Forward Not Back (International Torture Inc)
It's a strange world but eventually your karma catches up with you. How so you say? As Barbara Ehrenreich writes:
"Donald Rumsfeld still holds his post as defence secretary; Condoleezza Rice has been promoted to secretary of state; and torture-memo lawyer Alberto Gonzales has moved up to become the US attorney general. Only one general with a hand in the abuse - Janis Karpinski, the former head officer at Abu Ghraib - has suffered a demotion. Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of US forces in Iraq, is being considered for promotion to four-star general, and Maj Gen Barbara Fast, his head of intelligence-gathering in Iraq, has been given command of an Arizona army base where soldiers are taught interrogation techniques.
Four years ago, a Saudi militant, based in Afghanistan, engineered the 9/11 attack, leading the US to invade ... Iraq. What message does this send to Norway or Lesotho? That when it comes to US foreign policy, there is no connection between crime and punishment, or even cause and effect?"
Hmm maybe not but I think our Tony is hearing the noise in his head of chickens coming home to No 10 to roost.
After yesterdays account of the CIA extending their jurisdiction to Ireland, it was interesting also to read Michael Isikoff in Newsweek, who writes: “An FBI agent warned superiors in a memo three years ago that U.S. officials who discussed plans to ship terror suspects to foreign nations that practice torture could be prosecuted for conspiring to violate U.S. law. The strongly worded memo, written by an FBI supervisor then assigned to Guantanamo, is the latest in a series of documents that have recently surfaced reflecting unease among some government lawyers and FBI agents over tactics being used in the war on terror.”
The memo appears to be the first that directly questions the legal premises of the Bush administration policy of "extraordinary rendition" - a secret program under which terror suspects are transferred to foreign countries that have been widely criticized for practicing torture.
In a memo forwarded to a senior FBI lawyer on Nov. 27, 2002, a supervisory special agent from the bureau's behavioural analysis unit offered a legal analysis of interrogation techniques that had been approved by Pentagon officials for use against a high-value Qaeda detainee. After objecting to techniques such as exploiting "phobias" like "the fear of dogs" or dripping water "to induce the misperception of drowning," the agent discussed a plan to send the detainee to Jordan, Egypt or an unspecified third country for interrogation. "In as much as the intent of this category is to utilize, outside the U.S., interrogation techniques which would violate [U.S. law] if committed in the U.S., it is a per se violation of the U.S. Torture Statute," the agent wrote. "Discussing any plan which includes this category could be seen as a con-spiracy to violate [the Torture Statute]" and "would inculpate" everyone involved.”
Yeah well, quite.
Full article here...
Finally, on a not unrelated topic, sad news this morning that Anthony Blair is rumoured to be quitting politics after the next election.
The Guardian quotes sources as saying Mr Blair intends to write "his memoirs and pursue his religious interests perhaps with a role in promoting inter-faith unity".
More here...
Yikes! Er, don’t want to seem churlish or anything but if you were ‘a faith’, would you really be wanting this guy to be promoting ‘inter-faith unity’?
Some snippets from The Jurist...our friends at Amnesty...or don't forget this from last year...
