documention hyperlinks are live at the source: http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y2009m8d28-Torture-indictment-for-George-Bush-a-draft

Torture apologists prefer that Americans surrender their powerful voices on this issue. Torture addicts propagandize that the legal issue is somehow too complicated for your little intellect to understand. Torture sadists use false rhetoric for you to submit to American torture under your flag and your tax dollars by telling you “torture keeps America safe;” a Rovian spin as reprehensible as “torturing your children makes them love you” or “torture promotes American values.” The trick is to take a universal virtue and link it to whatever you want to do. It’s the “big lie” that Hitler wrote is so outrageous that the stupid common people will believe it because of its outrageousness. Recent scientific data also posit the human tendency to justify evil just because you'd rather not embrace its implications.

But you’re smarter than Nazi dupes. You're committed to intellectual prowess and moral courage. You're ready to confront and end this repulsive episode of sanctioned cruelty.

How a Detainee Became An Asset
Sept. 11 Plotter Cooperated After Waterboarding

By Peter Finn, Joby Warrick and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 29, 2009

After enduring the CIA's harshest interrogation methods and spending more than a year in the agency's secret prisons, Khalid Sheik Mohammed stood before U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called "terrorist tutorials."

In 2005 and 2006, the bearded, pudgy man who calls himself the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks discussed a wide variety of subjects, including Greek philosophy and al-Qaeda dogma. In one instance, he scolded a listener for poor note-taking and his inability to recall details of an earlier lecture.

from: http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner with links to documentation of the below information.

Torture apologists prefer that Americans surrender their powerful voices on this issue. Torture addicts propagandize that the legal issue is somehow too complicated for your little intellect to understand. Torture sadists use false rhetoric for you to submit to American torture under your flag and your tax dollars by telling you “torture keeps America safe;” a Rovian spin as reprehensible as “torturing your children makes them love you” or “torture promotes American values.” The trick is to take a universal virtue and link it to whatever you want to do. It’s the “big lie” that Hitler wrote is so outrageous that the stupid common people will believe it because of its outrageousness. Recent scientific data also posit the human tendency to justify evil just because you'd rather not embrace its implications.

But you’re smarter than Nazi dupes. You're committed to intellectual prowess and moral courage. You're ready to confront and end this repulsive episode of sanctioned cruelty.

from: http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner

"Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause... for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country."
- General George Washington, letter to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775

Report Reveals CIA Conducted Mock Executions
A long-awaited report on post-9/11 interrogation tactics will reveal harrowing new details about treatment of suspected terrorists.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/213188

PHOTOS
A Torture Timeline
For hundreds of years, atrocities have been committed in the name of empire-building, religion or national security

By Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Aug 21, 2009 | Updated: 6:58 p.m. ET Aug 21, 2009
A long-suppressed report by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general to be released next week reveals that CIA interrogators staged mock executions as part of the agency's post-9/11 program to detain and question terror suspects, NEWSWEEK has learned.

Source: Michael Ramirez for Investor's Business Daily, 23 April, 2009.

Tsk tsk! Such jingoist fervor and enthusiasm! But: "enhanced interrogation" of whom? Binyam Mohamed? Christopher Hitchens? Children, perhaps? You seem confused, Michael. Maybe a German philosopher, international law and the 9/11 truth movement can help unconfuse you.

"He who fights monsters must take care lest he become a monster. When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes into you."

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/guantanamo/story/1179756.html

BY CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@miamiherald.com

U.S. military defense lawyers for accused 9/11 conspirator Ramzi bin al Shibh cannot learn what interrogation techniques CIA agents used on the Yemeni before he was moved to Guantánamo to be tried as a terrorist, an Army judge has ruled.

Bin al Shibh, 37, is one of five men charged in a complex death penalty prosecution by military commission currently under review by the Obama administration. He allegedly helped organize the Hamburg, Germany, cell of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers before the suicide mission that killed 2,974 people in New York, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania.

But his lawyers say he suffers a ``delusional disorder,'' and hallucinations in his cell at Guantánamo may leave him neither sane enough to act as his own attorney nor to stand trial. Prison camp doctors treat him with psychotropic drugs.

Army Col. Stephen Henley, the military judge on the case, has scheduled a competency hearing for mid-September.

(Updated with further developments from Democracy Now. Essentially, the Obama administration is threatening the security of British citizens to prevent disclosure of torture crimes; a less roundabout way to describe it would be that the White House is "threatening with increased risk of mass murder by ending intelligence sharing" -- SnowCrash)

British Lawmaker David Davis Challenges US Threats to Suppress Evidence of CIA Torture

Democracy Now, August 5, 2009

A British court heard evidence last week that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to prevent the disclosure of details regarding the CIA’s role in the alleged torture of former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Binyam Mohamed. We hear from conservative British parliamentarian David Davis about the Obama administration’s attempts to suppress evidence in this case.

Torturing Children: Bush's Legacy and Democracy's Failure
Henry A. Giroux

The torture of children under the Bush administration has gone relatively unpublicized.

Monday 03 August 2009 - t r u t h o u t | Perspective

This is an excerpt from Henry A. Giroux's forthcoming book, "Hearts of Darkness: Torturing Children in the War on Terror," to be published by Paradigm Publishers.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

EXCLUSIVE: John Walker Lindh’s Parents Discuss Their Son’s Story, from Joining the US-Backed Taliban Army to Surviving a Northern Alliance Massacre, to His Abuse at the Hands of US Forces

"US 'waterboarding' row rekindled"
BBC, July 13, 2009

Fresh claims have emerged that a key al-Qaeda suspect was waterboarded before the Bush government lawyers issued written authorisation to do so.

A former CIA agent has told the BBC that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded by the CIA in May or June 2002.

The date was provided by former CIA agent John Kiriakou. The practice was sanctioned in written memos by Bush administration lawyers in August 2002.

The CIA says waterboarding did not take place before August 2002.

Officials have refused to tell the BBC when it did occur.

Legal memos

Mr Kiriakou led the CIA team that captured Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan on 28 March 2002, and was the first to speak to the badly injured captive before returning to the US.

There he monitored the internal communications that came in (cable traffic) on Abu Zubaydah's interrogation at a secret CIA prison from the organisation's headquarters in Virginia.

by Kevin Connolly
BBC, July 13, 2009

In the world of intelligence gathering the past never really goes away - it stays around to haunt the present and set traps for the future.

The issue of how America conducted its "war on terror" - who it tortured and detained and on whose orders - is full of such traps.

We know that Barack Obama knows this - he talks about the need to move forward rather than to look back - but that is no guarantee that he will be able to resist calls for some sort of investigation of the Bush administration's intelligence policies.

The argument from the human rights lobby and the left of the Democratic Party appears to have gained ground in Washington in the last week or so - some sort of enquiry is now necessary, they believe, to re-assert the rule of law and restore America to the moral high ground of international diplomacy.

Dirty linen

The case against re-opening the wounds of the recent past lacks moral clarity, perhaps, but it is no less passionately held among Republicans.

By Jon Gold
6/26/2009

A thought I had years ago, more like a "dream," was that eventually, the American people would have the equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials to try those responsible for the atrocities taking place today in our name. In my mind, those trials would be called "The 9/11 Trials."

Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting a hero of mine by the name of Cindy Sheehan. I have followed Cindy since the day she testified in the basement of the House during what were called, "The Downing Street Memo Hearings."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1195484/If-I-didnt-confess-7-7-bombings-MI5-officers-rape-wife-claims-torture-vict...

'If I didn't confess to 7/7 bombings MI5 officers would rape my wife,' claims torture victim

By Matthew Hickley
Last updated at 10:25 PM on 25th June 2009

A British man spoke publicly for the first time yesterday to accuse MI5 officers of forcing him to confess to masterminding the July 7 bombings.

Jamil Rahman claims UK security officers were behind his arrest in 2005 in Bangladesh.

He says he was beaten repeatedly by local officials who also threatened to rape him and his wife.

Mr Rahman, who is suing the Home Office, said a pair of MI5 officers who attended his torture and interrogation would leave the room while he was beaten.

He claims when he told the pair he had been tortured they merely answered: 'They haven't done a very good job on you.'

Mr Rahman told the BBC: 'They were questioning me on the July 7 bombings, showing me pictures of the bombers.

Now can we do the RIGHT THING, and talk about the 9/11 Cover-Up?

Negroponte Named As Intelligence Czar

Sen. Byrd Is Correct To Equate Bush With Hitler

Washington Post Editorial on Prisoner Abuse/Torture

What Is The Definition Of Anarchy?

Scores Died In U.S. Custody In War Zones

Negroponte Confirmed As Director Of National Intelligence

Uh Oh Rummy...

Growing Evidence U.S. Sending Prisoners To Torture Capital

Keep Terror Suspects Out Of Egypt

WAR CRIMES