Download | play Download | play (Warning-Disturbing images. NSFW)

Video courtesy Amnesty International.

A man using the pseudonym Matthew Alexander has written a truly remarkable op-ed for the Washington Post discussing effective interrogation of enemy combatants -- which most decidedly does not include torture:

I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology -- one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information. I personally conducted more than 300 interrogations, and I supervised more than 1,000. The methods my team used are not classified (they're listed in the unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of "ruses and trickery"). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi.

Over the course of this renaissance in interrogation tactics, our attitudes changed. We no longer saw our prisoners as the stereotypical al-Qaeda evildoers we had been repeatedly briefed to expect; we saw them as Sunni Iraqis, often family men protecting themselves from Shiite militias and trying to ensure that their fellow Sunnis would still have some access to wealth and power in the new Iraq. Most surprisingly, they turned out to despise al-Qaeda in Iraq as much as they despised us, but Zarqawi and his thugs were willing to provide them with arms and money. I pointed this out to Gen. George Casey, the former top U.S. commander in Iraq, when he visited my prison in the summer of 2006. He did not respond.

Perhaps he should have. It turns out that my team was right to think that many disgruntled Sunnis could be peeled away from Zarqawi. A year later, Gen. David Petraeus helped boost the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces, cutting violence in the country dramatically.

Our new interrogation methods led to one of the war's biggest breakthroughs: We convinced one of Zarqawi's associates to give up the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader's location. On June 8, 2006, U.S. warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs on a house where Zarqawi was meeting with other insurgent leaders.

If the moral argument cannot persuade the defenders of torture, then perhaps the practical one will. "Alexander" has written a book on the subject that I'm ordering today.

Bill O'Reilly started off his TPM segment by being angered that Obama wants to close Guantanamo Bay and not use torture. "Where will he put those Gitmo guys." He feels the ACLU will sue him if they come to the US. BillO then asks what exactly is torture.

O'Reilly: Keeping a suspect awake, loud music, bad food? Will President Obama eliminate all stressful interrogation methods? If so, that will end most of the information flow from captured terrorists. Most of these guys are hard cases. They don't give up information easily.

Notice he never mentioned waterboarding at all and that's his favorite technique. I think the military knows how to get information without torturing detainees. I don't seem to remember BillO or his buddy Dick Morris bringing up Gitmo or McCain's stance on torture when they cheer-leaded for him during the general election. Nope. They were more interested in Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, but I do know that Bill is just looking out for the folks.

Here's McCain on Gitmo via his own 60 Minutes interview on CBS:

PELLEY: Would you close Guantanamo Bay?

MCCAIN: Yes. I would close Guantanamo Bay. And I would move those prisoners to Fort Leavenworth. And I would proceed with the tribunals.

PELLEY: Why? What's wrong with the way it was handled?

MCCAIN: Guantanamo Bay has become an image throughout the world which has hurt our reputation. Whether we deserve it or not, the reality is Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib have harmed our reputation in the world, thereby harming our ability to win the psychological part of the war against radical Islamic extremism.

And in the same interview, even though McCain did vote that the CIA could use waterboarding, he talks about being against the use of torture.

PELLEY: There have been a lot of semantics over the last few years about what is torture, what isn't torture, whether American tortures prisoners.

MCCAIN: Yeah.

PELLEY: What would you bring to that as President?

MCCAIN: I would never allow any technique which would not be publicly known to be used. We are better than our enemies. We are morally superior. That's why we will win this struggle. And I am confident that we will

.
Saddle up people. BillO and FOX News have "Only Just begun"

Jon Stewart reports on the recent SCOTUS decision granting Gitmo detainees the right to contest their imprisonment in federal court, and in the process mocks all the outraged right-wing nut jobs. Bill Kristol gets it especially rough, considering he appears to have recently changed his opinion on due process.

Download | play Download | play

Doocy: "So with the recent Supreme Court decision saying that detainees down at Gitmo can wind up with habeas corpus and get legal rights and stuff like that"

Stewart: Legal rights and stuff. It's actually all been explained in Thomas Paine's 'A Treatise on the Rights of Man...and Sh*t'"

It's crazy to stop and think about how far we've come in just eight short years. It is now within "mainstream" right-wing discourse to condemn the Supreme Court for ruling that the President can't lock people up for life without a chance for them to prove their innocence. Is this even America anymore? Is there literally anything more un-American?

Digg It!

During an interview with Sky News, President Bush accused British journalist Adam Boulton of "slander[ing] America" when he noted that, despite the President's lofty rhetoric of spreading freedom, Guantanamo Bay and rendition are really "the complete opposite of freedom."

Download | play Download | play

BOULTON: And yet there are those who would say, look, let's take Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and rendition and all those things, and to them that is the, you know, the complete opposite of freedom.

THE PRESIDENT: Of course if you want to slander America, you can look at it one way. But you go down -- what you need to do -- I think I suggested you do this at a press conference -- if you go down to Guantanamo and take a look at how these prisoners are treated -- and they're working it through our court systems. We are a land of law.

The standard response whenever one criticizes American policies, of course, is to proclaim that that person is an anti-American slanderer. The irony, though, is that the policies this President has pursued over the past eight years could not be more "anti-American" in the classical sense. You know, things like rule of law and respect for human rights.

But wait, there's more:

BOULTON: But the Supreme Court have just said that -- you know, ruled against what you've been doing down there.

THE PRESIDENT: But the district court didn't. And the appellate court didn't.

BOULTON: The Supreme Court is supreme, isn't it?

You see, in Bush's America, the only courts that count are the ones he controls and/or the ones who rule in his favor. Never mind the fact that, as Boulton points out, the Supreme Court is called the Supreme Court for a reason.

This man -- and the corrupt movement that sustained him for so long -- truly sicken me. January can't come soon enough.

WaPo's Dan Froomkin has more on what he calls "Bush's Senioritis" and "contempt for those who question him or doubt his accomplishments."

Full, infuriating transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »