Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

What They Craved
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11
By MARJORIE COHN
When I testified last year before the House Judiciary Committee's 
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties about 
Bush interrogation policies, Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz) stated that 
former CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed that the Bush 
administration only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zabaydah, and 
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirit for one minute each. I told Franks that I didn't 
believe that. Sure enough, one of the newly released torture memos reveals 
that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 
times. One of Stephen Bradbury's 2005 memos asserted that "enhanced 
techniques" on Zubaydah yielded the identification of Mohammed and an 
alleged radioactive bomb plot by Jose Padilla. But FBI supervisory special 
agent Ali Soufan, who interrogated Zubaydah from March to June 2002, wrote 
in the New York Times that Zubaydah produced that information under 
traditional interrogation methods, before the harsh techniques were ever 
used.
Why, then, the relentless waterboarding of these two men? It turns out that 
high Bush officials put heavy pressure on Pentagon interrogators to get 
Mohammed and Zubaydah to reveal a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 
hijackers, in order to justify Bush's illegal and unnecessary invasion of 
Iraq in 2003. That link was never established.
President Obama released the four memos in response to a Freedom of 
Information Act request by the ACLU. They describe unimaginably brutal 
techniques and provide "legal" justification for clearly illegal acts of 
torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In the face of monumental 
pressure from the CIA to keep them secret, Obama demonstrated great courage 
in deciding to make the grotesque memos public. At the same time, however, 
in an attempt to pacify the intelligence establishment, Obama said, "it is 
our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good 
faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be 
subject to prosecution."
In startlingly clinical and dispassionate terms, the authors of the 
newly-released torture memos describe and then rationalize why the 
devastating techniques the CIA sought to employ on human beings do not 
violate the Torture Statute (18 U.S.C. sec. 2340).
The memos justify 10 techniques, including banging heads into walls 30 times 
in a row, prolonged nudity, repeated slapping, dietary manipulation, and 
dousing with cold water as low as 41 degrees. They allow shackling in a 
standing position for 180 hours, sleep deprivation for 11 days, confinement 
of people in small dark boxes with insects for hours, and waterboarding to 
create the perception they are drowning. Moreover, the memos permit many of 
these techniques to be used in combination for a 30-day period. They find 
that none of these techniques constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or 
degrading treatment.
Waterboarding, admittedly the most serious of the methods, is designed, 
according to Jay Bybee, to induce the perception of "suffocation and 
incipient panic, i.e. the perception of drowning." But although Bybee finds 
that "the use of the waterboard constitutes a threat of imminent death," he 
accepts the CIA's claim that it does "not anticipate that any prolonged 
mental harm would result from the use of the waterboard." One of Bradbury's 
memos requires that a physician be on duty during waterboarding to perform a 
tracheotomy in case the victim doesn't recover after being returned to an 
upright position.
As psychologist Jeffrey Kaye points out, the CIA and the Justice Department 
"ignored a wealth of other published information" that indicates 
dissociative symptoms, changes greater than those in patients undergoing 
heart surgery, and drops in testosterone to castration levels after acute 
stress associated with techniques that the memos sanction.
The Torture Statute punishes conduct, or conspiracy to engage in conduct, 
specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or 
suffering. "Severe mental pain or suffering" means the prolonged mental harm 
caused by or resulting from either the intentional infliction or threatened 
infliction of severe physical pain or suffering, or from the threat of 
imminent death.
Bybee asserts that "if a defendant acts with the good faith belief that his 
actions will not cause such suffering, he has not acted with specific 
intent." He makes the novel claim that the presence of personnel with 
medical training who can stop the interrogation if medically necessary 
"indicates that it is not your intent to cause severe physical pain."
Now a federal judge with lifetime appointment, Bybee concludes that 
waterboarding does not constitute torture under the Torture Statute. 
However, he writes, "we cannot predict with confidence whether a court would 
agree with this conclusion."
Bybee's memo explains why the 10 techniques could be used on Abu Zubaydah, 
who was considered to be a top Al Qaeda operative. "Zubaydah does not have 
any pre-existing mental conditions or problems that would make him likely to 
suffer prolonged mental harm from [the CIA's] proposed interrogation 
methods," the CIA told Bybee. But Zubaydah was a low-ranking Al Qaeda 
operative, according to leading FBI counter-terrorism expert Dan Coleman, 
who advised a top FBI official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split 
personality." This was reported by Ron Suskind in his book, The One Percent 
Doctrine.
The CIA's request to confine Zubaydah in a cramped box with an insect was 
granted by Bybee, who told the CIA it could place a harmless insect in the 
box and tell Zubaydah that it will sting him but it won't kill him. Even 
though the CIA knew that Zubaydah had an irrational fear of insects, Bybee 
found there would be no threat of severe physical pain or suffering if it 
followed this procedure.
Obama's intent to immunize those who violated our laws banning torture and 
cruel treatment violates the President's constitutional duty to "take Care 
that the Laws be faithfully executed."
U.S. law prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and 
requires that those who subject people to such treatment be prosecuted. The 
Convention against Torture compels us to refer all torture cases for 
prosecution or extradite the suspect to a country that will undertake a 
criminal investigation.
Obama has made a political calculation to seek amnesty for the CIA 
torturers. However, good faith reliance on superior orders was rejected as a 
defense at Nuremberg and in Lt. Calley's Vietnam-era trial for the My Lai 
Massacre. The Torture Convention provides unequivocally, "An order from a 
superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification 
for torture."
There is evidence that the CIA was using the illegal techniques as early as 
April 2002, three to four months before the August memo was written. That 
would eliminate "good faith" reliance on Justice Department advice as a 
"defense" to prosecution.
The Senate IntelligenceCommittee revealed that Condoleezza Rice approved 
waterboarding in July 17, 2002 "subject to a determination of legality by 
the OLC." She got it two weeks later from Bybee and John Yoo. Rice, Dick 
Cheney, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and George Tenet reassured the CIA 
in spring 2003 that the abusive methods were legal.
Obama told AP's Jennifer Loven in the Oval Office: "With respect to those 
who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more 
of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various 
laws, and I don't want to prejudge that." If Holder continues to carry out 
Obama's political agenda by resisting investigations and prosecution, 
Congress can, and should, authorize the appointment of a special independent 
prosecutor to do what the law requires.
The President must fulfill his constitutional duty to ensure that the laws 
are faithfully executed. Obama said that "nothing will be gained by spending 
our time and energy laying blame for the past." He is wrong. There is more 
to gain from upholding the rule of law. It will make future leaders think 
twice before they authorize the cruel, illegal treatment of other human 
beings.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president 
of the National Lawyers Guild and author of Cowboy Republic. and co-author 
of the new book, Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military 
Dissent. Her articles are archived at 
www.marjoriecohn.com
.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohn04242009.html
US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites
By Mark Danner
y Mark Danner
ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA 
Custody
by the International Committee of the Red Cross
43 pp., February 2007
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22530

 Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11
***RRRRRROOOOOOOTTTTTTFFFFFFLLLLLLLLLL***
-Stefano 

 una mano da te. 


Proprio cosi'.
Cheney sta blaterando come non mai, rivendica la utilita' estrema della
tortura.
Con questa ha sventato orrendi attentati ........ progettati da lui stesso.
Adesso e' chiaro a cosa serviva il Lagher al di fuori di ogni controllo.
Una fabbrica di Fiction e una tomba dove mettere al silenzio i vecchi
alleati del Corano.
Guai se parlassero liberamente.
Si e' tenuta di recente una conferenza dove uno studioso americano
raccontava degli anni di Osama Bin Laden a Sarajevo.
Peccato che l'ho persa.
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