Mark DANNER Lambasting Shrub/GONZALES Torture on C-SPAN2

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Lucidly, articulately, definitively, damningly. Dedicate this to our senators who "love" Alberto GONZALES.

"From the White House, through the Dept of Justice, through the Dept of Defense" (to implement a policy of torture). It is now the policy of the U.S. to perform torture. Re-defined "torture" to make it sound like torture is not-quite-torture. GONZALES was used as the "point man----the WH's own words" to effect the re-definition and to define the president's authority to implement torture, which is contrary to our principles, which is authoritarian.

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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1590171527/qid=1105842154/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/102-1628120-5002551?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Editorial Reviews


From Publishers Weekly
This stout and valuable instant book presents a documentary history of the Abu Ghraib prisoner-torture scandal. The paper trail includes policy statements concerning prisoner treatment signed by Attorney General Ashcroft and President Bush, reports on prisoner mistreatment generated within the United States armed forces themselves and material (including photographs) from outside agencies. The sheer mass of data requires some background knowledge about the military and the situation, if only to free the reader from dependence on the author's commentary, although New Yorker staff writer Danner (The Massacre at El Mozote) was in Iraq during 2003, and his opinions, when they come to the fore, are backed up with observations. While the publisher admits to having rushed the book into print, it emerges as a book of permanent value for the study of the Iraq war and of how apparently reasonable policies can be swept away by intense pressure, political or military, to produce a particular result. Abu Ghraib raises issues that will form part of the debate on American military policy long after Iraq is out of the headlines; at the very least, this book provides the information necessary for the public's involvement in that discussion.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description:
"Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, officials of the United States ... from Bagram in Afghanistan to Guantanamo in Cuba to Abu Ghraib in Iraq, have been torturing prisoners," writes Mark Danner. "This is a simple truth, well known but not yet publicly admitted in Washington." The torture was essentially given institutional approval by the U.S. government, through memoranda from the President's White House counsel, among others, opining that the Geneva Conventions need not apply to prisoners. In Iraq, at least three different interrogation policies were used. Many soldiers and outside organizations were aware of these torture sessions. Torture and Truth includes documents outlining acceptable interrogation techniques and reports revealing prisoner abuse and torture - including a memo signed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld concerning "Interrogation Techniques," the reports by Major General Antonio M. Taguba, and the report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

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1. "Torture and Truth" Is the Book, Chockfull of Documents

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http://www.markdanner.com/
http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/12/12_401.html
....

In his new book, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War On Terror, Danner explores the origins and aftermath of the administration’s post-9/11 decision to “take the gloves off.” The book collects several articles written for the New York Review of Books over the past year, offering a mix of reportage -- Danner was one of the first reporters to arrive on the scene of the bombing of the Red Cross headquarters in Baghdad in October 2003 -- and a close reading of the nearly 500 pages of official documents related to the Abu Ghraib scandal that make up its bulk. The documents, some of which are published for the first time in Torture and Truth, make for gripping, if disturbing, reading. Danner admits that most Americans are unlikely to delve into these papers with the seriousness they did another official account of terror-fighting gone wrong, the best-selling 9/11 Commission report. “These are difficult issues,” says Danner. “They make people uncomfortable.”

The documents illustrate how the Bush administration constructed its rationale for ignoring prisoners’ rights, and how that decision played out, with appalling consequences, in Iraq. “I think it’s a lesson for every American to see how a democracy can arrive at the point where it commits these kinds of crimes,” Danner says. “It’s there in the documentary history.” Exhibit A is the “torture memo” issued by the Justice Department in early 2002 at the request of President Bush’s legal adviser (and nominee for attorney general) Alberto Gonzales, which concluded that “under the current circumstances, necessity or self-defense may justify interrogation methods that might violate” U.S. laws prohibiting torture. A few pages later, Iraqi prisoners give hair-raising depositions of their time in American captivity. Such first-hand accounts, says Danner, reveal how the “euphemistic world” of the Bush bureaucracy translated into “real pain and real suffering on the ground.” As some of the Abu Ghraib guards go on trial, and fresh stories of abuses in Guantanamo and Iraq come out, it remains to be seen whether any of this will trickle up the chain of command. As Danner wonders, “Is there a way to connect uniforms to policy makers?” ....

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[DELUSIONAL]

2. All military families should be screaming bloody murder

about the new US policy on torture.

When I was a kid I clearly remember my father going away for a week for "prisoner of war" training. Because of the nature of his job in the Navy during the cold war -- all of the men in his outfit had to undergo this training.

So how does the "modern" bushie military train the military to behave when they are POW -- do they water board them? Make the guys go naked? Or are they told -- you get captured -- expect no help from your buddies -- and expect to die?

Bushie and his gang of dopes have done so much damage to the military -- it will take a generation or two to recover -- IF EVER.

In the back of my mind I have the thought running -- if Kerry had cared more about the troops -- about us -- he WOULD NOT HAVE CONCEDED so damned quickly. WHY didn't he know about the election fraud? Who the fuck where his advisers. Sorry -- I will put those thought way back in a secret place -- so sorry to disturb everyone.

In the next 4 years the troops will be used like disposable tissue paper -- Syria -- threats have been tossed in Syria's direction. And then Iran -- or maybe Egypt?

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3. DANNER Described Water Boarding in Detail. Ugh. n/t