02.03.14
Gemini version available ♊︎
Posted in Law at 4:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: News about aggressive approaches to domination
Torture Report
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The Senate Intelligence Committee voted to approve the 6,000-page report, which the panel’s Democratic chairwoman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, said, “uncovers startling details about the CIA detention and interrogation program,” on December 13, 2012. The panel provided copies of the document to the White House, Department of State, CIA and Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) for their review and comment.
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Last night, John Rizzo told an audience at Fordham Law School that he supports the public release of a Senate report on CIA interrogation and detention after 9/11. Rizzo, acting CIA general counsel 2001-2002 and 2004-2009, and one of the Bush Administration legal officials who approved many of the torture techniques used in interrogations of terror suspects, said adamantly, “I would like to see it released.”
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The 6,300-page Senate report on CIA “enhanced interrogations” remains officially classified, but that hasn’t stopped CIA officials from repeatedly and loudly condemning the report publicly, insisting it is filled with unspecified errors.
Outsourcing Torture
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At the beginning of the US war on terror, and even to this day, the US literally kidnapped “suspects” and took them to countries where the could torture and even kill suspects. This practice of kidnapping and usually flying suspects around the world and then torturing or killing them in countries with poor human rights records or brutal regimes happened so much that the practice soon became known to all and the name for it “extraordinary rendition” became a household word.
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In the long search for accountability for the torturers of the Bush administration, which has largely been shut down by President Obama, lawyers and human rights activists have either had to try shaming the US through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or have had to focus on other countries, particularly those that hosted secret CIA torture prisons, or had explicit involvement in extraordinary rendition.
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The Washington Post story was both scary and a bit comical: Polish intelligence received $15 million from the CIA to operate secret prisons — or “black sites” — and the money was supposedly delivered in two cardboard boxes. Hmmm.
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A top security adviser to President Obama has said that the allegations of a CIA prison in Poland are a “matter for the Polish government and Polish justice”. – See more at: http://www.thenews.pl/1/10/Artykul/160420,CIA-prison-in-Poland-No-comment-says-White-House#sthash.BFlKwUXd.dpuf
Brennan
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Once again, a national-security official is asked a question with just one defensible answer. And he doesn’t give it.
Assassination
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At the moment only the US, the UK and Israel are using armed drones – but many others are building them – because they bring new capabilities.
Take, as an example, this story I heard on a trip to Pakistan last year.
An Arab militant used to sleep in the same room as his wife and children in one of Pakistan’s tribal areas.
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There were no reported drone strikes in Pakistan in January. This is the first calendar month without a drone strike in more than two years.
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Top-secret documentation collected by Pakistani field officers gives detailed information on 330 US drone strikes that have occurred in Pakistan since 2006. The CIA-run program is estimated to have killed 2,371 people.
From solitary individuals riding on horseback to mountain hideouts crammed with people, the CIA drone program has had no shortage of targets in the Islamic Republic, according to newly released information obtained by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ).
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More than 2,200 people have been killed by U.S. drones operating in Pakistan since 2006, according to a report obtained by the U.K.-based group The Bureau for Investigative Journalism.
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A secret Pakistani government document contradicts several of the US’s rare public statements on the CIA’s drone strikes in Pakistan.
The document outlines over 300 drone strikes dating between 2006 and September 2013. It is compiled by local officials using a network of on-the-ground agents and informants reporting to the FATA Secretariat, the tribal administration.
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We will not resist or evade arrest and if prosecuted, we will use the judicial process to continue our anti-drone campaign. Where possible we will put the Pentagon’s and CIA’s use of hunter/killer drones itself on trial.
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Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, more commonly known as drones, have been in use for years but have recently become a topic of controversy because of their increased use by the Obama administration. The U.S. military uses drones to do surveillance in hostile areas and to conduct missile strikes on military targets. Drones are praised for being precise in their strikes, which arguably reduces civilian casualties. Additionally, since no one is in the drones, they keep soldiers out of the line of fire.
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