Torture, Still U.S. Policy

One standard ploy on the part of American conservatives when arguing about the BushCo military adventures in Iraq has been to ask something like "Well, are you saying that the Iraqi people are not better off now that Saddam Hussein has been removed from power?" The implication was that even though each of the rationalizations that BushCo trotted out to justify their criminal invasion and disastrous war (e.g., the Hussein-al Qaeda connection, WMDs, and so on) proved to be lies, the consequences of their policy had been salutary. After all, the conservatives smirked, we lied to topple a brutal dictator who sanctioned systematic torture of Iraqi civilians.

Well, it turns out that that line of argument, like the earlier conservative and neo-conservative lies, is proving to be less and less persuasive. What the U.S. military did was to unleash an alternative source of brutal, arbitrary power on the Iraqi people. You can find reports here and here in The Guardian. Indeed, the U.S. military has continued to participate in the systematic torture of Iraqi "detainees" by proxy, that is, by allowing the Iraqi police and military to do the torturing for us.

What evidence do we have that the practices detailed in these reports have ceased under the Obama regime? None.

Another Crystal Clear Indication that Obama is (at best) a Right Leaning Centrist

The Obama Administration won a court decision today (hopefully not a final one, but given the reactionary make-up of SCOTUS, there is at best a fleeting hope that this decision will be reversed) by invoking "state secrets" as a defense against detainees who have been tortured by the CIA in black sites around the world. You can read the report in The New York Times here. The delicious part appears in these paragraphs:

“The administration’s aggressive national security policies have in some ways departed from the expectations of change fostered by President Obama’s campaign rhetoric, which was often sharply critical of former President George W. Bush’s approach.

Among other policies, the Obama national security team has also authorized the C.I.A. to try to kill a United States citizen suspected of terrorism ties, blocked efforts by detainees in Afghanistan to bring habeas corpus lawsuits challenging the basis for their imprisonment without trial, and continued the C.I.A.’s so-called extraordinary rendition program of prisoner transfers — though the administration has forbidden torture and says it seeks assurances from other countries that detainees will not be mistreated.”

The understatement is obvious. For those who are 'disappointed' that the putatively progressive Obama is constrained somehow from putting his true political aspirations into effect this case should be a clanging whack upside the head. If Obama were a progressive this case would not exist. His administration is resisting the efforts of individuals seeking justice and he cannot blame this on the Republicans. His administration is saying 'you don't even get your day in court ... we want the torturers to be immune from any recourse ...'. This is shameful.
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P.S.: (Added early the next day) ~ As I re-read this this morning there is something else. Does it need saying that the appeals court panel (11 judges!) in San Francisco who made this decision on a 6-5 vote are shameful as well. They sold the constitution down the river.

P.S. 2: Even The New York Times sees this more clearly than our political leaders ~ "Torture is a Crime, Not a Secret." Just So.

Orwell's Shadow (2) ~ How "Torture" Disappeared From (or, Was Banished By) American Journalism

"Yet the most dangerous side of our new semantic war, our use of the words of power – though it is not a war, since we have largely surrendered – is that it isolates us from our viewers and readers. They are not stupid. They understand words in many cases – I fear – better than we do. History, too. They know that we are drawing our vocabulary from the language of generals and presidents, from the so-called elites, from the arrogance of the Brookings Institute (sic) experts, or those of those of the Rand Corporation. Thus we have become part of this language." ~ Robert Fisk

In my last post (here) I recommended the essay by Robert Fisk on journalism and the language of power from which I've lifted this passage. The "we" and "our" he refers to are journalists. His complaint is that the press (print and broadcast) have embraced the language of the powerful. Sometimes this is because of the putative need to retain "access"; sometimes it reflects the convention of being "fair" or "neutral" or "objective." Either way, capitulating to the powerful and their claims leads, as Fisk indicates, to decidedly partial and political reporting.

As if on cue, yesterday Glenn Greenwald posted on a newly released report on the U.S. media entitled "Torture at Times: Waterboarding in the Media." The study finds that the four largest circulation national print news outlets - The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today - capitulated more or less completely to the campaign by the Bush Administration to redefine interrogation techniques commonly recognized to be torture as something other than torture. They did so in a sharp break from their own historical practice, reaching back nearly a century, and from their own descriptions of practices in other countries. ("They" torture, "we" don't; we simply rely on "enhanced interrogation techniques.") These outlets, thereby, did not maintain "neutrality" or "objectivity" or "fairness" but actively connived in legitimating the torture policy that the Bush administration implemented.

This is a damning report. We are not talking about the clowns at FOX "News" here. We are talking about the purportedly "liberal" media. Fortunately, as Fisk notes, people are not stupid. They know torture when they see it and can call it by its name.
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P.S.: While I don't want top ring my own bell on this one (too loudly), this is a pattern that I have posted about repeatedly - see here and here and here, for instance.

P.S.(2): You might want to see Andrew Sullivan's post on this, and the reply issued by the lackeys at The New York Times. Why read Pravda, when you can read the American mainstream media.

P.S.(3): Update 7/6/2010 ~ See this follow-up by Glenn Greenwald on the vapid response of editorial higher-ups at The Times.

Shahidul Alam Crossfire

What is the last thing a person sees before being murdered by quasi-official death squads? That is among the matters Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam is trying to address in this series of images. You can read about his work here at The New York Times photography blog "Lens" and, more directly, here among Alam's own "musings."

Note that the images straddle the line between fact and fiction in that they allude to actual cases but do not simply document them. Even so, as The Times post makes clear, speaking out on this topic cannot be safe. You will note too that the exhibition of his images has passed and that it was in Dhaka. Perhaps this small increase in publicity, however belated, will help forestall risk for Alam.

João Pina ~ Fleeting Occurances, Banality, Offical Terror

I stumbled across this post at The New York Times photography blog "Lens." It details ongoing work by Portuguese photographer João Pina (about whom I posted here before) in which he is retrieving the memory and consequences of coordinated state terror across Latin America in the 1970s. The images are extraordinary.

Keep the "Change": The Bush/Cheney-Obama Torture Policy

As discussed here and here and here and here and here and here, the Bush/Cheney torture policy is rapidly being embraced by the Obama administration. It is not just that Obama has failed to close Guantanamo, although that is bad enough. He has continued to implement similar policies in Afghanistan. And he has refused, systematically, to fulfill the duties of his office (you know, the bits were he pledged to faithfully execute the laws and uphold the Constitution) by investigating the systematic program put in place by BushCo to engage in and rationalize torture.