Sunday, April 26, 2009

TORTURE IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE Independent: "A US major reveals the inside story of military interrogation in Iraq. The use of torture by the US has proved so counter-productive that it may have led to the death of as many US soldiers as civilians killed in 9/11, says the leader of a crack US interrogation team in Iraq. 'The reason why foreign fighters joined al-Qa'ida in Iraq was overwhelmingly because of abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and not Islamic ideology,' says Major Matthew Alexander, who personally conducted 300 interrogations of prisoners in Iraq. Major Alexander's attitude to torture by the US is a combination of moral outrage and professional contempt. 'It plays into the hands of al-Qa'ida in Iraq because it shows us up as hypocrites when we talk about human rights,' he says. An eloquent and highly intelligent man with experience as a criminal investigator within the US military, he says that torture is ineffective, as well as counter-productive." AfterDowningStreet: "Nancy Pelosi denies knowing U.S. officials used waterboarding - but GOP operatives are pointing to a 2007 Washington Post story which describes an hour-long 2002 briefing in which Pelosi was told about enhanced interrogation techniques in graphic detail." CommonDreams: "Last week, we pointed out that one of the newly released Bush-era memos inadvertently confirmed that the CIA held an al-Qaeda suspect named Hassan Ghul in a secret prison and subjected him to what Bush administration lawyers called 'enhanced interrogation techniques'. The CIA has never acknowledged holding Ghul, and his whereabouts today are secret. But Ghul is not the only such prisoner who remains missing. At least three dozen others who were held in the CIA's secret prisons overseas appear to be missing as well. Efforts by human rights organizations to track their whereabouts have been unsuccessful, and no foreign governments have acknowledged holding them. In September 2007, Michael V. Hayden, then director of the CIA, said 'fewer than 100 people had been detained at CIA's facilities'. One memo released last week confirmed that the CIA had custody of at least 94 people as of May 2005 and 'employed enhanced techniques to varying degrees in the interrogations of 28 of these'. Former President George W. Bush publicly acknowledged the CIA program in September 2006, and transferred 14 prisoners from the secret jails to Guantanamo. Many other prisoners, who had 'little or no additional intelligence value', Bush said, 'have been returned to their home countries for prosecution or detention by their governments'. Bush did not reveal their identities or whereabouts - information that would have allowed the International Committee for the Red Cross to find them - or the terms under which the prisoners were handed over to foreign jailers. The U.S. government has never released information describing the threat that any of them posed. Some of those prisoners have since been released by third countries holding them. But it is still unclear what has happened to dozens of others." NISNews: "The Netherlands wants the US to abolish the act that legitimises the use of force to free Americans if they should fall into the hands of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. 'American legislation that would justify the use of force against the Netherlands to keep Americans out of the ICC is outdated and should be amended,' said Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen after a meeting with Democratic Congressman Chris van Hollen in the Congress in Washington. 'As host country, the Netherlands welcomes the improved cooperation between the US and the ICC, for example over Darfur,' Verhagen went on. 'I hope that this trend will continue, and that it will also lead to the amendment of the so-called Hague Invasion Act' of 2002." Fiori about torture. So president Obama still has a big mess to clean up. That's what he was elected for. 10:21:47 AM

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