A sick feeling in the gut ...

[BlackShanglan]

Read and weep. Yes, we may now imprison people on the grounds that we tortured them until they said what we wanted to hear.


Government: Evidence gained by torture allowed
Judges could rule soon on Guantanamo detainee suits
Wednesday, December 8, 2004 Posted: 3:42 AM EST (0842 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. military panels reviewing the detention of foreigners as enemy combatants are allowed to use evidence gained by torture in deciding whether to keep them imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the government conceded in court Thursday.

The acknowledgment by Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Brian Boyle came during a U.S. District Court hearing on lawsuits brought by some of the 550 foreigners imprisoned at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The lawsuits challenge their detention without charges for up to three years so far.

Attorneys for the prisoners argued that some were held solely on evidence gained by torture, which they said violated fundamental fairness and U.S. due process standards. But Boyle argued in a similar hearing Wednesday that the detainees "have no constitutional rights enforceable in this court."

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon asked if a detention would be illegal if it were based solely on evidence gathered by torture, because "torture is illegal. We all know that."

Boyle replied that if the military's combatant status review tribunals (or CSRTs) "determine that evidence of questionable provenance were reliable, nothing in the due process clause (of the Constitution) prohibits them from relying on it."

Leon asked if there were any restrictions on using evidence produced by torture.

Boyle replied the United States would never adopt a policy that would have barred it from acting on evidence that could have prevented the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks even if the data came from questionable practices like torture by a foreign power.

Evidence based on torture is not admissible in U.S. courts. "About 70 years ago, the Supreme Court stopped the use of evidence produced by third-degree tactics largely on the theory that it was totally unreliable," Harvard Law Professor Philip B. Heymann, a former deputy U.S. attorney general, said in an interview.

I don't think anything remotely like torture has occurred at Guantanamo.
-- Dep. Associate Attorney General Brian Boyle

Subsequent high court rulings were based on revulsion at "the unfairness and brutality of it and later on the idea that confessions ought to be free and uncompelled."

Leon asked if U.S. courts could review detentions based on evidence from torture conducted by U.S. personnel.

Boyle said torture was against U.S. policy and any allegations of it would be "forwarded through command channels for military discipline." He added, "I don't think anything remotely like torture has occurred at Guantanamo" but noted that some U.S. soldiers there had been disciplined for misconduct, including a female interrogator who removed her blouse during questioning.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Tuesday it has given the Bush administration a confidential report critical of U.S. treatment of Guantanamo detainees. The New York Times reported the Red Cross described the psychological and physical coercion used at Guantanamo as "tantamount to torture."

The CSRT panels, composed of three military officers, usually colonels or lieutenant colonels, were set up after the Supreme Court ruled in June that the detainees could ask U.S. courts to see to it that they had a proceeding in which to challenge their detention. They have finished reviewing the status of 440 of the prisoners but have released only one.

The military also set up an annual administrative review which considers whether the detainee still presents a danger to the United States but doesn't review enemy combatant status. Administrative reviews have been completed for 161.

Boyle argued these procedures are sufficient to satisfy the high court and the detainee lawsuits should be thrown out.

Noting that detainees cannot have lawyers at the CSRT proceedings and cannot see any secret evidence against them, attorney Wes Powell argued "there is no meaningful opportunity in the CSRTs to rebut the government's claims."

Leon asked, however, "if the judiciary puts its nose into this, won't that lead us into reviewing decisions about who to target and even into the adequacy of information supporting the decision to seize a person?"

Leon said he thought an earlier Supreme Court ruling would limit judges to checking only on whether detention orders were lawfully issued and detention review panels were legally established.

Leon and Judge Joyce Hens Green, who held another hearing Wednesday on detainees' rights, said they will try to rule soon on whether the 59 detainees can proceed with their lawsuits.

 

[minsue]

Makes you proud to be an American, don't it?

 

[shereads]

"Terrorist? You bet. I also kidnapped the Lindburg baby and fired on JFK from the grassy knoll. Can we remove the jumper cables from my gonads now?"

Where common decency isn't operative, common sense should suffice. Information gained from torture is as reliable as it deserves to be.

Of course, most of us wouldn't believe intelligence provided by a convicted imbezzler, either. Yet without it, where would we be now?

 

[cantdog]

The obvious is never the same thing to any two people. It's an infinite-regression thing. Think of The Princess Bride. It's obvious to you that Chalabi was not a credible witness, but that's because you aren't a Likudnik.

 

[cantdog]

Joe would tell us that even if you forced testimony, there's no logical reason why it couldn't also happen to be true.

The people using less violent techniques get answers, too. They're not reliable sometimes. People who volunteer information without any help at all are mistaken, too. There's never a guarantee on any of it. Even when polygraphs and their successors do work, they only can tell you that the person feels no anxiety about her answer, not that it's necessarily true.

Testimony is a fickle thing. There is no art to read the mind's construction in the face.

cantdog

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Just how many convictions have there been in the War on Terror by now?

Just how much have we gained by selling our ideals down the river?

This whole "War on Terror" has been a load of crap from the beginning. Strange how all the color-coded terror alerts stopped once the election was over, isn't it?

What a bunch of crap. And what a load of pathetic saps we are. "Home of the Free" my ass...


---dr.M.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Joe would tell us that even if you forced testimony, there's no logical reason why it couldn't also happen to be true.

The people using less violent techniques get answers, too. They're not reliable sometimes. People who volunteer information without any help at all are mistaken, too. There's never a guarantee on any of it. Even when polygraphs and their successors do work, they only can tell you that the person feels no anxiety about her answer, not that it's necessarily true.

Testimony is a fickle thing. There is no art to read the mind's construction in the face.

cantdog

Agreed, cantdog. I don't know that testimony gained by other means is substantially more reliable than that gained through torture. However, I doubt on the whole that it is any less reliable, either, which I think still asks a valid question about the pragmatic ramifications of torture.

That said ... I must admit that my own objection is not pragmatic in nature. I believe torture to be morally wrong. For that reason, the fact that I might stand to gain something from it is not, for me, a good argument. In the end, to torture others or to support their torture would be to make myself evil in my own eyes. Intellectually - questions of courage aside - I think it preferable to suffer torture than to inflict it. Of course, when faced with the reality, no doubt I might be rather brutally persuaded otherwise. But morally, I think it better to suffer than to inflict suffering on others.

Shanglan

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

The obvious is never the same thing to any two people. It's an infinite-regression thing. Think of The Princess Bride. It's obvious to you that Chalabi was not a credible witness, but that's because you aren't a Likudnik.

And it is INCONCEIVABLE that the President should even accidentally tell us an untruth.

Doc,

Wasn't there a thread not too long ago, titled Terrorists 5000, Ashford 0 (I checked, but our search function won’t let me search for less that four words.) At that time, of the five thousand prisoners only one had been brought to trial, and the case had been overturned.

That’s probably why they wanted to be able to use testimony collected by torture. Don’t you think? Nothing to do about truth, justice, or safety — everything to do with their conviction records.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

And it is INCONCEIVABLE that the President should even accidentally tell us an untruth.

Doc,

Wasn't there a thread not too long ago, titled Terrorists 5000, Ashford 0 (I checked, but our search function won’t let me search for less that four words.) At that time, of the five thousand prisoners only one had been brought to trial, and the case had been overturned.

That’s probably why they wanted to be able to use testimony collected by torture. Don’t you think? Nothing to do about truth, justice, or safety — everything to do with their conviction records.

Yes, I remember seeing something like that. I also read something in a magazine on the total lack of convictions or even actionable information that we've obtained through whatever unsavory means.

The whole thing just makes me sick. I suspected from the start that this War on Terror was just political bullshit used by Bush to make himself look good and guarantee his re-election as a "war president". It's no more winnable than the War on Drugs or the War on Poverty, but it gives the NeoCons a smokescreen behind which they operate.

It's just like 1984. I can't wait for the hate sessions to start.

---dr.M.