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War Crimes

DCblogger's picture
Submitted by DCblogger on Thu, 12/11/2008 - 7:29pm
Departments: 
Department of Genocide, Torture, and Tyranny
Thread: 
Bush Torture Policies
Tags: 
Bush
war crimes
torture
Robert Gates
SERE
Senate Armed Services Committee

Via TFT:
Obsidian Wings:

I'm not sure it tells anything we don't already know (read, e.g., The Dark Side). But the Levin-run Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee abuse is now out (pdf exec summary). And it deserves some press attention.

It confirms that senior administration officials authorized torture. Specifically, they authorized the "SERE" techniques -- which had been originally used decades ago to train American troops to withstand Communist torture -- to be used on detainees. In other words, they used illegal medieval methods designed to obtain false confessions, and made them the centerpiece of our intelligence-gathering. In this respect, Abu Ghraib was the sick poisoned fruit of a very rotten tree.

So the question is, what, if anything, are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee prepared to do about this?

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amberglow's picture
Submitted by amberglow on

Truth or Consequences? Why can't we hold torturers accountable and still find out the truth? --

... There is a growing schism between the cranky legal purists and the pragmatic liberals who were delighted last week when two Obama advisers told the Associated Press that "there's little if any chance that the incoming president's Justice Department will go after anyone involved in authorizing or carrying out interrogations." A Newsweek report this week confirmed that Obama advisers are pushing instead for a 9/11-style commission that would "investigate counterterrorism policies and make public as many details as possible." ...