US officials find repeated instances of detainee abuse at six more Iraqi prisons, and — unlike last time — are not removing all the tortured prisoners from their place of custody, thus violating a promise made by Joint Chiefs chairman Peter Pace last November. “Pace said at a news conference Nov. 29 with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, ‘It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it.’ Turning to Pace, Rumsfeld responded: ‘I don’t think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it’s to report it.‘” Now, why make that distinction, Rummy?
Category: Gulags and Torture
Whistle Blown.
“[Y]ou have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the White House for revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie. That underscores what’s really wrong in Washington, D.C.” Following the recent dismissal of CIA historian and Africa specialist Mary McCarthy for telling the Post about our secret gulags, several Dems, including John Kerry and Rep. Jane Harman, question the Dubya double standard regarding leaks. Update: Was it not McCarthy after all?
Pulitzer Punches.
As you likely heard, the 2006 Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday. Special kudos go to the WP team of Susan Schmidt, James Grimaldi, and R. Jeffrey Smith for helping to expose Casino Jack; to the Post‘s Dana Priest for disclosing Dubya’s secret gulags; to the NYT‘s Nicholas Kristof for his consistently excellent commentary on world issues that merit more US (and GitM) attention; to historians David Oshinsky, Kai Bird, and Martin Sherwin for their recent books on polio and J. Robert Oppenheimer respectively; and to the inimitable Edmund Morgan — one of my favorite historians — who won a special citation for his “creative and deeply influential body of work” over the last half-century.
His Cup Rummeth Over.
“Secretary Rumsfeld’s energetic and steady leadership is exactly what is needed at this critical period. He has my full support and deepest appreciation.” In response to the growing calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation among retired top brass, Dubya chooses instead, as per his usual M.O., to hug Rummy tighter to his breast. (full text.) And, in related news, Salon‘s Michael Scherer and Mark Benjamin argue that Rumsfeld was “personally involved” in at least one questionable interrogation at Gitmo in 2002.
Jose, can you see?
“‘Even if the Court were to rule in Padilla’s favor,’ Kennedy went on, ‘his present custody status would be unaffected. Padilla is scheduled to be tried on criminal charges. Any consideration of what rights he might be able to assert if he were returned to military custody would be hypothetical, and to no effect, at this stage of the proceedings.” By a margin of 6-3 (Ginsburg, Breyer, and Souter dissenting), the Supreme Court punts on Padilla, on the grounds that Padilla’s dilemma has been rendered “hypothetical” now that he’s been transferrred into the normal justice system.
Justice Ginsburg disagrees: “This case…raises a question of profound importance to the Nation. Does the President have authority to imprison indefinitely a United States citizen arrested on United States soil distant from a zone of combat, based on an Executive declaration that the citizen was, at the time of his arrest, an ‘enemy combatant’? It is a question the Court heard, and should have decided, two years ago. Nothing the Government has yet done purports to retract the assertion of Executive power Padilla protests.“
Hearing Hamdan.
“The president’s consistent refusal to try the Guantanamo detainees before criminal courts or courts-martial leads a reasonable observer to conclude that the government’s case would fail if it were subjected to scrutiny by an impartial adjudicator. And if that is the only justification for military tribunals, it must be rejected. No one denies that the war on terror presents new challenges to the rule of law. But prosecuting someone with a crime that does not exist, before a commission that does not have rules, simply does not constitute justice under any set of circumstances.” Slate files several dispatches on the important case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which the Supreme Court (without Chief Justice Roberts, who has recused himself…as should probably Scalia) will hear today. Emily Bazelon finds that GOP Senators Kyl and Graham seem to have tried to deceive the Court about the legislative history of their Detainee Treatment Act, while Ariel Lavinbuk suggests a compromise solution: the Supreme Court could “find that ‘conspiracy’ — the only charge against Hamdan — does not violate the law of war.“
Update: The Court hears the case, and it seems a majority — Scalia and Alito notwithstanding — are not amused with the Dubya administration: “Without Chief Justice John Roberts…the argument seemed lopsided against the government.” Still, as was expected to be the norm on the Roberts Court,”the outcome of the case will likely turn on moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.”
The “Black Room.”
“Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, ‘NO BLOOD, NO FOUL.’ The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: ‘If you don’t make them bleed, they can’t prosecute for it.'” In related news, the NY Times exposes more allegations of shameful and disturbing Abu Ghraib-like detainee abuse conducted by “a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26.” “Task Force 6-26 was a creation of the Pentagon’s post-Sept. 11 campaign against terrorism, and it quickly became the model for how the military would gain intelligence and battle insurgents in the future…Military and legal experts say the full breadth of abuses committed by Task Force 6-26 may never be known because of the secrecy surrounding the unit.”
Report Card: Incomplete.
By way of a friend, the State Department releases its mandated yearly human rights report for 2005 (here), finding cause for alarm in Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, Burma, North Korea, Belarus and Zimbabwe and (surprise, surprise) progress in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report doesn’t delve into human rights violations here at home (although China tries to fill that gap in response every year), but it does unequivocally state — in bold, no less — that “countries in which power is concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers tend to be the world’s most systematic human rights violators.” Hey y’all might be on to something. Deadpans the head of Amnesty International: “The Bush administration’s practice of transferring detainees in the ‘war on terror’ to countries cited by the State Department for their appalling human rights records actually turns the report into a manual for the outsourcing of torture.”
Night (and Day) Watch.
“I am only a chicken farmer in Pakistan.” With the recent release of detainee names, the NYT looks more closely at exactly who’s being held at Guantanamo Bay, including several folks, it seems, who were guilty of the heinous crime of wearing the wrong timepiece, a “Casio model F-91W watch. According to evidentiary summaries in those cases, such watches have ‘been used in bombings linked to Al Qaeda.’“
Not exactly the comfy chair.
“‘These allegations…describe disgusting treatment, that if proven, is treatment that is cruel, profoundly disturbing and violative of’ U.S. and foreign treaties banning torture, [U.S. District Judge Gladys] Kessler told the government’s lawyers.” So what happened to “we don’t torture?” Lawyers for the administration fight allegations of abuse at Gitmo (involving force-feeding and a restraint chair) — not by saying it didn’t happen — but by arguing instead that the recent McCain bill doesn’t apply there. “‘Unfortunately, I think the government’s right; it’s a correct reading of the law,’ said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. ‘The law says you can’t torture detainees at Guantanamo, but it also says you can’t enforce that law in the courts.'”