WASHINGTON – The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.
The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency. Read the rest of this entry »
The author catches his breath after undergoing his first waterboarding session. Photographs by Gasper Tringale.
Believe Me, It’s Torture
What more can be added to the debate over U.S. interrogation methods, and whether waterboarding is torture? Try firsthand experience. The author undergoes the controversial drowning technique, at the hands of men who once trained American soldiers to resist—not inflict—it.
by CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
August 2008
Here is the most chilling way I can find of stating the matter. Until recently, ?waterboarding? was something that Americans did to other Americans. It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva Conventions. But it was something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict.
Exploring this narrow but deep distinction, on a gorgeous day last May I found myself deep in the hill country of western North Carolina, preparing to be surprised by a team of extremely hardened veterans who had confronted their country?s enemies in highly arduous terrain all over the world. They knew about everything from unarmed combat to enhanced interrogation and, in exchange for anonymity, were going to show me as nearly as possible what real waterboarding might be like.
This is no limited recession. The New York Times observed that: “June?s job losses affected a range of industries, including banks, construction companies, manufacturing firms and car dealerships. Janitors and administrative workers were the hardest hit, with about 70,000 workers losing their jobs last month alone. Temp agencies lost 30,000 jobs.”
Pain continues to trickle up, as those still working are also suffering under the weight of recession. NYT notes “employers are cutting hours for their full-time employees and shrinking salaries.” USA Today reports, “Wages are lagging inflation as gasoline, energy and food prices surge.”
But this is not a brief bump in the road, a mere cyclical dip that will be quickly forgotten. Weak job growth, flat wages and rising costs have been the hallmark of this eight-year conservative era. Read the rest of this entry »
Instead of negotiating a long-term presence in Iraq, the United States should be negotiating a withdrawal.
The Iraqis have reached a consensus: the U.S. should leave Iraq. Regardless of whether they are Kurds, Sunni, or Shi’a; regardless of political party, there is a general agreement that the United States should depart soon — within the year, or at most, three years. Yet some Americans, especially conservatives, are shocked that the Iraqis would show such a lack of gratitude to the United States.
In the last two weeks, many Iraqi leaders have made the rounds in Washington. Two of them, one a Sunni and one a Shiite leader, testified before the House subcommittee of Foreign Affairs and Oversight chaired by Congressman Bill Delahunt (D-MA). It was remarkable to see the reaction on the face of one Republican member of the subcommittee when the Iraqis replied to congressional questions with a definitive call for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. The two Iraqis were clear in their expressions of Iraqi sentiment towards the United States: we are considered occupiers, not liberators. One of them, to the astonishment of Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), declared that the removal of one man, Saddam Hussein, was not worth the loss of thousands of Iraqi lives since the inception of the occupation. Read the rest of this entry »
Statement on House Congressional Resolution 362 before the US House of Representatives, June 28, 2008
Today the Dow Jones Average was down 350-some points, gold was up $32, and oil was up another $5. There is a lot of chaos out there and everyone is worried about $4 gasoline. But I don’t think there is a clear understanding [of] exactly why that has occurred.
We do know that there is a supply and demand issue, but there are other reasons for the high cost of energy. One is inflation. In order to pay for the war that has been going on, and the domestic spending, we’ve been spending a lot more money than we have. So what do we do? We send the bills over to the Federal Reserve and they create new money, and in the last three years, our government, through the Federal Reserve and the banking system, has created $4 trillion of new money. That is one of the main reasons why we have this high cost of energy and $4 per gallon gasoline.
But there is another factor that I want to talk about tonight, and that is not only the fear of inflation and future inflation, but the fear factor dealing with our foreign policy. In the last several weeks, if not for months, we have heard a lot of talk about the potential of Israel and/or the United States bombing Iran. And it is in the marketplace. Energy prices are being bid up because of this fear. It has been predicted that if bombs start dropping, that we will see energy prices double or triple. It is just the thought of it right now that is helping to push these energy prices up. And that is a very real thing going on right now. Read the rest of this entry »
A couple of days ago, I wrote about how appalling it was for President Bush to credit himself, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham for the GI Bill, considering how they did everything they could to block its passage. Well, Jim Webb shared that sentiment on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
Webb laughed, “I think it’s safe to say there was a good deal of cooperation between Republicans and Democrats. It just didn’t include the administration.” He then added that Bush, who didn’t even thank Sen. Chuck Hagel as one of the GI Bill’s actual proponents, “made a real bad mistake in terms of our trying to show full respect for military service. I think he blew it.”
A ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that details both the threat of global warming and our ability to address the problem has been suppressed by the White House since December. This document, produced in response to a “monumental” Supreme Court mandate, includes a “multimillion-dollar study conducted over two years” that finds “the net benefit to society could be in excess of $2 trillion” if strong carbon dioxide emissions standards for the automotive industry are issued. The proposal to increase today’s fuel economy standards by 50 percent from 25 miles per gallon to 38.3 mpg by 2020 is stronger than those included in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, which called for a 40 percent increase. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson used the signing of the act as the public excuse to reject the findings of his staff and block California’s proposal to regulate greenhouse tailpipe emissions. In fact, congressional investigations have revealed that officials in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) refused to open the email containing the EPA plan and that Johnson has been stonewalling to prevent disclosure of President Bush’s role.
$2 TRILLION BENEFIT: As first revealed by the Detroit News, an advanced model used by the EPA and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) foundthat iincreasing fuel economy standards by 4 percent a year would have a net benefit to society of $1.4 to two trillion dollars by 2040. The benefit is strongly tied to the price of gasoline. Using the latest estimates from the Energy Information Administration, the EPA study assumed that gasoline prices would get no higher than $3.50 a gallon. Those figures are already outdated, as gasoline prices have reached an average of $4.09 a gallon, and oil prices are nearing $146 a barrel. With higher gasoline prices, the benefits of high carbon dioxide standards would be even greater. Consumers are responding already to the spiking price by moving away from gas guzzlers. Detroit automakers have suffered hard sales declines: “Ford Motor was down 28 percent in June, General Motors was off 18 percent, and Chrysler dropped 36 percent.” Toyota likewise fell 21 percent. Only Honda Motor, with its fleet of fuel-efficient vehicles, saw any sales gains.
NEW STANDARDS: The ruling prepared by the EPA in December, after being rejected by the White House was pared down and recrafted as an “Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” — a draft version with a request for further rounds of public comment, thus delaying any implementation until the next administration. Even after major cuts from the December version, this document makes a mockery of Bush’s claim in April that applying the Clean Air Act to global warming pollution ”would have crippling effects on our entire economy” and be a “glorious mess.” In fact, the ruling finds “technology is readily available to achieve significant reductions,” “the benefits of these new standards far outweigh the costs,” and the new standards “would result in substantial reductions” in greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, under the terms of the 2007 Energy Act, NHTSA proposed gas-mileage standards that the Center for Biological Diversity criticized for being kept low “through a number of bizarre assumptions, including asserting that gas will cost $2.36 per gallon in 2020 and $2.51 in 2030.” In contrast, the automotive industry — after arguing they “acted in good faith” to develop the law — is challenging these standards saying the NHTSA implementation “goes beyond what it is technologically feasible and economically practicable” and will create “net social costs.”
INTENSE BATTLE: Johnson testified before Congress on May 20 that he would issue this rulemaking draft by the end of spring. (A version acquired by The Progress Report is dated May 30.) The Detroit News reported that the EPA proposal would be published June 23, but an “intense private battle” between OMB officials and the EPA has blocked publication. According to published reports, the political appointee in charge of the plan, Jason K. Burnett, stepped down because of this “collision course between the agency and the OMB.” As the Wall Street Journal reported, the OMB “has asked the EPA to delete sections of the document that say such emissions endanger public welfare, say how those gases could be regulated, and show an analysis of the cost of regulating greenhouse gases in the U.S. and other countries.” The OMB instead “wants the document to show that the Clean Air Act is flawed and that greenhouse-gas regulations should be developed under new legislation,” reflecting the public stance taken by Bush. The EPA’s findings raise serious questions about whether Bush’s statements to the American public were made in good faith and why he asserted executive privilege on June 20 to block the congressional investigation.
The nation’s top military officer said yesterday that more U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan to tamp down an increasingly violent insurgency, but that the Pentagon does not have sufficient forces to send because they are committed to the war in Iraq.
Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said insurgent Taliban and extremist forces in Afghanistan have become “a very complex problem,” one that is tied to the extensive drug trade, a faltering economy and the porous border with Pakistan. Violence in Afghanistan has increased markedly over recent weeks, with June the deadliest month for U.S. troops since the war began in 2001.
“I don’t have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq,” Mullen told reporters at the Pentagon. “Afghanistan has been and remains an economy-of-force campaign, which by definition means we need more forces there.”
Mullen has raised similar concerns over the past several months, but his comments yesterday were more pointed and came amid rising concern at the Pentagon over the situation in Afghanistan, where insurgents have regrouped in the south and east. Read the rest of this entry »
At this rate, the October Surprise won’t be very surprising.
The threats, counterthreats, and counter-counterthreats between Israel, Iran and the United States have reached new levels of hysteria in recent days. Israel openly threatens to attack Iran’s nuclear program, Iran threatens to shut down oil-shipping lanes, and the commander of the U.S. fleet in the Persian Gulf, Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, says this would be an “act of war” requiring an American military response.
That was the backdrop yesterday as Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, faced the cameras in the Pentagon briefing room. Mullen, just back from a trip to Israel that further raised speculation about an Israeli attack, was asked whether Cosgriff’s saber rattling would raise tensions with Iran.
“Actually,” the chairman replied, “I think Admiral Cosgriff, who made that statement, is making an accurate statement.”
In footwear, flip-flops are what you slip on when you want something comfortable and easy. In politics, flip-flops are the sloppy intellectual equivalent: what you talk about when you’re looking for a comfortable and easy way to attack the opposition.
It’s summer, it’s hot. No one wants to wear pointy toes and high heels; no one wants to talk about calculating budget baselines or auctioning cap-and-trade permits. How much easier for rival candidates — and, truth be told, for us in the media — to fling accusations about flip-flops: Who’s got more? Whose are bigger?
True, playing endless rounds of “his surrogate said WHAT?” makes talking about flip-flops look like the Lincoln-Douglas debates — serious fare compared with fixating on whether the vice presidential vetter got a good rate on his mortgage. But flip-flops remain the reliable beach read of American political discourse, not terribly taxing but not necessarily enlightening, either. Read the rest of this entry »
On Thursday, Senate conservatives blocked a bill that would have averted a 10.6 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors. The bill, which would have canceled a reduction in Medicare fees and increased doctor pay by 1.1 percent, passed the House last week 355-59. But the Senate failed to invoke cloture on the bill by only one vote. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was the only senator to miss the vote, besides Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), who is undergoing treatment for a brain tumor. The bill had proposed offsetting the increased doctor pay by reducing payments to Medicare Advantage’s private fee-for-service insurers, a provision opposed by the White House. In a “misleading” move, the Bush administration announced this week it had asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to delay making payments to physicians until July 15, giving the Senate time to pass another bill after the July 4th recess. Yet as Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) explained, the administration was simply following existing law, and it is “misleading the public by claiming” to help ameliorate the negative effects of a legislative move it endorsed.
SENIORS SUFFER MOST: The recalcitrant position of the conservatives and the White House creates real victims. As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, Senate conservatives “are playing a dangerous game of chicken. The only losers will be Medicare patients, old people.” “A lot of physicians will limit the number of Medicare patients they will see” as a result of the pay cut, said Dr. Lee Schoeffler, a Tulsa, OK ophthalmologist. A poll by the American Medical Association found that 60 percent of physicians “said they would limit the number of new Medicare patients they would see if a cut took effect.” Even as doctors sought to ward off the latest cuts, the CMS announced Monday the legislation would mean Medicare payments to doctors would undergo a further drop another 5.4 percent in 2009. It is not just Medicare patients and doctors who will feel the pinch. “Most private insurance companies will begin reducing their reimbursement rates to doctors because they use Medicare as a benchmark” in setting their rates. “It doesn’t hit just Medicare,” Schoeffler said. “It works its way down into every part of the community.” Read the rest of this entry »
