The SASC Report - "Designed To Elicit False Confessions"

The very long Senate Armed Services Committee report on torture and interrogation tactics used by the military has been released in unredacted form, on the heels of the OLC torture memos. Because the report gives a broader history of the Bush torture regime, it is unquestionably more damning, with more details and a more coherent timeline. For instance, we learn that the Bush Administration made a "wish list" for torture, before the first detainees even came into custody. Unlike the familiar narrative that torture techniques were only employed after the subjects refused to give up information, this was their M.O. from the beginning.

A report by the Senate Armed Services Committee released Tuesday night says that some harsh interrogation techniques used at Abu Ghraib prison weren’t approved by officials in the George W. Bush administration until after they were already being put into use.

“Intelligence and military officials under the Bush administration began preparing to conduct harsh interrogations long before they were granted legal approval to use such methods — and weeks before the CIA captured its first high-ranking terrorism suspect, Senate investigators have concluded,” the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The paper adds, “Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the committee, said the new findings show a direct link between the early policy decisions and the highly publicized abuses of detainees at prisons such as Abu Ghraib in Iraq.”

“Senior officials sought out information on, were aware of training in, and authorized the use of abusive interrogation techniques,” Levin said. “Those senior officials bear significant responsibility for creating the legal and operational framework for the abuses.”

We knew that President Bush's order in February 2002, months before the Bybee torture memo, that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to Al Qaeda or Taliban subjects kicked off the finding of legal rationales for torture. But the Administration actually started the process in December 2001, when the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, William Haynes, solicited information on detainee "exploitation" from the agency that oversees SERE (Survival, Evasion, Rescue, Escape) training. And we know now, although I think we already knew this, that the SERE techniques were based on Chinese communist techniques, used against Americans to ELICIT FALSE CONFESSIONS.

Leading us to this:

The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime [...]

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

Yes, it was all connected. They approved the torture to gather the false intelligence to push forward their agenda in Iraq. And it was done at a shadowy level, without disclosure to most top officials that these techniques were banned by the United States and prosecuted when used by foreign countries for decades. And nobody involved bothered to consult the past, either. Or at least, they didn't want to know. Ignorance was bliss.

And once and for all, we know that tactics used by the military at Gitmo were rapidly outsourced to Abu Ghraib. The work of Charles Graner and Lynndie England and the gang was not the work of "a few bad apples." It was policy, as was obvious at the time.

Nobody should buy the argument that, because Americans at SERE school don't have lasting physical or psychological damage from these techniques, they don't constitute torture. It should be obvious that going to school and being held captive with no end in sight are two different things, and the two experiences have different effects on the mental state.

Emptywheel notes that DoJ's guidelines on waterboarding differed from the CIA's, but the CIA followed the more expansive DoJ guidelines.

And if you believe that there were no objections, consider that all the briefings for Congress were classified (are they supposed to reveal classified information?), and then this:

At the time, in 2005, I circulated an opposing view of the legal reasoning. My bureaucratic position, as counselor to the secretary of state, didn’t entitle me to offer a legal opinion. But I felt obliged to put an alternative view in front of my colleagues at other agencies, warning them that other lawyers (and judges) might find the OLC views unsustainable. My colleagues were entitled to ignore my views. They did more than that: The White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo. I expect that one or two are still at least in the State Department’s archives.

The conservative response to all this inevitably devolves into they're not like you and me, those Arabs. I'd prefer to see them try that excuse in court. (They'll also probably whip out Dennis Blair's statement that the interrogation tactics yielded high-value information, as if the ends justify the means, and as if we should take Blair's claims at face value against mounds of evidence that the information was essentially useless). And this report implicates practically everyone at the highest levels, particularly Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney.

John Conyers wants hearings. I think it will be virtually impossible to stop this from becoming a full-blown investigation. The reckoning is coming.

...in re: The Blair memo - the National Intelligence Director's conclusion was that torture does more harm than good, which I suspect you won't hear much when conservatives talk about it.

Seeking Justice, Part I

I mentioned this the other day, but I think I was too hasty about it. The bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee treatment is a bombshell. Here we have the US Senate stating very plainly that members of the Administration, all the way to the very top, committed war crimes by directing interrogators in the field to use torture. They reverse-engineered techniques used to teach American soldiers how to resist torture, and turned them on the detainees captured in Iraq and Afghanistan, in violation of US and international law.

The Committee concluded that the authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques by senior officials was both a direct cause of detainee abuse and conveyed the message that it was okay to mistreat and degrade detainees in U.S. custody.

Chairman Levin said, “SERE training techniques were designed to give our troops a taste of what they might be subjected to if captured by a ruthless, lawless enemy so that they would be better prepared to resist. The techniques were never intended to be used against detainees in U.S. custody.”

Senator McCain said, “The Committee’s report details the inexcusable link between abusive interrogation techniques used by our enemies who ignored the Geneva Conventions and interrogation policy for detainees in U.S. custody. These policies are wrong and must never be repeated.”

Chairman Levin also said: “The abuses at Abu Ghraib, GTMO and elsewhere cannot be chalked up to the actions of a few bad apples. Attempts by senior officials to pass the buck to low ranking soldiers while avoiding any responsibility for abuses are unconscionable. The message from top officials was clear; it was acceptable to use degrading and abusive techniques against detainees. Our investigation is an effort to set the record straight on this chapter in our history that has so damaged both America’s standing and our security. America needs to own up to its mistakes so that we can rebuild some of the good will that we have lost.”

If you've been paying attention for the past several years, none of this is new. There have been many books written on the subject, loads of documentary evidence from those tortured. But never has a body as esteemed as the US Senate pointed the finger right at the White House. We're talking about the President, the Vice President, the chief counsel, the Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, all guilty, going back to a February 2002 order when the President signed an authorization claiming that the Geneva Conventions didn't apply to members of Al Qaeda, which has since been rejected by the Supreme Court. That they based their authorization on warped legal theories is immaterial, in my view. Just because you are told that you're allowed to break the law doesn't men you're absolved from blame when you do so.

There is a legal case with which this report can be put to use. Yesterday the Supreme Court ordered a federal appeals court to make a decision in the case of four British Muslims who were detained at Guantanamo and tortured.

The former prisoners are attempting to hold top Pentagon officials responsible for the abuse, including former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The lawsuit was thrown out last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, which concluded that the Guantanamo prisoners had no rights under the Constitution because they were foreigners held by the military.

In a one-line order Monday, the justices set aside the appeals court's decision and ordered the judges to take a new look at the case.

There are many dedicated lawyers who are not going to stop advocating for holding the Bush Administration responsible. They will be filing motions and seeking arrests in civil and criminal court for the rest of George Bush's life, for the rest of Dick Cheney's life, for the rest of Don Rumsfeld's life. They believe in the rule of law and reject the idea that anyone is above it.

They are seeking justice because they believe in the Constitution.

If You Don't Build It, They Won't Come

Hillary Clinton, Jim Webb and a collection of other Democrats have just written Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin demanding a hearing on contingency plans for withdrawal from Iraq. This of course will be likely to lead to criticism that just talking about withdrawal emboldens the enemy, criticism that Under Secretary for Defense Eric Edelman made just last week. This letter from Clinton and Webb follows a letter from Clinton and John Kerry to SecDef Robert Gates asking for contingency plans on withdrawal of US forces.

What's amazing is that these letters have to be written at all. It flies in the face of all prior history of the US military.

The entire reason for a Pentagon, for a War Room, for wargaming exercises, for military analysts in the employ of the US government, is for contingency planning. That is their directive and what we mandate as the taxpayers who fund them. The Pentagon has housed in its archives plans to bomb practically every country on Earth, including Iran and Venezuela and on and on. It would be irresponsible if they didn't. USSTRATCOM, the Strategic Command of the United States, exists primarily for nuclear contingencies but also for a wide variety of strategic planning of varied type.

Indeed, the Republican Warner-Lugar bill calls for the presentation of a redeployment plan for Iraq by October of this year. So this is not a recipe for defeat. This is the Defense Department's job, to plan for every possible outcome. The fact that the political class is resistent is simply an irresponsible act. The calculation is that if there are no plans for withdrawal, then it cannot be accomplished. This is not a supposition; members of the "Dear Leader" caucus of the executive branch have come right out and said this. In fact, there appear to be contingencies that have been in the works for months, even before "all the troops were in place":

American military planners have begun plotting a fallback strategy for Iraq that includes a gradual withdrawal of forces and a renewed emphasis on training Iraqi fighters in case the current troop buildup fails or is derailed by Congress.

...a drawdown of forces would be in line with comments to Congress by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates last month that if the "surge" fails, the backup plan would include moving troops "out of harm's way." Such a plan also would be close to recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, of which Gates was a member before his appointment as Defense Department chief.

It's not dishonorable to game out the options of a failed surge; it's the way the military has always done its business. There is this mentality among the warhawks and Bush defenders that if you don't build it (a withdrawal plan, they won't come (to force a withdrawal). That's why it's absolutely smart for Clinton and others to call for hearings on this plan, to ensure that we don't get out of Iraq in the same stupid way that we
got into it.

The letter to Levin follows:

The Honorable Carl Levin
Chairman
Committee on Armed Services
United States Senate
R228
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Chairman Levin:

We write to request that the Senate Committee on Armed Services hold a hearing on Department of Defense contingency planning for the redeployment of United States military forces from Iraq. Such a hearing could solicit the views of outside experts who have experience in the redeployment of large numbers of troops as well as administration witnesses. If necessary, portions of the hearing could be held in closed session.

The importance of holding this hearing was underscored this month when Senators Warner and Lugar introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act calling for the Administration to present its redeployment plan to Congress by October 16, 2007. As they noted, the safety and security of our military forces, as well as our nation’s credibility in the region, require that any military withdrawal or redeployment from Iraq be carefully planned and executed. A poorly planned withdrawal would compound the risks to our forces, coalition partners, and the government of Iraq.

The need for the Committee to know the status of Department of Defense redeployment planning is clear, yet past efforts by individual members to obtain this information were rebuffed. Following reports that the Pentagon was not engaging in detailed planning while the Iraqi Defense Ministry was preparing its own plans in the event that the United States and its forces departed Iraq quickly, the Secretary of Defense was requested in May to provide the appropriate oversight committees in Congress with briefings on the current status of contingency planning for the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman responded to this request on Secretary Gates’ behalf on July 16. A copy of his letter and other correspondence relating to this matter are enclosed for your reference. As you will see, Under Secretary Edelman raised spurious arguments to avoid discussing contingency planning and claimed that premature discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda. His assertion that necessary congressional oversight emboldens our enemies is outrageous.

As you are aware, the roots of the many problems facing our men and women serving in Iraq were planted by the failure of this Administration to develop sound, realistic plans. We cannot afford to repeat the same mistake when our forces redeploy. Congressional oversight will help to ensure that redeployment plans properly address the numerous challenges that our troops will face, including the resources and the diplomatic support required to ensure that any redeployment is safe and orderly.

Thank you for considering this request.

Sincerely yours,

Hillary Rodham Clinton Robert C. Byrd

Evan Bayh Jim Webb

CC: The Honorable John McCain
Ranking Member
Committee on Armed Services