Pioneers of Torture by Alfred W. McCoy and Tom Engelhardt
9 June 2009 When the Abu Ghraib
photos were released in 2004, it seemed that most Americans were shocked
by such novel and horrific images, but at least one was not. I’m talking about
Alfred McCoy, who had been following the Central Intelligence Agency since
the early 1970s, when it unsuccessfully tried to stop the publication of his
book, The Polotics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. As soon as McCoy saw the now grimly iconic images of hooded figures, naked
men on leashes, and the like, his reaction – even grimmer than that of the
rest of us – was recognition. He had long been studying the CIA’s pioneering
research into methods of psychological torture. (The Agency had embarked on
this project in the early 1950s, initially studying old Soviet and Chinese
methods of interrogating and breaking prisoners.) As a result, he knew that
what was unique at Abu Ghraib was not the methods of abuse, but those images.
"I Don't Think. I'm Sure."
8 June 2009 ABC News tells the story of Lakhdar Boumediene, seized in Bosnia by the
Bush administration (nowhere near a battlefield), accused by president
Bush of trying to blow up the US embassy (charges never substantiated
in any way), thrown into the Gitmo torture factory for seven years,
only to be released. Torture factory? Unlike the NYT, Boumediene is
able to call what happened to him.
Guilty Until Proven Innocent
8 June 2008 Lakhdar Boumediene, who spent more than seven years at Guantanamo
but is now a free man, said he understands, to a degree, how the
attacks of Sept. 11 prompted strong reactions from the U.S. government. "The first month, okay, no problem, the building, the 11 of
September, the people, they are scared, but not 7 years. They can know
whose innocent, who's not innocent, who's terrorist, who's not
terrorist," he said. "I give you 2 years, no problem, but not 7 years."
The Nation: The CIA's Truth Problem by Tim Weiner
June 8, 2009 ·NPR.org. "The United States has been trying to run a secret intelligence service
in an open democracy for sixty years. It depends on trust between
politicians and spies, two professions known to wrestle with truth.
Trust has been broken time and again...Congress has a responsibility to oversee the CIA that remains
largely unfulfilled. It has to ask the right questions, demand full
answers and report the facts annually to the American people.... Peter Hoekstra—ranking Republican on the House Intelligence
Committee, now running for governor of Michigan—published a few damning
paragraphs from the report. He called it evidence that the CIA
"operates outside the law and covers up what it does and lies to
Congress." ....Will
the CIA tell Congress the truth? Would Congress listen if it did? If
trust remains broken, intelligence will fail again. And when
intelligence fails, soldiers and civilians die."
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Jesse Ventura on Larry King Live, May 11, 2009
At Guantanamo “it seems we’ve created our own Hanoi Hilton….
Jesse Ventura: I would prosecute every person who was
involved in that torture. I would prosecute the people that did it, I
would prosecute the people that ordered it, because torture is against
the law.”
Larry King: You were a Navy S.E.A.L.
Jesse Ventura: Yes, and I was waterboarded [in training] so I know…
It is torture…I’ll put it to you this way: You give me a waterboard,
Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate
murders.
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