I ran so far away

(I Ran: deal with it!)

In re: the electoral debacle in Iran, Juan Cole, as expected, has the definitive answers. Not only on the recent history and trends, but on how the election was likely stolen:

I am aware of the difficulties of catching history on the run. Some explanation may emerge for Ahmadinejad's upset that does not involve fraud. For instance, it is possible that he has gotten the credit for spreading around a lot of oil money in the form of favors to his constituencies, but somehow managed to escape the blame for the resultant high inflation.

But just as a first reaction, this post-election situation looks to me like a crime scene. And here is how I would reconstruct the crime.

As the real numbers started coming into the Interior Ministry late on Friday, it became clear that Mousavi was winning. Mousavi's spokesman abroad, filmmaker Mohsen Makhbalbaf, alleges that the ministry even contacted Mousavi's camp and said it would begin preparing the population for this victory.

Some Neocon idiots, and perhaps even some misguided naifs on the left might suggest we interfere. Here's why that's a monumentally bad idea.

In 1951 the Persian Parliament elected Mohammed Mossadegh as Prime Minister. No one disputes this democratic election. Mossadegh was popular, and western friendly. But he also thought that the U.S. & British profits from the Iranian oil fields, negotiated as usual with heavy favoritism to the colonial powers, were unfair. He tried to negotiate a 50/50% split with the Anglo-Iranian Oil company (AIOC) nad was rebuffed. Aramco had recently set up the same profit deal with Saudi Arabia, so the proposal was not out of line. Except to BP (British Petroleum).

Frustrated by Britain's stubbornness, Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry. While the Iranian populace was happy, western interests were furious. 10 Downing St. tried to talk then-Pres. Truman into helping engineer a coup, but were rebuffed.

Shortly after Eisenhower's inauguration, Allen Dulles & Kermit Roosevelt were tasked with organizing a coup. With the CIA's assistance, it came to fruition in August of '53 when Mossadegh was arrested. Much of this information is freely available, and the Wikipedia entry on Mossadegh is quite thorough. Yes, I know it's Wikipedia, but if you trudge through the cites and footnotes, it's all there.

Bottom line is that the ouster of Mossadegh and the return, again U.S. arranged, of Shah Reza Pahlavi, really pissed off the Iranian people. And many of them were slow to forgive. This pretty directly led to the revolution of '79 and the capture of the U.S. Embassy & hostages.

Iran is a young country; 2/3 of the population is under 30. And they're fairly western-friendly, and reform minded. And while Mousavi is not, by any western standards, a liberal or a reformer, he is a radical leftist compared to Ahmedinejad.

So if we really want to throw Iran under the bus, inflame Arab moderates, and generally infuriate the entire region, let's send the CIA and the U.S. military to clean up the election results. Because it worked so well the last time.

twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one

Obama consulted widely on memos

White House senior adviser David Axelrod says President Barack Obama spent about a month pondering whether to release Bush-era memos about CIA interrogation techniques, and considered it “a weighty decision.”
[...]
A former top official in the administration of President George W. Bush called the publication of the memos “unbelievable.”

“It's damaging because these are techniques that work, and by Obama's action today, we are telling the terrorists what they are,” the official said. “We have laid it all out for our enemies. This is totally unnecessary. … Publicizing the techniques does grave damage to our national security by ensuring they can never be used again — even in a ticking-time- bomb scenario where thousands or even millions of American lives are at stake."

I'll ignore the standard Politico method of giving anonymity to anyone who asks for it, (it's been covered), and go straight to the heart.

Those 'techniques' the Bush official was unwilling to lay claim to? Yeah, that would be torture, illegal by moral, US & International laws. And the 1st thing President Obama did in office was to outlaw those methods.

Now back to Bushworld "It's damaging because these are techniques that work, and by Obama's action today, we are telling the terrorists what they are" - actually the torture methods have been proven not to work. They weren't designed to elicit information, they were designed to elicit false confessions.

And, point of fact, the methods have already been published, (raise your hand if you've heard of 'waterboarding?'), just not the memos that authorized the torture. And what Obama was signifying to the world was that we have begun to climb out of the immoral & illegal abyss that 8 years of Bush & Co sunk us in.

More from the NYT:

Interrogation Memos Detail Harsh Tactics by the CIA.

[...]
Together, the four memos give an extraordinarily detailed account of the C.I.A.'s methods and the Justice Department's long struggle, in the face of graphic descriptions of brutal tactics, to square them with international and domestic law. Passages describing forced nudity, the slamming of detainees into walls, prolonged sleep deprivation and the dousing of detainees with water as cold as 41 degrees alternate with elaborate legal arguments concerning the international Convention Against Torture.
[...]
In the memos, the Justice Department authors emphasized precautions the C.I.A. proposed to take, including monitoring by medical personnel, and the urgency of getting information to stop terrorist attacks. They recounted the C.I.A.'s assertions of the effectiveness of the techniques but noted that interrogators could not always tell a prisoner who was withholding information from one who had no more information to offer.

The memos include what in effect are lengthy excerpts from the agency's interrogation manual, laying out with precision how each method was to be used. Waterboarding, for example, involved strapping a prisoner to a gurney inclined at an angle of "10 to 15 degrees" and pouring water over a cloth covering his nose and mouth "from a height of approximately 6 to 18 inches" for no more than 40 seconds at a time.

But a footnote to a 2005 memo made it clear that the rules were not always followed. Waterboarding was used "with far greater frequency than initially indicated" and with "large volumes of water" rather than the small quantities in the rules, one memo says, citing a 2004 report by the C.I.A.'s inspector general.

Further:

2 Suspects Waterboarded 266 Times

C.I.A. interrogators used waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, 266 times on two key prisoners from Al Qaeda, far more than had been previously reported.
[...]
A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.

The 2005 memo also says that the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Wow, either waterboarding doesn't work or these guys really like their job!

p.s. John McCain, that flaming liberal, says:

"It's unacceptable," McCain said, adding:

One is too much. Waterboarding is torture, period. I can ensure you that once enough physical pain is inflicted on someone, they will tell that interrogator whatever they think they want to hear. And most importantly, it serves as a great propaganda tool for those who recruit people to fight against us.

p.p.s. Digby says it better than I can.



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Tortured argument

We don't torture because what others call torture the preznit doesn't call torture, so nobody can call it torture even if it is torture because we said it's not torture....

In 2005, CIA officials ordered the destruction of videotapes depicting the harsh interrogation of prisoners in the agency's secret overseas prisons. CIA Director Michael Hayden admitted that in December 2007 amid a public debate over the use of "waterboarding" on detainees and whether or not the technique — which simulates drowning — constituted torture. At that time, Hayden said that only a few prisoners were ever subjected to "special interrogation techniques," which can include waterboarding, and that nothing was recorded on video after 2002. That claim is now coming under additional scrutiny, in part due to a classified briefing that will be delivered to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence this Friday. Lawyers for one current Guantanamo detainee tell TIME that they plan to present evidence that he was subjected to unspecified "systematic torture" that was videotaped when he was held in secret CIA prisons. The lawyers say the alleged videotaped torture took place after his arrest in 2003.

Majid Khan, 27, a former suburban Baltimore high school student, was first seized by authorities in Pakistan, where he said he was visiting his brother. Khan then spent more than three years in a secret overseas CIA "black site" before President Bush ordered his transfer to Guantanamo along with 13 other high-value detainees. Also transferred was alleged 9/11 mastermind Khaled Sheik Mohammed, who had allegedly ordered Khan to research attacks on American water reservoirs and gas stations.

Khan's lawyers are armed with more than 500 pages of top-secret notes taken during recent sessions with their client at Guantanamo; they will use the material to describe his interrogation and detention to the Intelligence Committee. Though details are highly classified, his lawyers claim that he and others were tortured and videotaped, charges that Hayden and other CIA officials deny. On Feb. 5, Hayden admitted to Congress that the CIA had used waterboarding on Khaled Sheik Mohammed and two others. The CIA continues to assert that it does not engage in torture.

Picture taken from article.

Attorney General Mukasey joins the ranks of those using the Nuremberg excuse,"I was just following orders."




Crossposted at Rants from the Rookery.

Update: The White House would consider using waterboarding again:

In congressional testimony yesterday, CIA director Michael Hayden confirmed that his agency used waterboarding on three al Qaeda suspects. In 2006, Hayden banned the use of waterboarding in CIA interrogations. The Pentagon also banned its employees from using it, and the FBI said its investigators do not use coercive tactics in interviewing terror suspects.

But in today’s gaggle, White House said that it may approve the use of waterboarding again “depend[ing] upon circumstances”:

“It will depend upon circumstances,” spokesman Tony Fratto said, adding “the belief that an attack might be imminent, that could be a circumstance that you would definitely want to consider.”

Later, in a press briefing, Fratto tried to distance himself from these remarks, claiming that he only was talking about “the process” of approving waterboarding. “I’m not speculating,” he declared.

Click on the link to watch him backpedal.

Update 5:00: Blue Girl at BlueGirl, Red State says it best:

When the current occupant authorized waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" (call them what they are: torture) he sold America's soul, and illustrated Ben Franklin's observation that those who would trade away their freedoms for a false sense of security deserve neither.

Waterboarding is torture. Period. Full stop.

It has long since been classified as such, and Congress is considering taking up legislation banning the CIA from using it. It is already prohibited under the Army Field Manual.

I am the ultimate Cold War brat. I have some pretty set-in-stone ideas and ideals. One of them is that we simply don't do things like that. There truly are prices that are simply too high to pay. Abdicating the moral high ground out of fear is one of them.

I realize full measure that "American Exceptionalism" was always a myth - but at least we used to pretend to behave in an exceptional manner.

'Cause everytime I breathe, I take you in

This is the mindset of the sociopaths running ruining America:

Intelligence Chief Couches Reference to Waterboarding as 'Torture'

The nation's intelligence chief says that waterboarding "would be torture" if used against him, or if someone under interrogation was taking water into his lungs.

But Mike McConnell declined for legal reasons to say whether the technique categorically should be considered torture.

"If it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it," the director of national intelligence told the New Yorker in this week's issue, released today.
[...]
"If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can't imagine how painful! Whether it's torture by anybody else's definition, for me it would be torture," McConnell told the magazine.

A spokesman for McConnell said the intelligence chief does not dispute the quotes attributed to him.
[...]
McConnell said the legal test for torture should be "pretty simple": "Is it excruciatingly painful to the point of forcing someone to say something because of the pain?"
[...]
CIA interrogators were given permission by the White House in 2002 to waterboard three prisoners deemed resistant to conventional techniques. The CIA has not used the technique since 2003; CIA Director Michael V. Hayden prohibited it in 2006.

Last summer, President Bush issued an executive order allowing the CIA to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" that go beyond what is allowed in the 2006 Army Field Manual. Waterboarding is among those techniques.

For anyone who thinks I used sociopath as hyperbole I recommend you read the definition.

It perfectly describes bush, cheney and DNI McConnel's statements and actions. McConnell basically stated that if it was done on him it would be torture but when done on others it's not.

That's the definition of a sociopath. And bush has personally authorized this torture repeatedly.

And McConnell has categorically stated, just like bush, that the US doesn't torture.

They are lying.

Waterboarding is torture. The US has successfully prosecuted other non-Caucasians for employing it.

They also destroyed evidence of the torture, in a so far successful attempt to avoid prosecution for war crimes. Bush and McConnell and everyone else involved are just plain lying so as to avoid prosecution for war crimes. e.g. "Mike McConnell declined for legal reasons to say whether the technique categorically should be considered torture"




Cross posted at VidiotSpeak