Neocons 1, Obama 0
by Stephen Zunes
The Obama administration's choice to head the National Intelligence Council (NIC) recently withdrew in face of a concerted right-wing attack. Veteran diplomat Chas Freeman would not have had to face Senate confirmation. Instead, he had to face attacks in the right-wing press and blogosphere. His withdrawal was a victory for Bush-era neoconservatives and their allies regarding intelligence and broader Middle East Policy.
The NIC chairmanship is structured to offer a skeptical view on U.S. intelligence. With his broad knowledge and experience in East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, Freeman would appear to be an ideal appointee. Fluent in both major dialects of Chinese, he accompanied President Richard Nixon on his historic 1972 trip to China. Later, he served as principal deputy assistant secretary of State for African affairs, assistant secretary of Defense for international security affairs, and as ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf War. After retiring from the State Department, Freeman succeeded former senator and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern as head of the Middle East Policy Council, a centrist Washington think tank.
Those closest to Freeman have confirmed that his decision was indeed his own. Neither the president nor Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who had offered Freeman the position, asked him to withdraw his acceptance of the NIC post. At the same time, the White House's refusal to come to Freeman's defense in the face of misleading and defamatory attacks is reminiscent of the Clinton White House's abandonment of assistant attorney general nominee Lani Guinier in similar circumstances back in 1993.
The Sin of Being Right on Iraq
Freeman announced his withdrawal just hours after Blair praised Freeman before the Senate Intelligence Committee for his "wealth of knowledge and expertise in defense, diplomacy and intelligence." The seven Republican members of the committee didn't, however, welcome these attributes when they spoke out strongly against his appointment. Particularly upsetting to Freeman's right-wing opponents were his statements acknowledging the disastrous consequences of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a decision backed not only by Republicans but by such key Senate Democrats as Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, Vice President Joe Biden, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), an outspoken supporter of the invasion, kept pressing Blair on the Freeman appointment during the hearing, to which Blair replied that such criticism was based on a misunderstanding of the position. "I can do a better job if I'm getting strong analytical viewpoints to sort out and pass on to you and the president than if I'm getting precooked pablum judgments that don't really challenge," Blair said. Lieberman, clearly unsatisfied with Blair's response, promised he would continue to press the issue.
Freeman had raised the ire of war supporters in his articles and speeches exposing the errors of Bush policy in the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. "Al-Qaeda has played us with the finesse of a matador exhausting a great bull by guiding it into unproductive lunges at the void behind his cape," Freeman said, noting how invading Iraq appeared to the world's Muslims as "a wider war against Islam." Freeman further observed: "We destroyed the Iraqi state and catalyzed anarchy, sectarian violence, terrorism, and civil war in that country."
Not surprisingly, the bipartisan group attacking the appointment was led by such staunch supporters of the invasion of Iraq as Representatives Mark Kirk (R-IL), Steve Israel (D-NY), John Boehner (R-OH), Shelley Berkley (D-NV), and Eric Cantor (R-VA). Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), another outspoken supporter of the invasion of Iraq, insisted that "Freeman was the wrong guy for this position." Schumer even tried to take credit for Freeman's withdrawal, claiming, "I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing."
By contrast, those supporting intelligence assessments based on the facts rather than ideology had praised the appointment as an example of a shift away from the Bush administration policy. Freeman has "spent a goodly part of the last 10 years raising questions that otherwise might never get answered - or even asked - because they're too embarrassing, awkward, or difficult," Dan Froomkin of NiemanWatch observed. "For him to be put in charge of [the NIC]...is about the most emphatic statement the Obama administration could possibly make that it won't succumb to the kind of submissive intelligence-community groupthink that preceded the war in Iraq."
James Fallows of The Atlantic noted how "anyone who has worked in an organization knows how hard it is, but how vital, to find intelligent people who genuinely are willing to say inconvenient things even when everyone around them is getting impatient or annoyed. The truth is, you don't like them when they do that. You may not like them much at all. But without them, you're cooked."
Smear Campaign
In the days following Blair's appointment of Freeman, the attacks grew more and more bizarre. For example, since the Middle East Policy Council had received some grants from some Saudi-based foundations, Freeman was accused of thereby being "on the Saudi payroll" and even being a "Saudi puppet." In The New Republic, Martin Peretz insisted that Freeman was "a bought man." But it's certainly not unprecedented for presidential appointees to have worked with nonprofit organizations that have received support from foreign governments. Indeed, Dennis Ross, appointed last month as Special Advisor for the Gulf and Southwest Asia, is still listed as the board chair of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, which is supported by the Israeli government.
To set the record straight, Blair told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Freeman had "never lobbied for any government or business (domestic or foreign)" and that he had "never received any income directly from Saudi Arabia or any Saudi-controlled entity."
In another irony, the person identified as the principal orchestrator of the attacks against Freeman - including the charge that he was a Saudi agent - was Steven Rosen, former director of the right-wing American-Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Rosen currently faces espionage charges for transferring classified materials to the Israeli government. M.J. Rosenberg, a former colleague of Rosen who now serves as policy director of the Israel Policy Forum, said "you couldn't have picked anyone less credible to lead the charge" against Freeman. But Rosen's smear campaign was apparently credible enough to force Freeman to turn down the position.
Another line of attack was that Freeman, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, was a "China apologist." Critics cited quotes allegedly made by Freeman, many taken out of context, that appeared to justify repression by the Beijing regime, including the 1989 crackdown against pro-democracy activists. According to Blair, however, Freeman - who has spoken of the Tiananmen Square massacre as a "tragedy" - wasn't describing his own views but was simply observing what he considered to be "the dominant view in China." Similarly, a number of leading China experts came to Freeman's defense as well, with Jerome Cohen noting that claims of Freemen endorsing the 1989 repression were "ludicrous" and Sidney Rittenberg observing that as a U.S. diplomat in Beijing, Freeman was "a stalwart supporter of human rights who helped many individuals in need."
Yet Peretz falsely claimed that Freeman had "made himself a client of China" and was a man with "no humane or humanitarian scruples" who wanted the United States to "kow-tow to authoritarians and tyrants." Nor did it stop the National Review from claiming that Freeman's appointment proved "you can go directly from effectively working for the Saudis and Chinese to being the country's top intelligence analyst."
None of those attacking Blair's appointments on the grounds of supposedly supporting authoritarian regimes has ever raised concerns about Admiral Blair himself. Blair served as the head of the U.S. Pacific Command from February 1999 to May 2002, as East Timor was finally freeing itself from a quarter-century of brutal Indonesian occupation. As the highest-ranking U.S. military official in the region, he worked to undermine the Clinton administration's belated efforts to end the repression, promote human rights, and support the territory's right to self-determination. He also fought against congressional efforts to condition support for the Indonesian military on improving their poor human rights record. When human rights activists raised concerns about having a defender of death squads as the Director of National Intelligence, the Obama White House rushed to Blair's defense, something they were clearly not willing to do for Chas Freeman.
Criticizing Israeli Policies
Freeman's rightist critics also claimed that Freeman was "anti-Israel." For instance, Freeman rejected the Bush administration's policy of defending Israeli violence against Palestinians while insisting that the Palestinians had to unilaterally end their violence against Israelis. A number of Freeman's critics cited in horror Freeman's observation that until "Israeli violence against Palestinians" is halted, "it is utterly unrealistic to expect that Palestinians will stand down from violent resistance."
Freeman has been concerned for some time that U.S. policy is radicalizing the Palestinian population to the point of jeopardizing Israel's security interests. The United States had "abandoned the role of Middle East peacemaker to back Israel's efforts to pacify its captive and increasingly ghettoized Arab populations," he observed. "We wring our hands while sitting on them as the Jewish state continues to seize ever more Arab land for its colonists. This has convinced most Palestinians that Israel cannot be appeased and is persuading increasing numbers of them that a two-state solution is infeasible."
Ironically, a number of prominent Israeli academics, journalists, security analysts, military officers, and political leaders have made similar observations. Freeman's critics, however, believe that expressing such concerns makes Freeman - in the words of the Wall Street Journal - an "Israel basher." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a strident supporter of Israeli government policies, claimed that Freeman's views were "indefensible" and urged President Barack Obama to withdraw his appointment.
In his withdrawal statement, Freeman reiterated his concern that "the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel." He went on to observe that this "is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States."
Obama's Silence
A number of diplomats and other State Department professionals who had known Freeman as a colleague spoke up in favor of his nomination, and challenged the defamatory and libelous attacks against him. For example, a letter signed by former UN ambassador Thomas Pickering, former ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis, former ambassador to Afghanistan Samuel Neumann, and more than a dozen other current and former ambassadors noted: "We know Chas [Freeman] to be a man of integrity and high intelligence who would never let his personal views shade or distort intelligence assessments."
Similarly, a group of prominent former intelligence officials called the attacks against Freeman "unprecedented in their vehemence, scope, and target," noting how they were perpetrated by "pundits and public figures...aghast at the appointment of a senior intelligence official able to take a more balanced view of the Arab-Israel issue."
Yet despite so many mainstream officials coming to his defense, the Obama White House chose to remain silent.
Most pundits, as well as Freeman himself, have blamed the so-called "Israel Lobby" for forcing him out. While AIPAC itself was apparently not involved in the smear campaign, many of Freeman's harshest critics were among the strongest supporters of the Israeli right. However, the battle over Freeman's appointment was about a lot more than simply his views on Israel - or Saudi Arabia or China; it was about the integrity of our nation's intelligence system. Those who most exploited the false claims about nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction" in order to frighten the American public into supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq were the most eager to deny Freeman the chairmanship of the NIC.
And Freeman's willingness to ask the big questions frightened many on the right. For example, following 9/11, Freeman shared his disappointment that "instead of asking what might have caused the attack, or questioning the propriety of the national response to it, there is an ugly mood of chauvinism." His ability to look inward instead of simply attack "the other" is what apparently made him unworthy in the eyes of his critics.
Prior to Freeman's decision to withdraw, Chris Nelson of the influential Nelson Report, a daily private newsletter read by top Washington policymakers, wrote: "If Obama surrenders to the critics and orders [Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair] to rescind the Freeman appointment to chair the NIC, it is difficult to see how he can properly exercise leverage, when needed, in his conduct of policy in the Middle East. That, literally, is how the experts see the stakes of the fight now under way."
Obama apparently didn't order Freeman's appointment to be rescinded. But Obama's refusal to come to Freeman's defense will make it all the more difficult for the president to challenge future right-wing attacks on his administration's policies in the Middle East and beyond. Smelling victory, the right will only become bolder in challenging any progressive inclinations in Obama's foreign policy.
As Joe Klein so aptly put it in his Time blog, "Barack Obama should take note. The thugs have taken out Chas Freeman. They will not rest. Their real target is you, Mr. President."
© 2009 Foreign Policy In Focus
Stephen Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus. He is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003.)
reposted from:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/17-1
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The Fundies on the ropes?
There's a new power in America - atheism
by Andrew Sullivan
There is one thing that is not allowed in American national politics – and that is atheism. “In God We Trust” is on the currency; and the number of congressional members who avow no faith at all are about as plentiful as those who are openly gay (none in the Senate; five in the House).
Under the last president, religious faith – evangelical Christianity or Benedict-style Catholicism – was a prerequisite for real access to the inner circle. But the requirement is not just Republican. Among the more excruciating campaign events of last year was a faith summit for the Democrats in which candidates vied with one another to express the most piety. Barack Obama’s Christianity – educated, nuanced, social – is in many ways more striking than that of, say, Nixon, Truman or Eisenhower.
Americans are losing faith, though; and those who have it are moving out of established churches. The nonreligious are now the third biggest grouping in the US, after Catholics and Baptists, according to the just-released American Religious Identification Survey. The bulk of this shift occurred in the 1990s, when they jumped from 8% to 14% of the population – but they have consolidated in the past decade to 15%.
As elsewhere in the West, mainline Protestantism has had the biggest drop – from 19% to 13%. Despite heavy Latino immigration, the proportion of Catholics has drifted down since 1990, and their numbers have shifted dramatically from the northeast and the rust belt to the south and west. Take South Carolina, a state you might associate with hardcore Protestant evangelicalism. It certainly does exist there – but in that southern state, the percentage of Catholics has almost doubled since 1990 and the percentage of atheists has tripled.
America, it turns out, is a more complicated spiritual place than the stereotypes might imply. Islam is still tiny – and integrated and largely successful. Catholicism, while buoyant among new Hispanic immigrants (who are, nonetheless, drifting rapidly towards evangelicalism in the southern hemisphere whence they came), has plummeted in its heartland. Think of Massachusetts, the home of the Irish and Italian and Portuguese. In 1990, Catholics accounted for 54% of all residents of the Kennedys’ state. That’s now 39%.
The bulk of these ex-Catholics joined no other faith group – and the number of residents claiming no religion at all jumped from 8% to 22%. Of course, the sex abuse scandal played a powerful part. One of the chief enablers and protectors of abusive priests, Cardinal Bernard Law, was based in Boston and escaped real accountability by being given a prestigious sinecure in Rome. The Irish and Italians in Massachusetts did not forget.
In many ways the most interesting dynamic is that between mega-church, politicised evangelicalism and atheism. Mega-churches have emerged in many suburban neighbourhoods in America and serve as community centres, as social-work hubs and as venues for what most outsiders would think of as stadium-style Sunday rock shows, in which religion looks like a form of fandom. Charismatic preachers – like the now disgraced Ted Haggard or the politically powerful Rick Warren – have built massive congregations.
The movement has spawned its own shadow pop music industry, coopts the popular culture as any brand-conscious franchise would and has a completely informal form of worship. Go to one of these places and it feels like a town in itself – with shops, daycare centres, conference rooms and social networking groups. The car parks feel like those in sports stadiums; and the atmosphere evokes a big match. In 20 years, the number of Americans finding identity and God in these places has soared from 200,000 to more than 8m.
This is not, one hastens to add, an intellectual form of faith. It is a highly emotional and spontaneous variety of American Protestantism and theologically a blend of self-help, biblical literalism and Republican politics. This is, in many ways, how George W Bush reframed conservatism in America – and with one in three Americans now calling themselves evangelical, you can see the political temptation. The problem was that the issues the evangelicals focused obsessively on – abortion, gays, stem cells, feeding tubes for those in permanent vegetative states – often came to seem warped to many others. Those who might once have passively called themselves Christian suddenly found the label toxic, if it meant identifying with such a specific political agenda. And so as evangelicalism rose, atheism and nonaffiliation emerged as a reaction.
It is impossible to know where this is heading, but the latest survey is a reminder to exercise a little scepticism when you hear of America’s religious exceptionalism. Yes, America is far more devout than most of western Europe; but it is not immune to the broader crises facing established religion in the West. The days when America’s leading intellectuals contained a strong cadre of serious Christians are over. There is no Thomas Merton in our day; no Reinhold Niebuhr, Walker Percy or Flannery O’Connor. In the arguments spawned by the new atheist wave, the Christian respondents have been underwhelming. As one evangelical noted in The Christian Science Monitor last week, “being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence”.
The quality of the Catholic priesthood has also drifted downward: the next generation of priests is more orthodox, but also more insular and less engaged with the wider world. There are a few exceptions: the 29-year-old orthodox Catholic Ross Douthat has just won a treasured opinion column slot in The New York Times. But he is sadly an exception that proves a more general rule. American Christianity may be stronger in some pockets, but it is dumber too. In the end, in the free market-place of ideas and beliefs, that will count.
What one yearns for is a resuscitation of a via media in American religious life – the role that the established Protestant churches once played. Or at least an understanding that religion must absorb and explain the new facts of modernity: the deepening of the Darwinian consensus in the sciences, the irrefutable scriptural scholarship that makes biblical literalism intellectually contemptible, the shifting shape of family life, the new reality of openly gay people, the fact of gender equality in the secular world. It seems to me that American Christianity, despite so many resources, has ignored its intellectual responsibility. And atheists, if this continues much longer, will continue to pick up that slack.
reposted from:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,3657,Theres-a-new-power-in-America---atheism,Andrew-Sullivan
by Andrew Sullivan
There is one thing that is not allowed in American national politics – and that is atheism. “In God We Trust” is on the currency; and the number of congressional members who avow no faith at all are about as plentiful as those who are openly gay (none in the Senate; five in the House).
Under the last president, religious faith – evangelical Christianity or Benedict-style Catholicism – was a prerequisite for real access to the inner circle. But the requirement is not just Republican. Among the more excruciating campaign events of last year was a faith summit for the Democrats in which candidates vied with one another to express the most piety. Barack Obama’s Christianity – educated, nuanced, social – is in many ways more striking than that of, say, Nixon, Truman or Eisenhower.
Americans are losing faith, though; and those who have it are moving out of established churches. The nonreligious are now the third biggest grouping in the US, after Catholics and Baptists, according to the just-released American Religious Identification Survey. The bulk of this shift occurred in the 1990s, when they jumped from 8% to 14% of the population – but they have consolidated in the past decade to 15%.
As elsewhere in the West, mainline Protestantism has had the biggest drop – from 19% to 13%. Despite heavy Latino immigration, the proportion of Catholics has drifted down since 1990, and their numbers have shifted dramatically from the northeast and the rust belt to the south and west. Take South Carolina, a state you might associate with hardcore Protestant evangelicalism. It certainly does exist there – but in that southern state, the percentage of Catholics has almost doubled since 1990 and the percentage of atheists has tripled.
America, it turns out, is a more complicated spiritual place than the stereotypes might imply. Islam is still tiny – and integrated and largely successful. Catholicism, while buoyant among new Hispanic immigrants (who are, nonetheless, drifting rapidly towards evangelicalism in the southern hemisphere whence they came), has plummeted in its heartland. Think of Massachusetts, the home of the Irish and Italian and Portuguese. In 1990, Catholics accounted for 54% of all residents of the Kennedys’ state. That’s now 39%.
The bulk of these ex-Catholics joined no other faith group – and the number of residents claiming no religion at all jumped from 8% to 22%. Of course, the sex abuse scandal played a powerful part. One of the chief enablers and protectors of abusive priests, Cardinal Bernard Law, was based in Boston and escaped real accountability by being given a prestigious sinecure in Rome. The Irish and Italians in Massachusetts did not forget.
In many ways the most interesting dynamic is that between mega-church, politicised evangelicalism and atheism. Mega-churches have emerged in many suburban neighbourhoods in America and serve as community centres, as social-work hubs and as venues for what most outsiders would think of as stadium-style Sunday rock shows, in which religion looks like a form of fandom. Charismatic preachers – like the now disgraced Ted Haggard or the politically powerful Rick Warren – have built massive congregations.
The movement has spawned its own shadow pop music industry, coopts the popular culture as any brand-conscious franchise would and has a completely informal form of worship. Go to one of these places and it feels like a town in itself – with shops, daycare centres, conference rooms and social networking groups. The car parks feel like those in sports stadiums; and the atmosphere evokes a big match. In 20 years, the number of Americans finding identity and God in these places has soared from 200,000 to more than 8m.
This is not, one hastens to add, an intellectual form of faith. It is a highly emotional and spontaneous variety of American Protestantism and theologically a blend of self-help, biblical literalism and Republican politics. This is, in many ways, how George W Bush reframed conservatism in America – and with one in three Americans now calling themselves evangelical, you can see the political temptation. The problem was that the issues the evangelicals focused obsessively on – abortion, gays, stem cells, feeding tubes for those in permanent vegetative states – often came to seem warped to many others. Those who might once have passively called themselves Christian suddenly found the label toxic, if it meant identifying with such a specific political agenda. And so as evangelicalism rose, atheism and nonaffiliation emerged as a reaction.
It is impossible to know where this is heading, but the latest survey is a reminder to exercise a little scepticism when you hear of America’s religious exceptionalism. Yes, America is far more devout than most of western Europe; but it is not immune to the broader crises facing established religion in the West. The days when America’s leading intellectuals contained a strong cadre of serious Christians are over. There is no Thomas Merton in our day; no Reinhold Niebuhr, Walker Percy or Flannery O’Connor. In the arguments spawned by the new atheist wave, the Christian respondents have been underwhelming. As one evangelical noted in The Christian Science Monitor last week, “being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence”.
The quality of the Catholic priesthood has also drifted downward: the next generation of priests is more orthodox, but also more insular and less engaged with the wider world. There are a few exceptions: the 29-year-old orthodox Catholic Ross Douthat has just won a treasured opinion column slot in The New York Times. But he is sadly an exception that proves a more general rule. American Christianity may be stronger in some pockets, but it is dumber too. In the end, in the free market-place of ideas and beliefs, that will count.
What one yearns for is a resuscitation of a via media in American religious life – the role that the established Protestant churches once played. Or at least an understanding that religion must absorb and explain the new facts of modernity: the deepening of the Darwinian consensus in the sciences, the irrefutable scriptural scholarship that makes biblical literalism intellectually contemptible, the shifting shape of family life, the new reality of openly gay people, the fact of gender equality in the secular world. It seems to me that American Christianity, despite so many resources, has ignored its intellectual responsibility. And atheists, if this continues much longer, will continue to pick up that slack.
reposted from:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,3657,Theres-a-new-power-in-America---atheism,Andrew-Sullivan
Confirming what most of us already knew
Red Cross Described 'Torture' at CIA Jails - Secret Report Implies That U.S. Violated International Law
by Joby Warrick, Peter Finn and Julie Tate
The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's treatment of al-Qaeda captives "constituted torture," a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document.
The report, an account alleging physical and psychological brutality inside CIA "black site" prisons, also states that some U.S. practices amounted to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Such maltreatment of detainees is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
The findings were based on an investigation by ICRC officials, who were granted exclusive access to the CIA's "high-value" detainees after they were transferred in 2006 to the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The 14 detainees, who had been kept in isolation in CIA prisons overseas, gave remarkably uniform accounts of abuse that included beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and, in some cases, waterboarding, or simulating drowning.
At least five copies of the report were shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007 but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the humanitarian group's strict policy of neutrality in conflicts. A copy of the report was obtained by Mark Danner, a journalism professor and author who published extensive excerpts in the April 9 edition of the New York Review of Books, released yesterday. He did not say how he obtained the report.
"The ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture," Danner quoted the report as saying.
Many of the details of alleged mistreatment at CIA prisons had been reported previously, but the ICRC report is the most authoritative account and the first to use the word "torture" in a legal context.
The CIA declined to comment. A U.S. official familiar with the report said, "It is important to bear in mind that the report lays out claims made by the terrorists themselves."
Often using the detainee's own words, the report offers a harrowing view of conditions at the secret prisons, where prisoners were told they were being taken "to the verge of death and back," according to one excerpt. During interrogations, the captives were routinely beaten, doused with cold water and slammed head-first into walls. Between sessions, they were stripped of clothing, bombarded with loud music, exposed to cold temperatures, and deprived of sleep and solid food for days on end. Some detainees described being forced to stand for days, with their arms shackled above them, wearing only diapers.
"On a daily basis . . . a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room," the report quotes detainee Tawfiq bin Attash, also known as Walid Muhammad bin Attash, as saying. Later, he said, he was wrapped in a plastic sheet while cold water was "poured onto my body with buckets." He added: "I would be wrapped inside the sheet with cold water for several minutes. Then I would be taken for interrogation."
ICRC officials did not dispute the authenticity of the excerpts, but a spokesman expressed dismay over the leak of the material. "We regret information attributed to the ICRC report was made public in this manner," spokesman Bernard Barrett said.
"The ICRC has been visiting the detainees formerly held by the CIA," he added, "at Guantanamo since 2006. Any concerns or observations the ICRC had when visiting the detainees are part of a confidential dialogue."
President George W. Bush acknowledged the use of coercive interrogation tactics on senior al-Qaeda captives detained by the CIA in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but he insisted that the measures complied with U.S. and international law. Former CIA director Michael V. Hayden confirmed last year that the measures included the use of waterboarding on three captives before 2003.
President Obama outlawed such practices within hours of his inauguration in January. But Obama has expressed reluctance to conduct a legal inquiry into the CIA's policies.
The report gives a graphic account of the treatment of Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida, a Saudi-born Palestinian who was the first alleged senior al-Qaeda operative seized after Sept. 11 -- a characterization of his role that is disputed by his attorneys, who describe him as having a different philosophy of jihad than bin Laden.
Abu Zubaida was severely wounded during a shootout in March 2002 at a safe house he ran in Faisalabad, Pakistan, and survived thanks to CIA-arranged medical care, including multiple surgeries. After he recovered, Abu Zubaida describes being shackled to a chair at the feet and hands for two to three weeks in a cold room with "loud, shouting type music" blaring constantly, according to the ICRC report. He said that he was questioned two to three hours a day and that water was sprayed in his face if he fell asleep.
At some point -- the timing is unclear from the New York Review of Books report -- Abu Zubaida's treatment became harsher. In July 2002, administration lawyers approved more aggressive techniques.
Abu Zubaida said interrogators wrapped a towel around his neck and slammed him into a plywood wall mounted in his cell. He was also repeatedly slapped in the face, he said. After the beatings, he was placed in coffinlike wooden boxes in which he was forced to crouch, with no light and a restricted air supply, he said.
"The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in my leg and stomach became very painful," he told the ICRC.
After he was removed from a small box, he said, he was strapped to what looked like a hospital bed and waterboarded. "A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe," Abu Zubaida said.
After breaks to allow him to recover, the waterboarding continued.
"I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless," he said. "I thought I was going to die."
In a federal court filing, Abu Zubaida's attorneys said he "has suffered approximately 175 seizures that appear to be directly related to his extensive torture -- particularly damage to Petitioner's head that was the result of beatings sustained at the hands of CIA interrogators and exacerbated by his lengthy isolation."
Danner said the organization's use of the word "torture" has important legal implications.
"It could not be more important that the ICRC explicitly uses the words 'torture' and 'cruel and degrading,' " Danner said in a telephone interview. "The ICRC is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions, and when it uses those words, they have the force of law."
He discounted the possibility that the detainees fabricated or embellished their stories, noting that the accounts overlap "in minute detail," even though the detainees were kept in isolation at different locations.
Human rights groups echoed his assessment.
"These reports are from an impeccable source," said Geneve Mantri, a counterterrorism specialist at Amnesty International. "It's clear that senior officials were warned from the very beginning that the treatment that detainees were subjected to amounted to torture. This story goes even further and deeper than many us of suspected. The more details we find out, the more shocking this becomes."
Published on Monday, March 16, 2009 by the Washington Post
reposted from:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/03/16-0
by Joby Warrick, Peter Finn and Julie Tate
The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's treatment of al-Qaeda captives "constituted torture," a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document.
The report, an account alleging physical and psychological brutality inside CIA "black site" prisons, also states that some U.S. practices amounted to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Such maltreatment of detainees is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
The findings were based on an investigation by ICRC officials, who were granted exclusive access to the CIA's "high-value" detainees after they were transferred in 2006 to the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The 14 detainees, who had been kept in isolation in CIA prisons overseas, gave remarkably uniform accounts of abuse that included beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and, in some cases, waterboarding, or simulating drowning.
At least five copies of the report were shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007 but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the humanitarian group's strict policy of neutrality in conflicts. A copy of the report was obtained by Mark Danner, a journalism professor and author who published extensive excerpts in the April 9 edition of the New York Review of Books, released yesterday. He did not say how he obtained the report.
"The ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture," Danner quoted the report as saying.
Many of the details of alleged mistreatment at CIA prisons had been reported previously, but the ICRC report is the most authoritative account and the first to use the word "torture" in a legal context.
The CIA declined to comment. A U.S. official familiar with the report said, "It is important to bear in mind that the report lays out claims made by the terrorists themselves."
Often using the detainee's own words, the report offers a harrowing view of conditions at the secret prisons, where prisoners were told they were being taken "to the verge of death and back," according to one excerpt. During interrogations, the captives were routinely beaten, doused with cold water and slammed head-first into walls. Between sessions, they were stripped of clothing, bombarded with loud music, exposed to cold temperatures, and deprived of sleep and solid food for days on end. Some detainees described being forced to stand for days, with their arms shackled above them, wearing only diapers.
"On a daily basis . . . a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room," the report quotes detainee Tawfiq bin Attash, also known as Walid Muhammad bin Attash, as saying. Later, he said, he was wrapped in a plastic sheet while cold water was "poured onto my body with buckets." He added: "I would be wrapped inside the sheet with cold water for several minutes. Then I would be taken for interrogation."
ICRC officials did not dispute the authenticity of the excerpts, but a spokesman expressed dismay over the leak of the material. "We regret information attributed to the ICRC report was made public in this manner," spokesman Bernard Barrett said.
"The ICRC has been visiting the detainees formerly held by the CIA," he added, "at Guantanamo since 2006. Any concerns or observations the ICRC had when visiting the detainees are part of a confidential dialogue."
President George W. Bush acknowledged the use of coercive interrogation tactics on senior al-Qaeda captives detained by the CIA in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but he insisted that the measures complied with U.S. and international law. Former CIA director Michael V. Hayden confirmed last year that the measures included the use of waterboarding on three captives before 2003.
President Obama outlawed such practices within hours of his inauguration in January. But Obama has expressed reluctance to conduct a legal inquiry into the CIA's policies.
The report gives a graphic account of the treatment of Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida, a Saudi-born Palestinian who was the first alleged senior al-Qaeda operative seized after Sept. 11 -- a characterization of his role that is disputed by his attorneys, who describe him as having a different philosophy of jihad than bin Laden.
Abu Zubaida was severely wounded during a shootout in March 2002 at a safe house he ran in Faisalabad, Pakistan, and survived thanks to CIA-arranged medical care, including multiple surgeries. After he recovered, Abu Zubaida describes being shackled to a chair at the feet and hands for two to three weeks in a cold room with "loud, shouting type music" blaring constantly, according to the ICRC report. He said that he was questioned two to three hours a day and that water was sprayed in his face if he fell asleep.
At some point -- the timing is unclear from the New York Review of Books report -- Abu Zubaida's treatment became harsher. In July 2002, administration lawyers approved more aggressive techniques.
Abu Zubaida said interrogators wrapped a towel around his neck and slammed him into a plywood wall mounted in his cell. He was also repeatedly slapped in the face, he said. After the beatings, he was placed in coffinlike wooden boxes in which he was forced to crouch, with no light and a restricted air supply, he said.
"The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in my leg and stomach became very painful," he told the ICRC.
After he was removed from a small box, he said, he was strapped to what looked like a hospital bed and waterboarded. "A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe," Abu Zubaida said.
After breaks to allow him to recover, the waterboarding continued.
"I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless," he said. "I thought I was going to die."
In a federal court filing, Abu Zubaida's attorneys said he "has suffered approximately 175 seizures that appear to be directly related to his extensive torture -- particularly damage to Petitioner's head that was the result of beatings sustained at the hands of CIA interrogators and exacerbated by his lengthy isolation."
Danner said the organization's use of the word "torture" has important legal implications.
"It could not be more important that the ICRC explicitly uses the words 'torture' and 'cruel and degrading,' " Danner said in a telephone interview. "The ICRC is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions, and when it uses those words, they have the force of law."
He discounted the possibility that the detainees fabricated or embellished their stories, noting that the accounts overlap "in minute detail," even though the detainees were kept in isolation at different locations.
Human rights groups echoed his assessment.
"These reports are from an impeccable source," said Geneve Mantri, a counterterrorism specialist at Amnesty International. "It's clear that senior officials were warned from the very beginning that the treatment that detainees were subjected to amounted to torture. This story goes even further and deeper than many us of suspected. The more details we find out, the more shocking this becomes."
Published on Monday, March 16, 2009 by the Washington Post
reposted from:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/03/16-0
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