Patterico's Pontifications

11/17/2007

Moving on to Reality

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 10:34 am



I’m ready to move on from hypotheticals about waterboarding to what they mean in the real world. There’s no better way to do so than to discuss the matter with three smart bloggers who answered my first hypothetical, about whether it would be worth it to waterboard Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I’m thinking here of Armed Liberal, and Sebastian and Katherine from Obsidian Wings.

Let me preface my discussion by saying that I have a very different view of what should happen in the real world than I do in my admittedly unrealistic hypotheticals. My general view is that we should not be torturing people — and I include waterboarding in the category of actions that constitute “torture” — as a routine matter at all. I’d be willing to bet that many people agree with that — that when we have a run-of-the-mill accused terrorist who may or may not be a terrorist, and he may or may not have information that may or may not save lives, we should not torture that person for the information.

The discussion we have been having is on the margins. It relates to the high-value detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or (if we captured him) Osama bin Laden. Rational people accept that these people are indeed terrorists. When captured, they will almost certainly have information relating to ongoing terror plots.

What do we do with people like that?

It’s a very difficult question, with enough facets that you could probably write a book about it.

You could take the view that you torture them mercilessly and extract whatever information you can. But there are serious costs to such an approach, and the bloggers mentioned above discuss some of them. There are slippery slope arguments grounded in reality, arguments about the kind of society we want to be, arguments about the reliability of the information we get, and so on. Any confession you get is going to be unusable in court, and will interfere with any criminal prosecutions that might occur.

Or you could take the view that we treat them the same as we have treated criminal suspects in the past — read them their rights, and if they invoke their right to an attorney, then stop all questioning. There are serious costs to that approach too, including the fact that innocent people are more likely to die.

There are approaches in between as well.

It’s not an easy question, and every suggestion will run into rational counterarguments. Again, you could write a book about it.

As this post is long enough, I think I will respond to each of these bloggers in turn, starting with Armed Liberal.

120 Responses to “Moving on to Reality”

  1. You can start by listing how waterboarding is not going to be applied:

    1) To get a confession. (Useless anyway.) So any “potential waterboardee” is someone you already have far more evidence than you need to prosecute, and (in the view of the decision maker) more than a successful prosecution would need as well.

    2) Reliability. The whole reliability question keeps coming back to what types of questions are being asked. Nebulous questions, questions that are not immediately checkable, organizational questions – any answer to those is always in the ‘highly suspect’ realm. Reliability goes up dramatically if you already have narrowed to specific answers you’re missing. “What is the password to your laptop?”, “What time tonight were you to meet Josef?”, “Where is the VX right now?” (All presuming you have some reason to expect the detainee to have an answer to those sorts of questions.)

    3) Orders. This should not be something that can ever be ordered. Someone’s freedom and career should be on the line every single time. The individual has to personally have enough knowledge to feel the benefits outweigh risks – knowing that the risks would apply personally. Not ‘departmentally’.

    Al (b624ac)

  2. “Orders. This should not be something that can ever be ordered.”

    I disagree and agree with Alan Dershowitz. It should be used so rarely and only in such important circumstances, that an order from the President is required. Some government employee earning $49,000 per year shouldn’t be the one person, personally, who has to put his entire freedom and career on the line. He may or may not be willing to do so. But if the President or acting President is not willing to give such an order, do not use waterboarding or torture.

    Apparently its use is so rare anyway this would not be an administrative burden. And it should never become so common that it has the potential to be.

    Later, all. I need to do a Mike Huckabee and whip my ass in shape.

    Christoph (92b8f7)

  3. I am not invoking the reality simply to make the slippery slope arguments credible & not farfetched. I am saying: if you are arguing that torture is necessary based on real-world consequences, the ONLY legitimate or useful argument to have is to look at actual real-world torture policies and ask: based on the information we have, did the benefits outweigh the costs? Was this a defensible response to the dangers at hand, or was it a huge mistake with disastrous moral & practical consequences? It’s not enough to say: there could be benefits. Even if I conceded that this is best resolved with a cost benefit analysis, which I don’t, it seems to me that to make a convincing consequentialist case you would actually have to prove the benefits, and not just assume that they existed because it was PLAUSIBLE that they COULD exist. The costs I’m talking about aren’t just plausible; they actually happened.

    Maybe you’re arguing: “I’m not actually defending the President’s policies, mistakes were made, this is more of a theoretical policy discussion going forward.” That’s nice & all, but if you need to assume a benevolent gov’t torturing only the right people only as much as authorized & no more to make the authorization defensible, you’re still not grounding this discussion in reality. And if we’re all consequentialists here, I also want to consider the consequences of MY actions: in the real world, a defense of ANY authorization to torture will help perpetuate the Bush administration’s torture policies (since the gov’t can easily lie & hide the evidence when it’s torture policies go badly, & since even when the evidence does become public defenders of the administration are only too happy to simply ignore it.) Yours included.

    By the way, did you notice how many commenters thought I was advocating the assassination of Vice President Cheney & one asked whether it was illegal to even talk about such a thing & what the Secret Service would think of this? Imagine what reaction I would have gotten if (1) I was actually trying to make a point how assassination was sometimes justified instead of making a point about the uselessness of artificial hypotheticals in making moral/policy choices; (2) there had been a recent rash of assassination attempts against Bush administration officials, resulting in several gov’t officials being murdered or suffering debilitating injuries.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  4. What do we do with people like that?

    Kill a pig, skin it and sew them up in the fresh skin. As it dries, it will shrink.

    You can take the attitude that you are in loco parentis to your prisoner — responsible for his welfare as he would be himself were he free. Or you could say that he is a prisoner because he is a dangerous enemy who deserves no more consideration than a razor blade you have removed from an apple. The second approach is the more realistic and honest one. Take the first one if you wish but be prepared to be responsible for people jumping a thousand feet to their deaths to avoid a 3,000 degree fire.

    nk (09a321)

  5. When a “terrorist” sets out on his first mission, he has AFAIAC, signed his own death warrant. How that death arrives is another matter. This has nothing to do with courts of law. This is survival!

    Another Drew (8018ee)

  6. To put it another way: you authorize torture by the government you have.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  7. What do we do with people like that?

    They should be treated as soldiers in violation of the Geneva Conventions & Laws of War. They should not get the protection of U.S. law. Their punishment should be outside the sphere of politics. And extraction of information should be given priority over their well-being. If these cowards are unwilling to wear a uniform and declare open war, we should be completely intolerant of unequal protection under the law.

    Suicidal nations are those that let their own good conscience be used as a bludgeon against them.

    H2U (090516)

  8. Specifically, with the “don’t worry, we promise that these are all high level detainees & are all guilty” argument: this administration has a consistent 6 year track record of lying through its teeth about how these discussions only affect “the worst of the worst”–actually, of lying through its teeth about these policies in general. If you are authorizing the secret torture of high level terrorism suspects who haven’t been convicted of anything, you are authorizing torture of whomever the administration SAYS is a high level terrorist.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  9. Katherine, the gov’t is not obligated to tell us the truth about everything. To believe they have such an obligation is not only selfish, it is throughly stupid. Your post is a perfect caricature of the “entitlement society” that plagues this nation: you expect absolutely honesty because you feel you’ve somehow earned it just be the virtue of being a citizen.

    Knowledge is power, and a nation cannot remain strong when power is so thoroughly marginalized through the even dispersal of knowledge. This administration, when all is said and done, has established that a policy of preemptive action and vigilant surveillance can prevent domestic attacks from occurring. If a lie can save American lives, this Hebrew says fib away.

    But perhaps I’m just naive…

    H2U (090516)

  10. You can believe that. But if you give the gov’t the power to classify/lie about who it’s torturing, you cannot honestly defend it’s torture policies on the basis that you know it’s only torturing evil terrorist masterminds.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  11. its torture policies.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  12. Good post, Patterico.

    Russell (cf89ed)

  13. This post, by the way completely undermines your credibility on the subject with me, & makes me wonder why I should bother continuing the discussion. Unbelievably credulous & ignorant.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  14. Well, it’s a year ago, and I’m willing to be educated, Katherine.

    I’m not one of those people who claims I’m never wrong.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  15. I’m not steeped in the facts of the case. Can you tell me why we would rely on Syria to give us accurate information? Just the postcard version.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  16. Katherine,

    I guess Bill Clinton has no credibility with you on this subject either.

    DRJ (42ad54)

  17. That’s nice & all, but if you need to assume a benevolent gov’t torturing only the right people only as much as authorized & no more to make the authorization defensible, you’re still not grounding this discussion in reality.

    Why not? We’ve only waterboarded three people, all of them undeniable war criminals.

    KSM provided good intelligence that was vital to the breakup of several plots, didn’t he?

    So your argument is essentially baseless.

    Unless you’re trying to say that waterboarding, extraordinary rendition and alleged torture by foreign governments, and criminal abuse that was punished as the same thing.

    If so, you need to start grounding yourself in “reality.”

    By your own standards, for four years the government has acted acceptably regarding waterboarding. Three people in four years. All of them undoubtedly guilty. The waterboarding wasn’t gratuitous; the longest time was 2.5 minutes. They didn’t keep waterboarding after the subjects gave in or anything. Good intelligence gained out of it.

    You do a good job of refuting yourself anyway.

    chaos (9c54c6)

  18. DRJ: No, Bill Clinton doesn’t.

    Patterico: It’s not that you were wrong; anyone can get things wrong. I’s that you wrote that the explanation that exonerated the Bush administration was “the obvious one” & accusations to the contrary were “leftists assuming Syria is our pal” without any apparent attempt to research the case. (And by attempts to research, I don’t mean interviewing insider sources; I mean google searches & reading readily available sources.).

    I first heard of the Arar case in November 2003. I also started with the assumption that it was a horrible, tragic screwup by the INS, but by January 2004 I had figured out that that was false, based solely on
    published news articles. There’s been a great deal more evidence that’s come out since then, including several official reports from the Canadian government as well as a bunch of shorter weblog posts (ahem) & news articles quoting those reports.

    A few days before you posted your remarks on Arar, I posted this, which contains some details about U.S. intelligence’s contacts with Syrian intelligence & with Canada before Arar was sent to Syria. If you doubt Alamalki’s & El-Maati’s veracity, I’d recommend reading this Canadian government report (it’s not the 1000 page PDF, just 27 pages). I’d also note that Arar is NOT the only suspect we’ve sent to Syria. That last article, which dates from 2002, describes the rendition of an Al Qaeda suspect named Mohamed Haydar Zammar:

    “U.S. officials tell TIME that no Americans are in the room with the Syrians who interrogate Zammar. U.S. officials in Damascus submit written questions to the Syrians, who relay Zammar’s answers back. State Department officials like the arrangement because it insulates the U.S. government from any torture the Syrians may be applying to Zammar. And some State Department officials suspect that Zammar is being tortured.”

    Most people who defend the administration say that “of course I don’t want innocent people to be torture, or even people who might be innocent; that’s abhorrent.” But when it actually happens, people look away, assume the allegations false without looking at the evidence, assume the suspects are guilty without looking at the evidencem defend the administration’s use of state secrets privilege to hide the evidence & prevent the victims from being compensated, & go right on back arguing as if of course we’re only talking about torturing people like KSM.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  19. (1) You don’t, in fact, know that waterboarding was restricted to 3 people, for a maximum of 1.5 minutes, resulting in awesome intelligence. You know that anonymous CIA officials claimed that the ABC news, and because it is ideologically convenient for you, you accept it as fact. But it may or may not actually be true. Other sources have told ABC news that “Of the 12 high-value targets housed by the CIA, only one did not require water boarding before he talked.” A former army interrogator has said that at least one interrogator & a prisoner he interrogated had told him about using waterboarding in Iraq.

    (2) Even if waterboarding stayed limited, other CIA techniques didn’t. Hypothermia spread widely. “Forced standing” spread REALLY widely. Both have led to prisoner deaths.

    And I can sit here, and provide evidence of this until I’m blue in the face, and it will not have any effect.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  20. “I’m not steeped in the facts of the case. Can you tell me why we would rely on Syria to give us accurate information? Just the postcard version.”

    Sorry, I missed this one. Why would we? Well, they’re secular Ba’athists, they don’t like Sunni Muslim extremists like the Muslim Brotherhood very much, & at one point we were cooperating with them in intelligence efforts. But it’s not like I think it was a *good idea* to rely on them–& you’ll just have to ask the Bush administration why thought it was justified. The only answer I can come up with is that while authorizing torture may START with the desire for accurate intelligence, once you actually give that kind of power to a government the justifications & restraints on it get thrown out the window very quickly.

    If you assume that “gee, torturing someone like that would be really horrible & unjustified & not in our interests, so the allegations probably aren’t true,” you’re not going to be a very reliable watchdog against the gov’t torturing people.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  21. (1) You don’t, in fact, know that waterboarding was restricted to 3 people, for a maximum of 1.5 minutes, resulting in awesome intelligence. You know that anonymous CIA officials claimed that the ABC news, and because it is ideologically convenient for you, you accept it as fact. But it may or may not actually be true. Other sources have told ABC news that “Of the 12 high-value targets housed by the CIA, only one did not require water boarding before he talked.” A former army interrogator has said that at least one interrogator & a prisoner he interrogated had told him about using waterboarding in Iraq.

    Actually it was because I’d never heard any other number.

    If you really think that changing the number from 3 to 9, or 12, or 15, or whatever, is going to change my mind, you’re wrong.

    My point remains. Your information does not support any kind of contention that waterboarding interrogations were approved cavalierly.

    (2) Even if waterboarding stayed limited, other CIA techniques didn’t. Hypothermia spread widely. “Forced standing” spread REALLY widely. Both have led to prisoner deaths.

    That’s a very nice red herring.

    So hypothermia and forced standing led to prisoner deaths. I doubt the intent was to kill them. Mistakes happen, even callous mistakes, even mistakes so large that they have to be punished. It’s war.

    And I really do hate to bring this up, but if you would please point me to your tens of thousands of words expounding upon the evils of al Qaeda strapping children into cars to get them past checkpoints and blowing them up with the children still inside in Iraq, or the abattoirs of Fallujah, or the three American soldiers kidnapped, killed and mutilated south of Baghdad in May, I’d appreciate it.

    I highly doubt you would agree that the United States is morally inferior to her foes in this war, but I’m skimming down the Obsidian Wings main page, and I’m seeing post after post after post about torture, and I see – no perspective. You literally cannot see past the end of your nose, Katherine. If someone relied on you, Katherine, who was completely ignorant of history from September 10, 2001, to today, they would literally have no idea of who the United States was fighting and what they had done. If my only source of information was Obsidian Wings, I would know that the United States is cruelly torturing Arabs and fighting a pointless war in Iraq, but I wouldn’t know why the United States felt the need to “torture” Arabs or why the United States government would continue fighting a war that almost no one in the world thinks it will win. George Bush is crazy/stupid/evil/Cheneybot isn’t an argument and you know it.

    You don’t offer a constructive argument. Waterboarding is torture torture is bad we’re bad for doing it. That’s what you’re saying. Period. But what is the goal of the waterboarding? Is that goal something we should want to achieve, and waterboarding is just the wrong way to go about it? I wouldn’t know, reading you. I’d just have to guess, and from your writing, I’d probably guess that it wouldn’t be a goal worth achieving.

    once you actually give that kind of power to a government the justifications & restraints on it get thrown out the window very quickly.

    And yet the very facts of waterboarding that you have provided do not support that assertion. The Russians didn’t have any trouble starving, sending off to the gulag, forcibly relocating, shooting, and torturing hundreds of thousands or millions of people a year. Torturing, probably, tens or hundreds of thousands. Millions if you include all the Communist States. Hell, we ourselves imprisoned and beat up thousands of “Communists” after World War I.

    You’re all hissy about waterboarding something like, I’ll be generous, thirty people a year over the last four years? Please Katherine, get a grip. The goal of criticism is to improve what’s being criticized, not tear it down. If you ever knew that, you’ve forgotten it.

    chaos (9c54c6)

  22. And I can sit here, and provide evidence of this until I’m blue in the face, and it will not have any effect.

    I’m tempted to call that attitude smug, but I recognize that it may be rooted in a genuine frustration at conservatives’ lack of knowledge/interest in people who were actually tortured.

    Some of that resistance is, I think, caused by pigheadedness of the sort one sees on both sides of the political aisle: my side is always right no matter what.

    Some of it is ignorance. I planned to blog about this, actually, in my response to your post. You mentioned the “Ice Man” and I think that is a good example of the kind of thing conservatives ought to know about, but many don’t. I was actually at a blog gathering a couple of weeks ago and mentioned that case to a couple of people, as an example of how U.S. personnel have actually killed people by torturing them. They hadn’t heard about it.

    Some of the resistance, though, is different. There is, you should admit, a tendency on the part of some on your side to accept any claim about government abuse, no matter the source. For example, a commenter at Feministe came at me with evidence of torture of KSM’s children. it turned out to be a claim by the father of a suspected terrorist and high-value detainee, saying that one of his other sons said that a Pakistani guard said that some bugs were put on KSM’’s children’’s legs. In other word, fourth-hand hearsay relayed through a suspected terrorist’’s father.

    Too often, leftists put forth evidence of U.S. government torture that is “proved” by sources like that. Or anonymous government sources who might have all sorts of reasons to lie. Or human rights organizations with an axe to grind.

    The thing is, this doesn’t mean torture doesn’t happen. I think there is evidence out there that it does. I’ve seen some of it — probably nowhere near as much as you have, but I’ve seen some.

    I think you could perform a valuable service by collecting examples of torture that are proved up by sources that conservatives would accept.

    Above you provide some links that contain some such information, but much of it is buried in and around other reports for which the sources are questionable. Frankly, your presentation will be more effective the simpler and more straightforward it is. This is especially true when you are addressing a skeptical audience.

    Maybe you’ve already done this. I’m just saying that, your assumption to the contrary, many of the commenters here are rational people who maybe haven’t been exposed to this stuff. I probably haven’t been exposed to nearly as much as you. Perhaps you could give us evidence for which the sources are trustworthy — not anonymous sources, or human rights organizations, or suspected terrorists or their relatives.

    You could maybe really change some minds.

    Or you could continue to assume that none of it will matter.

    Up to you.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  23. Right, see, this is how it works: you would never approve of torturing innocent people; you would never approve of torturing people to death. And if someone does provide you with extensive, well-sourced evidence on how those things have in fact happened, you can ignore it, because the very amount of research they’ve done shows they’ve lost all perspective and probably hate America. So you can ignore what they’re saying unless they’ve also written at even greater length & in even more detail about evil actions committed by Al Qaeda & how much worse they are. Not that you’ll read it if they do, anymore than you’ve read the long reports that human rights groups prepare on both topics, because who has time for all that? It’s much easier to link to a post by another right-wing blogger, or rely on an administration denial–you can tell they’re true because they FEEL true.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  24. chaos,

    I don’t think it’s fair to attack a blogger as not caring about issue x because they have written more about issue y.

    I’ve had that sort of charge leveled at me, and I consider it silly reasoning. There’s all sorts of reasons we write about what we write about. Mostly, we think it will add something to the discourse. Katherine has apparently written about torture quite a bit, and I’m interested in what she has to say — and because she seems very rational and mostly respectful in her presentation, I do not assume that she doesn’t care about Al Qaeda just because she doesn’t write a bunch of words about how bad Al Qaeda is.

    I will say, Katherine, that many conservatives justifiably conclude that *some* liberals don’t really take the terror threat seriously — just like many liberals justifiably conclude that *some* conservatives use the terror threat as an excuse for almost anything. Whenever I see Glenn Greenwald mock fears over terrorism by using sarcastic capital letters to talk about The Terrorists, I put him in the category of people who don’t really take the threat seriously.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  25. Hatherine – As an example, a number of human rights organizations put out reports about the horrendous conditions at Guantanamo before we began releasing prisoners, without having visited the facilities. I feel justified in questioning their credibility after antics like that.

    daleyrocks (906622)

  26. I don’t think it’s fair to attack a blogger as not caring about issue x because they have written more about issue y.

    I consider it very fair. What would a reasonable person conclude about the war on terrorism if their only source of information was Obsidian Wings? What if their only source of information was Patterico’s Pontifications? If you weren’t yourself, what would you get from reading your blog?

    I don’t know whether it’s unconscious or deliberate, and it cuts both ways (much, much more on the Left), but there is a lack of perspective in the blogosphere. When you talk about “the power of the jump” or how the LA Times put a good-news story out of Iraq on page A247, how is it any different from telling Katherine that she never talks about whether this is a war we should win and why (or why not). In the absence of a clear statement on the matter – something not found in any of the consortium of posters’ offers on Obsidian Wings as far as I can tell – I draw my conclusions from what they are saying.

    If I don’t specifically say “I don’t respect you,” but I shove you out of my way, tell you to shut up, interrupt you, and generally act like an asshole towards you, does that mean I don’t respect you?

    Boohoo, it’s unfair sometimes to say “why didn’t you mention that?” Sometimes it isn’t.

    chaos (9c54c6)

  27. –The press junket at GTMO doesn’t tell you anything useful about whether the allegations of abuse are true. Presumably any abuse would not occur in front of visiting human rights activists/senators/journalists.

    –Patterico, I appreciate apparently some willing to engage, but you seem to dismiss almost every source who might possess actual knowledge about U.S. interrogation policies.

    (a) If you’re asking about how the U.S. treats “accused terrorists”, obviously statements from prisoners are at least RELEVANT. It doesn’t mean you accept them without corroboration, but (1) if fifteen detainees independently describe extremely similar conditions at a specific prison in Afghanistan; (2) if one prisoner gives a detailed account soon after his release, it remains consistent for years, & is later confirmed by corroborating information such as flight logs; (3) a prisoner’s testimony is corroborated by news stories about him year’s before his detention; (4) the administration releases a prisoner & tells his country of citizenship because it doesn’t want a court to hear his allegations of torture in Egypt, yes, that ought to be taken seriously. It doesn’t mean you credulously accept every time someone says “oh yes, I was tortured”. Detail; consistency; & corroboration matter. But the idea that you can automatically disregard a prisoner’s & his family’s testimony because he’s an accused terrorist is ridiculous.

    (b) Human rights organizations may have an “axe to grind” but they are very, very, very scrupulous in their factual reporting. I did some volunteer work for Human Rights Watch in particular, & I have never been more impressed with an organization in my life.It is essential to their mission that when they make an allegation of gov’t abuse & a gov’t denies it, you pretty much know which one’s telling the truth–their factual credibility is basically their main resource, which is why the U.S. gov’t relies heavily on it in discussions of other gov’ts human rights violations & State Dep’t human rights reports. There is no comparison whatsoever between their credibility & the administration’s on these matters–none. You might not agree with their policy positions or all of their rhetoric, but there is no reasonable basis for disregarding their factual reports.

    (c) Anonymous sources aren’t ideal, but their use is inevitable when the government classifies all the evidence of abuse & speaking to the press about it means risking your job. An anonymous source who is: (1) making a statement against interest; (2) making a statement corroborated government documents; (3) giving a detailed description that’s consistent with other witness reports; (4) relied upon by a reporter, human rights organization, or publication with a careful fact-checking department, is at least relevant.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  28. Katherine says:

    The press junket at GTMO doesn’t tell you anything useful about whether the allegations of abuse are true. Presumably any abuse would not occur in front of visiting human rights activists/senators/journalists.

    I agree. However, I did an extensive interview in five parts with an Army nurse who served at GTMO, and who spoke to the terrorists held there. I trust his views more than the views of human rights organizations who never visited, or idiots who went on a press junket, or suspected terrorists held there. Sorry.

    You might read it. You might learn something. Unless conservatives are the only ones who you think need to learn anything.

    The rest of your comment appears to be a justification for relying heavily on suspected terrorists, anonymous government sources, and human rights organizations for evidence of torture.

    You say:

    Detail; consistency; & corroboration matter.

    When we’re talking about terrorists, corroboration matters to me a hell of a lot more than detail or consistency. You need to face the hard fact, Katherine, that terrorists are taught to fight a war of ideas, which includes false accusations of torture. That doesn’t mean every such accusation is false, but it does mean every such accusation is suspect. If you can corroborate it through reliable sources, that’s what we need to hear.

    Your respect for human rights organizations is touching, but you’re not going to get anywhere with conservatives by asking us to trust them. I want verifiable facts from reliable sources with no axe to grind.

    You urge us to rely on anonymous government sources who make statements against their interest. The trouble is that if they are anonymous, we don’t know what their agenda is. One of your links above cites a story by Dana Priest, who famously cited an anonymous source who turned out to be a major Democrat donor. Priest never told us that. And rely on a “publication with a careful fact-checking department”? Ha!

    Patterico (486827)

  29. My point is this: you should make your case with untainted sources. Can’t you do that?

    I would treat suspected terrorists, anonymous government sources, and human rights organizations about the way that, as a prosecutor, I would treat the proffered testimony of a jailhouse informant. In other words, if it’s heavily corroborated by unimpeachable evidence, it’s interesting. Otherwise, it could be true, but I’m putting no stock in it.

    I once had a tough murder case where a cellmate of the defendant’s called me to say the defendant had confessed to him. I never even considered calling him, because of the strong possibility that he could be a con artist.

    That’s how I feel about your suspected terrorists, your anonymous government sources, and your human rights organizations. They might be right. They really might. But I’m not inclined to trust them without strong corroboration.

    So I’d advise you to spend less time arguing for the credibility of biased sources, and more time giving us the corroboration.

    I mean, it’s out there. Isn’t it?

    Patterico (9ee7d1)

  30. That’s ACCUSED terrorists. Not all of them are guilty. You know how I know that? I read through tens of thousands of pages of GTMO hearing transcripts & serving as a research assistant on a book on the subject. But it was by a habeas attorney, so I guess you don’t have to read it despite the extensive & carefully checked citations to all kinds of sources; you know everything there is to know about the subject based on an exchange with one guard. And the hearing transcripts consisted mainly of testimony by the detainees, so I guess I can’t have learned anything relevant from it. I did read your nurse’s interview & it SOMEHOW didn’t quite outweigh all that–guards are not disinterested neutral sources any more than attorneys or prisoners.

    Based on your contention that you are determined to willfully disregard: (1) all victim testimony; (2) all human rights reports; (3) one of the most reliable reporters on this subject; (4) news organizations with an extensive track record of accuracy; (5) any government source that does not give his name–whereas clueless blog comments on the Arar case that were amply disproven two and a half years before are just DANDY–you are absolutely apologizing for torture. You are lying when you say you oppose the torture of innocents & people who might be innocent. Not in the real world, you don’t:

    Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side….The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

    Given that you’re going to willfully ignore the overwhelming majority of the evidence in favor of random blog posts & the assumption that if a torture allegation would’ve been unjustified it must also be false, I am not going to bother holding your hand & walking you through it. Feel free to read through the archives: there are cases that involve autopsy reports & court martial testimony, which IS presumably an acceptable form of evidence (though based on your endorsement of states secret privilege I can see that you also clearly also support the administration’s efforts to keep as many of these documents secret for as long as possible). The best place to read summaries of those gov’t documents is in human rights organizations’ reports, of course, but I know that you can’t trust those guys to quote accurately from the government documents they link to, so I don’t really know how to help you.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  31. Yes, it would be preferable to prove this in court, wouldn’t it? Such a SHAME that all efforts to do so had to be thrown out to protect state secrets–something I see you avidly support.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  32. Oh for god’s sake, you’re citing Mary McCarthy to me as evidence that Dana Priest is unreliable? For f*ck’s sake, the fact that she donated money to democratic campaigns doesn’t make the inspector general’s office’s evidence irrelevant, (& by the way, with your usual accuracy I think you’ve mis-identified which Priest story she was the source for: the story that relies on Inspector General’s office documents was the “erroneous rendition” one, not the “secret prisons in E. Europe” one). Tell me, do you refrain from quoting articles quoting CIA sources about how awesome waterboarding works unless all sources’ campaign contributions are listed? You better skip my archives too: I’m a registered Democrat & I donated to Howard Dean so obviously I can’t be trusted either.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  33. That’s ACCUSED terrorists. Not all of them are guilty. You know how I know that? I read through tens of thousands of pages of GTMO hearing transcripts & serving as a research assistant on a book on the subject. But it was by a habeas attorney, so I guess you don’t have to read it despite the extensive & carefully checked citations to all kinds of sources; you know everything there is to know about the subject based on an exchange with one guard.

    Nurse, actually. Not guard.

    He talked to the detainees directly, and I spoke with him for hours (and exchanged over 100 e-mails with him) for the interview. I trust him more than I trust your detainees. Again, sorry.

    How is “suspected” different from ACCUSED, by the way?

    I know you think it’s just “DANDY” that Dana Priest reported Mary McCarthy’s allegations without ever mentioning her clear allegiance to Democrats. But in the world I come from, biases should be disclosed, and when reporters don’t report those biases, I tend not to trust them.

    And I clearly have less respect for the almighty fact-checking of major news organizations, in part because I have spent about 5 years now pointing out clear factual errors in the local rag, all of which were somehow missed by their mighty and trustworthy fact-checking machine. Keep your eye on their corrections page; they’ll be issuing yet another correction based on one of my e-mails in the next few days. It’s become a habit of theirs.

    Given that you’re going to willfully ignore the overwhelming majority of the evidence in favor of random blog posts & the assumption that if a torture allegation would’ve been unjustified it must also be false, I am not going to bother holding your hand & walking you through it.

    Yeah, I’m so interested in willfully ignoring evidence that I asked you to provide some, and defended you against the unfair complaints of one of my commenters, and praised your posts as measured and rational. I’m starting to regret my praise, as your latest comments just sound like more self-righteous claptrap from someone eager to believe anything that is anti-Bush.

    I’m so eager to dismiss all evidence that I argued above that the Ice Man was indeed killed by torture. But it’s more fun to demonize me than to treat me as a curious human being coming from a different perspective.

    I’m sorry you’re offended when I school you on the facts of life regarding how conservatives view evidence coming from people with a clear bias. I thought you might want to do your side a favor and educate some of us on some of the episodes that don’t depend on tainted evidence. But when I ask, all I get is defenses of tainted evidence. That suggests to me you don’t have much that isn’t based on biased sources.

    Such a SHAME that all efforts to do so had to be thrown out to protect state secrets–something I see you avidly support.

    I see that with your usual accuracy you failed to notice who wrote the post on my site about state secrets.

    I can do without your smug attitude. If you have corroboration, I’m interested in what you have to say. If you just have attitude, I’m not.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  34. I’m supposed to be impressed that you admit that Jamadi was tortured given the photographs of his corpse & the autopsy reports? You’ve got to be kidding me. Wow, such intellectual integrity. Maybe next you’ll impress me by admitting that it appears we stripped people naked at Abu Ghraib?

    Have you actually read one of Human Rights Watch’s reports on the subject? They’re not breathless “America tortures people!!!!!”-type affairs. They are quite detailed with extensive quotations from interviews & documents. Why don’t you start with this one & go through in detail & explain the basis for your belief that it’s so tainted & unreliable that we can assume it to be false in the absence of corroboration (presumably not including the dozens & dozens of corroborating documents cited in the report. Or maybe this one–explain to me how the “clear bias” of the human rights organization undermines the autopsy reports they quote. Again, in detail, please.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  35. I’m supposed to be impressed that you admit that Jamadi was tortured given the photographs of his corpse & the autopsy reports? You’ve got to be kidding me. Wow, such intellectual integrity. Maybe next you’ll impress me by admitting that it appears we stripped people naked at Abu Ghraib?

    No, you’re just supposed to understand that I’m interested in the subject and am trying to learn about it. Why would I be talking to fellow bloggers about the Ice Man a couple of weeks ago, before I ever heard of you, if I was actively trying to ignore all evidence of torture?

    Your preening attitude is encapsulated well by this little gem of yours:

    You are lying when you say you oppose the torture of innocents & people who might be innocent.

    If that’s your attitude, then with all due respect, fuck you.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  36. Addressing now the liberals who don’t accuse me of lying, and who do think I care about innocent people being tortured:

    I will repeat that I think that torture has occurred. Indeed, much of what the human rights organizations say may well be true. (Didn’t I say that?) I’d just like to see some reporting that doesn’t come filtered through organizations or witnesses with a clear bias.

    Is there anyone out there who can provide a few clear examples of that, for those of us who haven’t made a career out of studying the issue, but are interested to learn more? Only those who aren’t utterly contemptuous of all conservatives need apply.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  37. There has to be someone out there who fits that description.

    Someone?

    Anyone?

    Patterico (bad89b)

  38. It wasn’t my attitude until you started taking the same line on human rights organizations’ carefully corroborated & clearly sourced reports as every tyranny & terrorist organization in the world.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  39. You are lying when you say you care about innocent people being tortured. Because if you really did, you would try to convince conservatives of that fact — something that is going to have to happen for torture to stop. But instead of taking the opportunity, you retreat into a stance of smug superiority. That’s because you don’t really care about stopping torture; you just care about feeling better than other people.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  40. If you think that those organizations can be trusted to accurately report direct quotes from witnesses & government documents, you don’t need to rely on their filtering or their conclusions. A weblog post by a pseudonymous author quoting primary sources is not any more reliable or less biased than a human rights report or a news reporter doing so. I don’t have any less of an agenda than they do, and they have more time to do this & a careful editing & fact checking process that I lack. If they can’t be trusted to accurately report direct quotes from witnesses & government documents, someone really ought to tell the State Department, as well as the immigration courts, which often consider their research in asylum cases. Also, they conveniently provide cites to many of their documentary & press sources, so you can check yourself if they’re misquoting.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  41. I don’t actually believe that, by the way. Just giving you a little taste of what it’s like to have someone say something unbelievably offensive to you.

    I actually think you care about whether innocents are tortured, and about feeling smugly superior to others.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  42. I like following Supreme Court cases, and often read the briefs from each side on a particular issue. When I read the brief from one side, I generally assume it is accurately quoting the cases it cites, and provides citations to those cases.

    For some reason, I still like to read the briefs from the other side.

    When the plaintiff makes an assertion and the defendant admits it, it helps me know that the assertion is true and undeniable, because if there were a way to deny it, the defendant would do so.

    Let’s say I talked to someone fully familiar with the case, and he said there was material that was undisputed that favored the plaintiff, and I asked him for a quick summary of that information. I’d be especially interested in citations to the brief from the defendant — or failing that, to the direct case law. If he did nothing but cite to the brief from the plaintiff, and told me how great the plaintiffs’ lawyers are, and how they can be trusted, and how their brief cites to everything necessary, I’d still be asking why he won’t give me something from the defendant’s brief, or from neutral case law.

    He can always give me the whole 100-page brief and tell me that if I’m too lazy to read the whole thing, and all cases cited therein, then I obviously don’t care about the plaintiffs’ position.

    And my response would be: 1) then why the fuck did I ask you? and 2) I don’t have time to read the whole brief and all cases cited therein. I have a job and a family and several other interests. Why not give me your best examples, from an untainted source?

    If at that point he still told me that I wasn’t interested, and that I was a liar for claiming I was, I think I would tell him to fuck off.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  43. I am quite certain you have spent more time discussing your cutesy little hypotheticals than it would take to read even one such report. Nevertheless, fine, start here, though I fully assume you’ll dismiss many of these as “tainted” since they lack signed confessions from Bush administration officials or whatever you think qualifies as evidence given your exclusion of almost all existing primary or secondary sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

    Katherine (0a7665)

  44. Sorry I’m late to the party, folks…

    H2U

    They should be treated as soldiers in violation of the Geneva Conventions & Laws of War.

    But they aren’t soldiers. But I agree that we should apply the geneva conventions. Considering we have ample evidence already (Bin Laden’s already on video saying he’s behind 9/11), we should just line them up and shoot them.

    After we get every bit of info we can out of them.

    Kathrine, questioning the legality of a discussion about assasinating Cheney isn’t out of place, even if it’s a hypothetical. The Secret Service really does not play around with that sorta stuff. They prefer to go after everything and find out it’s not a threat than ignore one and find out it wasn’t.

    Also, these deaths you say happened because of cold rooms, forced standing, and sleep dep…

    Name one?

    I mean, I wasn’t aware that being made to STAND could kill you, but you suggest that standing lead to someone’s death.

    Scott Jacobs (a1de9d)

  45. Katherine,

    It’s not enough to say: there could be benefits. Even if I conceded that this is best resolved with a cost benefit analysis, which I don’t, it seems to me that to make a convincing consequentialist case you would actually have to prove the benefits, and not just assume that they existed because it was PLAUSIBLE that they COULD exist. The costs I’m talking about aren’t just plausible; they actually happened.

    No, they haven’t. You’ve listed quite a number of things that simply haven’t happened and are not likely to. And you’ve listed others that may have happened, but you’ve attributed them to waterboarding KSM with no discernable cause/effect relationship evident. By way of example, you’ve stated the following:

    It would help drive recruiting for Al Qaeda. It would help seal the failure of our invasion of Iraq.

    There’s absolutely no evidence of either of those things having resulted from the KSM reality, and plenty of evidence that they did not and will not be such results.

    This isn’t about taking action because an given outcome is plausible, it’s doing it because it’s reasonably expected, and your demand for proof is an unattainable standard requiring infallible foresight. I can reasonably expect that if I cook dinner, the result will be a decent meal. I cannot prove beforehand that I won’t burn the house down in the process.

    Pablo (99243e)

  46. You don’t, in fact, know that waterboarding was restricted to 3 people, for a maximum of 1.5 minutes, resulting in awesome intelligence. You know that anonymous CIA officials claimed that the ABC news, and because it is ideologically convenient for you, you accept it as fact.

    By that standard, you don’t know, in fact, that anyone has been waterboarded. The only evidence we have comes from the CIA, and we both know how they lie.

    Pablo (99243e)

  47. Scott #43,

    In the instance that Katherine talks about the guy had been hung by his arms shackled behind him and the other ends of the shackles attached five feet off the floor. It would have been like an extreme form of crucifixition. Check the link she provides if your stomach is strong enough.

    nk (09a321)

  48. nk, I think we can all agree that when you kill the guy, you’ve clearly crossed the line. From what I can see, Mark Swanner ought to be prosecuted for Manadel al-Jamadi’s death, but I can’t find anything newer than 2005, which indicates that the Justice Department is investigating and that the translator in the room with him has been given immunity for his cooperation. Perhaps someone with access to Lexis Nexis and/or PACER can find something more current that indicates the status of the investigation/prosecution.

    Pablo (99243e)

  49. Swanner is not being prosecuted and I do not expect him to ever be prosecuted. There was one CIA contractor, David Passarro, prosecuted & convicted for a prisoner death in Afghanistan the Eastern District of North Carolina. After that, they started referring all detainee abuse cases to a task force in the Eastern District of Virginia headed by political appointees. The task force is 0 for 19 as far as bringing charges (not every case involved a death). I’m not sure the E.D.Va. task force has so much as launched one single official investigation. The translator was given immunity in a court martial against Navy SEALs who brought in Jamadi before his death, not, as far as I know, any DOJ investigation. It would be rather awkward for the administration to explain why Jamadi was not being treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention, since they’ve previously claim it applied at Abu Ghraib, though in fact they exempted certain US personnel in Iraq from complying with it. It would also be difficult to try the case without the defense giving evidence on the OLC memo on “forced standing”. Swanner was not the only guy who shackled people with their arms too high. Graner did it to, to all kinds of people; fortunately he at least didn’t kill anyone (Graner, in case people’s forgotten is the soldier who received the longest sentence in Abu Ghraib). And while the naked pyramids & crap seem to have been the night shift guards’ own idea, the “stress positions” were not.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  50. Oh, and Patterico, I can give you the brief for the other side in one or two of the human rights groups. Very detailed refutations they are, too. It goes approximately like this: “I haven’t read it. The United States doesn’t torture.” e.g.: “THE PRESIDENT: I haven’t seen the report, but if they’re saying we tortured people, they’re wrong. Period.”

    I have a slightly hard time believing that in court cases, “I haven’t read it, but we do not torture & they clearly have an agenda and can’t be trusted” is considered an adequate response to a carefully composed, well-supported brief.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  51. as a routine matter at all.

    six words which wipe out all the meaning in the rest of patterico’s post. now we get to argue what’s routine and what’s not, all in the face of the implacable, inexorable mission creep.

    assistant devil's advocate (519cb7)

  52. The translator was given immunity in a court martial against Navy SEALs who brought in Jamadi before his death, not, as far as I know, any DOJ investigation.

    If he’s been given immunity from criminal prosecution for his cooperation, then he’s got immunity, no? Does it really matter what venue he was granted immunity for testifying in? I’m not saying it doesn’t, and I concede that it might. I honestly don’t know. But it seems that if he’s talking, he’s talking and that that cat is out of the bag. Does his testimony in the court martial include description of what went on when he, Swanner and al-Jamadi were the only people in the room?

    As for the DOJ investigation, I came across that here.

    Swanner’s lawyer, Nina Ginsberg, declined to discuss his case on the record. But he has been under investigation by the Justice Department for more than a year.

    It’s important to note here that the system has found this incident to be an unacceptable practice. Those involved in it clearly knew it was out of bounds and took affirmative steps to cover it up. It is not an example of policy and those involved damn well knew it.

    It does seem that prosecution has been lacking, though not nonexistent. That said, you should to have sufficient evidence to convict before you decide to prosecute, and it seems that those involved may have done a good enough job of destroying such evidence to escape prosecution. I’d really like to know what the DOJ has done on this in the last couple of years and why.

    Pablo (99243e)

  53. Oh, and Patterico, I can give you the brief for the other side in one or two of the human rights groups

    Fine, I expected you’d say that, which is why I also analogized to the case law. In other words, give us (even just in 1, 2, 3, or 4 cases) access to the hard documentation on which the human rights organization material relies — like giving the judges the relevant cases. So we know that they aren’t cherry-picking.

    Or you could just give us the reports and tell us to trust that they’re not cherry-picking and that they’re quoting accurately. That’s what you’ve done, and since we’re liars and we don’t care, that’s what you’ll continue to do.

    I don’t even know why you’re on a site run by someone you think is a liar and doesn’t care whether innocents are tortured. Unless your goal is to alienate conservatives further by calling us liars, what’s your goal?

    Patterico (bad89b)

  54. I provided 5 specific links to shorter sources.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  55. (The Dilawar death, that is, referred to in the first two links.)

    You’re right though. This is a waste of time. If you’re too lazy to look at what the human rights groups actually say & impugning their credibility based on zero evidence & despite the fact that all of their sources are clearly cited & many of them are easily checked online, that speaks for itself.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  56. I have done it before, which is why I have the opinion that this stuff has happened. Despite my suspicion of biased sources, I read through one of the human rights reports a long time back. I don’t remember a lot of details because it’s not my career, but you’ll notice I have never said that torture didn’t happen.

    The problem is that I don’t know how reliable what I have read in the past is. I don’t remember how much of what I have read in human rights reports is based on solid evidence, and how much is based on allegations that could be false or cherry-picked or one-sided. I never did read any supporting documentation, which isn’t always attached to the reports. And I think this is a useful exercise for my commenters, who may not have ever read the reports and may not know about much of this.

    What I don’t understand is why you feel the need to be so goddamned hostile and self-satisfied about this. It’s not going to prevent me from reading what you provide, but it will deter some others. You are not a good spokesperson for your position if you go around calling people liars, and assuming that they haven’t read material without asking them if they have.

    I read the briefs in the Supreme Court cases, even though I know they are biased. Saying that they are biased doesn’t mean that I haven’t read them or that I consider them useless. It means that I (and many other rational people) are going to suspect them if not corroborated by other sources.

    We’re going round and round here. I’ll take a look at what you’ve provided. But you’re not doing your cause any service by calling people liars and lazy and uncaring about innocents. You’re really, really not.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  57. The autopsy report link doesn’t work.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  58. That’s ACCUSED terrorists. Not all of them are guilty. You know how I know that? I read through tens of thousands of pages of GTMO hearing transcripts & serving as a research assistant on a book on the subject.

    So KSM is just an accused terrorist?

    That hole you keep digging yourself just grows deeper and deeper as your tone gets more and more strident.

    I did some volunteer work for Human Rights Watch in particular, & I have never been more impressed with an organization in my life.

    You do your credibility such great service with remarks like this.

    I don’t see why anyone is wasting their time with Katherine anymore. She has consistently failed to respond to points and really done absolutely nothing but bring up prisoner abuse that has nothing to do with waterboarding. Everything she says is a red herring.

    chaos (9c54c6)

  59. chaos,

    Prisoner abuse has something to do with waterboarding, the argument goes, because when you accept some of these tactics you’re likely to accept others.

    If you have specific evidence that Human Rights Watch is not credible, let’s hear it. Otherwise you shouldn’t snidely dismiss her because she says she is impressed with it. Maybe it is an impressive organization. If you have a reason to say it’s not, let’s hear it.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  60. #46,

    Then that wouldn’t be “forced standing”, now would it? More like “chaining up” or something.

    Scott Jacobs (a1de9d)

  61. Try this link, Pat. Katherine appears to be referring to the autopsy referred to on pages 29-36. The conclusion, on Page 36 begins as follows:

    “This approximately 35 year old Afghan male dies of blunt force injuries to the lower extremities, complicating underlying coronary artery disease.”

    I’d be interested to hear about the source and manner of the injuries to the legs.

    Pablo (99243e)

  62. If you have specific evidence that Human Rights Watch is not credible, let’s hear it.

    As much as it galls me to link HuffPo, here’s Dershowitz on the subject.

    Pablo (99243e)

  63. Sorry, better link to the autopsy report here.

    Could you please specify what sources you DO think are reliable to rely on without additional corroboration (other than the corroboration already provided in the source itself–e.g. a news article quoting from government documents?) As far as I can tell it’s restricted to U.S. personnel who give their names, & gov’t documents. The U.S. personnel’s accusations are going to be contained in news articles & human rights reports. The gov’t documents exist but there are literally hundreds of thousands of pages of them, not all of them especially relevant. The people who take the time to sort through them & determine their relevance are news organizations & human rights organizations & the odd obsessive blogger. Until we have a comprehensive gov’t investigation that goes anywhere or a court case that doesn’t get thrown out, those are going to be the only sources. (Of course, if there is a court case, the places where its results would be reported are news organizations & human rights groups’ reports.) If you won’t rely on human rights groups’ and news organizations because they might be “cherry picking”, and you’re not willing to read through the documents yourself, how exactly am I supposed to convince you? Read through hundreds of thousands of pages of the documents myself & link to the raw documents? Do you know how much time that takes–particularly when I actually did the same thing already for some of the original HRW reports that your readers can’t be expected to read? And why would my doing that as an anonymous blog commenter be MORE credible than me sorting through the same documents for an extremely well-respected organization that double checked my work & cited to the same sources & staked its considerable credibility on the report? If you’re saying, “quote from the report, don’t tell us to read a 67 page document,” that’s one thing. But if I do that, & I’m going to get ignored because the Right-Wing-List-of-Approved-Sources doesn’t include: (1) any statement by a prisoner, (2) any statement by a government source not giving his or her name (3) any government witness (named, psedonymous, or anonymous) when quoted by the NY Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, & the New Yorker, than this is a giant waste of my time trying to convince people who are ruling out 95% of the publicly available evidence for ideological reasons.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  64. So they interviewed witnesses from only one side, and ignored obvious evidence to the contrary.

    Thanks, Pablo. I hadn’t seen that. It does illustrate my point about the need to rely on unbiased sources.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  65. 62: see here, which is also the first link in 43.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  66. [Caution: Pablo says that the link below has malware, specifically a browser hijacker. Be aware of this before you click. — P]

    Yes, Hezbollah agrees with Dershowitz about HRW.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  67. Could you please specify what sources you DO think are reliable to rely on without additional corroboration (other than the corroboration already provided in the source itself–e.g. a news article quoting from government documents?) As far as I can tell it’s restricted to U.S. personnel who give their names, & gov’t documents.

    Wait a minute. In your #19, you said “You know that anonymous CIA officials claimed that the ABC news, and because it is ideologically convenient for you, you accept it as fact.”

    What are you doing differently?

    The people who take the time to sort through them & determine their relevance are news organizations & human rights organizations & the odd obsessive blogger. Until we have a comprehensive gov’t investigation that goes anywhere or a court case that doesn’t get thrown out, those are going to be the only sources.

    We still have the source material itself, the same material that the media, human right orgs and odd bloggers have.

    If you won’t rely on human rights groups’ and news organizations because they might be “cherry picking”, and you’re not willing to read through the documents yourself, how exactly am I supposed to convince you?

    If you’re tossing cherries, and linking to where they’ve been picked from, that will be evident. If it’s a fair representation of the content of the documents you refer to, then that will be evident.

    Pablo (99243e)

  68. The three types of sources you described aren’t going to do it for me without hard corroboration.

    Relying on Human Rights Watch ain’t gonna do it, and Pablo’s link is a good illustration of why. You obviously have a high regard for them. I see them as a biased source and I am going to be skeptical where I can’t see the corroboration. Same goes for the almighty fact-filled goodness of the NYT or LAT, or uncorroborated statements from detainees with a potential motive to lie. Or from anonymous government sources.

    You’ll call that willful blindness. I call it appropriate skepticism.

    So let’s move past those sources and get to the corroboration, shall we?

    Autopsy reports corroborating witness accounts is a good start. I haven’t read the entire report that Pablo (not you) provided. [UPDATE: OK, I see you provided a better link as well.] I’ll have to read it all together with the other material you provided.

    Your link above with the former Army interrogator is also good. He’s got first-hand knowledge and no apparent axe to grind.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  69. That Haaretz page linked in #66 has a browser hijacker. Malware! Not Katherine’s fault, mind you, but an ongoing problem at Haaretz and other sites.

    Would you please quote from it, Katherine, or provide an alternative source for the story you’re referencing? Is it related to this? Or is it something that refutes Dershowitz’ perfectly valid observation?

    Pablo (99243e)

  70. Pablo sounds interested too. So you’ve got two of us.

    I think, Katherine, that you’re just not used to a skeptical audience. You’re used to people who swallow all these allegations whole.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  71. But the army interrogator was interviewed by a news organization! They could have fabricated the quotations! Why trust MSNBC not to fabricate his quotations if you don’t trust HRW not to? Why is your interview with a pseudonymous soldier more credible than HRW’s interview with the soldier going by the pseudonym “Jeff Perry”?

    I am not re-cataloging through 300,000 pages of raw government documents for you because you & your commenters refuse to read every major secondary source on prison abuse. You are jerking me around, not evaluating the evidence in good faith.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  72. I haven’t read the entire report that Pablo (not you) provided. [UPDATE: OK, I see you provided a better link as well.]

    Also, I found it by truncating the original link. Katherine tried to link to a specific section of the doc, which didn’t work. An honest error, no doubt.

    Pablo (99243e)

  73. I am not re-cataloging through 300,000 pages of raw government documents for you because you & your commenters refuse to read every major secondary source on prison abuse.

    No one is asking you to do that. But if you’ve already become familiar with them, then you should be able to direct us to the sections that form the basis of your opinion. Then, we can follow the logical chain that leads you to your beliefs. Or, we can see where you’re wrong and point it out.

    If you’re not going to trust various secondary sources because you have concerns about their biases, why do you expect us to do it?

    Pablo (99243e)

  74. You’re caricaturing my skepticism as utter paranoia. The interview with the former interrogator is one with a named individual. I wouldn’t believe the quotes were manufactured even if there weren’t an accompanying video. But there is. I have listened to it.

    You’re once again acting like we are going to reject all evidence, even when I just now gave you examples of evidence I consider to be good evidence.

    You are jerking me around, not evaluating the evidence in good faith.

    Like I said, fuck you.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  75. An honest error, no doubt.

    Well, of course it is. But she won’t believe that we believe that.

    Can you believe the smugness? It just DRIPS off of her.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  76. Why is your interview with a pseudonymous soldier more credible than HRW’s interview with the soldier going by the pseudonym “Jeff Perry”?

    People get to make up their own minds about the credibility of the source. HRW has its track record and I have mine. You don’t want to believe the interview with Stashiu, that’s your right. I can tell you it got plenty of attention and plenty of people tried to shoot it down. Nobody ever did.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  77. Pablo, I honestly thought I was making a constructive suggestion when I asked Katherine to provide evidence that doesn’t depend on biased sources. I didn’t expect this response, which is basically a ton of vitriol, accusing me of being a liar, acting in bad faith, etc., and simply defending the honor of the biased sources. I expected either: 1) sorry, that’s too much work, or 2) sure, here’s a coupla examples.

    I’m still working my way through the links, and maybe there’s something there. But I’m spending a lot of time explaining to someone calling me a liar that I’m not. I never expected that. Maybe I should have.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  78. So would you trust an excerpt from a news article or a human rights organization’s evidence as it least relevant, to the extent that it’s quoting from: (1) a government document; (2) a named U.S. witness (3) a detainee account w/ some independent corroboration, or (4) a pseudonymous witness who is identified with comparable specifity to your interview with a GTMO nurse? Do you trust them not to fabricate direct quotes?

    Katherine (0a7665)

  79. I am not re-cataloging through 300,000 pages of raw government documents for you because you & your commenters refuse to read every major secondary source on prison abuse.

    And I asked you to do that . . . when?

    I merely asked for a coupla examples. As many as you have time to provide. That don’t depend on biased sources.

    And I said it’s up to you whether you want to do it or not. You could take a few seconds out of your busy schedule of calling conservatives liars and provide the corroboration from untainted sources. Meanwhile, I’ll work through what you have provided, some of which comes from sources of the type I don’t trust, and some of which doesn’t.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  80. So would you trust an excerpt from a news article or a human rights organization’s evidence as it least relevant, to the extent that it’s quoting from: (1) a government document; (2) a named U.S. witness (3) a detainee account w/ some independent corroboration, or (4) a pseudonymous witness who is identified with comparable specifity to your interview with a GTMO nurse?

    I’m skeptical but reasonable about everything. I’m not automatically accepting anything. The former Army interrogator may have an axe to grind. But I am not going to assume he does, because I see no evidence of it. So I’ll take his statements as good evidence until I see evidence to the contrary.

    Because he is named, it’s potentially possible to check on his biases, and go to him to make sure that he actually said what is claimed (not an issue here because it’s on video).

    But the fact is that news organizations misreport what named witnesses say, and we have seen documented evidence of that. So I don’t automatically accept anything.

    Nor do I automatically dismiss anything, regardless of the source. I just assign very low weight to evidence from biased sources on this issue without corroboration.

    But why don’t you continue to mischaracterize my skepticism as cartoonish uberparanoia, call me a liar, and say I’m acting in bad faith?

    Patterico (bad89b)

  81. I didn’t expect this response, which is basically a ton of vitriol, accusing me of being a liar, acting in bad faith, etc., and simply defending the honor of the biased sources. I expected either: 1) sorry, that’s too much work, or 2) sure, here’s a coupla examples.

    It’s a dodge, plain and simple, which leads me to assume a lack of faith in her convictions. If I were her, I’d be beating you over the head with such examples.

    Pablo (99243e)

  82. Well, she did provide some links. I’m looking at them.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  83. I’m going to get off this little merry-go-round of “You’re a lying uncaring asshole” and “I have proved I’m not so fuck you.” As much fun as it is, I have better things to do.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  84. If we are to believe the information presented about Katherine on Obsidian Whinge, she is a Harvard trained lawyer. The task of presenting some “credible” evidence for the thousands of examples of torture she has really shouldn’t be as difficult as she is pretenting, paericularly if she has HRW’s formidable archives and her own from which to cull a few documents. I smell a dodge as well.

    daleyrocks (906622)

  85. You’d think a Harvard trained lawyer would understand the concept of biased sources.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  86. Right, daleyrocks. She’s ostensibly an expert on this issue. Can you imagine her taking this tack on the stand if she were an expert witness, trying to explain this stuff to a clueless jury? Of course not. Cowboy…er…Lawyer up, Madame.

    I expect the “Evil, sexist, racist, neocon, torturing thugs are ganging up on her” card to be played at any moment, if it hasn’t already happened over yonder. It all ends with deep sympathy and obnoxious bile. Predictably.

    Pablo (99243e)

  87. Yeah, they’ll probably make a huge deal of the fact that I told her to fuck off, and will fail to note that I did so only as a direct response to being called a) a liar, b) someone operating in bad faith, and c) someone who doesn’t care if innocent people are tortured.

    Then, if I point that out, they’ll say that’s all true.

    Whee. I think I’ll bow out of that little bit of Internet fun in advance, since it’s so fucking predictable how it plays out.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  88. Guys, check above. I just pulled a comment out of moderation that had five shorter links. (It was in moderation because it had so many links.)

    Patterico (bad89b)

  89. It’s at 43.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  90. “Nor do I automatically dismiss anything, regardless of the source. I just assign very low weight to evidence from biased sources on this issue without corroboration.”

    Again, I am genuinely confused here: is a direct quote from a named witness or a government document, in a report by a major daily newspaper or human rights organization, something that goes in the category of:

    (1) “evidence from biased sources on this issue without corroboration”? or

    (2) evidence that you’ll proceed on the assumption is “good evidence until I see evidence to the contrary,” given that it would be possible (though in some cases time consuming) to confirm with the source or document?

    If (2) I may have misunderstood you & may be able to provide material you’d find interesting. If (1) we have nothing to say to each other, & I stand by what I said.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  91. I’d probably trust quotes from named witnesses in newspapers more than I’d trust them in human rights organizations reports. If they’re in the latter and compelling, they should make their way into the former.

    If I can see the government document directly, that’s a lot better.

    Whether it’s 1) or 2) depends on the source. A DoJ Civil Rights Division lawyer complaining about the Bush Administration’s record on civil rights issues may have a name, but if their complaints are stupid, that doesn’t mean I’ll find them credible.

    I liked the link to the former Army interrogator.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  92. Do me a favor and stop calling me a liar, please. It’s not real conducive to civility.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  93. I really think you’d find the “No Blood No Foul” HRW report useful given that you place great weight on soldier’s accounts. The majority of the report is soldier’s quotations. One of them is Lagouranis. Another, who uses a pseudonym in the report, is named Ben Allbright. I can personally vouch that HRW’s representations about the third are accurate but I can’t say more than that. I will also personally vouch for the accuracy of the citations to news reports & government documents (most of which are also readily check-able). The pseudonymous’s witnesses account also has been corroborated by later government documents–in particular, an Army Inspector General’s Report; I could provide details if interested but it’s quite involved. This was picked up in news stories but the one that did so at greatest length is an article about what great people HRW researchers are, which I agree with but don’t think you’re going to find very appealing. Other news reports greatly truncated the quotes from the former interrogators & did not discuss the gov’t documents.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  94. Ok, from Link #1, the Dilwar case:

    (Specialist Walls was charged last week with assault, maltreatment and failure to obey a lawful order; Specialist Claus was charged with assault, maltreatment and lying to investigators. Each man declined to comment.)

    Link #2 is a reference to the same case. I still haven’t seen any description of how the blunt force trauma to his legs happened, though we do know that it was such trauma combined with his coronary artery disease that led to his death.

    Link #3:

    The Post article states that task force member have “been charged with abuse in connection with the deaths of two detainees they arrested in the field.” I don’t know who the other one is.

    And then:

    The detainee’s name is Fashad Mohamed. Unlike the Jamadi case, the fatal beating seem to have happened during capture, not interrogation.

    In all three of these cases, the fact that those responsible have been prosecuted for their actions seems to put the lie to the claim that they’re acting within approved, accepted policy.

    Link #4 is a reference to 2 detainee statements. Again, they are suspect as biased and also suspect given that we know this enemy instructs those captured to claim they’ve been tortured. Is there any corroborating evidence in these cases, such as medical reports?

    Link #5 is more of the same as #4, but with the twist that the raids were conducted in error based on faulty information. As for the beatings, complete with broken bones, is there any corroborating evidence? Any medical reports or evidence of treatment rendered? It seems that once we knew the errors had been made and were releasing the men that medical treatment of any injuries would be a no-brainer. Is there anything that indicates that happened? Are there any statements from any of the American forces involved? I see this:

    [In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said the Defense Department would not comment on the complaints until the completion of an official investigation being conducted by the United States Central Command.]

    …but the article is 5 years old. Is there any follow up?

    Pablo (99243e)

  95. Link #4: yes, there are, but they’re contained in a 200+ page PDF on my hard drive which you have to subscribe to ECF & pay a fee to download.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  96. Are those public documents or are there copyright issues with them?

    Pablo (99243e)

  97. Some of the corroborating info is more readily available though, in the form of news articles about the prisoners’ arrest & torture by the Taliban/Al Qaeda in 2000, & news articles by reporters who spoke to them at the Kandahar prison between the fall of the Taliban & them being sent to GTMO. Those articles include:

    Kathy Cannon, “Arabs in Afghanistan Claim US Link,” Associated Press Online, May 4, 2000

    Anwar Iqbal, “Taliban Acknowledge Arresting Spies,” United Press International, May 7, 2000

    “Taliban-US Spy Confessions,” The Pakistan Newswire, July 29, 2000

    Tasgola Karla Bruner. “Taliban’s Retreat Leads to Prisoners’ Release”, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Dec. 11, 2001

    Erik Eckholm, “A Nation Challenged: Kandahar: Inmates Left by the Taliban Are Free, But Cannot Leave”, NY Times, December 16, 2001

    Christopher Torchia, “Fewer Inmates in Kahndahar Prison,” Associated Press, December 17, 2001

    Pierre Lhuillery, “Five Foreigners in the Prison Hell of the Taliban and al-Qaeda,” Agence France Presse, January 16, 2002

    Catherine Philip, “Foreign Prisoners Leave Liberators Bewildered,” The Weekend Australian, December 15, 2001

    John Pomfret, “Inside the Taliban’s Torture Chambers: Men Held By Militia as Spies Detail Routine Brutality, Large Role of Foreigners,” December 17, 2001

    Tim Reid, “Taleban Warrior? No, I’m a Lost Backpacker,” The Times, Feb. 4, 2002.

    That’s not the half of it though. The court documents have to be seen to be believed.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  98. Oh, also:

    This Washington Post article about Saddiq Turkisani another of the former Taliban prisoners (since released), & “Bin Laden Urges Killing Americans,” Associated Press, December 26, 1998 (AP article documenting Bin Laden personally accusing the same detainee of plotting to assassinate him).

    Katherine (0a7665)

  99. (I would actually also be pretty surprised if Al Qaeda & the Taliban instruct captured detainees to claim that they were tortured BY AL QAEDA & the TALIBAN, by the way, just as a matter of simple logic)

    Katherine (0a7665)

  100. Also on this:

    “Link #4 is a reference to 2 detainee statements. Again, they are suspect as biased and also suspect given that we know this enemy instructs those captured to claim they’ve been tortured. Is there any corroborating evidence in these cases, such as medical reports?”

    Link #4 references not only detainee statements but news articles, including this one. Read that news article & please tell me how anyone genuinely open to evidence of abuse dismisses the story out of hand as typical untrustworthy Taliban/Al Qaeda propaganda. Particular the parts about how:

    “[Ginco] was soon imprisoned by the Taliban, and tortured by operatives of Al Qaeda until, he said, he falsely confessed to being a spy for Israel and the United States.”

    “Mr. Ginco named [high level Al Qaeda operative Mohamed] Atef as one of the Qaeda and Taliban operatives who tortured him in early 2000, applying electric shocks to his ears and toes, nearly drowning him in a filthy water tank, depriving him of sleep and beating him on the soles of his feet.”

    “In December 2001 and January 2002, several Western news reporters, including one for The New York Times, interviewed Mr. Ginco and four other foreign prisoners as the Northern Alliance took over the prison where they had been held in Kandahar. A reporter for The Times of London described Mr. Ginco and some of the others as “desperate to be interviewed by the F.B.I.””

    “The Taliban announced in May 2000 that Mr. Ginco had been arrested as a spy. Another videotape was then broadcast on an Arab television network, in which he looks pale, uneasy and underweight and confesses at length to having been a spy for the United States and Israel.

    This interview with Mr. Ginco about his purported espionage was also published in a Taliban government magazine in July 2000. It quotes him as saying he was corrupted at college by an “evil acquaintance” who introduced him to a “computer game called PlayStation.” Later, he added, he was shown a pornographic computer disc and introduced to an American embassy official, whom he identified as “Shamoyel Anty,” an agent of “the Israeli intelligence agency.””

    You don’t click through the links, & when you do, you read the sources looking for excuses to dismiss them: “Prisoners always lie about torture”–yes, but I don’t think they’re instructed to lie about being tortured by Al Qaeda until they falsely confess to spying for Israel.

    “The Times is biased.” “The Post is biased.” “You can’t trust lawyers.” “You can’t trust human rights organizations.” “Well, someone was charged, clearly we didn’t approve this” (never mind that the maximum sentence in the Bagram murders was under a year, due in part to the soldiers’ argument that no one made clear to them that their conduct was illegal). “The autopsy said he had coronary artery disease”–right, I’m sure the heart attack wasn’t at all related to having his legs “pulpified” in the coroners’ report (also, the Times article in 1 DOES describe how he got those leg injuries.)

    Katherine (0a7665)

  101. Katherine’s posts remind me of a lawyer in a civil trial who can’t touch the other side’s argument so they start dredging up every thing they can think of to snowball the jury.

    Just what the hell is being discussed anymore? What are you people arguing about?

    Are you arguing about did the US or did the US not hold some interrogations that resulted in beatings and/or deaths?

    Are you arguing about the credibility of various media outlets and Human Rights Watch?

    (And by the way, the reason HRW = no credibility is because their excuse for focusing so much on the US and the West is that “it’s easier to get information there” and “governments listen to us more.” Cold comfort to the millions being oppressed in totalitarian countries; “Sorry,” HRW is saying, “but since your governments ignore us, we’re going to keep on condemning the countries who are probably your only hope.”

    It’s the same reason why I don’t give a shit about anything Katherine has to say; her criticism is not intended to improve what is being criticized, it is intended to destroy what is being criticized.)

    Just what the hell is the point of contention here? I’ve lost it in Katherine’s disgusting, morally repugnant wailing. You’d think she was describing Babi Yar.

    chaos (9c54c6)

  102. Is Katherine’s argument that Ginco was tortured by the Taliban or the U.S. or both?

    daleyrocks (906622)

  103. both. (Much worse by the Taliban. The main thing with the U.S. is not the credible allegation of abuse in Kandahar, but the fact that he’s still in bloody GTMO.)

    Katherine (0a7665)

  104. I’m not seeing the allegations of torture under U.S. custody in Kandahar or at Gitmo for Ginco? The length of detention is a separate issue IMHO.

    daleyrocks (906622)

  105. see pp. 11, 13 of the CSRT. There are more details in the court docs.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  106. Katherine – I had read the CSRT linked from your blog post on OW the other night. The only reference to torture in U.S. hands that Ginco makes in a vague reference on page 160 of the pdf from your post link:

    Detainee:I’m positive, there’s nothing wrong. In the beginning in Afghanistan, they pushed me, they beat me and tortured me, and they usually let me have outside exercise, that kind of torture.

    Ginco also confirms he was not tortured at Gitmo. It’s unclear apart from beatings what the adverse treatment was in Afghanistan. I take it that it was not merely the withholding of outside exercise?

    Is there any corroboration?

    daleyrocks (906622)

  107. Read that news article & please tell me how anyone genuinely open to evidence of abuse dismisses the story out of hand as typical untrustworthy Taliban/Al Qaeda propaganda.

    Abuse by al-Qaeda/Taliban is not the issue. We’re talking about torture by Americans. Wrongful detention is another issue, and I don’t doubt that there are cases of that.

    The main thing with the U.S. is not the credible allegation of abuse in Kandahar, but the fact that he’s still in bloody GTMO.

    Again, that’s not torture.

    Some of the corroborating info is more readily available though, in the form of news articles about the prisoners’ arrest & torture by the Taliban/Al Qaeda in 2000, & news articles by reporters who spoke to them at the Kandahar prison between the fall of the Taliban & them being sent to GTMO.

    If these are again based on detainee statements, they’re not corroborative they’re repetitive.

    “The autopsy said he had coronary artery disease”–right, I’m sure the heart attack wasn’t at all related to having his legs “pulpified” in the coroners’ report (also, the Times article in 1 DOES describe how he got those leg injuries.)

    Are you referring to a different document than the autopsy report when you refer to the coroner’s report? because that doesn’t say anything about his legs being “pulpified”. as for the Times piece, it says: “But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend.” Is that it? No source, no quote, no attribution, just the reporter’s statement? Or are you referring to this, which doesn’t tell us what happened to Dilwar? “The company received basic lessons in handling prisoners at Fort Dix, N.J., and some police and corrections officers in its ranks provided further training. That instruction included an overview of “pressure-point control tactics” and notably the “common peroneal strike” – a potentially disabling blow to the side of the leg, just above the knee.

    The M.P.’s said they were never told that peroneal strikes were not part of Army doctrine. Nor did most of them hear one of the former police officers tell a fellow soldier during the training that he would never use such strikes because they would “tear up” a prisoner’s legs.”

    That they weren’t specifically told not to do it does not tell us that they did it. Nor does it constitute torture. Having had some police training myself, I can assure you that we’re taught all sorts of compliance techniques that you use not for fun, but when you have to in order to well, gain compliance. Pressure points and well placed strikes are among them. Furthermore, the autopsy report states pretty clearly that the injuries combined with his coronary artery disease caused his death. I don’t see the point in the snark you’re offering on the subject.

    You don’t click through the links, & when you do…

    Come on, now. What is that? I’m not reading the stuff, but when I read it…? Please.

    see pp. 11, 13 of the CSRT.

    Was that linked in one of your OW posts? I recall seeing it, but can’t seem to find it. I’d like to look at that again.

    There are more details in the court docs.

    Those would be helpful.

    The court documents have to be seen to be believed.

    Yeah. That would be good.

    Pablo (99243e)

  108. Pablo – I gotta agree that interviews with the detainees are repetitive rather than corroborative, the same source is involved. Also, the focus is torture as you correctly point out, not length of detention, unjust detention, or other unrelated matters.

    daleyrocks (906622)

  109. Are we talking about this document? and are we talking about pages 11-13 as numbered in the PDF, or as numbered in the pages themselves, which are #23-25 in the PDF? I don’t see claims of Ginco being tortured in either.

    Pablo (99243e)

  110. 1. Make sure you’re reading the whole NY Times article on the Bagram deaths. There are 8 parts. I think it clarifies all these questions.

    2. The quote from the coroner is hearing testimony, not an autopsy report. Sorry about that.

    3. Normally when you commit aggravated assault on someone & the effect of beating his legs to a bloody pulp triggers a heart attack, it’s not considered to lessen your responsibility for his death. “You take your victim as you find him,” the saying goes.

    4. I forgot how confusing the CSRT numbering is. See page 160 of the PDF.

    5. The relevance of the news stories: (1) the 2000 ones are accounts of the Taliban’s arrest of the detainees, allegations that they have confessed to spying for Israel & America, & references to a videotape of those confessions. If you look at the details of the articles & the CSRTs, you realize: they match. This was captured by the Taliban in 2000. (2) The late 2001/early 2002 ones are probative because reporters were present in Kandahar when the Taliban prison where these men were held, Sar-e-poza, was liberated. Reporters describe a bunch of prisoners leaving, & discussing the horrible conditions & the prevalence of torture inside the Taliban jail. In the weeks that follow, they describe how almost all of the prisoners are freed, but a small group of foreigners remain–their Afghan jailers confirm that they were imprisoned by the Taliban & say they’re not sure what to do with them now because it’s not safe to just release them in Afghanistan–they might get killed. The reporters describe the prisoners’ allegations of abuse at the hands of the Taliban & high level members of Al Qaeda, which match the claims years later at GTMO–& remember, this was before they were in GTMO or had any suspicion they’d be sent there, so the testimony can’t be dismissed as self-serving. The reporters meet with them at the former Taliban prison, & wardens confirm that these men were imprisoned by the Taliban. This is relevant corroboration for Ginco’s allegation that he was “taken from prison to prison” & he had never fought against the United States because he had been in jail from a Taliban hellhole from early 2000 to January 2002, where he had been tortured into a false confession by high level Al Qaeda members. They also contain allegations from a group of 5 men, all of whom end up in GTMO.

    If I am accused of bearing arms against the United States for al Qaeda & the Taliban in fall 2001, and I say: “sir, I can’t have done that, I was in prison for all that time, I’m not a member of Al Qaeda; they tortured me” news articles about the Taliban arresting me in 2000, & about reporters visiting me in a Taliban prison where I had been held until the fall of Kanhadar in December 2001, & where I remained from the fall of the Taliban until my transfer to Kandahar airbase & Guantanamo, would tend to corroborate my story, because they would confirm that my alibi was true.

    That all seemed pretty obvious to me, honestly; it was also all described in the NY Times article linked by the post.

    6. It IS more about wrongful imprisonment than torture. But one of the arguments I gave against torture is that our reliance on evidence obtained under torture leads to wrongful imprisonment:

    The people tortured would make false confessions, which whether they were guilty or not would lead to them being detained for years without charge or trial. Their false confessions would lead to other arrests, and more torture, and more false confessions. Intelligence would be led down God knows how many blind alleys, resulting in the torture of God knows how many, the imprisonment of God knows how many more.

    The results would be downright bizarre sometimes. We’d not only imprison & torture innocents–we’d imprison & torture guys we captured in a Taliban prison bearing scars from torture by high level al Qaeda members; one of whom Osama Bin Laden had personally accused of trying to assassinate him in 1998. We’d keep one of them in prison in Guantanamo for the better part of 5 years; another for 6 and counting despite the fact that he kept trying to kill himself.

    7. I’m sorry about the lack of court documents but I just don’t have time to upload the links & walk you through them in the level of detail that would apparently be necessary, especially if you don’t consider this case relevant to the central issues discussed here. I don’t have any more time to post in this thread. Your responses to the detailed links have pretty much confirmed my initial fears that it was a big waste of time, but hey, I did provide some sources. If you’re genuinely curious I would try poking around in the various links & perhaps even running a few google searches yourself. I would also recommend actually reading the reports linked in 34, picking a few cases at random & looking at the source documents to verify that they’re being accurately quoted. Hours of educational fun.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  111. Oh sorry, one last thing: this is from the sworn Declaration of Ayrat Vahitov, another former Taliban prisoner also sent to GTMO, pp. 12-13 of the exhibits that Janko’s lawyers Document 37-21 in Case No. 05-cv-01310, filed in the D.C. District Court on October 10 2006:

    “14. About a month after our arrival at the Kandahar air base, things became much
    worse. Our chief interrogator was a woman who called herself Erin, who worked with another
    interrogator who had an Irish flag tattooed on his arm. The military police were from an airborne
    unit; the soldiers said they had previously been deployed in Kosovo. We were tranferred to a large
    hangar divided with wire into separate areas. Without warning, the interrogators began treating
    Abdul Rahim and me very badly. The first day we spent together in the same area, and I saw
    Abdul Rahim brought back from interrogation with red patches on his face and with his clothing
    ripped. Abdul Rahim was very intimated and told me that he had been shown an article in a
    magazine and that statements he had made on Abu Dhabi television were being twisted into
    meaning he was a terrorist.

    15. From that time, Abdul Rahim received very bad treatment. From my area, I saw and heard interrogations of Abdul Rahim using sleep deprivation, exercise like push-ups and sit-ups to
    the point of exhaustion, police dogs set on Abdul Rahim, and forcing him to stay in uncomfortable
    positions for long times, such as kneeling on gravel with his hands on his head for hours at a time. I suffered the same treatment. The mistreatment was not only painful but humiliating because it was in front of other prisoners. Although Abdul Rahim never resisted or used violence, when Abdul Rahim was taken to interrogation, a group of soldiers would jump on him, forcibly immobilize him, and rough him up. Abdul Rahim sometimes came back from interrogation with his clothing ripped. Abdul Rahim was treated worse than other prisoners, and the interrogators used their treatment of Abdul Rahim to try to make me confess to being a Russian spy. The interrogator with the Irish flag tattoo said words to the effect: See how we’re treating your friend Abdul Rahim; we can do the same to you.
    16. I could not hear what was said during Abdul Rahim’s interrogations, but he told me
    they wanted him to admit he was a terrorist involved in bombings. Abdul Rahim told me that he
    had told the interrogators everything they wanted him to say, just as he had done when the Taliban
    tortured him and then had him interviewed on videotape for Abu Dhabi television admitting he was an American spy. Abdul Rahim told me that he told the interrogators what they wanted to hear to
    make the torture stop.”

    See also document No. 39 in the same case, filed 10/16/2006, the declaration of Jamal Harith. You could argue that this is abuse/cruel treatment not rising to the level of torture. The false confession, I would think, would be a concern anyway. You could also argue that they are former prisoners & their allegations are by definition false & don’t corroborate each other. I suppose. Vahitov & Harith were released from GTMO years before Janko & lived in separate countries from one another; if all three coordinated lies about torture, they weren’t recent. Turkistani also alleged abuse at Kandahar in court documents. I am also not sure why the continued presumption of guilt & lying given the whole Taliban prison thing & the corroboration of many other parts of Ginco’s story (I don’t have all the details on this, I know). The fact that Ginco does NOT allege abuse at Guantanamo I would think would also show he’s not just following a script–& this is extremely common in the CSRT transcripts: nearly everyone says it was worst in Afghanistan. This is also consistent with human rights groups’ interviews of other prisoners. Also, stress positions & sleep deprivation & the other things he mentions were authorized in Afghanistan, & U.S. troops were not required to treat detainees in accordance with the Geneva Convention there. So I’m inclined to believe him, but again, the thing I consider REALLY unjustifiable is the enemy combatant determination.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  112. oops, corrections: Ginco/Janko are alternate transliterations of the same guy’s name, and he has NOT been released from Guantanamo. 7 years of imprisonment (including the time in the Taliban jail) & counting.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  113. Katherine – There you go again trying to change the subject of the conversation and blaming those on this site for being unwilling to carry on a dialogue. Nice try.

    I believe you claimed to be able to provide documented evidence of U.S. torture of its prisoners. That was the subject, not torture by the Taliban or Al Queda. The subject was also not torture leading ro false confessions, the length of detention of prisoners at Gitmo or the many other red herrings you have attempted to raise today. Your inability to stick to the basics does indeed bring your credibility into question, much like Hillary Clinton. Why can’t you answer the simple direct questions you have promised with the evidence you promised? Why does the subject keep changing the more questions that are asked of you? Either you have the information or you don’t. Feeble excuses and blame shifting are lame.

    daleyrocks (906622)

  114. “Why can’t you answer the simple direct questions you have promised with the evidence you promised?”

    Am I reading that right? Are people seriously denying that the Bagram deaths (& the others documented in the human rights reports above) are evidence of torture by U.S. forces? Amazing. Wow. I can honestly say that that’s a first: I’ve discussed these issues with a lot of people & I’ve never seen the like.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  115. Your Naomi Wolf passive/aggressive approach is not working.

    daleyrocks (906622)

  116. I don’t have any more time to post in this thread.

    Then perhaps you shouldn’t have wasted so much of it on off topic tangents, like Ginco. From page 160 of the PDF:

    “In the beginning, in Afghanistan, they pushed me, they kept pushing me, they beat and tortured me, and they usually let me have outside exercise, that kind of torture.”

    That’s it?

    Am I reading that right? Are people seriously denying that the Bagram deaths (& the others documented in the human rights reports above) are evidence of torture by U.S. forces?

    No, not at all. What they’re not evidence of is a policy of torture. You can tell that by the way they were reported by military witnesses and then prosecuted by the chain of command. Cases like that do not support your thesis, which is that the Administration is engaging in, as a matter of policy, torture. But I see you have no time.

    Frankly, I’d be looking for a way to get lost too, were I you. Otherwise, you might actually have to face applied logic and all that work starts swirling the drain.

    Pablo (99243e)

  117. Click on the little interactive “Bagram file” feature on the left side of the story to learn how that criminal investigation started. The military originally announced that the prisoners had died of a heart attack & a pulmonary embolism. Only after a NY Times reporter tracked down a copy of autopsy from a family member did the military acknowledge what had happened or start an investigation. The prosecutions were a near complete failure, though: the guards argued that much of what they’d done was S.O.P. at Bagram & that no one knew what was legal (the Geneva Conventions having been held to be inapplicable and replaced with a vague, contentless instruction to treat prisoners “humanely”). And no one pursued the allegations of the chain of command.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  118. up the chain.

    Katherine (0a7665)

  119. Oh, damn, screwed up my links again. The first link in the above post: “Only after a NY Times reporter tracked down a copy of autopsy from a family member”–should go to this article, which also contains other detainees’ at Bagrams reports of undergoing similar treatment. And again, don’t forget the little Java multimedia “Bagram File” thing to the left of the first NY Times story on the case I cited (I don’t know how to link directly to that.) Or the Human Rights Watch report on conditions in Bagram in 2003, which in addition to quoting a large number of prisoners, quotes a military spokesman stating that “We do force people to stand for an extended period of time” & “Disruption of sleep has been reported as an effective way of reducing people’s inhibition about talking or their resistance to questioning”. He denied that people were routinely chained to the ceiling to force them to stand but that contradicts a lot of the other testimony.

    There’s a documentary on this coming out soon. “Taxi to the Dark Side.” Being released early next year, I think–lots of interviews with soldiers. I’ve not seen it but I’ve heard good reviews.

    Katherine (0a7665)


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