By Venezolana de Televisión

“The Kingdom of Heaven is not a kingdom or life in the clouds. Either it exists here or else it exists nowhere,” President Chávez issued a wake-up call during the last Sunday program of 2008. “It’s on earth, and that is why Christ came here and was born among the poor, in the manger.”

The head of state in Venezuela noted that the capitalist system throughout its history has distorted Jesus’s message to the poor about the Kingdom of Heaven, with the sole purpose of exploiting the impoverished majorities in favor of the minorities who enjoy the wealth of the world.

The Christ child was born on earth, poor and human, to fight and make this planet truly the kingdom of heaven, of equality and justice, not to be poor in life and to win glory in the afterlife, Comandante Chávez said during the last Aló Presidente broadcast of the year, speaking from El Valle where he inaugurated a new People’s Clinic.

“The message of Christ, who said the Kingdom of Heaven is that of the poor, has been very often manipulated. In this way they have for centuries manipulated the poor of the world, to make them quietly accept exploitation.”

“Christ was born to call on us to create, here on earth, the Kingdom of Love,” Chávez explained, adding that this kingdom has no other name than socialism.

The president reminded the audience that socialism comes from what is social, as capitalism proceeds from capital.

“Socialism is the doctrine, science, of development of what is social. Capitalism is the immoral art, science, and technology of development of capital or growth of capital — (for capitalism) what matters is that even while people die of hunger capitalists accumulate capital.”

The president stressed that therein lies the key to understanding the confrontation that began again, in which Venezuela has become the center of the battle between socialists and capitalists, “between people becoming more politically conscious every day and those who exploited them forever.” He said that that is why the issue of the constitutional amendment is of vital importance as it will allow Venezuela to go farther on the socialist path, the truly human and democratic path, for the happiness of the Venezuelan people.

To conclude the last Aló Presidente of the year, the president wished the best for Venezuelan families, urging them to enjoy Christmas and New Year’s Eve with love, moderation, and simplicity so they can continue in 2009 the work of making Venezuela a great nation of justice and equality.

The first day of what Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak assures us will be a “long and difficult” war in the Gaza Strip has come and gone, leaving at least 300 Gazans dead, over 700 wounded, and one Israeli civilian killed and four wounded in retaliatory strikes. The number of Gaza civilians dead is not currently known, but the attacks centered around police stations and killed a large number of Palestinian security forces.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak hit out at calls to cease the attacks and renew the ceasefire, saying “for us to be asked to have a ceasefire with Hamas is like asking you to have a ceasefire with al-Qaeda.” Except of course that up until a week ago Israel did have a six month long ceasefire with Hamas which Minister Barak repeatedly defended from the more hawkish opposition members.

But the time for an unpopular peace is over in Israel, and police are being dispatched to crack down on those protesting against the unpopular war that has followed.

Meanwhile, as Gazans count their dead and tend to their wounded in a chaotic scene, Hamas and the assorted militant factions that reside in the strip are vowing revenge. Hamas says “all options are open” in responding to the attacks, while Islamic Jihad is ordering all its fighters to respond to “the Israeli slaughter.”

Those still calling for peace between the belligerent factions appear for now to have little traction, and the war is liable to continue to escalate.

Author’s note: Cheney’s admission during an interview with the Washington Times this week about his role in approving the waterboarding of three Guantanamo detainees and the so-called “enhanced interrogation” of 33 prisoners was, disturbingly, not covered at all by the mainstream media.

By Jason Leopold - www.pubrecord.org

Vice President Dick Cheney, in another stunning admission during his campaign to burnish the Bush administration’s legacy, said he personally authorized the “enhanced interrogations” of 33 suspected terrorist detainees and approved the waterboarding of three so-called “high-value” prisoners.

“I signed off on it; others did, as well, too,” Cheney said about the waterboarding, a practice of simulated drowning done by strapping a person to a board, covering the face with a cloth and then pouring water over it, a torture technique dating back at least to the Spanish Inquisition. The victim feels as if he is drowning.

Cheney identified the three waterboarded detainees as al-Qaeda figures Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and al Nashiri. “That’s it, those three guys,” Cheney said in an interview with the right-wing Washington Times.

Other detainees at secret CIA prisons and at Guantanamo Bay were subjected to harsh treatment, including being stripped naked, forced into painful stress positions, placed in extremes of heat or cold and prevented from sleeping – actions that international human rights organizations, and previously the U.S. government, have denounced as torture and illegal abuse.

“I thought that it was absolutely the right thing to do,” Cheney said of what he called the “enhanced interrogation” of the detainees. “I thought the [administration’s] legal opinions that were rendered [endorsing the harsh treatment] were sound. I think the techniques were reasonable in terms of what they [the CIA interrogators] were asking to be able to do. And I think it produced the desired result.”

Cheney also took issue with the notion that waterboarding was torture.

“Was it torture? I don’t believe it was torture,” Cheney said. “The CIA handled itself, I think, very appropriately. They came to us in the administration, talked to me, talked to others in the administration, about what they felt they needed to do in order to obtain the intelligence that we believe these people were in possession of.”

Other experts, including some military and intelligence interrogators, have disputed Cheney’s claims of success in extracting reliable information through waterboarding and other harsh techniques. Much of the confessed information turned out to be dubious or incorrect.

The First Case

Zubaydah was the first “war on terror” detainee to be subjected to the Bush administration’s waterboarding, according to Pentagon and Justice Department documents, news reports and several books written about the Bush administration’s interrogation methods.

However, according to author Ron Suskind who interviewed CIA and other insiders, Abu Zubaydah was not the “high-value detainee” that the Bush administration had claimed. Rather, Zubaydah was a minor player in the al-Qaeda organization, handling travel for associates and their families, Suskind wrote in his book The One Percent Doctrine.

Nevertheless, Suskind said President George W. Bush became obsessed with Zubaydah and the information he might have about pending terrorist plots against the United States.

“Bush was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind wrote. Bush questioned one CIA briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?”

Abu Zubaydah’s captors soon discovered that their prisoner was mentally ill and knew nothing about terrorist operations or impending plots. That realization was “echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President,” Suskind wrote.

But Bush did not want to “lose face” because he had stated Zubaydah’s importance publicly, according to Suskind.

Zubaydah was strapped to a waterboard and, fearing imminent death, he spoke about a wide range of plots against a number of U.S. targets, such as shopping malls, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. Yet, Suskind wrote, Zubaydah’s information under duress was judged not credible.

Still, that did not stop “thousands of uniformed men and women [who] raced in a panic to each … target,” Suskind wrote. “The United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”

Cheney Unapologetic

Last week, in an interview with ABC News, Cheney was unapologetic about the waterboarding and other harsh techniques used against the detainees. But Cheney’s matter-of-fact response to the Washington Times‘ questions on Monday provided the most detailed look yet at the administration’s highly classified interrogation program.

In the interview, Cheney defended the interrogation program by claiming the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) drafted legal memorandums stating Bush had the authority to suspend the Geneva Convention and order harsh interrogations of prisoners in the “war on terror.”

But the memos were written after Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other high-ranking Cabinet officials known as the Principals Committee met in July 2002 to discuss specific interrogation techniques — including the outlawed technique of waterboarding — to be used against “war on terror” detainees.

The OLC attorneys fashioned the legal arguments that then gave legal cover for the interrogation strategies that the White House wanted to carry out.

The Aug. 1, 2002, opinion, widely referred to as the “Torture Memo,” was written by Jay Bybee, an assistant attorney general at the OLC, and John Yoo, Bybee’s deputy. It was addressed to Gonzales and stated that unless the amount of pain administered to a detainee during an interrogation results in injury “such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions” than the technique could not be defined as torture.

Additionally, the memo said CIA interrogators would not be prosecuted for violating anti-torture laws as long as they acted in “good faith” while using brutal techniques to obtain information from suspected terrorists.

“To validate the statute, an individual must have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering,” the memo said. “Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture.”

The memo was drafted the same month Abu Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding.

Jack Goldsmith, who succeeded Bybee as head of the OLC in October 2003, quickly determined that the Aug. 1, 2002, memo was “sloppily written” and “legally flawed” and withdrew it.

Administration critics also have noted that actions are not made legal simply by having friendly lawyers give favorable opinions.

“You can’t just suddenly change something that is illegal into something that is legal by having a lawyer write an opinion that saying it’s legal,” said Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee whose panel spent two years investigating the Bush administration’s interrogation policies.

Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Security Project, said Cheney used the Justice Department to “twist” the law “and in some cases ignored it altogether, in order to permit interrogators to use barbaric methods that the U.S. once prosecuted as war crimes.”

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said, “there must be consequences for [these] illegal activities.” He added, “A special prosecutor should be appointed. To do otherwise is to send a message of impunity that will only embolden future administrations to again engage in serious violations of the law.”

The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is close to wrapping up a formal investigation to determine whether agency attorneys, including Yoo and Bybee, provided the White House with poor legal advice when they drafted the legal opinions.

The waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, Al Nashiri and Kalid Sheikh Mohammed was videotaped, but those records were destroyed in November 2005 after the Washington Post published a story that exposed the CIA’s use of so-called “black site” prisons overseas to interrogate terror suspects.

John Durham, an assistant attorney general in Connecticut, was appointed special counsel earlier this year to investigate the destruction of that videotape as well as destroyed film on other interrogations.

Despite the torture criticism, Cheney said he has no regrets about the interrogation methods that he signed off on, claiming they were “directly responsible for the fact that we’ve been able to avoid or defeat further attacks against the homeland for seven and a half years.”

Cheney added, “I feel very good about what we did. I think it was the right thing to do. If I was faced with those circumstances again, I’d do exactly the same thing.”

Cheney’s remarks to the Washington Times were part of a two-week media blitz that has sought to highlight the Bush administration’s “accomplishments.”

The White House has published two lengthy reports, “Highlights of Accomplishments and Results of the Administration of George W. Bush,” and “100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration Record” in an attempt to change the emerging historical consensus about a failed presidency.

However, Cheney’s blasé responses to questions about torture have instead fed growing demands for a criminal investigation against Cheney and other Bush administration officials.

By Phil Mattera

Opponents of the auto industry bailout, who warned that it would prompt other business sectors to ask for similar consideration, are probably feeling vindicated. Only days after the Bush Administration did an end run around Senate Republicans and agreed to provide a Detroit rescue package using bank bailout funds, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that commercial real estate developers are seeking their own federal assistance package. They are warning that, without such aid, thousands of office complexes, shopping centers, hotels and the like could join the country’s foreclosure tsunami.

There’s one major difference between the auto industry and commercial real estate that justifies a bailout for one and not the other: the number and quality of jobs at stake. The Big Three provide hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs (too well-paying according to certain Southern Senators) that have helped workers achieve a middle-class standard of living. Real estate developers, by contrast, are primarily responsible for substandard retail and janitorial positions. While the Service Employees International Union has helped improve wages and benefits for some building services workers, most of those jobs don’t take people far out of poverty. While it would be a shame for janitors and clerks to lose their jobs, preserving those positions does not have the same urgency as saving the estimated 1.2 million direct and indirect jobs linked to the Big Three.

Rather than bailing out their employers, it would make more sense to use federal funds to help retail and janitorial workers find better jobs elsewhere in the economy. In the speculative boom of recent years, the real estate business built far too many office buildings and shopping centers, and many of those properties will probably not survive the current shakeout. While there is a strong case that the country needs a domestic auto industry, it is much harder to argue that every commercial property needs to be kept in operation.

And if Congress does decide it is necessary to prevent a commercial real estate meltdown, it should keep in mind that these same developers now looking for aid have repeatedly pressured local governments for property tax abatements and other subsidies. A report I wrote last year (with two colleagues) on the big mall owner General Growth Properties, which is now struggling to survive, found that the company had received more than $200 million in such subsidies and another $9 million in savings as a result of aggressive filing of property tax assessment appeals. Previous (unpublished) research I did on the country’s largest mall operator, Simon Properties, found $380 million in subsidies and savings from assessment appeals. In both cases, the data come from an examination of only a portion of the malls owned by the company. Also remember that Wal-Mart used a gimmick called captive real estate investment trusts to avoid paying an estimated $2.3 billion in state taxes.

Perhaps Congress should require developers to use part of any bailout to repay the subsidies they received from local governments that are now facing dire fiscal conditions.

But even that would not provide a compelling case for a commercial real estate bailout. In a country that still hasn’t devised a comprehensive plan for stopping home foreclosures, we shouldn’t be worrying about saving the owners of superfluous office towers and big box stores.

Serving police officers in the West have criminal records for offences including assault, drink driving and fraud a Freedom of Information inquiry has revealed.

Wiltshire (no more than five), West Mercia (10) and Dorset police (nine) confirmed that between them more than 20 serving officers have criminal records including for public order offences, a domestic dispute and taking a vehicle without consent.

The Gloucestershire, Avon and Somerset and Gwent forces declined to state how many serving officers had criminal convictions under regulations in the Act that exempts investigation into a question if it is likely to cost too much money.

However all forces, apart from Wiltshire Constabulary, released information on the numbers of officers who have been sacked or forced to resign because of a criminal conviction since September 2003.

Dorset Police revealed that nine officers on its force have criminal records but that none of its officers has been dismissed.Gloucestershire police confirmed that they had to dismiss one officer for breaking the law while Avon and Somerset confirmed three officers had been dismissed or were asked to resign.

Gwent police revealed that two officers had been dismissed in the five year period, while West Mercia police, who cover Hereford and Worcester, said one officer had been dismissed and two had been required to resign from the force due to criminal convictions.

Hereford’s Liberal Democrat MP Paul Keetch said: “I am glad that West Mercia Police have been so open and honest about the situation and I am surprised that other police forces have not been so forthcoming.

“One would have thought the Home Office gave guidelines on this issue.

“I would presume that the Chief Constable would be aware of the circumstances and offences of any convicted officers and would ensure that these officers would not be involved in any operational activity in those areas or associated with anything relating to their crime.”

Paul West, ACPO lead for the Professional Standards Working Group and Chief Constable West Mercia, said: “The police service expects good conduct and probity from its officers and staff at all times.

“Where wrongdoing is alleged, police officers are investigated and action taken as appropriate to each case.

“It should be remembered that there are just over 140,000 police officers in the country, the overwhelming majority of whom serve the public with dedication under sometimes difficult circumstances.

“In common with a large majority of British employees, police staff members are subject to the ACAS code of practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, while police officers are subject to the Police and Misconduct Regulations set by Government.

“Where an officer has committed misconduct, which can include a criminal offence, a range of disciplinary actions can be taken by a police force, including a reprimand, fine, reduction in rank or dismissal.

“The force concerned will take action depending on a range of factors including the severity of the offence and its impact on an officer’s ability to carry out their duties.

Source

BAGHDAD — The television reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush was burned by a cigarette in the hours after his arrest on Dec. 14 and was beaten so badly by Iraqi security personnel that one of his teeth was knocked out, the reporter’s brother said Sunday after a visit to the jail.

The reporter, Muntader al-Zaidi, 29, has been jailed since hurling his shoes at Mr. Bush during a news conference here last week. Mr. Zaidi has not been formally charged, but he faces up to seven years in prison if convicted of the crime of aggression against a foreign leader during an official visit.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki did not return phone calls seeking comment on Sunday about the allegations, but the Maliki government previously denied that Mr. Zaidi had been mistreated while in custody.

It was Mr. Maliki’s security detail that detained Mr. Zaidi after he hurled his shoes. Mr. Zaidi was seen being beaten before he was pulled from the room where the news conference by Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki was held.

On Sunday before the torture allegations were made public, Mr. Maliki said that he had received a letter from Mr. Zaidi saying that a terrorist had persuaded him to throw the shoes.

“A person urged him to commit this act, and this person is known to us as a person who beheads people,” Mr. Maliki said, without divulging the person’s name.

Mr. Zaidi’s family has maintained that he was acting out of his own frustration with the American invasion.

The visit by one of Mr. Zaidi’s brothers was the first by either a relative or a lawyer that the reporter had been allowed since being jailed. He has not been seen publicly since his arrest.

During an interview broadcast Sunday on Al Baghdadia, the Cairo-based satellite television network for which Mr. Zaidi works, his brother Uday, 33, said that Mr. Zaidi had been stripped to his underwear before being placed in a cell and tortured during the 24-hour period after his arrest.

“He told me he was sleeping on the floor of the cell when a very large man came in and dumped cold water on him and began hitting him with a thick cable,” Uday al-Zaidi said in the TV interview.

He said his brother had told him that he was brutally beaten by several men and burned on his right ear by a cigarette. Uday al-Zaidi said that on Sunday his brother had bruises on his face, stitches on the bridge of his nose and swelling in his legs, arms and hands.

His jailers had periodically demanded that he state in a videotaped confession that he had been ordered to commit the act by enemies of the prime minister, Uday al-Zaidi said his brother had told him.

Uday al-Zaidi said his brother had said: “After the torture and the cold-water shower, I told them to bring me a blank sheet of paper and I would sign it, and they could write whatever they wanted. I am ready to say I am a terrorist or whatever you want.”

But Muntader al-Zaidi told his brother that the men had stopped beating him and did not force him to write or sign anything. The journalist said that a letter to the prime minister written by him from jail expressing regret for the attack had not been coerced, his brother said. It was unclear if this was the same letter Mr. Maliki referred to.

Uday al-Zaidi said his brother told him that he had bought the shoes — used — at a market in Cairo.

Meanwhile, leaders of the blocs in Parliament reached consensus on Sunday on a resolution that would allow troops from Britain, Australia and other countries to operate on Iraqi soil after the end of the year.

The resolution grants the Iraqi government the authority to set the terms for the presence of those troops, as long as they are to be out of Iraq by the end of July, said Taha Diraa, a lawmaker from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a leading Shiite party.

Parliament is scheduled to vote on the resolution on Monday.

Iraqi lawmakers are also considering whether to strip Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of Parliament, of his position. Lawmakers said that Mr. Mashhadani was considered a histrionic man who was often brusque with those with whom he disagreed, and that he had insulted members of Parliament on Wednesday at a rowdy session dealing with the bill governing foreign troops.

If the vote passes, Mr. Mashhadani will keep his seat in Parliament but lose the speaker’s post. It is one of the most prominent positions in the Iraqi government now held by a Sunni.

Revolution | Millions of people in the U.S., the wealthiest country in the world, are homeless. People’s need for shelter and other facilities does not determine what actually gets built.  Instead, if more profit can be extracted by building luxury condos than by constructing good basic housing for masses of people, then it is luxury condos that get built.  This is because different blocs of capital must either expand or die, and their expansion depends on the highest possible profit.  This basic law of capital determines what gets produced, how, and for whom.

Should we rescue this?

One in six children on this planet are child laborers.  Many of these children are owned outright as slaves.  Despite laws against child labor, capitalists are driven to maximize profit and to gain competitive advantage over other capitalists by exploiting, and robbing the youth from approximately 250 million children around the world. 

Should we rescue this?

Under global capitalism, third world countries have been incorporated into the global capitalist economy.  Farmers produce food for export based on what’s most profitable.  Crops like corn, sugar, and wheat are now often produced for biofuels in advanced capitalist countries instead of for feeding people.  Yet over a billion people on this planet suffer from hunger.  In Haiti, food prices have risen by over 40 percent.  People eat mudcakes, and dig through garbage dumps looking for food to survive, while mangoes and coffee are mass produced for export.

Should we rescue this?

In every sphere of society—from health care to education to culture to the environment and beyond—the capitalist system acts as a fetter on humanity.  Capital twists and bends these arenas of human concern and endeavor to the rule of profit over all, to the requirement that capital continually expand itself…or die.  As a result people suffer terribly and their lives are stunted in every dimension-—that is, when they are not outright blown away in some brutal war for empire, or snuffed out by some murdering enforcer for this capitalist system.

Should we rescue this?

NO! WE SHOULD GET RID OF IT!

There is tremendous productive power in the technology, resources and knowledge of the people of this planet.  The basis exists to provide a decent life for all right now, and to lay the basis for a common abundance in the future for all of humanity, as part of the all-round transformation of society.  But capitalism can only harness those productive powers if they can be used to expand capital; and labor can only be utilized within relations of exploitation for profit.  Trapped within the confines and requirements of capitalism, people suffer from the kinds of horrors outlined on this page even in “normal times.”  Now with two wars being carried out by U.S. imperialism, and many more raging elsewhere on the planet. . . and with a major economic crisis just beginning to be felt in every corner of the globe.…the monstrosity of this stands out all the more sharply.

But none of this is necessary!  Humanity can embark on the road of eliminating the division into classes, uprooting the oppressive institutions and relations that grow out of and reinforce those divisions, and transforming people’s thinking.  This is the road of communist revolution.  The first step on that road is shattering the rule of capital through revolution.  Such a revolution actually took place in the Soviet Union (Russia and other countries), and in China – and when revolution ruled those countries, the people were able to create amazing new societies that transformed everything, and met the basic needs of the people in a way never before seen. 

This first stage of revolution was defeated by the remaining strength of imperialism, together with the new capitalist forces which arose within the new-born socialist societies.  Today there are no socialist states.  But Bob Avakian, Chairman of the RCP, USA, has developed a new framework  of understanding to blaze the trail for the next stage of revolution.  Avakian has analyzed the lessons of the previous stage of revolution, studying both the achievements and the criticisms, from various quarters, and has developed a new synthesis of communist scientific theory.  He has built on, and carried forward, the contributions of previous revolutionary communist thinkers, and gone further.

WE DON’T NEED TO “RESCUE” THIS CAPITALIST SYSTEM.
WE NEED TO GET RID OF THIS SYSTEM.

WE NEED REVOLUTION!

“The war on drugs has been an utter failure. (W)e need to rethink and decriminalize our (nation’s) marijuana laws.”

-Barack Obama, January 2004 (Watch the video here.)

“I inhaled frequently, that was the point.”

-Barack Obama, November 2006 (Watch the video here.)

Q: “Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?”

A: “President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana.”

-Statement from Change.gov, the official website of President-Elect Obama, December 15, 2008

Okay, count me among those disappointed, but hardly surprised to see that Change.gov — the official website of the incoming Obama administration — answered the above question, which finished first out of over 7,000 public policy questions submitted to the website, in the most curt and dismissive way possible.

That said, as StoptheDrugWar.org’s Scott Morgan writes, Obama’s brevity is, in fact, quite telling.

As frustrating and insulting as it is to witness an important matter brushed casually to the side without explanation, Obama’s answer actually says a lot. It says that he couldn’t think of even one sentence to explain his position. Within the vast framework of totally paranoid anti-pot propaganda, Obama couldn’t find a single argument he wanted to associate himself with. That’s why he simply said “No. Next question.”

All of this highlights the well-known fact that Obama agrees that our marijuana laws are deeply flawed. He’s said so, and has back-pedaled recently for purely political reasons. If Obama’s transition team tried to give an accurate description of his position on marijuana reform it would look like this:

Q: “Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?” S. Man, Denton

A: President-elect Obama will not use his political capital to advance the legalization of marijuana. While he agrees that arresting adults for marijuana possession is a poor use of law enforcement resources, he believes that the issue remains too controversial to do anything about it.

In fact, Obama essentially said as much earlier this year when asked about the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Shoe-throwing journalist Muntather Zaidi told his family he would never apologize to President Bush for hurling his footwear at the American leader, even if he is chopped into pieces, his brother said after visiting him for the first time Sunday.

Muntather has become an unlikely hero to America’s critics for lobbing his shoes at Bush a week ago during the president’s surprise trip to Baghdad. His actions have been praised by religious leaders, ordinary people and governments hostile to the United States and even prompted marriage offers.

Muntather, from the Cairo-based satellite channel Baghdadiya, has been locked away and kept out of the public eye since last Sunday. The Iraqi government announced earlier in the week that Muntather had written to Prime Minister Nouri Maliki requesting forgiveness for attacking Bush. But Muntather’s brother Uday challenged the government’s assertions after the family’s first visit with the shoe-thrower.

” ‘Muntather said that he was forced to apologize to Maliki and he will never, never apologize to Bush even if they cut him into small pieces,’ ” Uday told The Times after his visit with his brother.

Uday said his brother had lost a tooth and his nose had required stitches because of the beatings he had suffered in custody.

“There were multiple bruises all over his body. There were cigarette burns behind his ears. He was beaten with metal rods. His eyes were swollen. They have assigned two medical doctors … to provide him with treatment in order to hide the evidence of torture,” Uday said

A judge investigating the case told the Associated Press on Friday that Muntather showed signs of having been beaten in custody.

According to his brother, Muntather had no regrets for attempting to hit Bush at a joint press conference with Maliki. He said Muntather told him: ” ‘I do not regret what I did. If I went back in time, I would do the same thing.’ ”

Uday said his brother wanted the world to know that he threw the shoe not for money, fame or an ulterior motive and had been ready to die. ” ‘I thought I was going to be shot immediately as I saw the bodyguards with the guns standing there, but I really did not care. I was prepared for anything because I did this for my country,’ ” Uday said his brother told him.

Meeting with Iraqi reporters on Saturday, Maliki criticized Muntather for giving the world a “bad image” of Iraq and harming the reputation of its journalists. Even so, Maliki said he made sure the journalist had a pillow, clean sheets and clothing his first night in captivity. He vowed the courts would decide Muntather’s fate. Before speaking, he listened to Iraqi reporters condemn Muntather’s behavior.

– Caesar Ahmed and Ned Parker in Baghdad

A call for world-wide solidarity actions against state terrorism had come from those occupying the Polytechnic University in Athens, who linked their struggle to that of others around the world, “zero tolerance and repressive terrorism, wage slavery, poverty and social exclusion, exploitation, oppression and social control are not constrained by borders but neither is the struggle for freedom.”

The demonstration in London also remembered the ‘Massacre of 19th December’ 2000, eight years ago, when Turkish troops killed 29 political prisoners and wounded many more. The soldiers went into 20 prisons to end non-violent protests against the transfer to new F-type prisons in which prisoners are kept either in total isolation or in isolated cells housing three prisoners. Many of the prisoners are tortured and these isolated cells have increased the abuses. A further 122 political prisoners died in the hunger strike protest that followed against these prisons.

After an hour the demonstration dispersed quietly. There is a solidarity meeting tomorrow, Sunday 21 Dec, at 3pm at the Refugee Workers Cultural Associaiton , Unit C1, 3-19 Victorian Grove, Stoke Newington, N16, where the guest speaker will be Christos Giovanopoulos of KOE - Communist Organisation of Greece.

A few more pictures from the event shortly on My London Diary,  http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2008/dec.htm

By Tom Eley  

As the economic crisis deepens, its human toll is becoming more evident. A new survey of food charities in the United States has revealed a dramatic increase in hunger. Feeding America, the largest hunger-relief organization in the US, says that a growing number of families face difficulties in securing adequate nutrition. Meanwhile food banks have proven ill-equipped to meet the increased demand caused by layoffs and increased food costs, and many have collapsed or have restricted the allotments of food they make.

In a nationwide survey of 160 local food assistance programs, with operations covering virtually every county in the US, Feeding America found that there has been a 30 percent increase in requests for emergency food assistance, and that every food bank has seen an increase in demand for food relief. An opinion poll commissioned by the organization and released simultaneously found that a growing number of low-income families lack sufficient nutrition.

In a chilling statement on social conditions in the US, 72 percent of surveyed food charities said that they are unable to meet the current demands of local communities for assistance. In most cases, the charities have responded by offering smaller distributions to the hungry, and some have been forced to close down.

This is taking place in every region of the country. To cite a few examples, the Food Bank of New York City reported that organizations under its direction “have regularly reported over the past year that their shelves are bare and that they have had to turn people away due to their lack of food.” The Cleveland Foodbank reported that the crisis “is moving at a pace so fast that our staff cannot catch a breath.” The Food Bank of Corpus Christi, Texas, said that “our agencies are seeing such a drastic increase in new clients that they are having a hard time getting the money to acquire the food we need,” while “other agencies are burning out and we are seeing a number of agencies closing their doors.” Second Harvest Food Bank of Northeast Tennessee reported that its agencies have asked that it not refer new clients “because they are running out of food.”

In its survey of households, Feeding America found that nearly two thirds of low-income households—defined as having an income at less than 200 percent of the official poverty level—said that within the past year “their food didn’t last and they could not afford to buy more.” Forty percent “ate less than they felt they should,” and 36 percent “cut the size of meals or skipped meals because there wasn’t enough money for food.” A large majority of low-income respondents, 70 percent, said that they are reducing food spending, while 62 percent said they make multiple shopping trips for food “because they didn’t have enough money to buy everything at one time.” In New York City, in 2008, nearly 40 percent of all households said that they had faced difficulties in procuring sufficient food for their families, a sharp increase over figures from 2007.

Hunger is affecting ever-wider sections of the working class, including two-parent households and the gainfully employed. The survey of food banks found user increases of 99.4 percent among “first-time” users, 74 percent among unemployed workers, 59 percent of those with jobs, and 48 percent among families with children seeking assistance.

“When you hear someone say, ‘I never thought that I would have to come to the pantry to get food,’ or to have someone say, ‘I used to donate to the pantry and now I am using it,’ that’s when you realize how tough things are,” a representative of the Community Food Banks of South Dakota said.

A food charity in Bloomington, Indiana, reported that a food bank in what it called “a higher income per capita” area saw an increase from 60 visits per month last year to 700 this year. A food bank in Long Island, New York, said that it has witnessed “increased need among middle class people making between $40,000-$70,000, who are recently unemployed, having health problems, having difficulties managing mortgage payments, and going to pantries and soup kitchens for emergency food assistance.” A survey of New York City households found that even among the college-educated, 36 percent faced hardship in 2008 in buying needed food, an increase from 11 percent in 2003. A food assistance program in California reported that it is “seeing people coming to us who have never been a part of our system and who never thought that they would need food assistance.”

“We are in a national crisis,” said Vicki Escarra, the president and CEO of Feeding America. “We have some food banks reporting as high as a 65 percent increase in need. There are record numbers of new men, women and children, who never thought they would need food assistance.”

Financial hardship forces many families to choose among necessities such as food, health care, and home heating. The survey of households revealed that 40 percent of low-income families had, in the past year, been forced to choose between eating and paying for utilities.

The economic crisis is at the root of the growth in hunger. Upwards of 90 percent of food banks attribute the increase in hunger to rising food prices and unemployment. Sixty percent also cite fuel costs, and 52 percent listed the inadequacy of state food stamp programs as a cause.

A press release by Feeding America calls on Congress “to pass economic recovery legislation that will offer desperately needed relief to both low-income Americans and the nation’s food banks, as the recent surge in unemployment has pushed millions to the brink of hunger.”

Estimates on the size of the “economic stimulus” package that President-elect Barack Obama will put in place have ranged from $400 billion to $900 billion. Democrats have hedged their bets, moreover, by asserting that its passage will depend upon minority Republican support. But whatever its final size and content, Obama’s “stimulus” will prove woefully inadequate in the face of the deepest social crisis since the Great Depression. The sums being discussed represent a small fraction of the more than $8 trillion that has already been doled out to the largest financial institutions.

Meanwhile, in the 2009 Federal Budget, only $62 billion has been appropriated for all food assistance programs, including food stamps and school lunches, which for many children provide the only substantial meal of the day.

More than 9 percent of all US households now rely on food stamps, the Supplemental Food Assistance Program, to help meet dietary needs. This is a sharp increase from 2001, when 6 percent used food stamps. But indications are that this number will rise sharply. A number of states, including Oregon and Washington in the Pacific Northwest, have seen record requests for food assistance. Food stamps function as vouchers that can be redeemed at grocery stores. Generally, they may be exchanged only for the cheapest items in stock, and only for staples such as milk, meat, and bread.

The program will not meet the level of hunger provoked by the crisis. In the Feeding America survey of households, one third of food stamp recipients said “their benefits only lasted for two weeks or less.” Bureaucratic hurdles prevent a large number of eligible families from receiving aid. Undocumented immigrants, as well as immigrants who have been in the country legally for less than five years, are not eligible. Assistance is pegged to 130 percent of the official poverty level, meaning that large numbers of the so-called “working poor” are ineligible, including many of those surveyed by Feeding America.

Though they paint a grim portrait, the Feeding America surveys on hunger offer only a glimpse of the level of social misery to come. Significantly, the surveys were conducted at the end of November. Since then, layoffs have mounted precipitously.

Commondreams 

Dick Cheney has publicly confessed to ordering war crimes. Asked about waterboarding in an ABC News interview, Cheney replied, “I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared.” He also said he still believes waterboarding was an appropriate method to use on terrorism suspects. CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed that the agency waterboarded three Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003.

U.S. courts have long held that waterboarding, where water is poured into someone’s nose and mouth until he nearly drowns, constitutes torture. Our federal War Crimes Act defines torture as a war crime punishable by life imprisonment or even the death penalty if the victim dies.

Under the doctrine of command responsibility, enshrined in U.S. law, commanders all the way up the chain of command to the commander-in-chief can be held liable for war crimes if they knew or should have known their subordinates would commit them and they did nothing to stop or prevent it.

Why is Cheney so sanguine about admitting he is a war criminal? Because he’s confident that either President Bush will preemptively pardon him or President-elect Obama won’t prosecute him.

Both of those courses of action would be illegal.

First, a president cannot immunize himself or his subordinates for committing crimes that he himself authorized. On February 7, 2002, Bush signed a memo erroneously stating that the Geneva Conventions, which require humane treatment, did not apply to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But the Supreme Court made clear that Geneva protects all prisoners. Bush also admitted that he approved of high level meetings where waterboarding was authorized by Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey says there’s no need for Bush to issue blanket pardons since there is no evidence that anyone developed the policies “for any reason other than to protect the security in the country and in the belief that he or she was doing something lawful.” But noble motives are not defenses to the commission of crimes.

Lt. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, said, “There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Second, the Constitution requires President Obama to faithfully execute the laws. That means prosecuting lawbreakers. When the United States ratified the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, thereby making them part of U.S. law, we agreed to prosecute those who violate their prohibitions.

The bipartisan December 11 report of the Senate Armed Services Committee concluded that “senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”

Lawyers who wrote the memos that purported to immunize government officials from war crimes liability include John Yoo, Jay Bybee, William Haynes, David Addington and Alberto Gonzales. There is precedent in our law for holding lawyers criminally liable for participating in a common plan to violate the law.

Committee chairman Senator Carl Levin told Rachel Maddow that you cannot legalize what’s illegal by having a lawyer write an opinion.

The committee’s report also found that “Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantánamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there.” Those techniques migrated to Iraq and Afghanistan, where prisoners in U.S. custody were also tortured.

Pardons or failures to prosecute the officials who planned and authorized torture would also be immoral. Former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that “there are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq - as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat - are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.”

During the campaign, Obama promised to promptly review actions by Bush officials to determine whether “genuine crimes” were committed. He said, “If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” but “I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of the Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.”

Two Obama advisors 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 that provoked worldwide outrage.”

When he takes office, Obama should order his new attorney general to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate and prosecute those who ordered and authorized the commission of war crimes.

Obama has promised to bring real change. This must be legal and moral change, where those at the highest levels of government are held accountable for their heinous crimes. The new president should move swiftly to set an important precedent that you can’t authorize war crimes and get away with it.

By Robert Fisk

Editor’s note: This article was originally printed in The Independent.

A nit-picker this week. And given the fact that we’re all remembering human rights, the Palestinians come to mind since they have precious few of them, and the Israelis because they have the luxury of a lot of them.

And Lord Blair, since he’ll be communing with God next week, might also reflect that he still—to his shame—hasn’t visited Gaza. But the nit-picking has got to be our old friend United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. This, you’ll recall, was supposed to be the resolution that would guide all future peace efforts in the Middle East; Oslo was supposed to have been founded on it and all sorts of other processes and summits and road maps.

It was passed in November 1967, after Israel had occupied Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Sinai and Golan, and it emphasises “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and calls for “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”.

Readers who know the problem here will be joined by those who will immediately pick it up. The Israelis say that they are not required to withdraw from all the territories—because the word “all” is missing and since the definite article “the” is missing before the word “territories”, its up to Israel to decide which bits of the occupied territories it gives up and which bits it keeps.

Hence Israel can say it gave up Sinai in accordance with 242 but is going to keep East Jerusalem and much of the West Bank for its settlers. Golan depends on negotiations with Syria. And Gaza? Well, 242 doesn’t say anything about imprisoning one and a half million civilians because they voted for the wrong people. No one in 1967 dreamed that the Israeli-Arab conflict would still be in ferocious progress 41 years later. And as an Independent reader pointed out a couple of years ago, the Security Council clearly never intended the absence of a definite article to give Israel an excuse to stay in the West Bank. Alas, our reader was wrong.

I’ve been going back through my files on 242 and discovered a most elucidating paper by John McHugo, who was a visiting fellow at the Scottish Centre for International Law at Edinburgh University. He points out that pro-Israeli lawyers have been saying for some years that “Resolution 242 unanimously called for withdrawal from ‘territories’ rather than withdrawal from ‘all the territories’. Its choice of words was deliberate … they signify that withdrawal is required from some but not all the territories”.

McHugo is, so far as I know, the only man to re-examine the actual UN debates on 242 and they make very unhappy reading. The French and Spanish versions of the text actually use the definite article. But the Brits—apparently following a bit of strong-arm tactics from the Americans—did not use “the”. Lord Caradon, our man at the UN, insisted on putting in the phrase about the “inadmissability of the acquisition of territory by war” in order to stop the Israelis claiming that they could cherry-pick which lands to return and which to hand on to. Britain accepted Jordan’s rule over the West Bank—the PLO were still shunned as super-terrorists at the time—but it did no good. Abba Eban, Israel’s man on the East River, did his best to persuade Caradon to delete both “the” and the bit about the inadmissability of territory through war. He won the first battle, but not the second.

That great American statesman George Ball was to recount how, when the Arabs negotiated over 242 in early November of 1967—at the Waldorf Astoria (these guys knew how to pick the swankiest hotels for political betrayal)—the US ambassador to the UN, Arthur Goldberg, told King Hussein that America “could not guarantee that everything would be returned by Israel”. The Arabs distrusted Goldberg because he was known to be pro-Zionist, but Hussein was much comforted when US Secretary of State Dean Rusk assured him in Washington that the US “did not approve of Israeli retention of the West Bank”. Hussein was further encouraged when he met President Johnson who told him that Israeli withdrawal might take place in “six months”. Goldberg further boosted his confidence. “Don’t worry. They’re on board,” he said of the Israelis. Ho ho.

It’s intriguing to note that several other nations at the UN were troubled by the absence of “the”. The Indian delegate, for example, pointed out that the resolution referred to “all the territories—I repeat, all the territories—occupied by Israel … ” while the Soviet Union (which knew all about occupying other people’s countries) stated that “we understand the decision to mean the withdrawal of Israeli forces from all, and we repeat, all territories belonging to Arab states and seized by Israel … ”. President Johnson rebuffed the Soviets and bluntly refused to put the word “all” in the resolution. Bulgaria, not surprisingly, said much the same as the Soviets. Brazil expressed reservations—rightly so—about “the clarity of the wording”. The Argentinians “would have preferred a clearer text”. In other words, the future tragedy was spotted at the time. But we did nothing. The Americans had stitched it up and the Brits went along with it. The Arabs were not happy but foolishly—and typically—relied on Caradon’s assurances that “all” the territories was what 242 meant, even if it didn’t say so. Israel still fought hard to get rid of the “inadmissability” bit, even when it had got “the” out.

Ye gods! Talk about sowing the seeds of future catastrophe. Well, Colin Powell, when he was George W Bush’s secretary of state, gutlessly told US diplomats to call the West Bank “disputed” rather than “occupied”—which suited the Israelis just fine although, as McHugo pointed out, the Israelis might like to consider what would happen if the Arabs talked about those bits of Israel which were not included in the original UN partition plan as “disputed” as well. Besides, George W’s infamous letter to Ariel Sharon, saying he could, in effect, keep large bits of the West Bank, set the seal on Johnson’s deception.

McHugo mischievously adds that a mandatory warning in a city that says “dogs must be kept on the lead near ponds in the park” clearly means that “all” dogs and “all” ponds are intended. These days, of course, we use walls to keep dogs out. Palestinians, too.

By Coleen Rowley and Ray McGovern

“First, let’s kill all the lawyers” may have made sense in that Shakespearian scene, but there is a far simpler solution to the legal ambiguities regarding what to do now about the torture approved by President George W. Bush. We suggest this variant: First, let’s have the lawyers review their notes from Criminal Justice 101.

The professor whom Coleen Rowley had for that course at the University of Iowa was the consummate curmudgeon. He kept repeating himself. It is now clear why. The old fellow hammered home the basic purposes of the criminal justice system and the various kinds and degrees of criminal intent. For Rowley, 24 years as a FBI special agent and attorney helped make it all real.

Eight years of the Bush/Cheney administration have served to make the matter of criminal intent the first essay question on the final exam for Criminal Justice 101, so to speak. But obfuscation (much of it deliberate) reigns; worst of all, it impedes the important task of seeking accountability for those responsible for torture.

Criminal intent comes in essentially three kinds: No one needs much help understanding the “deliberate-premeditated-cold blooded” first-degree intent, because that’s the stuff of the movies–the perfect murder scheme or elaborate plot to pull off the heist of the century. “Second-degree intent” is also easy to grasp. It is the usual label for what prompts people to commit unplanned crimes in the heat of passion, for example.

It was to that third type of guilty intent—”recklessness”—that the old law professor devoted most emphasis, using his favorite “Russian Roulette” hypothetical to distinguish it from the first two types and from mere negligence. His words still ring: “One cannot simply put a gun on a table knowing there is a bullet in the cylinder, spin the cylinder, point it at a person, pull the trigger and then say (when it goes off), ‘It’s not my fault, because I was hoping it would spin to one of the empty chambers.’”

The First and Third Degrees

The evidence on the Bush administration’s torture decisions, which is becoming more abundant and damning as the weeks go by, rules out second-degree intent; i. e., unplanned crimes in the heat of passion. These decisions were much more deliberate. As the saying goes, after 9/11 “everything changed.” With virtually no opposition, the president was allowed to declare the country in a “war on terror” and consider himself above the law.

Indeed, after his address to the nation on the very evening of 9/11, Bush assembled his top aides in the White House bunker and set a lawless path from the start. One of the aides present, Richard Clarke, has written in his memoir, Against All Enemies, that the president insisted: “[W]e are at war…Nothing else matters…Any barriers in your way, they’re gone…I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.”

A bipartisan report released on Dec. 15, Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry Into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody, highlights in its “First Conclusion” the fact that on Feb. 7, 2002 the president issued a written determination that the Geneva protections for POWs did not apply to al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees; and that following that determination, techniques like water boarding were authorized for use in interrogation. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2006 that such detainees could not be exempted from the protections of Geneva, despite efforts to “redefine the law to create the appearance of legality” for aggressive techniques, as the recent Senate report puts it.

Sounds Premeditated, No?

Administration apologists, from Rush Limbaugh to Attorney General Michael Mukasey claim that none of those who approved or conducted torture had guilty intent, but were only trying to protect national security. (That’s right—the same Mukasey who professes not to know whether water boarding is torture.)

Mukasey’s sophistry calls to mind the disingenuous argument of other administration lawyers that one could apply harsh interrogation techniques to a detainee, as long as your intent is not to inflict pain but rather to obtain information. Not to mention the pithy hint provided by a CIA attorney: “If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.”

Add to this mix the remarkable guidance of Justice Department counsel, Jay Bybee (now a federal judge), quoted in the Senate report:

“Violent acts aren’t necessarily torture; if you do torture, you probably have a defense; and even if you don’t have a defense, the torture law doesn’t apply if you act under the color of presidential authority.”

Clearly, the so-called “rotten apples” sat atop the proverbial barrel, as the Senate report demonstrates time and time again. If you’d like still more proof of premeditation and you missed Vice President Dick Cheney Monday on ABC TV bragging about his role in facilitating water boarding, please read the transcript.

Cheney’s was the familiar above-the-law attitude, a reprise on his contemptuous “So?”—in this case meaning, “So what are you going to do about it?” With Cheney admitting to his key role in water boarding, Mukasey is no doubt relieved that during his confirmation hearing he obeyed White House instructions to stonewall all attempts to get him to concede what the whole world knows—that water boarding is torture.

Indeed, the law is not in question. Water boarding was wrong during the Spanish Inquisition and during the Spanish-American war in the Philippines. It was illegal during WW-II. Americans as well as Japanese have been convicted and severely punished for it.

Recklessness

For those, who despite the above prefer to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt regarding first-degree intent, should know that the third type of guilty intent, recklessness, also applies—in spades.

For example, Cheney’s lawyer, David Addington, and then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales dissed the hapless former Gen. Colin Powell, who as secretary of state wrote to the White House in January 2002:

“A determination that Geneva does not apply could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries.”

A pity Powell did not have the courage of his convictions, for he now has reason to be concerned about an eventual conviction of a different kind. Beneath the circumlocution quoted above is his clear appreciation that, if he did not fight against what was clearly in the cards, torture was likely to sully the Army and the nation to both of which he owed so much.

“Could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries,” writes Powell. Could introduce, say, reckless Russian roulette. In his interview with ABC, Cheney put the old law professor’s hypothetical smoking gun right out there on the table.

Deterrence

A widespread lack of understanding regarding the purposes served by the criminal justice system—and the penal system—is a major obstacle to even entertaining the thought of prosecuting administration officials for torture. All too many pundits are claiming that the country should simply move on and just close the book on this painful chapter—and that to do otherwise would simply be to try to extract vengeance.

But it is not about vengeance. The key goal here is deterrence—the final and most important goal of our criminal justice and penal systems in such circumstances.

At this point, the emphasis needs to be on establishing the facts—not punishment. Priority must be given to determining how our country ended up torturing people. Just as Cheney has termed water boarding a “no brainer,” it is equally a “no brainer” that we must focus now on his self-admitted role, as well as the revelations in the Senate report and other evidence that has come to light. An independent prosecutor like Patrick Fitzgerald would not need a lot of time to establish the facts.

Our country’s values and the immorality of torture are important considerations. And the law, of course, is also key—or should be. Seldom have we seen it more cynically twisted and abused. But here is something else that must be thrust into public consciousness—the reality that, TV hero Jack Bauer’s mythical exploits aside, torture never can be counted upon to yield reliable information.

THAT is the quintessential “no brainer.” For, as the head of U.S. Army intelligence, Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, asserted on September 6, 2006: “No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that.”

Stop Torture Now

Let us have no backsliding. Barack Obama must order an abrupt halt to torture, as he has promised—and preferably on January 20, right after he is sworn in as president. A timely report from an independent prosecutor would surely be helpful in buttressing and justifying that order.

Before the Senate Armed Services Committee’s released a summary of its report on Dec. 11, and before Cheney threw down the gauntlet four days later, what seemed to make the most sense was the more gradual approach proposed by the insightful lawyer/writer, Scott Horton (see December issue of Harper’s). Horton calls for the appointment of a commission peopled by men and women of unimpeachable integrity, in order to “provide a comprehensive narrative, setting out in detail how U.S. torture policy came to be formed and identifying the key actors and the decisions they made.”

An excellent approach. And this, of course, is where the penal factors and deterrence would come very much to the fore.

It is important to point out that the independent prosecutor and the commission approaches are in no way mutually exclusive. If both can be done expeditiously, both should be approved. What Horton may not have anticipated is that, in releasing the shatteringly candid results of their Senate committee’s two-year investigation, Senators Carl Levin and John McCain have named names, jump-starting—and hopefully shortening—deeper investigation.

It may be a hopeful sign of the times that on Dec. 18, even the editors of the New York Times lifted their heads out of the sand long enough to endorse the importance of doing what is necessary to deter crimes like torture:

“Unless the nation and its leaders know precisely what went wrong in the last seven years, it will be impossible to fix it and make sure those terrible mistakes are not repeated.”

—————————————–

Coleen Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. She came to national attention in June 2002, when she testified before Congress about serious lapses before 9/11 that helped account for the failure to prevent the attacks. She now writes and speaks on ethical decision-making and on balancing civil liberties with the need for effective investigation.

Ray McGovern, a former Army infantry/intelligence officer, and then a CIA analyst for 27 years, now works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. Both authors are members of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).