High Profile Detainee's Confessions under torture mere fabrications
Bush, Cheney et al guilty of War Crimes etc.
Obama still unmoved by the mounting evidence and calls for investigations and indictments
Is Obama culpable if he helps to cover up these criminal activities or obstructs calls for justice
More on Spain's attempts to bring members of Bush Regime to justice
Anyway recently it was revealed in an article in the Washington Post that Cheney and Bush etc. were lying about the high profile case of alleged terrorist and Al Qaeda mastermind Abu Zubaida who was held in Guantanamo. Abu Zubaida was tortured and Bush and Cheney have claimed time and again that the information extracted from him was invaluable and this information was used to prevent several terrorists attacks on the United States and led to the arrests of other high profile Al Qaeda members. But it appears Abu Zubaida according to the Washington Post article was not a member of Al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks and the Intel he provided was useless as the Post article points out :
" within weeks of his capture, US officials had gained evidence that made clear they had misjudged Abu Zubaida. President Bush had publicly described him as "Al Qaeda's chief of operations," and other top officials called him a "trusted associate" of Osama bin Laden and a major figure in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None of that was accurate, the new evidence showed. "
and in fact the Washington Post points out that :
" Abu Zubaida was not even an official member of Al Qaeda, according to a portrait of the man that emerges from court documents and interviews with current and former intelligence, law enforcement, and military sources. Rather, he was a "fixer" for radical Muslim ideologues, and he ended up working directly with Al Qaeda only after Sept. 11 - and that was because the United States stood ready to invade Afghanistan. "
also see article by Abu Zubaydah's lawyer Brent Mickum who suggest that his client even now under the Obama administration is unable to get a fair hearing because there are those who are still in positions of power and authority who are afraid of all the facts in this case coming to light because they have taken part in or are complicit in War Crimes for which they might be prosecuted .Mickum also points out that the forced confessions of his client cast doubts about a number of other people who were detained based in whole or in part upon those confessions or who then made false confessions while being tortured concerning the role of Abu Zubaydah in terrorist activities.
"The truth about Abu Zubaydah:The Bush administration's false claim that my client was a top al-Qaida official has led to his imprisonment and torture " by Brent Mickum, Guardian.co.uk, March 30, 2009
Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, more commonly known as Abu Zubaydah, is my client. After being extensively tortured by the CIA and imprisoned in various black sites around the world, Zayn may finally be approaching his day in court. I and my co-counsel welcome that day. But what if we are successful and establish that Zayn is not an enemy combatant? Would any country agree to take our client? The Bush administration's misrepresentations about Zayn make that virtually impossible unless I am allowed to tell his side of the story. This article is the first step in that reclamation process.
...The Senate armed services committee recently released a public report that establishes that almost immediately after Zayn's capture, a group of some of the highest-ranking government officials in the land met in the White House to orchestrate and oversee his torture, months before the now-infamous torture memoranda were issued in August 2002. The individuals involved in this activity included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Attorney General for the Department of Justice John Ashcroft, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Aghast at the enormity of the government's willingness to approve torture, Ashcroft has been quoted as saying: "Why are we discussing this here? History will not judge us kindly."
[...] but the public is prevented from seeing them due to policies of the administration that have nothing do with national security; instead they have everything to do with preventing embarrassment and shielding individuals from potential war crimes charges. Why is our client not allowed to tell his story? The government has admitted to waterboarding him, [...]. The government's description of what that entailed is categorically false, like so many statements about our client.
...As with the weapons of mass destruction and the need for war in Iraq, it is no longer shocking to find that the Bush administration got it all wrong. Abu Zubaydah's supposed relationship with al-Qaida is a complete myth. In an ever-growing litany of horrors, the Bush administration tortured the wrong guy, just as it tortured my former clients, British residents Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna and British citizen Martin Mubanga, who were returned to England without charge. But what additional evidence exists to support the assertion that Abu Zubaydah was never with al-Qaida?
...What becomes of Zayn depends on whether the truth can be revealed to the public. Consistent with its position on other prisoners who were seized in error, such as the Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who was mistakenly arrested and sent to Syria for torture; the German citizen Khaled el-Masri, who was tortured in Afghanistan at a prison called the "Salt Pit" and eventually dumped alone on a road in Albania and left to make it back to his wife and home; the Bush administration never admitted to making any mistakes. Doing so would have opened it to criticism for not affording prisoners some legal process to argue their innocence before they were tortured. It was much easier simply to assert over and over again that only the "worst of the worst" were housed at Guantanamo.
History will look back at Guantanamo and find precious little to justify that charge. My best guess is that at the end of the entire process, not more than 25-30 actual trials will take place, out of the more than 1000 prisoners who have made their way through the prison camp.
Unlike Maher Arar and Khaled el-Masri, whose countries championed their return, no country is extending a hand to help a stateless Palestinian, given the administration's public statements about him. Unless the Obama administration allows me to negotiate openly on his behalf and provide officials with an actual account of his activity, he will continue to fade from view, which is, I fear, exactly what the administration wants.
Intel Officials Admit Torture Did Not Work At All-March 30, 2009 Cenk Uygur -The Young Turks
Watch more at http://www.theyoungturks.com
Note even Cenk Uygur seems to accept some of the allegations made against Abu Zubaydah which may in fact prove to be manufactured in order for those involved in this miscarriage of justice to cover their tracks. We must always take into account that we are dealing with a rather cynical group of Machiavellians that is Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Yoo, Rice ,Rumsfeld et al. & we should give honorable mention at the least to the Main Stream Media in the US which acted as mere propagandists for the Bush/Cheney Regime and even now do their best to paint the Bush era in the best light possible no matter how far from the actual truth.
also see: " Officials: Torture Confessions Not Proven Useful: White House pressured CIA to extract plots " By Peter Finn and Joby Warrick Washington Post,March 30, 2009
" Ex-State Dept. lawyer decries torture at Gitmo Former counsel says Bush administration overreacted after 9/11" AP March 27, 2009
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A former State Department lawyer responsible for Guantanamo-related cases said Friday that the Bush administration overreacted after 9/11 and set up a system in which torture occurred.
Vijay Padmanabhan is at least the second former Bush administration official to publicly label “enhanced interrogation techniques” as torture. He said the administration was wrong in its entire approach when it sent detainees to the remote Navy base and declared it out of reach of any court.
“I think Guantanamo was one of the worst overreactions of the Bush administration,” Padmanabhan told The Associated Press. He said other overreactions included extraordinary renditions, waterboarding that occurred at secret CIA prisons and “other enhanced interrogation techniques that would constitute torture.”
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Rachel Maddow discusses the issues raised by having a Spanish Judge investigating members of the Bush Regime of being complicit in illegal actions of torture. She also discusses the Abu Zubaida case inwhich he was torured and the intel received turned out to be useless.
Rachel Maddow Show - Protector of the flame of American Justice: Spain. Wait... Spain? 03_30_09 visit: http://firedoglake.com
Bill O'Reilly claims Spain is not a true friend of America. His main beef that Spain is insulting America. But this is not quite true . The Spanish judge is not going after America but members of the former Bush Regime for specific illegal actions. Once again O'Reilly like many in the US media conflate or equate the former Bush administration and its employees with America.It is odd how conservatives claim that the former Bush administration is to be equated with America and the American people and yet they claim President Obama's administration does not represent Real America .It is like Louis the 14 th claiming Iam the state and the state is me.
Bill O'Reilly Threatens To Not Travel To Spain Anymore-March 31, 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03...
Oh, snap, y'all! Fox News' Bill O'Reilly is WARRING, people! And not just with tearful towheaded turf taker Glenn Beck. No, no! O'Reilly has heard the latest news from Spain, and is just mad indignant over it all. So during last night's "Talking Points" section, he gave Spain a hot mug of SUCK IT.
So it appears that Waterboarding and other so called harsh techniques do not qualify as torture when they are used by US personnel or America's friends but are torture when done by governments who are not liked by the Americans. As Jason Linkins points out in this article at the Huffington Post:
Washington Post Finally Describes Waterboarding As Torture (When Someone Else Does It) by Jason Linkins,Huffington Post, March 31, 2009
Here's some unique writing from the Washington Post, in an article about a man named Kaing Khek Lev, or "Duch," a notorious genocidaire of the Khmer Rouge, who this week took responsibility for his crimes, namely running "the Khmer Rouge's most notorious torture center, Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh," where an "estimated 16,000 men, women and children died." Now, we've read a lot of descriptions of torture in the Washington Post, but some editor allowed reporter Tim Johnston to file an extraordinary rendition:
The prosecution described a chain of death operated by Duch. His victims -- most of whom were either disgraced members of the Khmer Rouge or their families -- were tortured with electric shocks, waterboarding or beating to extract a confession, which would implicate new victims. After confessing, the victims would be killed, most often by a sharp blow to the back of the head.
"There were autopsies carried out on live persons, there was medical experimentation, and people were bled to death: These were all crimes against humanity admitted by Duch," the prosecutors charged in the indictment. Among the four forms of torture he officially condoned, they said, was pouring water up victims' noses.
Wow. You see what Johnston did there, right? He called waterboarding "torture." He specifically called "pouring water up victims' noses"...torture.
It's a break from typical media traditions, obviously. See, when outfits like the WaPo typically talk about waterboarding, it's referred to as "a form of simulated drowning that U.S. officials had previously deemed a crime" or "harsh interrogation tactics" or an "interrogation tactic" or "harsh interrogation practices" or "a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill." But unless you are in possession of whatever gland produces honesty, like Dan Froomkin, you never, never, ever just come right out and say that waterboarding is torture.
I guess it becomes "torture" when it's being done by genocidal Communist madmen, whose political ideology lacks the beautiful exceptionalism that normally transforms an abhorrent and inhumane act into a patriotic gesture. At least I think that's the equation. I'm willing to revisit this position if, say, Ruth Marcus puts on her Inanity Cap and pens a piece about how we should give Duch a break because SURELY, when he was torturing and killing people in Phnom Penh, he was acting "not with criminal intent, but in the belief that they had grants of authority reaching to the highest levels of government."
and so it goes,
GORD.
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