Taking a public stand against our country's use of torture

Tomorrow morning I’m heading with my “Torture R US” sign to the plaza in my hometown, Healdsburg. It's a small town described as ”Nestled in the heart of Sonoma's County's wine country, Healdsburg offers relaxation, fun, and adventure for people of all ages. The natural beauty, friendly attitudes, and a cosmopolitan flair suggest the perfect backdrop for a splendid vacation.” I will stick out like a sore thumb.

On March 18th, I posted "Torture R Us" - What do you think? and received comments both discouraging and encouraging me about going public with this message. Given the news this past week about the recently released torture memos and the “torture team,” (the lawyers who advised Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.,) it feels like the right thing to do.

I’m also mindful that it isn’t just “unlawful enemy combatants” that are being tortured. Read Scott Horton’s post yesterday morning, "...Pentagon Moves Ahead on Contractor Accountability," which opens with “Today, The Nation’s Karen Houppert reports on a gruesome rape case out of Iraq. The victim is a young American woman given the pseudonym ‘Lisa Smith’.

“It was an early January morning in 2008 when 42-year-old Lisa Smith, a paramedic for a defense contractor in southern Iraq, woke up to find her entire room shaking. The shipping container that served as her living quarters was reverberating from nearby rocket attacks, and she was jolted awake to discover an awful reality. 'Right then my whole life was turned upside down,' she says….”

My previous posts about torture:
April 3rd: David S. Addington - The man in the torture shadows
March 30th : Whom do you believe? Murat Kurnaz or Bryan Whitman?
March 22nd: Exposure - Bush's refusal to give up torture*
March 21st: From the kingdom of fear....
March 18th: "Torture R US" - What do you think?
March 16th: How could you have done what you did?
March 13th: No Torture. No Exceptions*
Feb. 7th: Letter from Jack Balkin to Senator McCain
November 20th: Our humanity has been compromised

*Posts most worth reading

(stick figure: my friend Pat Denino, who blogs at Wandering Wonderings)

Torture: Whom do you believe? Murat Kurnaz or Bryan Whitman?

This evening on CBS's "60 Minutes" Murat Kurnaz, a German resident held by the U.S. for almost five years, will describe the many ways Americans tortured him. When he was first captured, he claims he was hung from the ceiling for five days.

The March 29th Washington Post article, "Ex-Afghanistan Detainee Alleges Torture by U.S." reports that Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said, “The abuses Mr. Kurnaz alleges are not only unsubstantiated, they are implausible and outlandish." [emphasis mine]

If you don’t know much about Bryan Whitman, go to this January 16th, 2008 article "Bogus Iran story was product of Pentagon spokesman.” Excerpt: “…[I]n an apparent slip-up, however, an Associated Press story that morning cited Whitman as the source for the statement that US ships were about to fire when the Iranian boats turned and moved away - a part of the story that other correspondents had attributed to an unnamed Pentagon official."

Since Kurnaz’s alleged torture occurred several years ago, you may conclude that the U.S. has changed its ways. Not according to Scott Horton, who blogs for Harper's Magazine at No Comment posted his remarks delivered on March 28th at the City [New York] University Law Review Symposium “Preventing Torture”here. It’s worth reading. The final paragraph: “The torture policy of the Bush Administration is a policy of, by and for torturers. It marks a radical departure from prior U.S. policies of honorable compliance with the Convention [against Torture]….”

I hope you’ll watch "60 Minutes" this evening and decide for yourself whether or not you think Kurnaz is telling the truth about what happened to him.

(photo of Kurnaz: CBS News)

A break from blogging - recommended reading

I suspect I’m going to miss posting every day until after the holidays. My law and mediation practice is keeping me busier than usual, I’m spending 2+ days a week with my youngest grandchildren, and I like to remember my family and friends during the holidays with cards, gifts, and homemade pumpkin bread. I’m wondering if I can make time to help two of my grandchildren make a gingerbread house again this year. If you have a "blog quota" you like to fill, I recommend the following:

1. The Democratic Activist: Chris Borland is doing a wonderful job keeping people informed and inspired regarding impeachment. Go there if you are committed to supporting House Resolution 799, the impeach Cheney resolution, currently before the House Judiciary Committee.

2. Scott Horton’s No Comment. Horton is the most prolific blogger I’ve come across, and he’s amazingly eclectic. For instance, today he posted Rumi's 'The Snake-Catcher's Tale' and about the scapegoating going on in the CIA tape destruction debacle on December 8th.

3. If you, like I, need someone who blogs every single day on important issues, go to Juan Cole's Informed Comment. I describe Juan as "my Middle Eastern expert," but I'm happy to share him.

If you only have time for an article or two a week, I recommend signing up for e-mail alerts at TomDispatch.com. If I had to give up all but once source of commentary on the news, this is the one I'd keep.

Looking for a book to read during those stolen moments from holiday preparations? I highly recommend Tim Weiner’s National Book Award winner, Legacy of Ashes - The History of the CIA, which I posted about here, here, and here. If you read this book, you’ll no longer be surprised by anything the CIA does, such as destroying hundreds of hours of videotaped interrogations of two Al Qaeda operatives. Or buy it for someone as a holiday gift, then borrow it.

(photo – 2006 gingerbread house baking crew: Grandma Gail and two grandchildren)

Why aren't we hearing about H.R. 1955, the bill "to prevent homegrown terrorism," overwhelmingly passed by the House on October 23rd?

I just learned about H.R. 1955 last night from my blogging buddy, Chris Borland, and am so alarmed about it that it’s now at the top of my concerns, although I will continue making calls to Congress in support of H.R. 799, the impeach Cheney resolution.

I need to get a handle on it. A link to the text of the bill is here. The details regarding the stunning 404 to 6 vote here.

The best post I’ve seen so far on it is here.

Right off the top:

1. Section 899 F of the bill, the protection of civil liberties, appears extremely weak to me, and the "auditing mechanism" by the DHS isn't an independent audit.

2. It also appears to open the door to identifying "thoughtcrime" in order to take preemptive action against those considered likely to commit a crime in the future.

I admit I don’t know much about it, but I plan to learn more. Please post a comment if you are aware of ramifications of this bill.

Update: Keep your eye on Scott Horton’s blog for Harper’s, No Comment. I expect to see a post on this soon.

(photo: Informed Dissent, also worth checking re H.R. 1955)

A nose for the news - The Iran war roll-out: one cartoon and four articles

The October 23rd Tom Toles cartoon says it all, but the following articles fill in the details.

1. On October 23rd Amy Goodman interviews Middle East Analyst & Historian Juan Cole on U.S. War Plans Against Iran.

2. On October 22nd, Washington Post blogger Dan Froomkin posts "Cheney Beats the Drums of War."

3. On October 22nd, Scott Horton posts "The Roll-Out Presses On."

4. On October 22nd, Barnett Rubin at the group blog, Informed Comment Global Affairs posts "The War Rollout Keeps Rolling Along."

(Photo from my friend, Pat Denino, who blogs at Wandering Wonderings)

On this day 73 years ago, Hitler was elected Fuhrer by 90% of the electorate- how did this happen?

On August 19, 1934, the vast majority of German voters gave Adolph Hitler sweeping dictatorial powers, electing him as "Fuhrer," or absolute ruler.

The next day, The New York Times published an article about Hitler’s victory, with a view of the actual newspaper article available here.

I’m not attempting to compare President George W. Bush with Adolph Hitler. I’m interested in what was going on in Germany, in the early 1930's, when it had a democratic parlimentary republic, that prompted 9 out of 10 Germans to cast votes in support of a dictator.

Wikipedia, in the section Hitler's rise to power, states, “The political turning point for Hitler came when the Great Depression hit Germany in 1930…. The new Chancellor, Heinrich Brüning of the Roman Catholic Centre Party, lacking a majority in parliament, had to implement his measures through the president's emergency decrees. Tolerated by the majority of parties, the exception soon became the rule and paved the way for authoritarian forms of government.” [bolding mine]

A national disaster, the Reichstag fire, helped consolidate Hitler’s power. From Hitler's rise to power, “…[O]n 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Since a Dutch independent communist was found in the building, the fire was blamed on a Communist plot to which the government reacted with the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February which suspended basic rights, including habeas corpus….”

I believe that Hitler was elected Fuhrer because of the rise of authoritarianism in Germany in the early 1930’s. I believe the United States is being dragged toward authoritarianism and away from a democratic future.

Two contemporary writers who share my opinion that about the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S. are Joe Conason and Scott Horton.

In Conason’s recently published book, IT CAN HAPPEN HERE - Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush, he quotes Sinclair Lewis, author of the well-known It Can't Happen Here, published in 1935: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross.” I highly recommend that you read this book from cover to cover.

Scott Horton, a prolific blogger, posted The Gleichschaltung at Justice on May 1 of this year: “In the final days of the Weimar Republic, the party in power employed a conscious policy for the consolidation of their authority within the state bureaucracy and other social institutions. This policy was simple—it required silencing critics and ensuring that all positions of confidence were in the hands of persons who were true to the line of the party. For historians of the period, this process is known as the ‘Gleichschaltung’ or ‘synchronization.’ Is the process pursued by Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove in the American Justice Department an American sort of Gleichschaltung”? Every day it seems that a stronger case can be made that it is.”

Horton was referring to the purging of US Attorneys by the Department of Justice, which is currently being investigated by Congress. Scott has been dogging this story for months, available at his Harper’s Magazine blog, No Comment.

(photo of Hitler at a Nazi rally in Nuremburg in 1928 - Wikipedia)

More on "wrong place, wrong time"

In response to yesterday’s post about the lack of attention to the deaths caused by an illegal and unjust war in contrast to those of the students at Virginia Tech, I received an e-mail from my friend, Susan Lamont, who is very active with the Peace and Justice Center of Sonoma County. She sent the following letter to the editor and expressed doubts that it would be published in our “newspaper of record," the Press Democrat. Here’s her letter:

Editor:

My daughter Ellen, a Ph.D. student at NYU, called after the killings at Virginia Tech. A teaching assistant for a class on social movements, she had shown her students a documentary on the Vietnam War. The film crystallized her disbelief that there is anyone who lived through that war who can’t see the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq – that our wants do not supersede those of the citizens of other countries.

Ellen observed that daily we read of “56 killed in bombings across Iraq”, “ 32 killed in violence in Baghdad” and that most respond with a “ho-hum, I’m too busy.” Even if we care, we’re “not political.”

The backdrop of our lives is bloodshed. In most movies, for our entertainment, someone dies violently. When a young man suffers a psychotic break, we pump him full of bullets. We bomb, massacre, and torture to fuel our SUV’s.

And a young man in Virginia learned the U.S. lesson well. Just like George Bush, he knew that force is the answer. The beat poet, Diane di Prima, astutely observed, “This death culture cannot imagine solutions that do not bleed.”

But alternatives do exist. It’s time to start imagining them. It’s urgent.

Susan C. Lamont


Yesterday’s post included a link to a Washington Post article, Va. Killings Widely Seen as Reflecting a Violent Society. Scott Horton, an attorney active in human rights, president of the International League for Human Rights, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, has a terrific blog, No Comment.

In his post this morning, The Tragedy at Virginia Tech Viewed from Abroad, Scott summarizes comments from newspapers in Spain, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. From these comments, Scott concludes, “Around the world, America is being portrayed as a land of wanton violence, obsessed with firearms—as the locus of a bizarre death cult. The grounds for this are not simply what happened at Virginia Tech and Columbine High School, but the way the American public has reacted to these tragedies.”

(photo of dead Iraqi child - ChuckCurrieblogs.com)