“Verschärfte Vernehmung” and George W. Bush

 

The phrase “Verschärfte Vernehmung” is German for “enhanced interrogation”. Other translations include “intensified interrogation” or “sharpened interrogation”. It’s a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods, as you can see above, are indistinguishable from those described as “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the president. As you can see from the Gestapo memo, moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their “enhanced interrogation techniques” would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan.

Also: the use of hypothermia, authorized by Bush and Rumsfeld, was initially forbidden. ‘Waterboarding” was forbidden too, unlike that authorized by Bush. As time went on, historians have found that all the bureaucratic restrictions were eventually broken or abridged. Once you start torturing, it has a life of its own. The “cold bath” technique – the same as that used by Bush against al-Qahtani in Guantanamo – was, according to professor Darius Rejali of Reed College,

pioneered by a member of the French Gestapo by the pseudonym Masuy about 1943. The Belgian resistance referred to it as the Paris method, and the Gestapo authorized its extension from France to at least two places late in the war, Norway and Czechoslovakia. That is where people report experiencing it.

In Norway, we actually have a 1948 court case that weighs whether “enhanced interrogation” using the methods approved by president Bush amounted to torture. The proceedings are fascinating, with specific reference to the hypothermia used in Gitmo, and throughout interrogation centers across the field of conflict. The Nazi defense of the techniques is almost verbatim that of the Bush administration…

Here’s a document from Norway’s 1948 war-crimes trials detailing the prosecution of Nazis convicted of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the Second World War. Money quote from the cases of three Germans convicted of war crimes for “enhanced interrogation”:

Between 1942 and 1945, Bruns used the method of “verschärfte Vernehmung” on 11 Norwegian citizens. This method involved the use of various implements of torture, cold baths and blows and kicks in the face and all over the body. Most of the prisoners suffered for a considerable time from the injuries received during those interrogations.

Between 1942 and 1945, Schubert gave 14 Norwegian prisoners “verschärfte Vernehmung,” using various instruments of torture and hitting them in the face and over the body. Many of the prisoners suffered for a considerable time from the effects of injuries they received.

On 1st February, 1945, Clemens shot a second Norwegian prisoner from a distance of 1.5 metres while he was trying to escape. Between 1943 and 1945, Clemens employed the method of ” verschäfte Vernehmung ” on 23 Norwegian prisoners. He used various instruments of torture and cold baths. Some of the prisoners continued for a considerable time to suffer from injuries received at his hands.

Freezing prisoners to near-death, repeated beatings, long forced-standing, waterboarding, cold showers in air-conditioned rooms, stress positions [Arrest mit Verschaerfung], withholding of medicine and leaving wounded or sick prisoners alone in cells for days on end – all these have occurred at US detention camps under the command of president George W. Bush. Over a hundred documented deaths have occurred in these interrogation sessions. The Pentagon itself has conceded homocide by torture in multiple cases. Notice the classic, universal and simple criterion used to define torture in 1948 (my italics):

In deciding the degree of punishment, the Court found it decisive that the defendants had inflicted serious physical and mental suffering on their victims, and did not find sufficient reason for a mitigation of the punishment in accordance with the provisions laid down in Art. 5 of the Provisional Decree of 4th May, 1945. The Court came to the conclusion that such acts, even though they were committed with the connivance of superiors in rank or even on their orders, must be regarded and punished as serious war crimes.

The victims, by the way, were not in uniform. And the Nazis tried to argue, just as John Yoo did, that this made torturing them legit. The victims were paramilitary Norwegians, operating as an insurgency, against an occupying force. And the torturers had also interrogated some prisoners humanely. But the argument, deployed by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Nazis before them, didn’t wash with the court. Money quote:

As extenuating circumstances, Bruns had pleaded various incidents in which he had helped Norwegians, Schubert had pleaded difficulties at home, and Clemens had pointed to several hundred interrogations during which he had treated prisoners humanely.

The Court did not regard any of the above-mentioned circumstances as a sufficient reason for mitigating the punishment and found it necessary to act with the utmost severity. Each of the defendants was responsible for a series of incidents of torture, every one of which could, according to Art. 3 (a), (c) and (d) of the Provisional Decree of 4th May, 1945, be punished by the death sentence.

So using “enhanced interrogation techniques” against insurgent prisoners out of uniform was punishable by death. Here’s the Nazi defense argument:

(c) That the acts of torture in no case resulted in death. Most of the injuries inflicted were slight and did not result in permanent disablement.

This is the Yoo position. It’s what Glenn Reynolds calls the “sensible” position on torture. It was the camp slogan at Camp Nama in Iraq: “No Blood, No Foul.” Now take the issue of “stress positions”, photographed at Abu Ghraib and used at Bagram to murder an innocent detainee. Here’s a good description of how stress positions operate:

The hands were tied together closely with a cord on the back of the prisoner, raised then the body and hung the cord to a hook, which was attached into two meters height in a tree, so that the feet in air hung. The whole body weight rested thus at the joints bent to the rear. The minimum period of hanging up was a half hour. To remain there three hours hung up, was pretty often. This punishment was carried out at least twice weekly.

This is how one detainee at Abu Ghraib died (combined with beating) as in the photograph above. The experience of enduring these stress positions has been described by Rush Limbaugh as no worse than frat-house hazings. Those who have gone through them disagree. They describe:

Dreadful pain in the shoulders and wrists were the results of this treatment. Only laboriously the lung could be supplied with the necessary oxygen. The heart worked in a racing speed. From all pores the sweat penetrated.

Yes, this is an account of someone who went through the “enhanced interrogation techniques” at Dachau. (Google translation here.)

Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I’m not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn’t-somehow-torture – “enhanced interrogation techniques” – is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

Rabbi Goldstein gives a historic overview of Zionism

In his lecture, rabbi Goldstein said,

“…The Muslims people basically got involved in the fight against zionism when it started effecting them on a political bases which is 1917 for the Palestinians or afterwards for some of the other Arab countries, We [religious Jews] were in this fight from the 1890 roughly… As soon as it was founded [zionism], it was condemned – Jews came out and said this is atheistic, this is idol worship…”

The audio is split in to two segments: the 33 minute lecture followed by 9 minutes of questions and answers. A few quotes from the lecture are provided below.

LECTURE Download (shift-click) lecture (real audio 33min 4Mb)

Blair pushed out of office because of Lebanon, not Iraq

The party is over. Ten years in office, some of them even in power, Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair departs not amid the farewell tour that his aides planned just last year but with an embarrassing and forced goodbye.

This is not a transition. This is a push and a putsch. Delayed, disguised but deliberate. Blair is being ditched by his own party to be replaced by a man with whom he has been barely on speaking terms since 1997.

All political careers end in failure but nothing in British foreign policy since the war matches the Iraq catastrophe. Failure is too mild a term. It destabilised the Middle East and made real a link between Iraq and terrorism that had only previously existed in the warped minds of Washington neo-cons. Fantasy was turned into reality by an act of calamity.

The Middle East has been a wretched place for the reputation of British prime ministers. Suez did it for Anthony Eden, the withdrawal from east of Suez helped cripple Harold Wilson.

Ted Heath was ruined by the oil price hike of 1973. Such a rate of attrition should mean that Gordon Brown at least familiarises himself with Middle East issues though the chancellor has been economical in his utterances of anything east of Norfolk.

Arms for Saddam

Margaret Thatcher was pushed aside during the build up to the military response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. While that had nothing to do with her departure events in the Middle East tarnished her government.

The Scott inquiry into weapons sales to Saddam made for macabre political theatre. There were the Tories saying they hadn’t given Saddam weapons when they had and there was Blair saying Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when they hadn’t. Neither was it just Iraq.

Lebanon cost Blair his job. During the Israeli bombardment last summer when Blair’s silence stunned his supporters, he was told by close aides that his time was up. Iraq was the one way ticket but Lebanon was what checked him into the departure lounge where he has been languishing for the last year.

Blair is the highest political casualty of Israel’s summer war with Lebanon.

Ten years ago Blair did not just win a landslide. The Labour victory resembled a meteorite that extinguished the dinosaurs of John Major’s government. It ushered in Cool Britannia, the Third Way, if not a new dawn then perhaps hopes for a pleasant evening.

The ramparts had been stormed. Some of us had even stayed up for Portillo. Even that special word, a word that encapsulates, youth, hope and a just cause was being uttered by political correspondents.

Camelot. Tony was not JFK and Cherie was no Jackie, but there was a young vibrant family in Downing Street. You could almost imagine Blair shoving state papers aside to help out with the homework. He was a man whose circumstances, young father, new job, progressive, a touch unsure, people could relate to. And it worked, in part.

Diana’s death

Northern Ireland, an issue that had bedevilled relations between Britain and Ireland since Lloyd George was put on the path to settlement by Blair in Easter 1998. His behaviour during the days following Diana’s death was exemplary. He was beginning to deliver.

But he wanted a second term more than he wanted reform in Britain, and when the second term came in 2001 he allied himself with White House extremism and sacrificed his idealism.

He won another election because like Bill Clinton, he chose his political opponents well and the full realisation of the Iraq fiasco was not yet fully appreciated by the public.

It is now, which is why he is going. Make no mistake about it, if the Labour hierarchy believed that could deliver one more election victory, if the backbenchers thought that he was an asset, he would still be Blair of Downing Street and not demobbed Tony of civvy street.

But his silence on Lebanon condemned him. There was no excuse for it and his most ardent supporters in the cabinet knew that he no longer commanded the party. Which is why 10 years after Blair first walked up Downing Street the British will have to chose at the next general election between a Scottish socialist and an Eton environmentalist.

Old school politics returns.

Charges Against two Guantanamo Detainees dismissed for Incorrect Legal Procedures

The Bush administration’s plans to bring detainees at Guantánamo Bay to trial were thrown into chaos yesterday when military judges threw out all charges against a detainee held there since he was 15 and dismissed charges against another detainee who chauffeured Osama bin Laden.In back-to-back arraignments for the Canadian Omar Khadr and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni national, the US military’s cases against the alleged al-Qaida figures were dismissed because, the judges said, the government had failed to establish jurisdiction.

Yesterday’s decision by Colonel Peter Brownback to dismiss all charges against Mr Khadr on technical grounds has broad implications for the Bush administration’s system of military tribunals because the technicality appears to apply to all 385 prisoners held at Guantánamo.

The dismissal of the case also undermines the administration’s efforts to show that the military tribunals are based on sound legal practice and can provide detainees with a fair hearing, detainee lawyers said.

In his decision yesterday, Col Brownback said the Pentagon had merely designated Mr Khadr, a Canadian citizen facing charges of murder and terrorism, as an “enemy combatant”, not an “unlawful enemy combatant”, the term used by Congress last year in authorising the tribunals.

The Pentagon’s lapse meant the tribunal did not have proper jurisdiction to try Mr Khadr. “A person has a right to be tried only by a court that has jurisdiction over him,” Col Brownback told the court.

Mr Hamdan is accused of being Bin Laden’s chauffeur and bodyguard. In his case, US Navy captain Keith Allred yesterday said Mr Hamdan is “not subject to this commission” under legislation passed by Congress and signed by President George Bush last year.

The new Military Commissions Act, written to establish military trials after the US supreme court last year rejected the previous system, is full of problems, defence attorneys argued.

Mr Hamdan last year won a US supreme court challenge that led to the scrapping of the first Guantánamo tribunal system.

Yesterday’s rulings also suggest that none of the 385 other detainees at Guantánamo, held for more than five years without charge, can be brought to trial before the tribunals because they too have been designated merely as “enemy combatants”, lawyers said yesterday.

“The system right now should just stop,” Marine Corps Colonel Dwight Sullivan, the lead military defence lawyer, said. “The commission is an experiment that failed and we don’t need any more evidence that it is a failure.”

Mr Khadr’s defence team was equally scathing. “This is a shambles,” said Kristine Huskey, who had been on Mr Khadr’s defence team until last week when he sacked all of his American lawyers. “It’s another example of how everything has been so ad hoc. The Military Commissions Act was just not done thoughtfully.” Yesterday’s ruling does not bring Mr Khadr any closer to freedom. Col Brownback threw out the charges “without prejudice”, which means the Pentagon could issue new charges against him.

However, it exposes the hastiness with which Congress moved in October to bring in legislation authorising the tribunals after the supreme court threw out the earlier version.

Now, once again barely a year later, the tribunals have been thrown into legal limbo at their first outing. In April, the first Guantánamo detainee to be charged, David Hicks, reached a plea bargain deal, thus avoiding trial.

Ms Huskey said that amid the confusion, one thing appeared clear. The detainees, held without charge since 2002, were likely to face further delays before having their day in court. “What it does mean for Omar and all the detainees is that they are going to have a whole new process so that everyone can be charged,” she said.

 Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,2095552,00.html

Cheney Lies To High Schoolers About Debunked Iraq/al Qaeda Connection

“Addressing about 100 wide-eyed Wyoming high school students learning about government and the political process,” Vice President Cheney yesterday repeated one of the key fabrications that helped send the United States into war.During the question and answer session, one student asked, “I was wondering — I’m not trying to start a debate, or anything, but do you still think that the Iraq war can be won?” Cheney immediately answered “yes,” adding, “I think we’re making significant progress now.”He then launched into a justification of the war, citing the September 11 attacks. “The fact of the matter is Iraq is part of the global war on terror,” he told the students. “And you’ve got to go back and look at what happened on 9/11.” Cheney recounted the tale of the late al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the administration’s great pre-war myths:

The worst terrorist we had in Iraq was a guy named Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian by birth; served time in a Jordanian prison as a terrorist, was let out on amnesty. … Then when we launched into Afghanistan after 9/11, he was wounded, and fled to Baghdad for medical treatment, and then set up shop in Iraq. So he operated in Jordan, he operated in Afghanistan, then he moved to Iraq.

The implication that Zarqawi helped justify the war was thoroughly debunked last year by the Senate Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Bush loyalist Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS.) It found:

Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and…the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi. [p. 109]

Adding insult to injury, earlier in the event, Cheney was asked about the “values or philosophy” he has developed during his 40 years of government service. He answered, “I basically developed a great respect for American history.

If I were one of the students attending that address, I would have politely raised my hand, stood up and told that phony,

“Mr.Cheney, you stink at lying!!!”

Another General Speaks: War is Lost

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez commanded U.S. forces during the first year of the Iraq war. In “his first interview since he retired last year,” Sanchez has said that the war in Iraq is lost, and the best outcome America can hope for is to “stave off defeat.” From his remarks after a recent speech in San Antonio:

“I think if we do the right things politically and economically with the right Iraqi leadership we could still salvage at least a stalemate, if you will — not a stalemate but at least stave off defeat,” Sanchez told the San Antonio Express-News. “It’s also kind of important for us to answer the question, ‘What is victory?’, and at this point I’m not sure America really knows what victory is.” […]

“I am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time and we’ve got to do whatever we can to help the next generation of leaders do better than we have done over the past five years,” Sanchez said, “better than what this cohort of political and military leaders have done.”

Sanchez “is the highest-ranking former military leader yet to suggest the Bush administration has fallen short in Iraq.” In April, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) also said that at this stage, the war in Iraq “can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically“:

“I believe…that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week,” Reid told journalists. […]

“I know I was the odd guy out at the White House, but I told him at least what he needed to hear … I believe the war at this stage can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically.”

At the time, the right wing viciously attacked Reid, calling him “an embarrassment” and charging that his comments were “very, very close to treason.” But since that time, other generals, in addition to Sanchez, have spoken out against the war.

Nevertheless, conservatives continue to pound the issue. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has threatened that if a vote of no-confidence on Alberto Gonzales is brought to the floor, he may bring an amendment on “whether the Iraq War is actually ‘lost’ as Reid has suggested.”