Comments on: Are Bradbury’s Two 2006 OLC Opinions Still Active?

By: timbo

timbo — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:19:55 +0000

And why is something that is ‘permitted’ in domestic prisons automatically legal? Permitting something and having it be legal are two different animals entirely.

By: bobschacht

bobschacht — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:57:38 +0000

Yes.

Bob from HI in AZ

By: bobschacht

bobschacht — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:55:15 +0000

One of my M.D.s once commented, after seeing that I had a Ph.D., something to the effect that “Oh, you’re a real doctor!” I guess he didn’t have that much respect for his own degree.

Bob from HI in AZ

By: bobschacht

bobschacht — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:52:56 +0000

I got a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin.
(No,no,no– B.S. = Bachelor of Science.)

Bob from HI in AZ

By: emptywheel

emptywheel — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:35:56 +0000

I think there were actually TWO people subjected to extreme sleep deprivation in 2007: one in August, and one in November.

And yes, they say specifically in a footnote that information as to the whereabouts of OBL or Zawahiri would count.

By: emptywheel

emptywheel — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:33:51 +0000

Yes.

By: emptywheel

emptywheel — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:32:28 +0000

Yes, precisely my point, though made much better than I’m apparently making it.

The same techniques don’t magically become security measures by flourish of Steven Bradbury’s pen. And that–as opposed to some but not all of the techniques–is my complaint.

By: MadDog

MadDog — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:51:54 +0000

I guess this is the answer to my question:

Memos: CIA pushed limits on sleep deprivation

A year after the Bush administration abandoned its harshest interrogation methods, CIA operatives used severe sleep deprivation tactics against a terror detainee in late 2007, keeping him awake for six straight days with permission from government lawyers.

Interrogators kept the unidentified detainee awake by chaining him to the walls and floor of a cell, according to government officials and memos issued with an internal CIA report. The Obama administration released the internal report this week.

Though the detainee’s name and critical details are blacked out in the memos, there is only one detainee known to have been in CIA custody at that time: Mohammed Rahim al-Afghani, an alleged al-Qaida operator and translator for Osama bin Laden…

And as I said then, perhaps this was the reason:

…Remember, and I can’t find it right now, but either in one of the latest documents dumped or in a recent press article or in recent testimony, there was a statement from a CIA or DOJ heavyweight (Hayden, Panetta, Mukasey, or even Holder?), that one of the few remaining justifications for again using some of the now banned enhanced interrogation/torture techniques was if the government thought the prisoner had information on the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden.

Keep that in mind as you re-read the above quote.

By: skdadl

skdadl — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:48:44 +0000

The Toronto Paintball 18 13 12 11 is a very close parallel to the Hanau/Sauerland case. There were agents provocateurs, one of them, the interestingly talky one, involved enough that you had to wonder. Most of the kids involved had no idea what their training in the woods, playing paintball, was all about. The Mounties switched the fertilizer-based explosives at time of sale. And then one good propaganda day, every police force available, federal, provincial, municipal, swooped in and arrested the whole bunch, major media in hyperventilating attendance.

That was June 2006. The trials since have become embarrassing. Perhaps two or three of the remaining defendants actually were politically radicalized and intended … something, but it’s very hard to tell any longer. As a friend once said of another propaganda exercise by our government, the authorities in this case took a small half-truth and blew it up until it became a great big lie.

By: skdadl

skdadl — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:25:29 +0000

Or an ABD. (Do Americans use the term?)