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From Obsidian Wings:
The Republican leadership of Congress is attempting to legalize extraordinary rendition. “Extraordinary rendition” is the euphemism we use for sending terrorism suspects to countries that practice torture for interrogation. As one intelligence official described it in the Washington Post, “We don’t kick the sh*t out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the sh*t out of them.”Let’s talk about torture. As any professional can tell you, as an intelligence-gathering mechanism, it’s worse than useless.The best known example of this is the case of Maher Arar. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was deported to Syria from JFK airport. In Syria he was beaten with electrical cables for two weeks, and then imprisoned in an underground cell for the better part of a year. Arar is probably innocent of any connection to terrorism.
As it stands now, “extraordinary rendition” is a clear violation of international law—specifically, the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Degrading and Inhuman Treatment. U.S. law is less clear. We signed and ratified the Convention Against Torture, but we ratified it with some reservations. They might create a loophole that allows us to send a prisoner to Egypt or Syria or Jordan if we get “assurances” that they will not torture a prisoner—even if these assurances are false and we know they are false.
Last month Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Congressman, introduced a bill that would clearly outlaw extraordinary rendition. But Markey only has 22 cosponsors, and now the House leadership is trying to legalize torture outsourcing—and hide it in the bill implementing the 9/11 Commission Report.
These are excerpts from a press release one of Markey’s staffers just emailed me:The provision Rep. Markey referred to is contained in Section 3032 and 3033 of H.R. 10, the “9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act of 2004,” introduced by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL). The provision would require the Secretary of Homeland Security to issue new regulations to exclude from the protection of the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, any suspected terrorist - thereby allowing them to be deported or transferred to a country that may engage in torture. The provision would put the burden of proof on the person being deported or rendered to establish “by clear and convincing evidence that he or she would be tortured,” would bar the courts from having jurisdiction to review the Secretary’s regulations, and would free the Secretary to deport or remove terrorist suspects to any country in the world at will - even countries other than the person’s home country or the country in which they were born. The provision would also apply retroactively.There is no possible way for a suspect being detained in secret to prove by “clear and convincing evidence” that he will be tortured if he is deported—especially when he may be deported to a country where has never been, and when the officials who want to deport him serve as judge, jury and executioner, and when there is never any judicial review. This bill will make what happened to Maher Arar perfectly legal, and guarantee that it will happen again.This provision was not part of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, and the Commission actually called upon the U.S. to “offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors.” The Commission noted that “The United States should engage its friends to develop a common coalition approach to the detention and humane treatment of captured terrorists. New principles might draw upon Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions on the law of armed conflict. That article was specifically designed for those cases in which the usual laws of war did not apply. Its minimum standards are generally accepted throughout the world as customary international law.” These standards prohibit the use of torture or other cruel or degrading treatment….
Rep. Markey said, “When the Republicans 9/11 bill is considered in the House, I intend to offer an amendment to strike the torture outsourcing provisions from the Republican bill and replace it with restrictions restoring international law as provided in my bill. It is absolutely disgraceful that the Republican Leadership has decided to load up the 9/11 Commission bill with legislative provisions that would legitimize torture, particularly when the Commission itself called for the U.S to move in exactly the opposite direction.”Markey’s staffer wrote to me that “this bill could be on the House floor as early as next week.”
To everyone: Please, please, please write to your Representative and tell him (or her) to vote against the bill and/or for Markey’s amendment.
Consider that commonly invoked scenario where terrorists have planted a nuclear device in a city, scanning for radiation is mysteriously not an option, and you have some prisoners in custody who may or may not know the location of the device. Those who like the idea of torture always ask whether it wouldn’t be justified to torture those prisoners for information.
The practical answer is: no, it wouldn’t. Someone who’s being tortured will tell you anything, and they’ll suddenly develop a real talent for figuring out what exactly what you want to hear, and giving it to you in detail. Using intelligence obtained under torture can actually lower your chances of finding that hypothetical device, because all your guys will be out there trying to track down fictional leads invented by your prisoners, instead of working on finding the device via conventional investigative methods.
Remember Abu Ghraib, and the reports that some of the humiliations visited upon the prisoners there are in fact techniques taught to US and UK special forces? (That’s “taught” as in “direct hands-on experience, giving and receiving.”) It’s supposed to prepare them to withstand such treatment if they’re captured.
What I said at the time was that I happened to know that those reports were correct. I also said I wasn’t going to explain how I knew it. That’s still my position.
What I will say is that there’s an aspect of that training that the media didn’t fully understand. As my source explained it, the exercise is a double-blind setup. Having the designated prisoners learn to resist severe interrogation methods is only half of what’s going on. The other half is that the designated interrogators are told in advance that the prisoners have been given certain pieces of target information. Their task is to elicit that information during interrogation.
The trick is that the designated prisoners haven’t been given that info. However, once the exercise is in progress—I gather it’s unpleasantly realistic—they make it up anyway. These are tough guys. They know they’re supposed to be resisting, but they break anyway, because that’s how torture works; and when they do, they start talking.
At the end of the day, the interrogators will have accumulated a mass of realistic-sounding intelligence on the subjects they were told to investigate. At that point they get to find out that the prisoners had no such information, and that none of the intelligence they’ve gathered is valid.
That is, the designated prisoners are learning what torture can do. The designated interrogators are learning what it can’t do, which is elicit reliable information.
There are only two real uses for torture, revenge and intimidation; and in my opinion, revenge can’t be the intended use. It doesn’t work at a distance. Privately torturing someone who’s been held in the United States, and whom you think may have some kind of ties with the other side, is not going to have any deterrent effect on guys in the field in Iraq. They may well take it as permission to torture our guys, but they will not be deterred.
That leaves intimidation. Who’s supposed to be intimidated by this—the guys who’re already in our hands? That’s pointless. They’re plenty intimidated already, as well they should be; and if they aren’t, further threats aren’t likely to move them.
Who remains to be intimidated? Everyone else. The rest of us.
Before this administration, you knew that even if you were completely and utterly framed, even if you had every dirty trick in the book thrown at you, there was a theoretical limit to what they might do to you. You could be slandered, imprisoned, ruined, the works; but you’d still be sort of a human being, and there’d be a chance (however slight) that someone would figure out what had happened to you, and that eventually you might be freed.
That was then, this is now. Bush & Co. have already been holding prisoners incommunicado, without legal counsel, without charges being filed, without anything. Don’t kid yourself that this is all being done to hardened terrorists. So far, the administration’s conviction rate on prosecutions for terrorism has been a big fat zero, even when the prosecution’s had every advantage it could grab; and those are the cases they felt confident enough to take to trial. It’s clear that many of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were picked up almost at random. What evidence we can glean says the same about Guantanamo. Bush & Co. have gone after their supposed terrorists with all the restraint of kids hunting for Easter eggs.
They aren’t careful, and you aren’t safe. You’re just unprosecuted. Same goes for everyone you care about, and everyone who’s dear to everyone you care about.
That’s where we stand now. Extraordinary rendition takes the last limitations off what can be done to you.
In American English, “being sold down the river” is still one of our favorite ways to say we feel betrayed. The phrase goes back to slavery days. Slaves in the Upper South might be worked hard and treated badly, but on the big cash-crop plantations of the Deep South, they simply died. Since it was more cost-efficient to replace them than to change the way the plantations were run, the Upper South exported a steady stream of slaves to that market.
This meant that no matter who owned them, or how well they behaved, slaves always lived with the possibility that they or their loved ones could go that route. If their owner needed to cash out, or if they disagreed in any way, or if their growing children just got big enough that they were expensive to feed but profitable to sell, they could go down the river. It had to have colored their every interaction with their white owners: You just watch yourself, because there’s no limit on what might happen to you.
I don’t know about you, but extraordinary rendition intimidates me.
By the way, I can think of one other use for extraordinary rendition. If you’ve kept somebody locked up for a long time on grounds that turn out to be groundless, it’ll be embarrassing to go on keeping them, and even more embarrassing to let them go. But if you ship them off to some hellhole in Syria and they never come back, they cease to be a problem. The same goes for prisoners who are in bad shape, maybe bad enough to die. If they die in Syria, it’s not your fault, and nobody’s going to look real hard at the corpse.
Write your representative.
This is one of those times when I regret already living a district represented by one of the House’s most liberal members (Jim McDermott).
Here's the 22-cosponsor list:
Rep Blumenauer, Earl [OR-3] - 7/7/2004
Rep Conyers, John, Jr. [MI-14] - 7/7/2004
Rep Filner, Bob [CA-51] - 9/9/2004
Rep Frank, Barney [MA-4] - 7/7/2004
Rep Grijalva, Raul M. [AZ-7] - 9/21/2004
Rep Hinchey, Maurice D. [NY-22] - 9/9/2004
Rep Honda, Michael M. [CA-15] - 7/19/2004
Rep Jackson-Lee, Sheila [TX-18] - 7/7/2004
Rep Kucinich, Dennis J. [OH-10] - 9/9/2004
Rep Lee, Barbara [CA-9] - 7/19/2004
Rep Lewis, John [GA-5] - 7/7/2004
Rep McCollum, Betty [MN-4] - 7/19/2004
Rep McDermott, Jim [WA-7] - 7/7/2004
Rep Millender-McDonald, Juanita [CA-37] - 7/19/2004
Rep Miller, George [CA-7] - 7/19/2004
Rep Owens, Major R. [NY-11] - 7/7/2004
Rep Pastor, Ed [AZ-4] - 9/9/2004
Rep Sanders, Bernard [VT] - 9/9/2004
Rep Schakowsky, Janice D. [IL-9] - 7/19/2004
Rep Van Hollen, Chris [MD-8] - 9/9/2004
Rep Waxman, Henry A. [CA-30] - 7/7/2004
Rep Woolsey, Lynn C. [CA-6] - 9/9/2004
It's depressing to see some of the names that aren't on it. If I still lived in Nanci Pelosi's district, I'd be on the phone right now.
Thanks for bringing this up. It's important.
Oh, and for those who are interested in reading more about the Arar case from a perspective that isn't necessarily purely American, the Canadian wing of the blogosphere has had some *great* stuff about it over the past year or so. Start with pogge and go from there.
-J
who knew it was possible to write polite email to my legislators while wanting to throw up?
(email included here; please feel free to borrow parts if it will help you write your legislators.)
Dear Representative Sabo:
I am writing you to encourage you to vote against Section 3032 and 3033 of H.R. 10, the “9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act of 2004”. These sections would attempt to legalize extraordinary rendition, the outsourcing of torture to other countries. The course of action that these sections propose are unfair, inhumane, and immoral.
Unfair, inhumane, and immoral are not words that I have ever associated with you, which is why I have been voting for you every election that I have lived in my current residence.
Representative Edward Markey, from Massachusetts, is planning on offering an amendment to H.R. 10 that would replace those sections and take a strong stand against extraordinary rendition. Representative Betty McCollum, your colleague from St. Paul, has cosponsored a bill to this effect with Rep. Markey. I encourage you greatly to get in touch with Rep. Markey and Rep. McCollum to find out how to also become a co-sponsor of this action.
I look forward to hearing back from you.
Thank you.
See also Sebastian Holsclaw on the same topic: Republicans Must Not Support Torture.
I strongly believe in the principle of policing your own. I am a Republican and a regular advocate for the Republican Party. You should consider this post a kind of 'toughlove'. As such I have some harsh words for the sponsors of this bill. This portion of the bill is morally, ethically, and politically wrong. It may be that you did not know all of what you were sponsoring (the bill is 300+ pages). But you should know now, and you should take action to change it.
Any right-winger who starts arguing that this won't be so bad should be pointed directly at this post.
I just telephoned my rep's office. (Tom Lantos - the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, I hope he'd be opposed to this despite his hawkishness.)
Given the timeliness of this issue, consider phoning as well as emailing. Hurry, most congressional offices close at 6PM.
The phone numbers are easy to find on the house.gov site.
For people trying to decide between phoning, emailing, and writing a letter, some advice on what technique works the best, what to include, etc..
Sent my letter. But I also just read this Washington Post article (p.2). Sounds like it's legal for the CIA to do that right now. I know B&Co. have been doing it, but I thought it was illegal. I feel ill.
Joe - There's one thing in the article you linked to that I disagree with. While handwritten letters do carry the most impact, it might not get through.
Ever since I got a form letter from Sen. Boxer's office that they were unable to read my letter because it was destroyed during the antrhrax scare, I've always doubled-up with a letter and an email. Or, in this case, a phone call.
As to how they had known I had written, I can only imagine that they imaged the envelopes before they destroyed them.
David, I feel your pain: I was halfway through my letter to my Representative when I discovered that his name is... Edward Markey.
(What can I say? I'm new in town.)
So I sent Rep. Markey a letter of congratulation.
You've put your finger on the actual purpose of torture, in all ages: to obtain confessions.
That is, to give the torturers what they want to hear, and thus to confirm their view of the world. "Confessions" have nothing to do with the truth, as the post so eloquently notes.
Write your Senators twice, for me: I'm a Canuck, and thus don't count.
Betsy, thanks for including your letter--I adapted it and have written a letter to my representative (a Republican; however, I've only been in my state for a year and am not yet very familiar with his stances); it'll go out in the mail tomorrow.
Yikes. Scary stuff here. I am now going to attend to the cranky baby and think about something less nauseating.
>It's depressing to see some of the names that aren't on it. If I still lived in Nanci Pelosi's
>district, I'd be on the phone right now.
Just phoned and emailed. I'm really surprised to find that she's not already on board with Markey.
Larry,
You're right, and they do acknowledge that in the opening graf:
Please note that after September 11, 2001, regular mail sent to a member's Washington, DC office may no longer be the best way to contact a member of Congress. Faxes get through, but expect many redials. Unless you have an email address for a staffer, forget about sending email directly. One method that does work, if your member uses it, is to send them email using the web-based form on their web site.I think the USPS and Congress are working on something to make the mail safe for congressional types again, which is why they haven't mothballed the "handwrite your letter" section. The rest of the specifics (mention bill number, etc.) are worth incorporating in emails, I think.
Jon, not Joe
I still meet people who try to tell me that "Oh, there's no difference between the parties."
It gets ever-harder to stay polite.
>Democrats tried to strike the provision in a daylong
>House Judiciary Committee meeting,
>but it survived on a party-line vote.
One side is the party of torture;
one side is against torture.
Could it possibly BE any starker???
>>but it survived on a party-line vote.
I don't understand this bit. Does that mean they were instructed to vote a particular way by their parties, or that the Republicans had more people than the Democrats?
Paul: It means that all the Rs voted one way, and all the Ds voted the other way. Yes, the Rs have more people right now.
They aren’t careful, and you aren’t safe. You’re just unprosecuted. Same goes for everyone you care about, and everyone who’s dear to everyone you care about.
That’s where we stand now. Extraordinary rendition takes the last limitations off what can be done to you....
If you’ve kept somebody locked up for a long time on grounds that turn out to be groundless, it’ll be embarrassing to go on keeping them, and even more embarrassing to let them go. But if you ship them off to some hellhole in Syria and they never come back, they cease to be a problem.
As Dorothy notes here (link from Katherine's comments). If I do write to my congresscritters, I will simply paste in the full text of Dorothy's post, possibly adding emphasis to the final words:
But then you remember.
This is the American Way.
And you voted for it.
I did write my rep Ed Pastor, thanking him his support of the bill.
My representative is already co-sponsoring the bill.
So I wrote friends and relatives who live in other districts and asked them to write their representatives.
This so stinks.
"First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me."
Writing to my rep (Republican worm John Peterson) hoping for decency is like asking a rattlesnake not to bite you the next time you french kiss it. Might happen, but the experience is gonna be ugly either way.
Sent this out on my email scandal sheet.
I've been meaning to call my rep (David Wu) about this for a couple of days now. I've been working on his campaign quite a bit (his paid staffers tell me I'm one of their superstars), so I'm hoping to get some attention from his office. He's a staunch liberal and a generally good guy (sad day when I have to come up with reasons why he'd be _against_ torture) so hopefully he'll be on board. I'll call tomorrow morning - no more procrastinating.
This extraordinary rendition thing happened to an Australian citizen, Mamdouh Habib, an Arab-Australian, captured in Afghanistan. Habib, along with another Australian, David Hicks, are currently held at Guantanamo Bay. Our conservative government claims they can't get either guy, both Australian citizens, back home to face Australian justice. Even though the British government has managed to get back several of their citizens. Hmm.
In any case, if you want to read more about Habib's case, go to
http://www6.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php?page=archive&daysum=2004-07-07
which is a transcript from a news programme here called Dateline, which broke the story about Habib's "rendition" to Egypt, and asks pointed questions about whether or not our government knew about this procedure.
We're facing a national election on the 9th. I'm sorely tempted to contact my own local representative to ask if our government has any plans to protest or otherwise object to the US government's plan to legalise this rendition business. I'm guessing they don't. They keep talking about how crucially, utterly important it is to Australia to be part of this alliance we have with the US, even if it means going along with the most reprehensible, horrific deeds imaginable.
I can't vote them out fast enough.
PS: I just wrote a letter to my local parliamentary representative, telling them about this business, and asking what might be done. I've never done anything like this before, never gotten involved or taken up a cause. Strange feeling.
Good job, Adrian. We all need to do the same -- even those who live in districts whose representatives co-sponsored this bill need to write to let those sponsors know that what they've done has been noted, and is disapproved.
Perhaps they didn't read the bill, perhaps they didn't understand all of its provisions (it's over 300 pages). Perhaps they merely wanted to have their name on something labeled "9/11" so they could say they're four-square against terrorism in their next election campaigns.
They should be reminded that the voters are watching them, and the voters will base their choice in the next election on how the representative treats this bill, and Markey's amendment.
============
Here's the text of my letter (hardcopy and email):
The Honorable Charles F. Bass, II
United States House of Representatives
2421 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-2902
Dear Congressman Bass,
I'm absolutely stunned that the House would consider making torture legal, as is apparently being done in Section 3032 and 3033 of H.R. 10, the "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act of 2004." The provision would require the Secretary of Homeland Security to issue new regulations to exclude from the protection of the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, any suspected terrorist.
Torture of prisoners, no matter what they are "suspected" of, is always wrong; we as Americans don't do it, and we don't allow others do it in our name. We should be an example to other countries as we uphold our own ideals.
I expect that you will vote to support Congressman Markey's amendment to this bill, to remove the shocking and unAmerican provision making torture legal, or, if an amendment decisively rejecting torture is not included in the bill, to vote to defeat it.
Sincerely,
James D. Macdonald
What I said at the time was that I happened to know that those reports were correct. I also said I wasn’t going to explain how I knew it. That’s still my position.
FWIW, I can back up the assertion that reports on "torture training" are right, and say how I know it: my brother is Army Special Forces and went through that training.
As far as I can tell, the best way to get information from somebody is to not even let them know you think they might be a suspect. Heck, to not even let them know you're watching them. Torture, as others have noted, just results in Confessions. As any lapsed Catholic knows, those aren't worth jack.
I lifted James's final paragraph, and wrote a note to my representative (Shelley Berkley, D-NV) that ran like this:
***
Dear Representative Berkley;
I am writing to urge your support for Massachusetts Congressman Edward Markey's amendment to H.R. 10, which would outlaw the practice of "extraordinary rendition," or remanding defendants to other nations for torture and interrogation.
Not only is the practice of extracting confessions via torture morally repugnant--it's also completely ineffective. I expect that you will vote to support Congressman Markey's amendment to this bill, to remove the shocking and unAmerican provision making torture legal, or, if an amendment decisively rejecting torture is not included in the bill, to vote to defeat it.
Thank you for your time, and for your continued service to the great state of Nevada.
Sincerely,
me.
Betsy--
Thank you. It's been a very hard week, and I felt like I **had** to glean out the specifics to write this letter, but I can't think today.
Thanks for the boost--
People may want to take a look at the other provisions of this bill before deciding whether to tell their congresscritters to support the ammendment, or first to vote against the bill and then, if they will not, at least support the ammendment.
It's clear that many of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were picked up almost at random.
Many of them are said to be the relatives of suspected terrorists. If Mr. Terrorist is not home when they come to arrest him, they grab his wife or sister instead.
Which relates back to "torture is only useful as a form of intimidation or revenge."
Laura, some of them are thought to be relatives of people who are thought to be terrorists. The judgement that many of them appear to have been picked up almost at random was made by the Red Cross.
A message was on its way to my representative before I had even finished reading the entire essay. Then, in the comments, I was pleased to see that he, Earl Blumenauer, D-OR, is a co-sponsor. As Oregon has five representatives, it seems only fair to write to the other four who are not sponsors.
The US defence secretary's decision to import such techniques into Iraq, after their use in Afghanistan, was opposed by members of US intelligence organisations, the report said.
"They said, 'No way. We signed up for the core programme in Afghanistan, pre-approved for operations against high-value terrorist targets, and now you want to use it for cab drivers, brothers-in-law, and people pulled off the streets,'" the former intelligence official told Hersh.
Rumsfeld 'Gave Secret OK' (emphasis mine)
I just called Van Hollen's office (he's a co-sponsor of Markey's bill) and told the callow-yet-helpful youth on the phone that I gave the Congressman a big thumbs-up.
Now it's time for a little history.
Y'all've heard of Algeria? French, north Africa, 1950s? Remember? Paratroopers, city fighting, terrorists, insurgents, civilian population? The whole deal.
Maybe one reason the French were so reluctant to join the current adventure in Iraq was they'd had some experience in how those things can turn out.
The French decided the way to get intelligence on the insurgents was with torture. Special courts were set up to issue torture warrants under strict guidelines. They were supposed to be issued only under extraordinary circumstances, for the most serious cases. In the first year there were only a hundred or so. Within two years, thousands were being issued.
Do you know what happened? The hard-core terrorists started betraying their moderate countrymen to the French, to put them under torture, to remove any element from society that would oppose their hard-core goals.
And do you know how well that torture worked? Not at all. The French spent their time chasing torture-induced fantasies. The population as a whole got more resistant, not less. The French lost. (Yeah, yeah, all the French jokes. We didn't do a whole lot better than they did in Vietnam, now, did we?)
Unless congressional procedures have changed a great deal since I learned about them in school, anything the House passes still has to get past the Senate. (IIRC, the House passes a bill, the Senate passes a bill, and then these bills goes to a reconciliation committee where an attempt is made to combine them into Frankenbill, and both houses pass that, at which point it goes to the President for signature or veto. At least, that's how I learned it about 30 years ago.) Therefore, while we all still need to badger the Reps, we also need to badger the Senators, and make it plain that whatever the House passes, the final bill Must Not Have This In It. There is a much narrower Republican majority in the Senate at this point, and many Republican Senators are less subservient to their leaders in that body. (Think--John McCain. This is a major hot-button issue for him.) Plus, some are retiring and can afford to do what they think is right rather than what they feel they must to survive. We can fight on two fronts here, and I think it's worth the effort.
I shamelessly cute & paste from betsy's and James' letters and sent it to my representative. Threw in a line about "the atrocities of Abu Ghraib being fresh in everyone's mind" for good measure.
He's republican though -- don't know if it will have an effect.
Teresa (and James) - good points.
I'm sure we used torture in Vietnam as well. In fact, I think that was one of the things Kerry testified about, back then.
James D. Macdonald:
I agree. Torture is usually counterproductive. This is true even when done by professionals; and certainly true when done by amateurs (as in Abu Gharib).
Strange bedfellows, in that your impressively professional opinion overlaps that of Pontecorvo's agitprop "Battle of Algiers."
If I may overgeneralize, the Corporate and government bureaucratic world lightly tortures almost all of their employees, who therefore tell Management exactly what management wants to hear, instead of what management needs to know.
That's my opinion, as a survivor of several decades of semihostile workplaces at Boeing, Rockwell, Lockheed, Hughes, and on contracts with Army, Navy, Air Force, FAA, and NASA.
I still wish that I could have saved the Space Shuttle for killing astronauts, had I been able to overcome torture from above (executive management clinging to falsified budgets and schedules) and below by the pathological lying idiots at Rockwell's Space Transportation Systems Division in Downey, who preemptively accused me of plagiarism to deflect attention from their criminal fraud, and continue to defame me to this day in the science fiction and space advocacy communities. Though not (I think) on the SFWA web domain (in ways that you know better than I).
Just emailed Rep. Mike Michaud for my district of Maine. He's generally very good on these issues; I couldn't believe he wasn't a co-sponsor. I'm sure I'll get a good answer, which I'll post as soon as it comes back.
Just called Rep. Nancy Pelosi again. The NY Times had an editorial and an Op-Ed piece about this today, so clearly some cats have been let out of the bag; I am hoping that every member of congress is being deluged with calls and e-mails.
I hate that things have come to the sort of pass where it is necessary to call out the troops to get a measure like this defeated.
Oh drat. I see by my post that the thought of torture gives me a bad case of typo-blindness.
On torture. Pain does increase one's openness to suggestion, as I think was touched on in another thread. I'm thinking of labor as a personal example. When finding out about natural (no-drugs) labor & childbirth, one thing consistently came up -- anything you suggest to a woman in transition will be acceded to. Then I tried it and sure enough -- you are in an altered state and everything external is far away and doesn't mean much and all that matters is getting through this breath. And the next breath.
What got me through labor was knowing the pain would end, and each "attack" (contraction) was helping the baby to arrive.
But if I try to imagine being in a state where I didn't know if the pain would end ...
When I called Jim Cooper's local office, the aide was aware of the issue of extraordinary rendition and the Arar case, although he didn't immediately key on HR10's provisions. He also told me that hard-copy letters could be sent to the local office, where they would be faxed to the Washington office. Those who wish to try this method of sending a hardcopy letter should check their phonebooks, in the blue page [government listing section]. This should list the local offices.
mayakda - My yoga teacher once told a story about her first childbirth. She was in such pain (and had been left alone for a period of time by everyone - docs, nurses, and her husband), that she was contemplating pulling out IVs and taking a header through the window across from the foot of her bed. Then the pain of the next contraction would distract her from that fell purpose and the whole thing would start over again.
Later, after her son was born, she told her husband about this. "There's no window in that room," he told her.
She insisted there was, until he actually took her into the room and showed her the blank walls. The room had no windows at all. I think she'd concur with your statement.
Thanks everyone for the wake-up call. I got on the phone to my representative, Anna Eshoo's office, and asked for her position and why she isn't a co-sponsor. Eshoo is okay, and she is on the intelligence committee so I hope she comes around, but I sure wish I could feel the same sort of delight and admiration for her that I feel for Mike Honda in the district next door.
I hope that principled representatives from both sides of the aisle will take a stand for implementing the 9/11 intelligence reforms exactly as recommended by the 9/11 commission. The extra provisions in the House bill are morally wrong and a threat to human rights, but that's not all. By bringing back failed policies, and by distracting attention away from the real intelligence reforms that are urgently needed, they undermine progress in the war on terror. It's almost as if the provisions are so bad, they can be explained only as a wedge issue designed to dare people to vote against it.
(Here's my attempt...)
U.S. Representative John Linder
1727 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515-1007
Dear Mr. Linder,
As a libertarian and a supporter of your Fair Tax Plan, I am proud to live in your district and to have voted for you in the past election. I am writing to you today because of my shock and dismay over Sections 3032 and 3033 of H.R. 10, the “9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act.”
These sections relax our compliance with the United Nations Convention Against Torture, and permit the removal of any alien to any country regardless of the alien's country of origin, crimes charged, or probable consequence. Particularly disturbing is this clause in Section 3032:
3) BURDEN OF PROOF- The revision shall also ensure that the burden of proof is on the applicant for withholding or deferral of removal under the Convention to establish by clear and convincing evidence that he or she would be tortured if removed to the proposed country of removal.
The idea that a prisoner of the United States, with limited access to information or legal recourse, would have to prove future torture in order to avoid that torture is in grotesque contradiction to our country's moral foundations. Presumption of innocence and respect for human dignity are just two of the principles we are fighting for around the world. The revisions further negate the due process of law by removing the authority of any court to review the revisions themselves or any claims made under the Convention Against Torture until it is too late to stop the removal.
Torture is always wrong, regardless of a prisoner's strategic value or suspected crimes. Just as we expect other countries not to torture Americans, we as Americans must never engage in torture, nor allow our prisoners to be sent to other countries for the purpose of torture. What we lose, in courage and moral determination, will always be greater to us than any dubious information we may gain. We must set an example to other countries by upholding our own ideals.
As my Congressman, I know that you will do the right thing. I expect that you will support Congressman Markey's amendment to this bill, to remove the shocking and unAmerican provision making torture legal, or, if an amendment decisively rejecting torture is not included in the bill, that you will vote to defeat it. Thank you for your service.
Sincerely,
Stephen Eley
Paul: It means that all the Rs voted one way, and all the Ds voted the other way. Yes, the Rs have more people right now.
So it is important you here, now, and give whatever little bit you can to help take back the House. Your little bit added to all the other little bits can be huge.
MKK
fidelio: your explanation is mechanically correct, but it's my understanding that the House members of the Frankenbill (excuse me, conference) committee tend to be the most pigheaded, reactionary legislators DeLay can dig up; "the world's greatest deliberative body" has not been winning very often in conference. The Senate isn't irrelevant, but the House is more likely to be the key battleground.
I've even heard of bad clauses deleted by \both/ houses but mysteriously reappearing in conference, although I can't cite instances. I guess we do what we can do and hope for less than the worst.
This is Katherine of Obsidian Wings. Thanks for the link, and the letters.
I am trying to call on the forces of blogger triumphalism and blogger trendiness to get the press--outside of Dana Priest of WaPo, who was already covering it without my help--to pay attention to this story. Like the CBS memos, only important.
(Part of this strategy is whoring for links, so that this story shows up on the blog tracking sites (blogdex, etc.) that some of the press reads. In that vein, I have an update here and more will follow.)
Unfortunately I don't like my chances, as Left Blogistan is not as good as Right Blogistan at incessantly fixating on one story, and Right Blogistan is better at completely ignoring stories that make their side look bad. About 2% of the links that first post got are from right-of-center bloggers.
But the post has already gotten a lot more attention than I would have expected, and I am very grateful for that.
One more thing: if anyone's Congressperson gives them a clear answer on whether or not they support Markey's amendment, could y'all email me the information at katherinesblog@hotmail.com? I'll post the responses if I get a decent number.
Okay, guys. After you write your representative, consider linking to Katherine's writeup at Obsidian Wings. Give her some Googlejuice.
I did link to Katherine, and posted my own rant, and then went and wrote to OW, and then responded to people who read me (a small group, but not all of them come here, or go there), and then wrote to my rep (David Drier) and told him where I stand (and took full advantage of both my MOS and my having been in Iraq, in the most recent unpleasantness), telling him that if he doesn't vote to remove the offensive language, or against the bill, or the language survives his vote against, that I was not going to vote for him, and that 18 years of being a registered Republican couldn't make me vote for anyone who could support such a thing.
I didn't see the point in telling him he won't have my vote, come hell or high water, and that my registration is because I have a much more vested interest in whom the Republicans field in the primaries, than I do the Dems, but hey, if he wants to think I've been a lockstep voter up to now... let 'im.
TK
A note for those wishing to keep up with Markey's bill: a search here on HR4674 will give you the text of the bill; clicking the link for "Bill Summary & Status", and then on the "Co-Sponsors" link will take you here, or you can click on "All Bill Summary & Status Info" to get the co-sponsors and information on the bill's progress (or lack thereof).
Note that the bill is HR4674, not HR4764 as stated in Obsidian Wings excellent 10/1 update. Those transpositions will kill you every time.
I'll be checking the co-sponsor list to see if my letter to my congressman, Martin Meehan [MA-5], bears fruit.
The list now shows a 23rd co-sponsor:
Rep Davis, Susan A. [CA-53] - 9/30/2004
As a Canadian, I am so glad that the Arar case is still getting some attention south of the border.
When it first broke last year, it prodded me into writing several letters to cabinet ministers, calling for a public inquiry into the matter.
The public inquiry is now underway in Ottawa, looking into the Canadian government's involvement in the matter. Unfortunately, a Canadian inquiry can only compel Canadians to testify and the U.S. State Department has declined to participate. Apparently the State Department is conducting its own internal review of the case. If you're writing to your congresspeople, you might want to ask them to find out how that review is coming along.
Another tactic I've found useful is to buttonhole politicians in person. You tend to find out more from the real live individual than from any form-letter you get in the mail. Since it's election season right now, the pols should be out mainstreeting and easy to corner. Pick a moment when the cameras aren't watching to make your moove. That way, the politician doesn't feel the need to get defensive.
Update: Susan Davis (CA-53) and Tom Lantos (CA-12) have joined the list of co-sponsors! Only 400-odd to go.
People seem to be missing the point: the goal of authorising torture is not obtaining useful information that will save lives, it's to appear to be as mean a bastard as you can, to look tough in fromt of your voters..."If we're going to such extremes, we must be doing as much as we can." That's what really matters.
And if you don't agree with that assessment of the relative importance of substantive effort and macho flash, you're probably a liberal elitist (warning: strong language in link).
David Moles - Thanks for the update! Now I can vote for Lantos with a slightly clearer conscience. (He's still too much the hawk for me.) Given his safe-seat status, I was ever so briefly considering of voting for the Green candidate. Now I can stop considering and support my party.
We get the point, Michael. And both the people who use that political tactic and the people who respond to it need to have their asses kicked.
No problem, Larry. You might still want to send him a note asking what took him so long. :)
David Moles: Good joke.
But it points out a real problem: what if you're a sane and rational and decent and ambitious person, and honestly believe that you'll do the country good by leading it (o.k. that last describes nearly every politician and so is redundant), and it looks like the only way to get elected by a taurocoprophile population is to add enough b.s. to your message that the taste will be acceptable to them?
A long-winded way of saying, "Is it possible to avoid coming down to their level when that's where the fight is, and fighting seems to be the talent the public values most?"
==================================================
"Either this intelligence agrees with our reasons for invading Iraq, in which case it's redundant but very welcome, or it contradicts our reasons for invading Iraq, in which case it is Evildoer stuff."
---George Bush, Caliph of Bagdhad, at the Library of Alexandria, VA.
No politician worth voting for would be cynical enough to want to lead a public that contemptible. If the problem really is that the voters prefer bullshit to truth, then playing to that just continues on an infinite downward spiral. If said sane, rational, decent, ambitious person wants to make a difference, said person should find a better outlet for his or her talents than electoral politics.
Luckily, that's not the world we live in.
Btw, what came of this business? Has the vote taken place yet?
I have no info on the vote, but saw this related article on the BBC.
HR10 passed the House without the Markey amendment (which died in committee); you can follow the current action on the bill status page for S2845. Here's the latest news as of 20 October:
10/16/2004:
Senate disagreed to House amendment, agreed to request for conference, and appointed conferees. Collins; Lott; DeWine; Roberts; Voinovich; Sununu; Coleman; Lieberman; Levin; Durbin; Rockefeller; Graham FL; Lautenberg. pursuant to the orders of October 10 and 11, 2004.
Metal Fatigue--thanks for posting that update. I've been wondering how it was going. Not so good, I see.
Rendition Torture was introduced from the Whitehouse by the Clinton Administration. Do the research.
Rendition Torture was introduced from the Whitehouse by the Clinton Administration. Do the research.
So what?
Any interrogator worth their salt will tell you that any information gained through torture is suspect at best and normally out-right useless for anything else. You might get one piece of information, but once tapped, your source is dry, which may have offered much more. Our own soldiers in POW camps, like Adm Stockdale, John McCain, could tell you that... and they have! This idea that if we dont torture them, they will think we are wimps is insane, inhumane and barbaric thinking. It puts us on a lower level than the ones we are trying to keep out of power. Lastly, I dont care who started it - it is wrong. Had I known it was going on then, I would be just as outraged as I am now. The Republicans would have probably used it to impeach Clinton again - which is what should be done with Bush.
Had I known it was going on then, I would be just as outraged as I am now.
Not to worry. It wasn't going on then. Under Clinton, "rendition" meant going overseas to fetch suspected terrorists back to the USA to stand trial here as criminals, even if we didn't have an extradition treaty with the foreign government where the suspect was located.
The pro-torture faction likes to cite Presidential Decision Directives 39 and 62 in their desperate "Clinton did it first!" argument. Unfortunately for their case, those PDDs don't support their claims.
Here's Louis Freeh testifying on rendition in 1999:
"During the past decade, the United States has successfully obtained custody of 13 suspected international terrorists from foreign countries to stand trial in the United States for acts or planned acts of terrorism against our citizens. Based on its policy of treating terrorists as criminals and applying the rule of law against them, the United States is one of the most visible and effective forces in identifying, locating, and apprehending terrorists on American soil and overseas. The majority of terrorist renditions have been accomplished with the cooperation of the foreign government in which the terrorist suspect was located. Among the individuals recently returned to the United States by this process have been Mir Amal Kasi, who shot and killed two Central Intelligence Agency employees in Langley, Virginia, in 1993, and who was rendered from Afghanistan to the United States in 1997, and Tsutomo Shirosaki, a Japanese Red Army member, who was rendered to the United States in 1996, more than 10 years after firing rockets at the United States Diplomatic Compound in Jakarta, Indonesia. Every time the United States obtains custody of a terrorist for trial, we send a clear message to terrorists everywhere that no matter how long it takes, no matter the difficulty, we will find you and you will be held accountable for your actions."
Rendition Torture was introduced from the Whitehouse by the Clinton Administration.
No, it wasn't.
Do the research.
I have.
This is an interesting article to find while I am online searching for facts on ethics in the criminal justice system for an Integrity Management class at Hesser College in New Hampshire.
I feel as though the tragedy of 9/11 hit home to so many people that Bush&co are using that sympathy on the American people for alot of bills trying to passed and actions the goverment is taking. This article only makes me feel more strongly about that suspicion of mine,
iwent to google, to find info for debate, but all i find are these stupid blogs, get a life, and stop posting this in google.
You do know what Google is, don't you, Ben?
And what kind of info do you need for a debate? What search terms did you use? What information were you looking for that you didn't find?
A fucktard who couldn't be bothered looking at the date of the last post on this topic, learning anything about Google ("posting" in Google? the minus key?), or even punctuating correctly.
Would it help if you knew he was posting from the Sioux Falls Public Schools? They're having hot ham and cheese on a bun for lunch there today, so I'm not surprised Ben's a bit testy.
Really, it's nice that they're planning to debate (I presume) Extraordinary Rendition in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I wonder what information he was after?
Oh, geez, I might have known. I feel all mean now, seriously. Let's help him. Do you suppose he put in his real email address?
Hot ham and cheese?
Mmmmm.
Harry, you're mistaken. If they were honest they'd say "hot ham (or reasonable facsimile containing at least 50% real meat) and pasturized processed cheese food product on a tasteless and nutritionally vacuous bun-shaped object."
No Mmmmmm.
From the Sioux Falls Public Schools sked:
Friday, November 4th
All Day Oral Interp : All High Schools: Debate @ WHS
Saturday, November 5th
All Day Oral Interp : All High Schools: @ WHS
All Day Oral Interp : All High Schools: Debate @ RHS
Tuesday, November 8th
3:30PM Oral Interp : All High Schools: Novice Debate Tournament@ LHS
Over on the "Political spam" thread, this guy
looks like he's had a similar education.
Geoff Crooks' post looks like the result of "skipped his meds" rather than "googled his facts."
Oy. It's almost a parody of itself. The thought is as incoherent as the spelling.
Seriously? Bored by the Internet?
Ba-da da-da-da-da-da-da ba-da da-da-da-da-da-da BRAT SPAM!!!!
Next week, same brat time, same brat channel.
I amend my remark at 82 to read, "Seriously? Bored on a site frequented by Xopher?"
Xopher @ 83...
Same brat, or bratwurst?
(Hey, it's late and I haven't had any coffee at all today.)
Serge, might be the wurst brat, but I think Lindsey Lohan is still in the running.
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It's hard to come up with witty things to say about spam, without sounding like spam itself.
Lucy Dana @ 85 -- not on any topic, vague flattery. I don't dare click her URL.
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