The WH knew at least by 2002 that it was holding innocent people at GITMO in violation of Article 147 of the GCs (and since most of them didn’t come from Afghanistan the failed state crap doesn’t work on them) and the WH proceeded for a period of now on 7 years, through two administrations and with Congress complicitly and compliantly passing both the DTA and MCA, to hold those innocent people bc it feared the war crimes fallout. And even more shockingly, it refused to even change their conditions of detention after having such information given to it, so that it they were all subject to ongoing Executive and DOJ authorized abuse, and their families tortured by having disappeared family members for years.

That’s one of the most important docs for anyone to get out – the one telling the WH they were detaining innocent people in abuse at GITMO. Bc it is subsequent to that info that people like Jack Goldsmith and now Barack Obama have touted continuing to keep those people in abuse as a long term solution.

…’Cause wasn’t the whole purpose of the torture to draw out confessions about direct links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda…?

October 11, 2002 – a date in history.

On the “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002,” the House of Representatives adopted the resolution on October 10, 2002, by a vote of 296-133 and the Senate adopted the resolution on October 11, 2002, by a vote of 77-23.

From torture timeline
October 2002: Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri captured
October 11, 2002: Date of photograph of Abu Zubaydah

The timing implies that al-Nashiri implicated Iraq in some way and someone wanted collaborative information before they would believe al-Nashiri, so Abu Zubaydah was tortured. Whichever excuse for invasion Congress wasn’t buying at the time is probably the information wanted.

OT

Did you watch this special by Brian Williams. Some interesting stuff there. The West Wing episode is really interesting. Brian slips in some observations worth hearing from the MSM.

And this from NPR yesterday is quite the listen regarding Behavioral Psychology.

Enjoy connecting the dots between the two news items.

I miss Chretien for his incredible quips.

Have you noticed, Petro, the elaborate courtesies of the U.S. Senate especially? Man, are those people polite to one another. We should show them Question Period some time. *wink*

Panetta tries to claim that this is all still on the Q T bc it is one thing to talk about torturing someone in a memo, but it is “operational” to show a picture of what was authorized happening, and that’s nonsense. So I’d think that it showed something that wasn’t authorized.

I guess one piece of info that wouldn’t be classified and Panetta should have to ante up would be whether or not the pic is one that Bradbury had access to when he drafted the memos

(my bold)

Great observation. That one piece of info needs to be known.

One of the problems of their history that many European writers were chewing on through the C17-C18 was the revenge cycle, macro and micro. As people were slowly sifting out the basic principles and structures necessary to building democracies and also to establishing some kind of international stability and peace, the revenge cycles came in for special attention, and just about everyone who was anyone recognized that justice systems, nationally and internationally, had to be structured to stop them.

I guess that Rivkin and his ilk have chosen to be post-Enlightenment. Or they don’t understand what they are returning us all to.

I doubt that there are any Brits or Canadians in the CIA photos, but there sure are a lot of UK and Canadian citizens who want to know if our governments have been complicit in any of the dirty games (and we know that they have). When our governments talk about the harm that would be done to international relations by coming clean about these horrors, they mean the damage that would be done to relations among national elites. They don’t mean us. The people have an interest in knowing the worst — that’s what our governments are scared of.