State-supported torture and assassination — here are two other “firewalls” that have come tumbling down since September 11, 2001. (See the summary articles below from the Guardian and Asia Times online.) Under the circumstances, we have to break down a few “firewalls” ourselves — as, of course, should the media.
We need to grasp the pattern here. Each boundary this administration breaks through, domestic or foreign (or in some cases, as for instance in intelligence matters, involving the blurring of the domestic and foreign) is reported in the mainstream media as a separate issue to be considered or debated as such. In fact, the Bushevik imperial urge for control, globally and domestically, is leading it to break down boundaries along a continuum, which stretches from individual civil rights in the US to the use of nuclear weapons in war abroad. They are clearly willing, to take a phrase from the arsenal of Cold War nuclear strategists, to think the unthinkable and then to do it as well. The results, sooner or later, are sure to surprise them — and be unthinkable. Tom
US interrogators turn to ‘torture lite’
By Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
The Guardian
Saturday January 25, 2003The United States is condoning the torture and illegal interrogation of prisoners held in the wake of September 11, in defiance of international law and its own constitution, according to lawyers, former US intelligence officers and human rights groups.
They claim prisoners have been beaten, hooded and had painkillers withheld.
Some prisoners inside American penal institutions and detention camps have been subjected to interrogation techniques which do not leave injuries, but which lawyers consider to be abusive. Others have been sent to countries where electric shocks and more conventional forms of torture have been used, according to the claims.Wayne Madsen, a former US navy intelligence officer, points to two forms of what he calls torture being practised by America or its partners in the wake of September 11. The first consists of techniques such as sleep deprivation and shining harsh lights at detainees which, Mr Madsen labels “torture lite”.
To read more of this Guardian piece click here
The United States is condoning the torture and illegal interrogation of prisoners held in the wake of September 11, in defiance of international law and its own constitution, according to lawyers, former US intelligence officers and human rights groups.
They claim prisoners have been beaten, hooded and had painkillers withheld.
Some prisoners inside American penal institutions and detention camps have been subjected to interrogation techniques which do not leave injuries, but which lawyers consider to be abusive. Others have been sent to countries where electric shocks and more conventional forms of torture have been used, according to the claims.
Wayne Madsen, a former US navy intelligence officer, points to two forms of what he calls torture being practised by America or its partners in the wake of September 11. The first consists of techniques such as sleep deprivation and shining harsh lights at detainees which, Mr Madsen labels “torture lite”.
To read more of this Guardian piece click here
On the road with Murder Inc
By Ian Urbina
Asia Times
January 24, 2003WASHINGTON – Last week Israel announced that it would begin taking a more aggressive role in the war on terrorism, including the use of so-called targeted killings in the US and other friendly countries.
This was a significant shift for the Israeli government, which has since the late 1990s officially steered away from practicing lethal covert operations beyond its own borders and throughout the occupied territories. But the most surprising thing about the announcement was the subsequent silence from the Bush administration, which until recently has been a vocal critic of Israel’s use of extrajudicial killings. Indeed, it seems that both Washington and Tel Aviv, to some extent in interplay with each other, have come a long ways toward rehabilitating the legitimacy of state-sanctioned assassination.
For the past five years, Washington has undergone a slowly creeping return to lethal cloak-and-dagger operations overseas.