Ex-CIA Officer Who Destroyed Waterboarding Videos: Torturers ‘Disgusted’ at Being Labeled ‘Torturers’
Via Common Dreams:
The former CIA officer who ordered the destruction of videotaped interrogations which showed the torture of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri in a secret CIA prison in Thailand in 2002, says he did so because he worried about the global repercussions if the footage leaked out and wanted to get “rid of some ugly visuals.”Jose Rodriguez, who oversaw the CIA’s once-secret interrogation and detention program, in his new book Hard Measures, writes critically of President Obama’s counterterrorism policies and complains openly about the president’s public criticism of Bush’s torture policies.
“I cannot tell you how disgusted my former colleagues and I felt to hear ourselves labeled ‘torturers’ by the president of the United States,” Rodriguez writes in his book, Hard Measures, which the Associated Press previewed in a new report.
Complaining about “bureaucratic” hand-wringing in Washington, Rodriguez claims he had the authority to dispose of the tapes. “I wasn’t going to sit around another three years waiting for people to get up the courage,” to do what CIA lawyers said he had the authority to do himself, Rodriguez writes…
Guantanamo Watchdogs Say Obama Gets Away With Legal Moves Bush Wouldn’t Have
As we assess Barack Obama’s first term, why hasn’t his reneging on his pledge to close Guantanamo Bay stirred more outrage? TPMMuckraker writes:
Bryan Broyles, the Pentagon’s deputy chief defense counsel at Guantanamo, and other observers believe that some policy changes instituted under the Obama administration would have sparked outrage if President George W. Bush was still in the White House.
Kammen called the reforms instituted by the Obama administration in 2009 “quite superficial” and said there are “huge, huge problems” in the military commissions system. “There is nothing about this system that the average American, if they were caught up in it, would see as being fair,” Kammen said. “The Republicans have an interest in keeping this process going and the Democrats have an interest, to a certain extent, in not embarrassing Obama.”
Portland Man Strips Naked To Protest TSA Search
Reports Cheryl Calm on KING 5 News:
Frequent flying businessman John Brennan set off an explosives wand at Portland International Airport Tuesday and stripped naked to show TSA screeners he was not carrying a bomb.
John Brennan stripped off his clothes at the TSA security station and stood there naked, as waiting passengers and their families looked on, took photos or looked away.
Brennan said as he left jail Tuesday night that removing all his clothes was not premeditated. The frequent traveler who had heard of many TSA issues while on prior business travels was just fed up as he set off the detector at PDX.
“And the machine went off, and I asked what it was and he said ‘nitrates’ which I know from Oklahoma City is one of the explosive ingredients,” said Brennan, “and I was not interested in being hassled so I took off my clothes to show them I was not carrying any explosives.”
Blackwater ‘Gone Wild’ in Iraq: ‘The Warrior Class’ (Videos)
Via Harper’s:
The April 2012 issue of Harper’s Magazine includes “The Warrior Class,” a feature by Charles Glass on the rise of private-security contractors since 9/11. The conclusion to the piece describes a series of videos shown to Glass by a source who had worked for the private-security company Blackwater (now Academi, formerly also Xe Services) in Iraq. Clips and photos from the videos are shown below, introduced by Glass’s descriptions:
The first [video], identified as “Baghdad, Iraq, May–September 2005,” showed Blackwater convoys racing through town. Suddenly, the door of a Blackwater SUV opened and a rifle fired at passing traffic. “They opened the door,” my companion said. “You should never break the seal.”
U.S. Soldiers Pose With Bodies Of Suicide Bombers In Afghanistan
David Zucchino writes in the Los Angeles Times:
The paratroopers had their assignment: Check out reports that Afghan police had recovered the mangled remains of an insurgent suicide bomber. Try to get iris scans and fingerprints for identification.
The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan’s Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held — and others squatted beside — the corpse’s severed legs.
A few months later, the same platoon was dispatched to investigate the remains of three insurgents who Afghan police said had accidentally blown themselves up. After obtaining a few fingerprints, they posed next to the remains, again grinning and mugging for photographs.
How the U.S. Uses Sexual Humiliation as a Political Tool to Control the Masses
“Believe me, you don’t want the state having the power to strip your clothes off. And yet, it’s exactly what is happening…” Naomi Wolf writes in the Guardian:
In a five-four ruling this week, the supreme court decided that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor, at any time. This horror show ruling joins two recent horror show laws: the NDAA, which lets anyone be arrested forever at any time, and HR 347, the “trespass bill”, which gives you a 10-year sentence for protesting anywhere near someone with secret service protection. These criminalizations of being human follow, of course, the mini-uprising of the Occupy movement.
Is American strip-searching benign? The man who had brought the initial suit, Albert Florence, described having been told to “turn around. Squat and cough. Spread your cheeks.” He said he felt humiliated: “It made me feel like less of a man.”
In surreal reasoning, justice Anthony…
Ways The Government Tracks You
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you… Bill Quigley writes on Counterpunch:
Privacy is eroding fast as technology offers government increasing ways to track and spy on citizens. The Washington Post reported there are 3,984 federal, state and local organizations working on domestic counterterrorism. Most collect information on people in the US. Here are thirteen examples of how some of the biggest government agencies and programs track people.
One. The National Security Agency (NSA) collects hundreds of millions of emails, texts and phone calls every day and has the ability to collect and sift through billions more. Wired just reported NSA is building an immense new data center which will intercept, analyze and store even more electronic communications from satellites and cables across the nation and the world. Though NSA is not supposed to focus on US citizens, it does.
Two. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) National Security Branch…
A TSA Official Admits Billion-Dollar-Body Scanner Program is Worthless (Video)
My last video demonstrated how easy it is to take a metal object through TSA nude body scanners undetected. In this video, I interviewed an actual TSA screener to hear more about how these machines are an epic fail. “Jennifer,” who asked me not to use her real name or face, has been on the front lines of the TSA’s checkpoints for the last 4 years.
Showdown With The Afghan National Army
Our convoy was screaming down the road, traffic got out of our way in a hurry, as most would when multiple multi-ton armed vehicles packed full of pissed off soldiers are in their rearview mirror. We shouldn’t have even been out in sector this night, mostly because we got back from another patrol only a few hours prior, and it was the other squads turn to roll out but there we were.
The Afghan National Army had received a tip from a kid saying his dad was Taliban, and that he had weapons in his house somehow this got sent to us. We never work with the Afghan Army, we work with the Afghan Police. The area they got the tip from wasn’t even in my company’s battle space but again, there we were.
Everyone in the trucks were bitching and complaining, my Team Leader kept saying the whole thing was a…
Chris Hedges Challenges NDAA in Court
Via Russia Today:
Last week the case against the National Defense Authorization Act was presented to a judge in New York. One of the plaintiffs in the case has decided to sue the Obama administration claiming that by simply doing his job he could be arrested and detained indefinitely due to the nature of his work, reporting. Chris Hedges, columnist for TruthDig, joins us to explain how his day in court went.
On Patrol With The Afghan National Police
Kandahar, Afghanistan—High centered, surrounded on both sides by open air sewage ditches is a dusty Afghan Police Checkpoint. I mean ‘checkpoint’ only in the loosest of terms, as the Afghans put it together. A few sand bags here and there with a bright pink lawn chair in the center, the police stand totally unprotected.
If they ever did their job that is.
My squad’s patrol crawls by under the hot Kandahar sun, when they see us the Police jump up off their flamboyantly colored lawn chair and start searching random fields and anyone who is misfortunate enough to be close by. Their checkpoint commander rushes out and tries to look as professional as his ill-fitting uniform and bare feet allow him to look.
“Hello!” he calls out, trying to act like we are disturbing his work. Our interpreter walks over to him and starts small talk while the tired, sun burned soldiers spread…
Is Your Local Law Enforcement Tracking Your Cell Phone’s Location? (Map)
In a massive coordinated information-seeking campaign, 35 ACLU affiliates filed over 380 requests in 31 states with local law enforcement agencies large and small to uncover when, why and how they are using cell phone location data to track Americans:
More from the ACLU
The TSA Precheck Program for the 1 Percent
Because rich people sure do hate being inconvenienced. Via the WSJ:
Hate the full-body scans, pat-downs and slow going at TSA airport security screening checkpoints? For $100, you can now bypass the hassle.
The Transportation Security Administration is rolling out expedited screening at big airports called “Precheck.” It has special lanes for background-checked travelers, who can keep their shoes, belt and jacket on, leave laptops and liquids in carry-on bags and walk through a metal detector rather than a full-body scan. The process, now at two airlines and nine airports, is much like how screenings worked before the Sept. 11 attacks.
To qualify, frequent fliers must meet undisclosed TSA criteria and get invited in by the airlines. There is also a backdoor in. Approved travelers who are in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s “Global Entry” program can transfer into Precheck using their Global Entry number.
Why I’m Suing Barack Obama
Chis Hedges explains why. From earlier this year, via TruthDig:
Attorneys Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran filed a complaint…on my behalf as a plaintiff against Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the president Dec. 31.
The act authorizes the military for the first time in more than 200 years, to carry out domestic policing. With this bill, which will take effect March 3, the military can indefinitely detain without trial any U.S. citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. And suspects can be shipped by the military to our offshore penal colony in Guantanamo Bay and kept there until “the end of hostilities.” It is a catastrophic blow to civil liberties.
We have already seen the persecution and closure…
The War in Afghanistan Is Mutiny by a Different Name
Clancy Sigal writes at AlterNet:
Military uprisings among the lower ranks have a long and fairly honorable tradition. The famous mutinies include Bligh’s HMS Bounty, the Indian Sepoy rising, Russian battleship Potemkin, British sailors’ strike at Invergordon, and lesser known mass revolts by French infantry divisions at the failed “Nivelle offensive” in 1917, Port Chicago in 1944 by African-American sailors refusing to unload dangerous cargo, U.S. soldier strikes in the Pacific against General MacArthur, and of course widespread GI resistance in Vietnam that broke the back of the war.
Afghanistan is an army mutiny by another name — on both sides. In “green on green” killings, Afghan soldiers have been on a spree killing American and NATO soldiers. Now an American sergeant, on his fourth combat tour, with previously diagnosed transitory brain injury, has “gone postal,” murdering 16 Afghans including women and nine children.
Yet the army doctors at the killer sergeant’s home…
Has The TSA Ever Foiled A Terrorist Plot?
Via the Economist, Bruce Schneier points out what should be obvious:
In the entire decade or so of airport security since the attacks on September 11th 2001, the TSA has not foiled a single terrorist plot or caught a single terrorist. Its own “Top 10 Good Catches of 2011″ does not have a single terrorist on the list. The “good catches” are forbidden items carried by mostly forgetful, and entirely innocent, people—the sorts of guns and knives that would have been just as easily caught by pre-9/11 screening procedures. Not that the TSA is expert at that; it regularly misses guns and bombs in tests and real life. Even its top “good catch”—a passenger with C4 explosives—was caught on his return flight; TSA agents missed it the first time through.
In previous years, the TSA has congratulated itself for confiscating home-made electronics, alerting the police to people with outstanding misdemeanour warrants and…
Afghan Villagers Believe Soldier’s Massacre Fueled by Revenge
Via Common Dreams:
Afghan villagers near the site where US Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is alleged to have murdered 16 civilians, including nine children, claim US troops — just days before the shooting — lined them up against a wall after a roadside bombing and told them that they, and even their children, would pay a price for the attack.
Although the villagers account could not be independently verified by the Associated Press, “their claim that the shootings by a US soldier may have been payback for a roadside bombing has gained wide currency in the area and has been repeated by politicians testifying about the incident to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.”
In the United States, where Americans broadly accept the lone-shooter explanation offered by the US military, the media focus has been mainly on Bales’ “state of mind” and what impact the massacre might have on public support for the ongoing…
The Drone War on Journalists
Anwar al-Awlaki (CC)
Scott Horton wrote in Harper’s Magazine:
… I wrote about how the Obama Administration has insisted that its deal with Yemen’s dictatorship concerning the use of drones there is a secret, and how it has been wielding that specious claim to justify withholding publication of a controversial Justice Department memo that outlines the president’s supposed authority to order the assassination of an American citizen abroad. Jeremy Scahill has published an important study of what the Obama Administration is prepared to do to journalists who expose its hit operations in Yemen:
On February 2, 2011, President Obama called Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The two discussed counterterrorism cooperation and the battle against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. At the end of the call, according to a White House read-out, Obama “expressed concern” over the release of a man named Abdulelah Haider Shaye, whom Obama said “had been sentenced to five years…
Sam Harris, Joe Rogan, Islam And The Future Of Liberalism
Sam Harris writes about the fallout from a recent visit with Joe Rogan on his blog:
I recently had a very enjoyable three-hour conversation with Joe Rogan on his podcast, where the topics ranged from jihad to probability theory to psychedelics. But I subsequently received a fair amount of abuse online for a few things I said about Islam and our adventures in the war on terror.
For instance, I appear to have left many viewers with the impression that I believe we invaded Afghanistan for the purpose of rescuing its women from the Taliban. However, the points I was actually making were rather different…
The United States Under Permanent State Of Emergency
Did you know that we in the U.S. are living under the gravest of danger, like, always? Via Parapolitical:
Due to a variety of crises, the United States has been in an almost continuous State of Emergency since 1941.
A declaration of emergency allows the President to exercise any of approximately 500 powers contingently delegated to him by Congress, from the dramatic – such as the seizure of ships in port (50 USC § 191) – to the mundane – such as the waiver of vehicle weight limits on a section of I-95 in Maine (23 USC § 127).
