The last word on torture, hopefully

Sure, torture produces unreliable information because a person being tortured will tell the torturer anything to make the torture stop. And sure, torture is antithetical to everything that this country stands for, fans the flames of hatred and all but assures that our troops will suffer similar treatment. But do cookies make you feel as tough as torture does?

The practice of torturing suspected terrorists received fresh blows Friday after a magazine reported that a key al Qaeda suspect offered useful intelligence after receiving sugar-free cookies.

Ali Soufan, a former FBI interrogator, revealed in an article being released in June that Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard opened up about the 9/11 terror attacks only after being offered -- sugar free cookies.

Bin Laden lieutenant Abu Jandal is a diabetic, Soufan said, and wouldn't eat sugar cookies he'd been offered.

"Soufan noticed that he didn't touch any of the cookies that had been served with tea: 'He was a diabetic and couldn't eat anything with sugar in it,' Time's Bobby Ghosh wrote. "At their next meeting, the Americans brought him some sugar-free cookies, a gesture that took the edge off Abu Jandal's angry demeanor.

"We had showed him respect, and we had done this nice thing for him," Soufan told Ghosh. "So he started talking to us instead of giving us lectures."

Yet the torture fetishists out there will continue to support torturing detainees even though it doesn't work and even though there are more effective methods. Makes you wonder why they would do that, huh?

As if the Philly Inky edit page

weren't bad enough with Rick Santorum, the paper hires John Yoo to write a monthly column. Yoo, of course, is famous for his previous work, which attempted to manufacture a legal justification for torture.

Now, instead of "enemy combatants" or just people ensnared in the post-9/11 round-up for the flimsiest of reasons, Yoo will be torturing Inky readers.

The last word on torture (hopefully)

What will it take to get proponents of torture to turn off "24" and face reality? Perhaps the leader of an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq?

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

But torture makes us feel tough and not afraid. We're supposed to give all that up just because some experienced Special Operations and counterintelligence guy says it violates American principles, doesn't work, inspires fighters to join the enemy and costs lives?

Did I mention that it makes us feel tough and not afraid?

How they voted

on the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act, which would give federal and congressional employees four weeks of paid parental leave after the birth or adoption of a child, or taking in a foster a child. The bill also would make it easier to use sick leave to care for a new child.

The bill passed despite 145 Republicans and one Democrat voting against it. But of course Bush plans to veto it. According to the Washington Post, the White House called the bill a "costly, unnecessary, new paid leave entitlement." In other words, it’s a reckless use of taxpayer dollars.

In other news, The White House reached an agreement with the House Wednesday for $165 billion in “supplemental” funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The White House had to agree to the inclusion of Jim Webb’s 21st Century GI Bill in exchange for permission to continue torturing detainees and to persue a status of forces agreement that will leave American forces stationed in Iraq forever, or at least until the day after it runs out of oil.

With another $165 billion heading out the window, the White House’s “costly” argument rings kind of hollow, eh? Let’s face it: The real reason 145 Republicans voted against this bill and the real reason Bush will veto it is that the bill throws a crumb to people who work for a living.

Remember this the next time you hear a Republican talking about how important it is to help families.

The torture memo

John Woo’s shameful legacy, in 81 pages.

Part One.
Part Two.

Douchebag of the Week

Douglas Feith, the “fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.”

“This year I was really a player,” Feith said, thinking back on 2002 and relishing the memory. I asked him whether, in the end, he was at all concerned that the Geneva decision might have diminished America’s moral authority. He was not. “The problem with moral authority,” he said, was “people who should know better, like yourself, siding with the assholes, to put it crudely.”

UPDATE: We have co-winners, courtesy of Darrell Issa.

The California congressman who called the Sept. 11 attacks "simply" a plane crash ran for cover Wednesday under a barrage of ridicule from fellow Republicans, first responders and victims' families.

UPDATE 2: Is there no end to the douchebaggery? Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC):

We spent the night in the Green Zone, in the poolhouse of one of Saddam’s palaces. A little weird, I got to be honest with you. But I felt safe. And so in the morning, I got up early — not that I make this a great habit — but I went to the gym because I just couldn’t sleep and everything else. Well, sure enough, the guard wouldn’t let me in. Said I didn’t have the correct credentials.

It’s 5:00 in the morning. I haven’t had sleep. I was not very happy with this two-bit security guard. So you know, I said, “I want to see your supervisor.” Thirty minutes later, the supervisor wasn’t happy with me, they escort me back to my room. It happens. I guess I didn’t need to work out anyway.

Veto

Remember, we do not torture. So this is just about keeping our options open, right? Because Americans would never actually sink to the level of its enemies, right?

President Bush said Saturday he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists because it would end practices that have prevented attacks.

"The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," Bush said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday. "So today I vetoed it," Bush said. The bill he rejected provides guidelines for intelligence activities for the year and has the interrogation requirement as one provision. It cleared the House in December and the Senate last month.

"This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe," the president said.

Supporters of the legislation say it would preserve the United States' ability to collect critical intelligence while also providing a much-needed boost to country's moral standing abroad.

"Torture is a black mark against the United States," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. "We will not stop until [the ban] becomes law."

The bill would limit CIA interrogators to the 19 techniques allowed for use by military questioners. The Army field manual in 2006 banned using methods such as waterboarding or sensory deprivation on uncooperative prisoners.

If only there were other ways for chickenhawks to feel like real men.

Washington drift

Yesterday’s senate vote on the Intelligence Authorizaion bill, which would make the Army Field Manual the standard for interrogations for intelligence organizations — essentially banning torture by any U.S. personnel, produced some interesting results.

To its credit, the senate passed the bill, 51-45. Naturally Bush will veto the bill because he doesn’t want torture to be outlawed.

What was interesting was how the presidential candidates handled the issue. Ex-maverick John McCain, he of the famous anti-torture amendment, voted against the measure to sure up his conservative bona fides and show The Base that he shares their craven bloodlust.

Meanwhile, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama cast a vote on this measure. This is what they call “drifting toward the center,” a time-honored practice of trying to attract the votes of moderates, fence sitters and maybe even some supporters of the other party. Both candidates apparently want to avoid looking soft on terrorism. For Clinton, this is another in a series of actions that she’s had to mold talking points to explain away—the first being her vote in 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq, the next being her September vote in favor of a resolution designating part of Iran’s military as a terrorist organization.

Clinton might argue that she didn’t vote because she is in Texas fighting to save her foundering campaign, but that hardly justifies missing votes on issues as important as torture being carried out by the United States government and immunity for companies acting as accomplices in warrantless spying on American citizens being carried out by the United States government.

For his part, Obama voted in favor of stripping immunity language out of the FISA bill, but he didn’t participate in the torture vote. And, like Clinton, he can’t cite the importance of the Wisconsin primary as a reason for skipping his day job, especially when an issue as significant as torture is on the table. Sure Bush is going to veto the bill, asshole that he is. However, if Obama is really looking past Clinton to McCain, he had a golden opportunity to distinguish himself from the likely GOP nominee. But instead of distinguishing himself from McCain, it appears that Obama was looking to siphon some voters from McCain by not casting a vote that could be make him look weak on terror — an issue that McCain supporters perceive as one of their man’s strengths.

That’s the thing about candidates who take a firm stand squarely in the middle: It’s hard to distinguish one from the other.

If there’s a vote to override the veto, let’s hope that Obama and Clinton show up and do their jobs. And it would be nice if McCain stopped the pandering and voted to override as well. It would be nice to see a little action behind their rhetoric.

Administration of Torture

When the same abuses are taking place in prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba and God knows where else, they are not isolated incidents. They are not coincidences.

President Bush gave "marching orders" to Gen. Michael Dunlavey, who asked the Pentagon to approve harsher interrogation methods at Guantanamo, the general claims in documents reported in the book.

The ACLU also found that an Army investigator reported Rumsfeld was "personally involved" in overseeing the interrogation of a Guantanamo prisoner Mohammed al Qahtani. The prisoner was forced to parade naked in front of female interrogators wearing women's underwear on his head and was led around on a leash while being forced to perform dog tricks.

One of the first question I asked when I saw Lynndie England holding a dog leash with a prostrate Iraqi man on the other end was, "If these incidents are the isolated actions of prison guards working the third shift, as the administration contends, where did she get the leash?” I doubt she brought it with her to Iraq, and she probably didn’t have a lot of free time to go shopping after she arrived.

N85VM

A shameful connection.

The part owner of a US baseball team has been cited as one of the prosecution witnesses in next month's trial of CIA and Italian spies for abducting an Egyptian cleric suspected of terror offences.

Prosecutors on Friday called Boston Red Sox minority owner Philip Morse as one of their witnesses in the 2003 abduction of Hassan Mustafa Omar Nasr, then head of Milan's main mosque.

The prosecutors claim Morse's Gulfstream jet was used to whisk Nasr from a US air force base in Italy to one in Germany, from where he was allegedly flown for interrogation to Egypt.

Nasr, who is also known as Abu Omar, was released from an Egyptian jail earlier this year, saying he had been tortured and raped.

As for Morse, he already has confirmed that the CIA charters his plane.

Phillip H. Morse, a minority partner of the Boston Red Sox, confirmed yesterday that his private jet has been chartered to the CIA and said he was aware that it had been flown to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where more than 500 terrorism suspects are held, as well as other overseas destinations.

''It's chartered a lot," Morse said by phone from his winter home in Jupiter, Fla. ''It just so happens one of our customers is the CIA.

"I was glad to have the business, actually. I hope it was all for a real good purpose."

Hope? I admit to knowing nothing about the process involved in chartering a private jet. But I know that when I rent a car, the agent wants to know if I'll be leaving the state. So it seems unlikely to me that the rental agent for a Gulfstream IV jet would ask fewer questions than a 20-something part-time Avis employee setting me up with a Chevy Aveo, even if it is the CIA we're talking about.

Mahlon Richards, co-owner of Richmor Aviation, the plane's charter agent, said in 2005 that he believes the plane was used to transport federal workers, adding that his company had no information that it was ever used to transport U.S. detainees. Is that becuause he was lied to, or because he never asked?

I understand as well as anyone the desire to do your part for the nation, especially in the aftermath of the horrible events of 9/11. But to simply turn over a private jet to the CIA with no idea what your plane is being used for? I think at the very least, I'd want to know what they plan to do with my plane that they can't do with one of their own.

Of course, it's not like the CIA is above lying or concealing its activities. Nearly three years after the Washington Post and Boston Globe mentioned it, does anyone really know anything about Premier Executive Transport Services?

If it turns out the agency was using the plane as part of the Bush administration's highly unethical extraordinary rendition program, and if Morse knew about it -- or should have but was too busy counting the $900,000 a week in taxpayer money the CIA paid to rent the jet to find out -- I think the Red Sox need to cut this tie to one of the darkest events in the history of this damaged nation as soon as possible. I hope someone in Fenway's owner's box is watching this.