Attorney General Holder Names CIA Special Prosecutor

Apparently deeply disturbed over some of the things he read in the recently released and redacted 2004 report on interrogations, Attorney General Eric Holder has finally decided to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate 12 cases of torture of prisoners of war.

Reports of mock executions where prisoners were housed in interrogation rooms and were led to believe that the gunshot they just heard in the next room was from an interrogator’s gun, reports of the threats to drill through the skulls of detainees with a power drill, reports like these were just too much, apparently, for Holder to ignore.

So today he announced the appointment of Connecticut federal prosecutor John Durham to head up the investigation, a good choice because he is already involved in many aspects of alleged CIA (or their contractors) prisoner abuse.

Now the idea here is not to go after the people who were taking their orders in good faith that they were legal (although some from the Nazi Wehrmacht might grumble about that one), but to go after the decision makers. Those who gave the go-ahead.

Those who were clearly politically motivated to issue orders that were in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions. You know, like Heinrich Himmler. Those type of guys.

I think it is probably pretty useless to go after the small potatoes, the ones who poured the water. I think it would be punishment enough to blackball them from any future government contracts.

Now . . . about Blackwater. Can that be next on the list of things to do or is it true that since the crimes were committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are copacetic?

Wouldn’t it be appropriate, then, to hand these alleged murderers over to the local governments, and have them render justice?

Put Cheney in Chains

I’m getting tired of all of the hand-wringing going on about whether or not to investigate and prosecute Dick Cheney for his war crimes. Not to act is a sure sign that America could lose all of the moral authority that it regained last January 20^th.

Not to act endangers our soldiers. Endangers everyone, really, who visits the Middle East for any reason.

All you have to do is look at what the law says. The things that Dick Cheney may be responsible for are by definition war crimes.

Here are the operative lines from 18 U.S.C. §2441:

(c) Definition. As used in this section the term "war crime" means any conduct--

(1) defined as a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party;

This isn’t something to mull over. Someone committed serious crimes and the world community is watching us and will ultimately judge us on what we do about it.

So I got an email from TrueMajority.org today. They have an online petition to Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to take action and select a special prosecutor. I signed it.

You could, too. The petition is here.

Don Rumsfeld: War Criminal

Two women verbally accosted former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as he was entering the Whitehouse Correspondents’ banquet last weekend.

Shouting at the top of their lungs "War criminal! Donald Rumsfeld is a war criminal!"

And yes, it was videotaped, and posted on You Tube courtesy of Democracy Now.

What a nightmare.

Ali Soufan: Al Qaeda Terrorists Trained For Torture

Well that explains it. I was wondering, after hearing about how Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in 2002, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times, I asked myself if they could take it that many times, and at reported rates of six times per day, how effective is waterboarding as an instrument of torture anyway?

Because the first report we got from an FBI guy who read a report that said they had been tortured just once and sang like canaries afterward, giving us all the impression that this was a great way to extract information, any information whether it is true or not true.

Well it was cleared up today by former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan who testified on the first day of Senate hearings on torture. Yes, waterboarding is definitely torture but al Qaeda terrorists go to torture school as part of their training.

Soufan put it this way (From Politico):

“As shocking as these techniques are to us, the al Qaeda training prepares them for much worse — the torture they would expect to receive if caught by dictatorships.”

Interesting that he equated the Bush Regime to a dictatorship, but really a namby pamby dictatorship.

Because real dictators know how to really torture people.

You have to wonder what went through the minds of these two terrorist leaders when the CIA contractors who were used brought in the waterboards. I can think of only a one word sentence that they might have uttered under their breath: “Amateurs!”

Guantanamo Detainee Released: What Hath Bush Wrought?

Today’s Chron contains an article filed by AP reporter Paisley Dodds detailing the hellish 7–year existence of Ethiopia born Binyam Mohamed, who was nabbed by Pakistani authorities when, in 2002 he tried to return to England, where he was a legal resident, from Karachi using a false passport.

In the years that ensued Mohamed was

• Strung up by his wrists with leather straps and left to hang for a week – sometimes witnessed by a British MI-5 operative;
• Renditioned to Morocco by US agents for an 18 month long torture session, which included, it is alleged, mutilation of some part of his more intimate areas;
• Forced to confess to “an array of charges to stop his abuse;”
• Further abused at a CIA site in Afghanistan, where he was starved and beaten;
• Sent to Guantanamo in 2004 where he eventually faced charges of “conspiring with al-Qaida members to murder and commit terrorism.”

Then, miraculously, all charges were dropped in 2008 after lawyers working for him in the UK filed a lawsuit seeking the release of 42 secret documents.

He is now back in the UK with his sister.

But the fun in reading the article really begins in the comments, where you get to see the kind of flora and fauna that I have to share oxygen with here in Red Texas.

“It begins. The first of many to be released so they can go back to plotting terrorist acts against the infidel”

“This will be the mastermind of the next terrorist attack on our soil. What a president we elected.”

“Remember, they don't torture our people. Decapitation isn't torture, just murder!”

Ad nauseum.

Here in Red Texas, we are more than willing to accept the notion of guilty until proven innocent. Particularly if the accused is a Muslim. Particularly if the accused is a converted Muslim (assuming from the Ethiopian flavor of Christianity). Here we have a guy who was initially arrested by Pakistanis, handed off to the Brits, then to the Americans, all of whom apparently had their ways with him.

Yielding confessions of questionable veracity or value.

But he must be guilty because the alternative is much too horrible to contemplate. That we Americans, through our government surrogates, engage in practices of medieval torture.

But I will give it to the second commenter, the one who predicts that this one will be the mastermind of the next terrorist attack. Because if Binyan Mohamed was not of the opinion that Americans are the great Satan and should be opposed at every turn at the cost of life and limb before his harrowing 7-year journey through living hell, I’ll bet he is now.

And I ask who then should we punish? Mohamed for becoming the person we have turned him into, or to punish some other to convince the world that this isn’t who we are anymore.

When will the war crimes trials begin?