Military attorney: Waterboarding is "tip of the iceberg"
The Raw Story reports that a military attorney who represented a suspected member of Al Qaeda (who was later freed) says her client received genital torture in a Moroccan CIA prison.
Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Bradley, the lawyer for Binyam Mohamed, said "They started this monthly treatment where they would come in with a scalpel or a razor type of instrument and they would slash his genitals, just with small cuts."
Bradley told CNN that when she was first assigned to represent Mohamed, she did not question he was a hardened terrorist, because "my government was saying these were the worst of the worst." However, she now says, "There’s no reliable evidence that Mr. Mohamed was going to do anything to the United States."Military attorney: Waterboarding is "tip of the iceberg"
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I should be surprised and outraged. Instead, I'm merely depressed that this happened and that probably no one will end up being convicted for torture. I wish I was shocked, though...
This is more than slightly scary but not wholly unexpected.
Keyword here is "Moroccan" prison.
This is the darker aspect of rendition, something that Bill Clinton started, Bush expanded and Obama has given as the choice alternative to Guantanamo Bay.
So ironically, the closing of Guantanamo will lead to the need for more rendition, more secret prison in cooperative countries like Morocco or Egypt.
See the LA Times:
"Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States."
Source:
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-rendition1-2009feb01,0,7548176,full.story
Change You Can Believe In!
Most disturbing: Thousands of Rush Limbaugh fans who will on hearing this wonder what the fuss is about.
I love that this story comes right after a post on an 1800's surgical kit.
Context fail.
I'm guessing about 15 minutes before the torture apologists start saying something along the lines of "how bad can razor blades to the genitals be if porn stars shave their junk all the time?"
The only reason to dribble it out is to build the case with the public.
I wonder if Sean Hannity will volunteer to have his genitals sliced.
That doesn't sound like a very effective form of torture. Monthly treatment. I guess it would take that long for all the small cuts to heal completely.
It's not so much brutal as it is weird.
I'd stick to water boarding.
Ugh. I already had my legs crossed after reading about Lars Von Trier's new movie at Cannes. And this is real life.
I'm going out to buy a chastity belt.
Cruel? Check.
Unusual? Big check.
It's somehow not right to post that article right after a post that is about "beautiful and horrifying" instruments of surgeons. Argh... Makes me puke. Unicorn chaser, where art though?
All this does is provide a more specific sexual association for the people who already almost certainly view torture as a more or less erotic act, enjoyed vicariously. In other words, torture was so wrapped up in a feeling of "revenge" for so many people in the US that it almost certainly has a sort of sex/power allure for them. This is a logical extension of that feeling.
So why doesn't she resign from her job in protest?
Officers can resign their commission at any time.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1160238/How-MI5-colluded-torture-Binyam-Mohamed-claims-British-agents-fed-Moroccan-torturers-questions--WORLD-EXCLUSIVE.html
#1, no one will be convicted or even lose their jobs. Except Nancy Pelosi, who was rude enough to talk about it.
@13, I think you should check back on Yvonne Bradley, too, in a year or two.
MypalMike @8 - You beat me to it... I earn an average income, but I will match Olbermann's $1,000/second offer if Hannity volunteers to have his tiny dick sliced with a razor blade by a CIA operative. $2,000 if he lets Nancy Pelosi do it.
But he probably is now! Or his friends. Or his family.
Good work boys! Thanks for keeping the good 'ol US safe.
@ #1 posted by surreality
Ever since this whole torture thing started to come to light, I've been trying to find a way to express how it really makes me feel, and you summed it up in one word - depressed.
Closing Gitmo?
Congress says, "No Way!"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8060350.stm
No easy way to stop once you have started torturing people.
Released after being held without charge and tortured, some may actively work against the US?
Gee, I wonder why?
The use of torture was Bush's way of guaranteeing that these Wars will drag on. And you're falling for it.
Cryptome's got two fotos up re:Gitmo,: I'd scream too if held without charge and tortured for years!
Now why would these guys hate the US? (If they did not before, they have very good reason to now.) Guess you'll have to kill them all....or else on release they might seek...would it be justice, or revenge?:(
http://www.cryptome.org/
WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME!!!
Hey, but this is the Moroccans doing it, not the US, so stop your bellyaching.
People, you're getting it all wrong, it's called "enhanced interrogation techniques", not torture, the CIA would never do such a thing.
newbie - 1st post.
"re-enactment" hahahaha what? yeah, like they are going to film it and youtube it up.
also: ouch
further - great blog, have had the rss feed for a while. entertaining and interesting stuff
Come on, cuts to the testes is not 'torture'!
It's 'enhanced interrogation techniques, subtype razor assisted'.
If we can't cut the testicles of brown people, how can we be the greatest nation on earth?
How bad can razor blades to the genitals be if porn stars shave their junk all the time?
http://pro.corbis.com/images/42-16062173.jpg?size=572&uid={BC5F13C1-2315-43B4-B2DD-DBE02565C3F2}
@ #27 posted by spazzm
"If we can't cut the testicles of brown people, how can we be the greatest nation on earth?"
I'm surprised they're not cutting the testicles OFF. That would take care of their fear of brown people.
I'm curious how the right-wing turdosphere will treat this:
1. "It's not torture" (doubtful)
2. "She's lying!" (likely)
3. "It doesn't matter, he's a terrorist. . . or do you love the terrorists?!" (likely)
4. "We didn't do it, the Moroccans did it!" (likely)
I put one tiny nick in my scrotum once, accidentally. It hurt like hell for days and bled like crazy for hours.
Many tiny cuts? Torture. No doubt about it.
#6 Brainspore 12:30 PM
"I'm guessing about 15 minutes before the torture apologists start saying something along the lines of "how bad can razor blades to the genitals be if porn stars shave their junk all the time?"
#28 Anonymous 2:28 PM
"How bad can razor blades to the genitals be if porn stars shave their junk all the time?"
1 hour 58 minutes. Wa-ay off, Brainspore.
@ Arkizzle #33:
#28 wasn't quoting me, he was quoting something Rush Limbaugh said at 12:45 this afternoon.
As to the weirdness of the genital cutting, as I understand it, the complete story was that they poured caustic liquid into the cuts (hence the reason for only making small ones).
A roundup of facts vs conjecture regarding the story here.
It's called 'rendition'.
I'm surprised that people are surprised.
Well, we will never know if this even occurred or not unless it goes to an open trial (or even weather it was likely to have occurred). If I was a terrorism suspect who got snatched off the street I would be a fool not to cry "Torture Torture" regardless of my own guilt or innocence or what actually happened to me. It is highly doubtful that physical torture is used at all for one simple reason: IT DOES NOT WORK. Intelligence agencies are all about results....that's what wins people higher positions in their fields and bigger bonuses. Every study on physical torture shows that it is simply not effective except to illicit false confessions. There are psychological and pharmaceutical solutions with a very high success rate. I know that and I am not even in the intelligence field. If they are using physical torture to search for information then I want them fired....not for torturing people, but for not doing their job to get the information that could prevent future terrorist attacks and save innocent lives.
perhaps a reminder is needed. Torture has little to do with the degree of physical damage. What makes it torture is the realization by the victim that the torturer DOES NOT HAVE TO STOP. Ever.
There is not ONE of you reading this that would be unmarked if you found yourself in the hands of another with no recourse and no hope. Not one.
Recall the case of the lost hiker who cut off his own arm with a pocket knife to escape certain death by rock-fall. Looking into his eyes and looking into the eyes of Binyam Mohamed, do you not think you will see a difference? People who survive a death-match with cancer are changed by it, they look different. But they don't look like Mohamed.
Brainspore +2
Nice :)
She must mean tip of the hot needle of inquiry. Seriously though how can any court take any evidence from any US prisoner held in the War on Terror seriously now?
either that or The Lying Bastard.
"It is highly doubtful that physical torture is used at all for one simple reason: IT DOES NOT WORK."
I've always wondered why the apologists don't seem to consider what they themselves would do if under a knife they knew would not be stayed by law or decency and they did not have the information the man with the knife sought. How does someone give accurate information when they ~don't have the information to begin with~?
It is highly doubtful that physical torture is used at all for one simple reason:IT DOES NOT WORK.
Yeah, they didn't torture because it doesn't work. They created an entire legal framework to justify something they weren't going to do. The Red Cross, various FBI interrogators and military officers are all lying or confused. Cheney's talking out of his ass by calling for the CIA to release records that he says proves torture--oh, excuse me: "enhanced interrogation"--worked.
Good grief.
Torture works: NOT to elicit info, BUT to TERRIFY a population into submission - if it's the "lawful/governing force" doing the torture, the victims are prominent and good people, and the torture goes unto grotesque and mutilated death, with the bodies then left in very prominent locations - like in El Salvador when in receipt of US aid to "fight guerrillas", or as in Bagdad under US occupation.
Remind me: who is responsible for security when a country is under military occupation? Ooooh, right....
Not that Americans would do such things: but their foreign "allies" (or "cut-outs", to use a CIA term) seem to ALWAYS do such: from Vietnam to South America, Latin America to the Indian Sub-continent, from Africa to Indonesia.
Lessons learned?
Chomsky says that US aid increases in direct proportion to the frequency of the use of torture and violence as a tool of governance.
Jesse Ventura said all he needed was an hour waterboarding Dick Cheney to make him admit to the Tate murders.
How long do you think he'd need with this technique.
"Jesse, you had me at 'scrotum.'"
Having had a voluntary vasectomy (complete with local anesthetic), I have to say this act is torture.
/going to sit cross legged for a while
I agree with @Surreality. This should shock and disgust me, but I am really not surprised.
Last year, retired C.I.A. agent John Kiriakou (who seems to be the C.I.A.'s official waterboarding spokesperson) came to talk to one of my classes at Pitt about waterboarding when it just hit the news. It was all very creepy, but the most disturbing part of the whole thing was when he mentioned other "extraordinary methods" the C.I.A. used to get information. When we asked what he meant, he said that he was not classified to say. I've been waiting to see if these other "methods" were exposed. I knew it would only be a matter of time.
Kiriakou said that he wasn't trained in waterboarding, because (echoing @Pecoto) it just doesn't work, unless you're looking for false information.
I guess pretty soon all that will be left are sadists and masochists. Sigh.
muslimboarding champion Cheney (The Dick) could have served in Viet Nam, and maybe got a taste of it himself in SERE training. But he got a deferment. Later, the war was still on, but he managed to get another deferment and didn't go. Time went by, his fat-ass, loud mouth buddy, Jabba the Rush got a deferment for ass-cysts. Just about when Cheney got another deferment. Well, wouldn't you know it, more time went by and Cheney got another deferment. What is that now? Four? Wasn't enough, El Chickenhawk Generalissmo Supremo Dick Muslimboarder Cheney got a FIFTH deferent. All that and there were still enough douchebags in America to give Bush eight years.
The only way to really find out if torture took place or not is if we tortured Cheney. Sorry, I mean we ask him using the enhanced interrogation techniques.
Don't lie, takuan. Limbaugh only had one ass-cyst that kept him from fighting the godless commies.
now there's doubt about the ass-cyst too.
see? it's working, mooslims the lot of them!
"NEW YORK — The FBI arrested four men Wednesday in what authorities called a plot to detonate a bomb outside a Jewish temple and to shoot military planes with guided missiles.
Officials told The Associated Press the arrests came after a long-running undercover operation that began in Newburgh, N.Y., about 70 miles north of New York City.
James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, all of Newburgh, were charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles, the U.S. attorney's office said.
The men had planned to detonate a car with plastic explosives outside a temple in the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale and to shoot military planes at the New York Air National Guard base at Stewart Airport in Newburgh with Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles, authorities said."
The military and politicians need to stop watching 24.
As long as you respect this authority, you are an enabler.
Gasp!! The US military?!! Torturing?!! NO!!!!
Say it ain't so!!!
Next we're gonna find out that they've been raping and killing civilians and children!
If substantiated, all these people should be prosecuted and go to prison.
Is most of the Bush admin in jail yet?
Cowcide: No, nor will they ever be. So many of the people involved could point to people still in office who knew the same things were going down.
Obama is apparently okay with the torture regime too. No need to reveal photos showing the torture, why? Because it might harm some Americans, Obama says ("the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger"). Like many Americans eager to find no fault with the pro-war torturer they voted for, Obama never seems to display understanding that it is the invasion and occupation that anger people and cause them to take up arms against their American invaders and occupiers. This all happens well prior to the torture photos.
How many CIA agents and right wingers are right now scouring the world for "compromising information" on Ms. Bradley? 4 months from now some fuzzy grainy images of some woman with similar glasses doing something naughty in a motel room will appear and throw this whole case off balance.
Nothing more serious than a bunch of frat pranks, right?
JB NicholsonOwens @59 Obama says "the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger"
What really gets me about that statement is that it's almost word for word what Dick Cheney said when Obama originally announced that the pictures would be released.
Well, now we know what those secret photos include. sliced genitals and boiling water pumped into some guy's anus.
Yay, Obama, keep burying the truth.
Three small notes:
1. My first attempt at commenting gave me the CAPTCHA pair "cutups overacting". Ouch again.
2. At 00:31 in the video, the CNN guy warns, "some of what you're about to hear is graphic," which makes me wonder if CNN can also let me see material which I will find malodorous, or let me touch something vivid, or taste a cacophony of foul-smelling sights.
3. And finally,
Oh, yeah. That's just the kind of high-quality legal advocate I'd like to have on my side if I ever get in a little jam.hang Cheney today
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/21/barack-obama-guantanamo-close