, the 17^th BNI, which remained in the frontline during the battles in Avadh and Lucknow, was made up of Muslims, Rajputs and Yadavs of Azamgarh. The Pulwar Rajputs of Azamgarh and Muslims of the Belariagunj, Sarai Meer and Beni Para (the upsurge areas of the current movement) are mentioned in British records as one of the toughest anti-colonial resistance fighters.

During the 1942 Quit India movement, one of the first attacks on Police stations and Kotwalis were reported from Azamgarh. One by one, all districts of Poorvanchal followed Azamgarh’s lead—soon the entire region from Jaunpur to Ballia was out of British hands, the police fleeing almost to a man.

In the post-Independence era, one of the first anti-Congress opposition party MLA was elected from Azamgarh. In the 1960s, when the notion of independent Muslim assertion was unheard of, Azamgarh was home to Muslim Majlis, a secular movement of Dalit-backward-Muslim elements started by Dr. Faridi of Lucknow.

In the 1970s and 1980s, upwardly mobile and politically and socially conscious Azamgarhis began to move out—in Mumbai, Dubai, and the US, wherever they went, they built small businesses and prospered to a certain extent. Then they came back to their villages—in the 1990s, Azamgarhis decided to send their boys and girls to for higher education, especially to centers like Delhi.

It was because of a desire for education that boys from Azamgarh rented houses and began staying in Okhla and the Jamia Nagar-Batala House area. At the same time the Delhi Police began to be fed with reports that a lot of Muslim boys from Azamgarh were settling down in the city. BJP UP circles viewed the social mobility of Muslims with envy and suspicion; during Advani’s tenure as the Home Minister, Azamgarh boys were screened regularly by the Delhi Police.

After the 12^th September 2008 Delhi blasts, there was immense pressure on the Delhi Police to do something. The department already had a ready data on Delhi based Azamgarh boys. Sajid and Atif, the victims of the Batala house episode, seemed to have been made the scapegoat, and Azamgarh the ready villain, by the Delhi Police.

Only Ulemas could have countered this kind of a state terror. Indian Ulemas played a glorious role during the Indian freedom struggle. Hundreds and thousands died during 1857 wars. Then in the 20^thcentury, Indian Ulemas opposed Jinnah’s two nation theory. After 1947, they went back to theirmadrasas and khanqahas (hospices). Now, 17 years after the Babari Masjid demolition, and 7 years after the Gujarat riots, they have again emerged for direct political action. In fact the Ulema Council has fielded 5 candidates from UP in the coming Parliamentary elections—in the days to come they will field more. Besides the BJP, the Ulema Council has rejected SP, BSP and the Congress for pursuing a negative brand of secular politics. Elsewhere in India too Muslims are forming secular parties under their leadership—Badruddin Ajmal’s Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF) is expanding to Maharashtra and Bengal. Kerala is witnessing the rise of the Popular Front. Even Jamaat-e-Islami is contemplating a secular political party.

Muslims say that for 44 years they tried first, the upper caste Hindu secular leadership—and then after 1991 the Backward and Dalit Hindu secular forces. All three took them for a ride. Now the current mood is to take leadership in their own hands and forge alliances with different social forces and Hindu castes. The Indian (chiefly Hindu) political class should take note as to why this is happening—isn’t it true that the story of current Muslim assertion includes the recent history of betrayal by the Indian state of its own promises given to Muslims, written as law in the Indian constitution?

India: Civil Rights or Civil War?

By Amaresh Misra

        The recent series of bomb blasts that have rocked India―a series which has become a proverbial dark tunnel where no end is in sight―denote a new pattern. Till now communal riots were engineered by communal forces and the fascist part of the Indian state machinery to polarize society. This trend reached its apogee in the Gujarat 2002 riots.

        The communal forces both inside and outside the Indian State machinery learnt some important lessons from Gujarat; chiefly that in this time and space, in the 21^st century, it is very difficult to get away with organized pogroms―ultimately you have to pay a political price which the BJP did in the 2004 elections.

        The communal forces then conjured a new phenomenon―why not start engineering bombs first in Hindu dominated areas, and then in Muslim areas?

        The trend began with the July 2006 Mumbai serial train blasts in `Gujarati Hindu dominated’ first class compartments of the Mumbai metro rail; soon there were blasts in Muslim areas of Malegaon and Hyderabad.

In 2008, with elections just around the corner in April-May 2009, and the BJP getting relegated to the third position in electoral calculations in the post-nuclear deal vote phase, the bomb blast phenomenon has become endemic. From July 2008 at the time of writing this piece here have been several blasts―in the past week, blasts have occurred almost daily.

One thing is clear―it is not that bomb blasts are being engineered to create communal riots. That (communal riots following bomb blasts) simply has not happened―the new mantra seems to be of bomb blasts replacing communal riots. This means that if in the past riots were engineered to create communal polarization the same kind of polarization is being sought to be created by engineering bomb blasts.

So the pattern―4 blasts in a Hindu dominated area; then one or two in a Muslim dominated area―soMalegaon and Modesa after Bengaluroo, Ahmedabad and the two blasts in Delhi.

This is a foreign pattern for even Indian communal forces; this trend has been seen in areas where Mossad and CIA operate; a similar/exact phenomenon was seen in Lebanon where Beirut, a beautiful and cosmopolitan Asiatic city was turned into an arena of sectarian Muslim-Christian conflict with bomb blasts being engineered every day in respective Muslim-Christian areas, something which now even Hollywood films (see Spy Game) admit as a CIA ploy to destroy Lebanon.

The post-American invasion Iraq situation too sees a similar thing―of sectarian Shia-Sunni violence being generated by the bomb blast phenomenon, engineered by the CIA, private US mercenary firms like Blackwater and the US forces.

A third region is Pakistan where too blasts take place respectively, in Shia or Sunni, Sindhi or Mohajir, NWFP or Punjabi or Baluchi areas alternately and with regularity. Here the western game is clear―America andIsrael have been working for decades to dismemberPakistan and control its nuclear arsenal.

India was spared of this ordeal till 1991 as Prime Ministers like Jawahar Lal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, and even Rajiv Gandhi, did not allow Mossad-CIA penetration.

Before liberalization during Narsimha Rao’s regime, Indian passport holders could not travel to two places: Israel and South Africa. India was at the forefront of the International crusade against apartheid and the denial of a homeland for Palestinians.

Why is it that after liberalization, which was initiated soon after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, India recognized Israel and established diplomatic relations―and then the Babri Masjid demolition incident occurred?

So three things are related―liberalization of the Indian economy, the change in Indian foreign policy from an anti-Imperialist, pro-Third World position to a pro-American, pro-Israel stance, and the increasing persecution of Muslims, in an institutionalized form.

See that these three developments occur side by side―and now in 2008 we see India being turned into another Lebanon.

The biggest delusion of the RSS-BJP is that by blaming organizations like SIMI or Muslim `terrorists’ for the recent blasts they are doing some service to the nation. On the contrary, by not exposing the foreign Mossad-CIA hand, they are going against the interests of India. Why did the BJP-RSS not cry foul over the flight of Ken Haywood from India after the email sent by the so called `Indian Mujahideen’ group was traced to his computer in Navi Mumbai? Why was there no demand for a probe into the role of this dubious American national with shady evangelical, anti-Hindu and anti-Muslim connections in America?

These connections can be seen by clicking on links like http://www.phillyimc.org/en/node/71510  or http://www.stlimc.org/newswire2008/yahooindiabombingkenneth-haywoodcampbell-white039s-computer-and-strange-fox-news039-fr orhttp://www.indianexpress.com/story/348646.html  or http://szamko.gnn.tv/blogs/29130/Haywood_Escapes or

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hvHOJNxzhM&feature=related and on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaZejnHLhrc&feature=related

This is a question I would like to put before people like Javed Anand―did they write anything on the Ken Haywood angle?

This is a question I would like to put before Yogendra Yadav―we were engaged in a debate over SIMI and the wider Muslim question in India―a debate in which Shri Yadav differed on several points but agreed on one that innocent Muslims are being persecuted and liberals, secular forces or any religious group with a conscience ought to fight against the persecution.

Now the question is: Is Shri Yadav ready to demand a probe and come out on the streets on the issue of the Ken Haywood angle or the Bajrang Dal angle (that they were caught making bombs which exlodd in their faces)? Is he willing to write as a member of the Governing Council of the ICSSR or otherwise against the total lack of concern in the Indian security agencies towards the Ken Haywood angle and the total failure to investigate into several instances where Bajrang Dal and Hindu Munaani and other RSS outfits have been found making bombs?

Another question: Are people like Tavleen Singh, who speak about `Islamic terrorism’, ready to even consider discussing the Ken Haywood or the Bajrang Dal angle in the recent bomb blasts and violence against Christians in Orissa and Karnataka?

If Tavleen Singh is not willing to discuss the foreign or the RSS angle then there is something seriously wrong somewhere―I have mentioned earlier that SIMI or the Indian Mujahideen is a fiction, a phantom like the WMDs in Iraq―why can’t the liberals see this?

I was reading Shashi Tharoor’s piece in the Times of India; I have also seen Karan Thapar writing against violence perpetrated by VHP on Christians in Orissa. All this is very good and welcome―but why haven’t Shashi Tharoor or Karan Thapar ever written on violence against Muslims in India? Why hasn’t Karan Thapar ever written on the Ken Haywood angle? In the Times of India piece, Shashi Tharoor makes it a point to condemn `both’ types of violence―he is again placing the fictitious `Islamic terrorism’ and the invented `Indian Mujahideen’ at par with Bajrang Dal and the VHP―he does not even mention the RSS―what kind of a secularism and liberalism is this?          

Let me be very clear and cloud―today, supporting the persecution and the arrest and the torture of thousands of Muslim youth, is tantamount to being anti-national. Today being anti-Muslim is tantamount to being anti-national. All newspapers and people in the media have to realize this―including people like Rajdeep Sardesai, Sagarika Ghose, Vinod Mehta―that you will be held accountable personally for Muslim persecution―and for not exposing the Bajrang Dal-Ken Haywood angle in the deaths of countless Hindus and Muslims during the `bomb blast season’ underway―by nationalists―and this is coming from me, a left and a religious Sanatan Dharma Hindu figure, not a rootless, westernized pseudo-secular personality.

   What India needs today are not just protests―we need a special prevention of atrocities against minorities act―something which makes refusal of housing and flats to minorities, refusal by a Police officer to register a FIR by minorities, or to act in their protection, failure of a District Magistrate or a Senior Superintendent of the Police to prevent a riot or a bomb blast, the picking up of Muslims and other minorities without a formal charge, the very idea of detention of Muslim youths after blasts, or encounter killings, the calling of Muslms by the nameLaandiya or Katua, a stringent crime with due punishment.

India already has a prevention of violence/atrocities against Scheduled castes act―it is a crime to call a Dalit a Chamar; or not to register his or hers FIR. Why can’t a similar act, be enacted for the minorities?

In India the so called war against terror, against SIMI or the Indian Mujahideen is a fictitious, bogus war―the recent bomb blasts were engineered by security forces, and foreign agencies and RSS-Bajrang Dal. The real war is against Muslim/minority persecution, the appropriate response to Batla House type fake encounter killing, and the extension of civil liberties guaranteed in the Indian constitution. See the history of nations―in America and Europe mere constitutional guarantees were not enough―specific new laws had to be enacted from time to time to abolish slavery, protect minorities, and end persecution, segregation and racism.

America passed through its civil rights moment in the 1960s―India has to confront its own civil rights moment now. There is a simple message to Indian liberals―either support, the demand for a special civil rights act for minorities or perish―for soon the fascist forces persecuting Muslims will turn against you.

If there is a civil war in India on this issue―so be the case; in any case with direct American intervention in Pakistan, conflict between America and India is very near. Liberals do not understand this but the Indian army does―so there is bound to be a double civil war in India―one against foreign intervention in the Indian sub-continent and the other against anti-national fascist forces.

Where do liberals stand in this fight? The anti-national forces want India to be invaded―that is why they are launching Muslim persecution so that when NATO forces  attack India, the country is weak internally.

They are of course deluded―as the history of 1857 shows, Indian Muslims are the single most nationalist forces alive in India today―persecution or no persecution, they will fight foreign invasion.

But what is our duty? The best course is to launch a mass movement now to end persecution and guarantee civil rights to Muslims and other minorities; otherwise a civil war, a military response against Modi and the RSS to save the Indian constitution and the Indian republic is imminent. Choose what you want…                 

Justice Delayed is Justice Denied: Accountability, Torture, and the Obama Administration

Published on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

by Frida Berrigan & Jeremy Varon

Witness Against Torture’s 100 Days Campaign to Close Guantanamo and End Torture began in the heady days following President Obama’s Executive Orders, signed on day one, promising the closure of the detention camp at Guantanamo within a year and ending the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program. Years of protest-- including a 2005 demonstration at the detention camp itself, arrest actions in Washington, D.C., and a resulting trial in which we condemned Guantanamo in the name of the detainees-- had paid off. The nightmare appeared close to over.

As we vigiled at the White House every day since inauguration to support Obama in his plans, countless people we met celebrated President Obama’s promises and questioned our being there. “Guantanamo is shut down,” we heard again and again. Yet the accumulated outrages of the last seven years and the tenacious defense of torture policies by some sectors of government and the media, cautioned against a premature sense of victory. Sadly, the cynicism of politics, the ignorance and paranoia of the right, and the Obama administration’s own failure of both conviction and nerve have kept the nightmare of indefinite detention, torture, and immunity for war crimes alive. So we’re coming to the White House, on day 101 of the Obama administration, to demand again that Guantanamo be closed, torture decisively ended, and torturers held to account.

Despite early, encouraging signs, the Obama presidency has been a disappointment with respect to detainee issues and torture. While releasing so called “torture memos” drafted under Bush administration, the Obama administration has been reluctant to investigate possible, past crimes by those who may have committed or provided pseudo-legal cover for torture. Without such an investigation (and prosecutions, if warranted) Obama’s pledge to bring accountability to government will ring hollow. Neither can Obama fulfill his pledge to restore the rule of law if he won’t enforce the law. Domestic and international law indeed require that the U.S. legal system investigate possible breaches of bans on torture.

Less acknowledged, but equally disturbing, the Obama administration has left untouched — and even actively affirmed — some of the worst of the Bush-era detention policies. The pledge to shut down Guantanamo has done nothing to relieve the ordeal of the men still held there, many of whom are innocent of allegations of terrorism and have been cleared for release. This is true of the 17 Uighur Muslims whom Judge Ricardo Urbina ordered last October to be released immediately into the United States. Yet the Obama Justice Department pursued a challenge to the ruling by the Bush administration, and the Uighurs remain at Guantanamo. The administration’s recent pledge to release seven Uighurs into the United States leaves the status of the other Uighurs-- and dozens of prisoners wrongfully detained-- unresolved.

The denial of the rule of law and the abuse of detainees continues at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The Department of Justice recently indicated it will challenge the April 3 ruling by conservative U.S. District Judge John Bates that habeas corpus rights, affirmed for Guantanamo inmates by the Supreme Court (Boumediene v. Bush), extend to Bagram inmates not captured on the Afghani battlefield. Bagram is fast becoming Obama's Guantanamo, where the same violations of American law and values take place.

Finally, in line with the Bush administration before it, the Obama administration has twice invoked the “state secrets” defense in efforts to dismiss lawsuits seeking redress for those rendered and tortured and damages against private companies participating in rendition (Arar v. Ashcroft et al; Mohamed et. al. v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc). This craven defense — which seeks to bar discussion of these tragic cases even from courts of law well-equipped to handle sensitive national security matters — adds insult to the ex-detainees’ enormous injuries. It not only puts the United States above the law and public reproach, but denies the defendants’ right to have their victimization acknowledged and their humanity recognized.

Witness Against Torture, like other human rights groups, is well aware of the awful dilemmas the Obama administration faces. Obama inherited a legal, political, and moral mess not of his own making. For his administration to pursue a criminal inquiry into alleged torture under Bush would be to invite further partisan backlash and possibly jeopardize many of his worthy policy goals. The CIA, by warning that that prosecutions of its officers would “weaken morale,” all but says to Obama that his administration risks losing CIA cooperation in ongoing anti-terrorist operations. And the political right, led by Dick Cheney, continues to mangle the debate, defending torture with garish zeal, and fraudulently claiming that closing Guantanamo and trying its “high-value” detainees in real courts means letting terrorists loose in the streets of America.

Whatever these pressures, the Obama administration faces a clear choice to fulfill the rhetoric of true change by upholding the law, leading the country in reckoning with sordid policies, and putting institutional mechanisms in place to assure that the United States never again commits torture. To grant immunity to those who may have carried out torture upholds the Bush administration doctrine that the Executive, operating in secret, has the power to determine what is and is not lawful regardless of what U.S. and international law state. Any Department of Justice inquiry must also extend to the architects of the torture policies, as well as the widespread use of “enhanced interrogations” beyond the CIA's notorious program. And Obama must urgently address the cases of remaining detainees; bring those against whom evidence of wrongdoing exists into a real system of law and releasing the others without needless delay.

President Obama himself insists that the true measure of America’s greatness lies how its people respond to daunting challenges, hard times, and tough choices. It is to time to be great, by simply doing what is good and right. Otherwise, America’s intricate compact with the evil of torture and disregard for its laws and best traditions will continue.

What is Happening on April 30? Witness Against Torture On Thursday, April 30th, hundreds of human rights activists will gather near the White House to call on the Obama administration to support a criminal inquiry into torture under the Bush administration and to fully break with past detention policies.

At a rally at Lafayette Park at 11:15 am, members of Witness Against Torture, Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Torture Abolition Survivors Support Coalition will speak out about the need for accountability and an end to Bush-era policies. At noon, sixty activists from Witness Against Torture — each representing one of the Guantanamo inmates cleared for release but still imprisoned – will risk arrest.

Why Are We Protesting? Witness Against Torture

We seek to demonstrate, in a forceful way, that there is an informed and active public constituency for justice, the rule of law, and accountability in this country that is demanding a criminal inquiry into possible torture by the CIA and other US military personnel, as well as how torture policies were crafted, who crafted them, and what culpability they bear. We seek to pressure the Obama administration to stop its equivocation and move toward some process aimed at genuine justice and which will safeguard the country against the future use of torture.

We are not now content to wait, years into torture policies, for the slow wheels of the opinion machinery, bureaucracy, and partisan grinding to produce some watered-down version of what should be an investigation into lawbreaking, extending to the highest reaches of the Bush administration.

We are also marching to dramatize the ongoing plight — at some cost to ourselves by virtue of our arrest (during which we'll wear orange jumpsuits with detainee names on our backs) of the are men at Guantanamo who have been cleared to release, pose no threat to the United States, and could be freed by the Obama administration much sooner than one year he has given himself to close the detention camp.

Please join us in Washington, DC on Thursday, April 30th. We gather at 10am at the Capitol Reflecting Pool, and then march in silent procession wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods to Lafayette Park for a brief rally. Then 60 friends will cross onto the White House sidewalk to bring the names and identities of the 55 Guantanamo men cleared for release who remain in the prison, and those of the 5 men who died at Guantanamo, to the attention of President Barack Obama.

To learn more, and support this effort, please visit www.100dayscampaign.org

Jeremy Varon and Frida Berrigan are both organizers with Witness Against Torture.

Disclosure of ‘Secrets’ in the '70s Didn’t Destroy the Nation

Published on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 by TruthDig.com

by Amy Goodman

President Barack Obama promised "more transparent ... more creative" government. His release of the torture memos, and the Pentagon's expected release of more photos of detainee abuse, is a step in the right direction. Yet he assured the CIA that he will not prosecute those who followed the instructions to torture from the Bush administration. Congress might not agree with this leniency, with prominent senators calling for investigations.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, just released a 262-page report titled "Inquiry Into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody." Levin said the report "represents a condemnation of both the Bush administration's interrogation policies and of senior administration officials who attempted to shift the blame for abuse ... to low-ranking soldiers. Claims ... that detainee abuses could be chalked up to the unauthorized acts of a ‘few bad apples' were simply false." Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., also are proposing investigations.

The Senate interest in investigation has backers in the U.S. House, from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee John Conyers, D-Mich., who told The Huffington Post recently, "We're coming after these guys."

Amrit Singh, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the Pentagon's photos "provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib. Their disclosure is critical for helping the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse as well as for holding senior officials accountable for authorizing or permitting such abuse." The ACLU also won a ruling to obtain documents relating to the CIA's destruction of 92 videotapes of harsh interrogations. The tapes are gone, supposedly, but notes about the content of the tapes remain, and a federal judge has ordered their release.

In December 2002, when the Bush torture program was well under way, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld signed off on a series of harsh interrogation techniques described in a memo written by William Hayes II (one of the "Bush Six" being investigated by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon). At the bottom of the memo, under his signature, Rumsfeld scrawled: "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?" Rumsfeld zealously classified information in his years in government.

A similar crisis confronted the U.S. public in the mid-1970s. While the Watergate scandal was unfolding, widespread evidence was mounting of illegal government activity, including domestic spying and the infiltration and disruption of legal political groups, mostly anti-war groups, in a broad-based, secret government crackdown on dissent. In response, the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities was formed. It came to be known as the Church Committee, named after its chairman, Idaho Democratic Sen. Frank Church. The Church Committee documented and exposed extraordinary activities on the CIA and FBI, such as CIA efforts to assassinate foreign leaders, and the FBI's COINTELPRO (counterintelligence) program, which extensively spied on prominent leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

It is not only the practices that are similar, but the people. Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr., general counsel to the Church Committee, noted two people who were active in the Ford White House and attempted to block the committee's work: "Rumsfeld and then [Dick] Cheney were people who felt that nothing should be known about these secret operations, and there should be as much disruption as possible."

Church's widow, Bethine Church, now 86, continues to be very politically active in Idaho. She was so active in Washington in the 1970s that she was known as "Idaho's third senator." She said there needs to be a similar investigation today: "When you think of all the things that the Church Committee tried to straighten out and when you think of the terrific secrecy that Cheney and all of these people dealt with, they were always secretive about everything, and they didn't want anything known. I think people have to know what went on. And that's why I think an independent committee [is needed], outside of the Congress, that just looked at the whole problem and everything that happened."
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

© 2009 Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.

What if Instead of the Nuremberg Trials There Was Only a Truth Commission?

Published on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

by Jeremy Scahill

Representatives John Conyers and Jerrold Nadler are officially asking Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint an independent Special Prosecutor "to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute" participants in the Bush-era US torture system. "A Special Counsel is the most appropriate way to handle this matter," Nadler said. "It would remove from the process any question that the investigation was subject to political pressure, and it would preempt any perceptions of conflict of interest within the Justice Department, which produced the torture memos." But, as Politico reports, "Holder is likely to reject that request - his boss, the president, has indicated he doesn't see the need for such a prosecutor." The Democratic Leadership, particularly Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Diane Feinstein have pushed for secret, closed-door hearings in the Senate Intelligence Committee. Other Democrats, like Patrick Leahy, advocate establishing a Truth Commission, though that is not gaining any momentum. The fact remains that some powerful Democrats knew that the torture was happening and didn't make a public peep in opposition.

This week, Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell came out in favor of prosecutions of "the decision-makers and their closest advisors (particularly the ones among the latter who may, on their own, have twisted the dagger a little deeper in Caesar's prostrate body - Rumsfeld and Feith for instance). Appoint a special prosecutor such as Fitzgerald, armed to the teeth, and give him or her carte blanche. Play the treatment of any intermediaries - that is, between the grunts on the ground and the Oval - as the law allows and the results demand."

Wilkerson, though, understands Washington. "Is there the political will to carry either of these recommendations to meaningful consequences?" he wrote to the Huffington Post. "No, and there won't be."

As of now, Conyers and Nadler aren't exactly looking for over-flow space for their meetings on how to get criminal prosecutions going.

Officially joining the anti-accountability camp this week was The Washington Post's David Broder who wrote this gem in defense of the Bush administration: "The memos on torture represented a deliberate, and internally well-debated, policy decision, made in the proper places - the White House, the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department - by the proper officials." (For a great response to this, check out Scott Horton). Broder is urging Obama to "stick to his guns" in standing up to pressure "to change his mind about closing the books on the ‘torture' policies of the past." Don't you love how Broder puts torture in quotes? I really wonder how Broder would describe it if he was waterboarded (and survived). Can't you just imagine him making the little quote motion with his hands? Broder's Washington Post column was titled "Stop Scapegoating: Obama Should Stand Against Prosecutions:"

[Obama was] right to declare that there should be no prosecution of those who carried out what had been the policy of the United States government. And he was right when he sent out his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to declare that the same amnesty should apply to the lawyers and bureaucrats who devised and justified the Bush administration practices.

But now Obama is being lobbied by politicians and voters who want something more - the humiliation and/or punishment of those responsible for the policies of the past. They are looking for individual scalps - or, at least, careers and reputations.

Their argument is that without identifying and punishing the perpetrators, there can be no accountability - and therefore no deterrent lesson for future administrations. It is a plausible-sounding rationale, but it cloaks an unworthy desire for vengeance.

Obama has opposed even the blandest form of investigation, a so-called truth commission, and has shown himself willing to confront this kind of populist anger.

Thank goodness we have a president who opposes "even the blandest form of investigation"-how uncouth such savagery would prove to be. While the elite Washington press corp works hard to make sure things don't get too uncomfortable at the wine and cheese cocktail parties, some liberal journalists are also making the case against a special prosecutor (or at least the immediate appointment of one). Last week it was Elizabeth de la Vega, who made an interesting case for waiting to prosecute while evidence is gathered:

We must have a prosecution eventually, but we are not legally required to publicly initiate it now and we should not, as justifiable as it is. I'm not concerned about political fallout. What's good or bad for either party has no legitimate place in this calculus. My sole consideration is litigation strategy: I want us to succeed.

This week it is Mother Jones Washington editor David Corn, who comes out in favor of a congressional investigation "that placed a premium on public disclosure" or "an independent commission." Corn describes how he recently warned a Congressmember who supports the appointment of a Special Prosecutor, "That's not necessarily a good idea." Corn talks about how a coalition of groups from the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU to Democrats.com and MoveOn.org have all petitioned for a prosecutor:

These liberals all want to see alleged Bush administration wrongdoing exposed. But there's one problem with a special prosecutor: it's not his job to expose wrongdoing. A special prosecutor does dig up facts-but only in order to prosecute a possible crime. His mission is not to shine light on misdeeds, unless it is part of a prosecution. In many cases, a prosecutor's investigation does not produce any prosecutions. Sometimes, it leads only to a limited prosecution.

That's what happened with Patrick Fitzgerald. He could not share with the public all that he had discovered about the involvement of Bush, Cheney, Karl Rove, and other officials in the CIA leak case... A special prosecutor, it turns out, is a rather imperfect vehicle for revealing the full truth.

[...]

Prosecuting government officials for providing legal opinions that greenlighted waterboarding and the like would pose its own legal challenges. Could a government prosecutor indict the government lawyers who composed and signed the torture memos for aiding and abetting torture without indicting the government employees who actually committed the torture? (President Barack Obama has pledged that the interrogators will not be pursued.) And could a prosecutor win cases in which his targets would obviously argue that they were providing what they believed was good-faith legal advice, even if it turned out that their advice was wrong?... Several lawyers I've consulted have said that a criminal case against the authors of these memos would be no slam dunk. One possible scenario is that a special prosecutor would investigate, find out that sordid maneuvering occurred at the highest levels of the Bush-Cheney administration, and then conclude that he or she did not have a strong enough legal case to warrant criminal indictments and trials.

The bottom line: Anyone who wants the full truth to come out about the Bush-Cheney administration's use of these interrogation practices cannot count on a special prosecutor.

Corn's advice to that unnamed Democratic Congressmember wasn't exactly well received by lawyers who have been pushing for prosecutions. Perhaps the most passionate advocate for the appointment of an independent Special Prosecutor right now is Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

"To argue that we should not have prosecutions because it won't bring out all the facts when taken to its logical conclusion would mean never prosecuting any official no matter the seriousness of the crimes," Ratner told me. "Right now is not the time to be backing off on prosecutions. Why are prosecutions of torturers ok for other non-western countries but not for the US?  Prosecution is necessary to deter torture in the future and send a message to ourselves and the rest of the world that the  seven or eight year torture program was unlawful and must not happen again. The purpose of prosecutions is to investigate and get convictions so that officials in the future will not again dispense with the prohibition on torture."

Constitutional Law expert Scott Horton says that the problems with a Special Prosecutor Corn lays out are "correct, but he makes the latent assumption that it's either/or.  That's absurd.  Obviously it should be both a commission and one or more prosecutors as crimes are identified."

Jameel Jaffer, one of the leading ACLU attorneys responsible for getting the torture memos released by the Obama administration, agrees with Horton. "I don't think we should have to choose between a criminal investigation and a congressional inquiry," Jaffer told me. "A congressional committee could examine the roots of the torture program and recommend legislative reform to prevent gross human rights abuses by future administrations. At the same time, a Justice Department investigation could investigate issues of criminal responsibility. One shouldn't foreclose the other."

Jaffer adds, "It might be a different story if we thought that Congress would need to offer immunity in exchange for testimony.  But many of the key players - including John Yoo, George Tenet, and Dick Cheney - have made clear that they have no qualms about talking publicly about their actions (Yoo and Tenet have both written books, and Cheney is writing one now)."

The bottom line, Ratner argues, is that "prosecutions will bring out facts." He cites the example of the Nuremberg Tribunals:

What if we had had a truth commission and no prosecutions?  Right now we have many means of getting the facts: FOIA, congressional investigations such as the Senate Armed Services Report, former interrogators, document releases by the Executive. There are plenty of ways to get information even if it does not all come out in prosecutions. Many of the calls to not prosecute are by those, particularly inside the beltway, who cannot imagine Bush, Cheney et al. in the dock or by those who accept the argument that the torture conspirators were trying their best. This is not a time to hold back on the demand that is required by law and fact: appoint a special prosecutor.

David Swanson, who for years has pushed for prosecutions of Bush administration officials, was one of the organizers of the petitions calling for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor. "My top priority is not ‘truth,'" he said. "My top priority is changing the current truth, which is that we don't have the nerve and decency to enforce our laws against powerful people."

Jeremy Scahill is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute.