Today's Stories

April 17-20, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Thin Ice From Here to the Horizon

April 16, 2009

Mike Whitney
A Bulletin From the Captain of the Titantic

Russell Mokhiber
The Top 10 Enemies of Single-Payer

Ronald Teska
From Iraq to Appalachia

Gareth Porter
Predator Blowback

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Thinking Like an Afghan

Benjamin Dangl
Latin America Changes

Kevin Pina
Haiti: Obama's First Foreign Policy Disaster?

Robert Bryce
Another Ethanol Producer Goes Bust

George Wuerthner
See the Forest: the Value of Dead Trees

Paul Garon, David Roediger and Kate Khatib The Surreal Life of Franklin Rosemont

Website of the Day
Socialism and the Facebook Generation

April 15, 2009

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Solving Palestine While Israel Destroys It

Ray McGovern
W, the Torture Decider

Robert Sandels
Is There a Latin American Policy?

Heather Williams /
Paul Baker
Carbon Cap and Trade: How Wall Street will Game the Regs and Trash the Planet

Jack Willoughby
The Lessons of the S & L Crisis

David Swanson
Habeas at Bagram?

Paul Craig Roberts
94 Years of Serfdom

Sara Mann
Norman Rockwell and the Perils of Nostalgia

Kenneth Couesbouc
John Maynard's Martingale: How Keynes Got Rich

Binoy Kampmark
Tax Haven Hypocrisies

Kekuni Blaisdell, Lynette Hi'llani Cruz, George Kahumoku Flores, et al.: An Urgent Letter to Obama on the Rights of Native Hawaiians

Website of the Day
Taxa: the Paintings of Isabella Kirkland

April 14, 2009

Conn Hallinan
The Afghan Rubik's Cube

Mike Whitney
Why is Goldman Sachs So Scared of Mike Morgan?

Peter Morici
Taxing Grandma to Subsidize Goldman Sachs

Greg Moses
Economic Curveballs: the Laffer Posse

Fidel Castro
Obama's Cuba Policy: Not a Word About the Blockade

Robert Weissman
No Blank Check for the IMF

Rebecca Macaux /
Philip Primeau
Somali Piracy and American Foreign Policy

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
The Dubious Revoution: Biofuels, the Next Generation

Dave Lindorff
Snatch-and-Jail Justice: the Ugly War on Immigrants

Walter Brasch
The Resurrection of Intolerance

Benjamin Day
Why Has the Press Failed Us in Reporting on Health Care Reform?

Website of the Day
The Appraisal Bubble

April 13, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Militia Fear Reprisals After US Exit

Uri Avnery
Our Dissonance

Jeremy Scahill
A Test Case for Habeas Corpus: Will Obama Prosecute the Somali Pirate in a US Court?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide Syndrome: Are VA Protocols Behind Iraq Vet Suicides?

Karl Grossman
A Radioactive Extension for Aging Nuclear Plants

Nadia Hijab
Still Waiting: Obama and American Muslims

Sam Smith
America's Cultural Bear Market

James McEnteer
Peru's Shining Example

Sean McMahon
Globalizing Politicide: Israel's Strikes on Sudan

Namihei Odaira
Makota's "Campaign Against Poverty"

John V. Walsh
Bossnapping

Website of the Day
Declining IRS Audits for Big Financial Houses

April 10 / 12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Resurrection and Revenge

Chris Floyd
Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos

Mike Whitney
"Liquidate the Banks; Fire the Executives!" Warren's Devastating Report to Congress

Saul Landau
How the Media Bought the Surge

M. Reza Pirbhai
Obama's Afghanistan Plan and India-Pakistan Relations

Franklin Spinney
The Art of the Scam: Wall Street and the Pentagon

Rannie Amiri
Iran's Elections: Why Arab Leaders Want Ahmadinejad to Win

William Blum
The Ideology of Barack Obama

Matt Vidal
Why Card Check Would Help the Economy

Jeff Howison
Death of the Square Deal

Jeff Leys
Resisting the Af-Pak War: the Creech Air Base Arrests

Dave Lindorff
America's Imperial Wars: Why We Need to See the Horrors

Ramzy Baroud
Israel Investigated: But Will It Repent?

Missy Beattie
The Grateful Dead, Wounded and Displaced

Fred Gardner
Fakes Left, Goes Right: Obama's Crossover Dribble on Marijuana Policy

Harvey Wasserman Another $50 Billion for Rust Bucket Nukes?

Suzan Mazur
A Revolution in Biology: an Interview with Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse

Bernard Umbrecht
German Capitalists Take Fire

David Macaray
A Word Clooney, Hanks and Baldwin Should Learn: Solidarity

Janet Kauffman
How to Starve (or Feed) a River

Ron Jacobs
Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win

Norman Solomon
Getting a Death Grip on Memory

Michael Winship
Let the Railsplitter Awake!

Richard Rhames
Empire, Ennui and Extra Cheese

Wanda Fucha
Brother, Can You Spare a Million Bucks?

David Yearsley
My Journey to the Heart of Rahman

Lorenzo Wolff
Getting Beyond the Black-and-White: Jason Isbell's Challenging New Album

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini's Louis XIV: "Neither the Sun Nor Death Can be Gazed Upon Fixedly"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Corzett

Website of the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help!

April 9, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Decade of Darkness

Patrick Cockburn
What It Would Take to Mend Fences with Islam

Stephen Soldz
Caught on Tape: Diagnostic Abuse of Veterans

P. Sainath
The Rise of the Shoe-cide Bomber

Ellen Cantarow
Israel's Master Plan for Transfer

Gareth Porter /
Jim Lobe
Obama and Israel's Threat to Strike Iran

Jeremy Scahill
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up Against Obama's Bloated Military Budget?

Jerry Kroth
Saving GM From Bankruptcy--With the Stroke of a Pen

Binoy Kampmark
Fujimori Convicted: A Measure of Justice in Latin America

Fidel Castro
My Meeting with the Black Caucus

Website of the Day
Bird Song Radio

April 8, 2009

John Prados
The Af-Pak Paradox

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Tooth Fairy and the Defense Budget

Russell Mokhiber
PBS Lashes Back

Kathy Sanborn
Depression Fury

Rev. William E. Alberts
If the Shoe Fits: Bush and Al-Zaidi

James McEnteer Rashomon and the Binghamton Shooter: the Rush to Interpret Jiverly Wong's "Statement"

Nadia Hijab
Olmert's Nightmare

Adam Turl
Card Check on the Ropes

Kevin Zeese
Escaping the Drug War Quagmire

Website of the Day
Walk Score Your Neighborhood

April 7, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency's Free Ride

Uri Avnery
Who's the Boss?

Chris Floyd
Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan

Winslow T. Wheeler Defense Cuts: Gates and the System

Marjorie Cohn
Prosecuting the Bush Torture Team: Spain Leads the Way

Dean Baker
Hands Off Social Security

Diana Johnstone
NATO, Strasbourg and the Black Block

Dave Lindorff
Politicizing Accounting

Martha Rosenberg
Life on HBO's Factory Hog Farm

Evelyn Pringle
Motherhood and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex

Website of the Day
Gaza: Closed Zone

April 6, 2009

Michael Hudson
The IMF Rules the World

Andy Worthington Bagram: Guantánamo's Dark Mirror

Ray McGovern
Profiles in Cowardice: Eric Holder and Colin Powell

Deepak Tripathi
The Pakistan Enigma

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Financial Rescue Plan: a Glide-Path to Destitution

Norman Solomon
Meet the New Escalators: the Democrats and the Afghan War

Jonathan Cook
Israel Railways Accused of Racism in Firing of Arab Workers

Judith Bello
Justice for the Developmentally Disabled

Deena Metzger Blackwater in Liberia

Dr. M. Kamiar
"There's No 'Eye' in Iran:" Obama's Pronunciation Problem

Website of the Day
Prison Talk

April 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
From Twin Towers to Twin Camelots

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall
Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

Sue Sturgis
Fooling with Disaster? Startling Revelations About Three Mile Island Raise New Doubts Over Nuclear Plant Safety

Peter Morici
Girding for a Depression

Kathy Sanborn
Homeless in Tent City, USA

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction?

Rob Larson
Subprime Supreme Court: The Roberts Court Has Become a Powerful New Tool for Business

Saul Landau
Biden and Nixon: a Tale of Two Latin American Experiences

Steve Early
An Evening with Andy Stern

John Goekler
Was Gaza Israel's Waterloo?

Rannie Amiri
Arab League Reconciliation Summit a Bust

Dave Lindorff
Hooray for Juries! A Courtroom Victory for Ward Churchill and Academic Free Speech

Lee Ballinger
Sound Garden: Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum

Ron Jacobs
Artifacts for Survival

David Macaray
AIG Plays the Sympathy Card

John Wight
G20: Capital's New World Symphony

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Race in the Obama Era

Mychal Bell
Surviving Jena Six

Missy Beattie
Hoop Hopes, War and Peace

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iran/US Rapproachment Dance

Michael Boldin
The War on Drugs is a War on You

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Batting 50-50

Charles R. Larson
Too Much Stuff

Susie Day
Bernie Breakout Shocker!!

Stephen Martin
Gordon Brown's Chicken Run at the G20

Kim Nicolini
"Last House on the Left:" Vigilantes of the Bourgeoisie

David Yearsley
Homage to Moog and Mallards

Phyllis Pollack
An Interview with Legendary Rock Producer Chris Kimsey on Working with the Stones, Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and Saint Jude

Poets' Basement
Foley, Valentine and Kozak

Website of the Day
The Corner Store

April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
Settling Scores in Iraq: Maliki Draws US Troops into Crackdown on Sunni Rivals

David Macaray
Obama and the Ruling Class: "Only the Little People Pay Taxes"

Chris Genovali
B.C.'s Bloody Grizzly Hunt

Sam Smith
The Politics of Adulation

Suzan Mazur
Is Neo-Darwinism Dead?

Website of the Day
Fighting for Change in St. Louis

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss

Stanley Heller
Israeli War Crimes: Thank God, It Was Only Rumors

Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Jane Slaughter Obama's Perilous Plan for Detroit: Restructure the Big 3, But Not With Bankruptcy

Jonathan Cook
The Slow Demise of Ehud Olmert

Eric Walberg
EU in Tatters: Only the Protesters Have Any Vision

Richard Morse
Why Haiti Can't Forget Its Past

Don Fitz
Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match? Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

Laray Polk
Texas and Evolution

Belén Fernández
12 Años de Soledad?

Harvey Wasserman
Cracking the Media Silence on Three Mile Island

Website of the Day
Pentagon Fraud Investigations Fell, While Contracts Soared

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

Weekend Edition
April 17-20, 2009

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Personal Torture Laws

By DAVID SWANSON

On August 1, 2002, then-Assistant Attorney General of the United States Jay Bybee sent an 18-page official memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel to the Acting General Counsel of the CIA John Rizzo. Such memos are treated as laws within our government, not opinions, not theories, not briefings, but laws. They are secret laws, but in many cases there's not much risk of us ordinary schmucks who don't know the laws violating them, at least not without also violating public laws that are tougher and more comprehensive. These secret laws tend to consist of permissions to violate the public laws in particular ways. They are crazy laws, because they advise violating the real laws and purport to serve as protection for the claim that the violator did so in "good faith." Nonetheless, they are as much laws as anything passed by Congress, if not more so, since they do not come with presidential signing statements but at most a snide remark scribbled by Donald Rumsfeld.

The secret law that Bybee sent to Rizzo was unusual in that it was a law for one particular person. It was even more specific than that. It claimed to apply to the treatment of one particular person under an elaborate set of circumstances. If the situation was altered, the law would not apply. The individual who received this personal legislative treatment may not have considered himself a lucky man, since it was 18 pages of descriptions of torture techniques that it would be "legal" to use on him. (Can't wait to get your own, right?) Curiously, the memo begins by citing the actual, real, normal, public law: "Section 2340A of title 18 of the United States Code." This is curious because for the following six years both the White House and Congress pretended there was no such law and engaged in an elaborate mating dance designed around the mythical need to create such a law anew. You'll recall Congress "banning" torture and Bush signing statementing himself the supposed right to torture anyway. All of that was theater. And during all of that theater, the people doing the torturing were concerned that they be protected, down the road, from prosecution for their violations of the actual law.

Section 2340A of title 18 of the U.S. Code says this: "Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life."

And 2340C adds this for the benefit of the people writing the "legal" permissions to violate it: "A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy."

And what is torture? According to 2340 it is "an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control."

And then there is Section 2441, which prescribes a fine or prison or death to any American who commits or conspires to commit a war crime, including torture or cruel or inhuman treatment. This was the section of law that caused then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to warn Bush and others that they should deny prisoners in Afghanistan the Geneva Conventions as the best defense of their own necks, advice Obama seems to have taken to heart.

Then there's the Convention Against Torture which requires criminal prosecution of "an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture" or in "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." And the Geneva Conventions which ban "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture," as well as "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."

Bybee had already written some personal laws for Jose Padilla, one of which included his indictment, trial, conviction, and punishment all personally performed by Bybee in the course of the memo. But this August 1, 2002, memo was a personal law for Abu Zubaydah. And part of the circumstances that made this law "legal" was a ticking time bomb:

"The interrogation team is certain he has additional information that he refuses to divulge. … Zubaydah has become accustomed to a certain level of treatment and displays no signs of willingness to disclose further information. Moreover, your intelligence indicates that there is currently a level of 'chatter' equal to that which preceded the September 11 attacks."

So, under these circumstances, it turned out -- after Jay Bybee checked with the mountain top and declared his new commandments -- that you could legally slam Zubaydah against a wall. Or deprive him of sleep. Or waterboard him. You would need to soften the wall and be careful not to break his neck. You would need to have doctors on hand. You couldn't keep him from sleeping for any more than 11 days at a time. If you slapped him in the face you should be careful not to poke him in the eye. The precautions and limitations are extensive. But so are the torture techniques and the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatments, which would all seem to be just as degrading even if bruising and death are avoided and therefore the "law" complied with.

However, according to Bybee any torturer would be in the clear legally if they did not "expressly intend to inflict severe pain or suffering." And this could be done by "honestly believing" that there would not be severe pain or suffering, which you would have to if you believed this memo which asserted as much. An honest belief, Bybee assured the CIA, need not be reasonable. In fact "good faith may be established by, among other things, the reliance on the advice of experts." In case anyone missed the point, Bybee went on to simply state that people following his torture manual would not have the intent to inflict severe physical pain or suffering.

But here's where it gets sticky. First, the techniques authorized by this custom-made designer law, and others not authorized, were used BEFORE the law was written as well as after. So the reliance on experts wouldn't cover everybody, and therefore the group of people that Obama just promised amnesty does not include everybody. Second, according to the account that Zubaydah gave the Red Cross, the guidelines given by Bybee were followed only very loosely, with the alterations tending toward the more forceful and punishing. Third, Zubaydah apparently suffered serious injury, suggesting that he experienced severe physical pain and suffering.

(In fact he told the Red Cross -- and we have no other witnesses since the CIA destroyed the video tapes and isn't talking: “I was put on what looked like a hospital bed, and strapped down very tightly with belts. A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the straps on my wounds caused severe pain. I vomited. The bed was then again lowered to a horizontal position and the same torture carried out with the black cloth over my face and water poured on from a bottle. On this occasion my head was in a more backward, downwards position and the water was poured on for a longer time. I struggled without success to breathe. I thought I was going to die. I lost control of my urine. Since then I still lose control of
my urine when under stress.”)

If that was indeed severe pain and not just a mild case of bodily collapse, was the expert relied upon not an expert and the advice therefore not a legal shield? Or is this just a case of violating the secret law, in which case is that just a case of violating the public law? Fourth, the ticking time bomb was a crock and we know now that our government obtained more useful information from its victim before torturing him than after. Does that alter the circumstances and therefore eliminate the specially designed law? Or is the bomb still magically ticking away very slowly, year after year, until we develop the patriotic courage to crush Mr. Zubaydah's testicles and finally learn the truth and save the television actress?

Sadly, Mr. Bybee may be too busy to rush to our rescue or to draft you your own personal torture law at the moment. That's because, even though his own crazy laws were discarded by Bush's Justice Department, even though Spain has been trying to indict him, even though he approved sticking Zubaydah in a small box with an insect, slamming him against a wall, and water-torturing him, Jay Bybee is serving as a federal appeals court judge in the Ninth Circuit. If we had a justice system he would be standing trial. If we had a Congress, he would be impeached.

David Swanson is the author of "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. He can be reached at: david@davidswanson.org

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