Newsweek on torture: "We Have Ways of Making You Talk" worth reading

[berry]

None of this is new, but I had missed the remarks of DIA head, Jacoby. Still, this is a good reminder of what is being done every day as we forget to pay attention (I know, there's TOO MUCH going wrong.) Anyway, this being "mainstream," I am encouraged by its publication, and its conclusions. I have posted the last 4 paras here. The first part is worth reading too--starting point is the arrest of "Chemical Ali" and asks HOW we are going to get the yearned-for info out of him....

We Have Ways of Making You Talk

The United States figures it can get plenty out of the newly captured Chemical Ali. But how? And are these ‘interrogation’ techniques being readied for American citizens?
by Christopher Dickey, Newsweek 8-22-03

http://www.msnbc.com/m/pt/printthis.asp?storyID=956061

<<Padilla was declared an "enemy combatant" based on the assertion--not the presentation--of "some evidence" by the administration that he was a bin Laden bad guy. As an enemy combatant, Padilla has no right to appear in court. And he has no right to see a lawyer. Indeed, by executive fiat, he's been deprived of every inalienable right with which our creator endowed us. The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights has filed a brief in the case damning this approach as (quoting James Madison) "the very definition of tyranny."

And for what? Whatever Padilla knew in May 2002 when he was caught, the intelligence he can give these days is not exactly real-time. Indeed, the only information he's received at the Naval Brig in South Carolina, probably including when it is day and when it is night, comes from his interrogators. So why not let him see counsel? Why not present him to the court?

Admiral Jacoby's rationale is fascinating: first of all, because there might be something the interrogators missed, or can find out if there are new suspects captured somewhere else sometime. And you wouldn't want Padilla to have any sense of hope if they need to question him again: "Any delay in obtaining information from Padilla could have the severest consequences for national security and public safety." Secondly--and this is what's really creepy--because Padilla might reveal "sources and methods." That is, he might talk about precisely those means that were used to make him talk, therefore he can never be allowed to talk at all.

If the courts buy this line of argument, then we Americans can kiss our sweet rights goodbye. And reading the admiral's brief, you have to ask yourself if that isn't really the goal: to give the president and his people the power to treat all Americans like José Padilla, unless and until we give the answers expected of us.>>

[shockandawed]

1. coming to a jail near you courtesy of the Patriot Act, Victory Act

and other legislation essential for preserving the American way of life?

Just is so hard to understand where the paranoid pigs come from.

Yeah, this is not likely to piss off the whole of the Arab community. And we wonder why the 'barbarians' have found suicide attacks preferential. Not only do you go to heaven (in their mind, not mine), but you skip the hell of an American vacation.

[AP]

2. Law students are taught that the problem with coerced testimony is

not that it's mean, but that it's unreliale. People will say anything to keep from being tortured. Now, I don't know if the US gov't is torturing people (or giving them drugs, or threatening to kill their mothers, or whatever), but if it is torture, I wonder if they're doing it because they WANT unreliable information which they can use to justify committing attrocities which wouldn't be supported by the facts. As we know, the Bush administration knows what they want to year, and fits whatevery they hear into their justification for their pre-ordained plans. Maybe this is more of the same.

[OldCurmudgeon]

3. well, that would fit...

with their "faith-based" worldview.

They only will hear what they want to hear anyway.

[AP]

4. Yeah. They have ways of making you say what they want to hear.

.