Go Shep
by digby
What in the hell is Roger Ailes putting in the coffee over at Fox News?
Wow.
"what digby sez..."
Blowing Off Steam
by digby
The Conservative Id puts it all in perspective:
LIMBAUGH: We have allowed — we have allowed these guys, Obama and his buddies over at the CIA and in Congress, to water down the definition of torture to mean anything that makes a person uncomfortable. You know what this reminds me of? Remember when the NOW gang and all these other social interest groups started asking women if they’d ever been a victim of domestic violence? They didn’t like the numbers they got initially. The numbers weren’t high enough for the NOW gang. So they expanded the definition to include a man shouting at them. A man shouting at them equaled domestic violence. It didn’t matter if the women shouted first. But let’s not get sidetracked. The important thing to understand is that these appeasers have painted themselves into a corner. Dick Cheney has now called their bluff. The stark truth is that despite what the political left and the Hollywood elite say, extreme measures, enhanced measures, so-called torture — whatever you want to call it — it works. And he’s seen the memos. And he wants them released.
Yeah, it “works.” Just like it “works” when a man threatens to punch a woman in the face if she doesn’t tell him she loves him. She tells him she loves him.
This is the way the right thinks. Limbaugh even famously believes that US soldiers should be allowed to torture prisoners to relieve their stress. And he’s still invited into the homes of seemingly decent people. They defend him on the pages of their magazines.
Here’s the thing: these people are puerile, schoolyard thinkers who believe in any means to an end. If they could have done what they truly wanted to do after 9/11, they would have opened concentration camps or started a nuclear war. They believe that you have to use everything you have at your disposal or the wogs (everyone but us) will think you are weak. That’s the full extent of their understanding of the way the world works.
That using torture and endless imprisonment of innocent people are immoral and disgusting taboos that put the perpetrator in the same company as history’s most evil villains is entirely unpersuasive to these people — they think that’s a good thing. But even on a practical level that even a very average 9th grader should be able to understand, you would hope they could see that these people hurt the nation in ways that we’ll be dealing with for decades — we showed that America loses its head when attacked, overreacts, spends and then botches the whole thing so badly we don’t know whether we are coming or going. We’ve shown that we are pants wetting, panic artists who will harm ourselves when frightened. And that is a weakness no powerful nation should ever allow the world to see.
Building A Fact Pattern
by dday
I don’t think you can debate whether or not to have an investigation on the Bush torture regime anymore, because the investigation is happening regardless. Jeffrey Smith and Peter Finn advance the ball in an article for tomorrow’s paper. Little of this is new, but given the new revelations of the past week, we can set it in proper context. And though the knowledge existed, it’s probably the first time a major media outlet fingers by name specific high-level Bush officials for approving torture.
Condoleezza Rice, John D. Ashcroft and at least 10 other top Bush officials reviewed and approved as early as the summer of 2002 the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation methods on detainees at secret prisons, including waterboarding that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has described as illegal torture, according to a detailed timeline furnished by Holder to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
At a moment when the Justice Department is deciding whether former officials who set interrogation policy or formulated the legal justifications for it should be investigated for committing crimes, the new timeline lists the members of the Bush administration who were present when the CIA’s director and its general counsel explained exactly which questioning methods were to be used and how those sessions proceeded.
Rice gave a key early approval, when, as Bush’s national security adviser, she met on July 17, 2002, with the CIA’s then-director, George J. Tenet, and “advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation of Abu Zubaydah,” subject to approval by the Justice Department, according to the timeline. Rice and four other White House officials had been briefed two months earlier on “alternative interrogation methods, including waterboarding,” it states. Waterboarding is a technique that simulates drowning.
A year later, in July 2003, the CIA briefed Rice, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Attorney General Ashcroft, White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and National Security Council legal adviser John Bellinger on the use of waterboarding and other techniques, it states. They “reaffirmed that the CIA program was lawful and reflected administration policy.”
This is the kind of article that results from the authors putting a bunch of index cards on the wall and moving them around. It’s what Marcy Wheeler does best. And it suggests that the major news organizations are mapping this out and taking a long look at every granule of information.
By the way, Condi Rice gave that approval two weeks before the Bybee memo allowing the CIA to move forward on torturing Abu Zubaydah. She could have stopped this irrespective of the legal rationales. She had two months to determine whether waterboarding, a technique used since the Spanish Inquisition, was torture. She chose not to, and now she must be held to account as well.
It’s clear the President doesn’t want the responsibility for future investigations. He apparently quashed the idea of a Presidential-level Torture Commission. But he cannot stop the wheels now in motion. Congress will have their crack at an investigation, and the media will return to the issue. The Attorney General will have to make his own independent judgment. And the truth may yet out.
…personally embarrassing P.S.: So Marcy Wheeler is running a fundraisier to do more of just this kind of investigative work. That’s important. Please participate. In addition, this is my blogiversary week on my little site, and I’m running a small fundraiser of my own if you want to
participate. That I’m getting around to this Wednesday night shows you the kind of entrepreneur I am.
(sheepishly exits off the stage)
.
Grown Ups
by digby
Marcy reported this today, which is very disturbing:
John Rizzo, the man who worked with both Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury to pre-authorize torture, is still being paid by you and me to make sure that the CIA follows the law.
I am honestly surprised by this. It’s one thing for the administration to say they don’t want to prosecute those who were involved in the torture regime. It’s quite another to continue to employ one of its architects. There is very good reason to fire him right now and it speaks to some of the bigger issues swirling around the revelations in the SASC report released last night.
One of the things I think people fail to recognize about this program is that there were quite a few people who objected. Indeed, the one who we probably most need to hear from these days is none other than the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, who pulled his men out of the field and told his people that they would not participate in these tactics. Jane Mayer writes today:
By June 2002—again, months before the Department of Justice gave the legal green light for interrogations—an F.B.I. special agent on the scene of the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah refused to participate in what he called “borderline torture,” according to a D.O.J. investigation cited in the Levin report. Soon after, F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller commanded his personnel to stay away from the C.I.A.’s coercive interrogations.
What did the F.B.I. see in the spring of 2002? And exactly who was involved? How high up was this activity authorized? Is it off-limits for criminal investigation?
These are all questions that still need to be answered. The report indicates that Mueller pulled the FBI out of this after an NSC meeting in 2002 where the interrogation policy was discussed:
According to the SASC report an NSC meeting about the Abu Zubaydah interrogations was held in 2002:
[Former head of the OLC Daniel] “Levin stated that a DOJ Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) attorney gave advice at the meeting about the legality of CIA interrogation techniques. Levin stated that in connection with this meeting, or immediately after it, FBI Director Mueller decided that FBI agents would not participate in interrogations involving techniques the FBI did not normally use in the United States, even though OLC had determined such techniques were legal,”
When asked about the FBIs withdrawal from the torture regime, Condi Rice told Senator Levin she had “general recollection that FBI had decided not to participate in the CIA interrogations but I do not recall any specific discussions about withdrawing FBI personnel from the Abu Zubaydah interrogation.”
Apparently she didn’t think the mere fact that the FBI “had decided not to participate in torture” was worth worrying about.
It’s been known for a while that FBI interrogation specialists were appalled at the CIAs torture program, from the Inspector General Glen Fine’s report (pdf) on the interrogations at Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq. It needs to be read in the context of the SASC Report and the OLC memos to really understand just how vociferously the FBI objected to what the Bush administration did.
And one of the sticking points revealed in the report is that none other than John Rizzo, the Acting General Counsel for the CIA who worked with Yoo and Bybee to “legalize” the torture, stonewalled Fine when he asked to interview Abu Zubaydah as part of his probe. And the excuse he used was just amazing: that AZ “could make false allegations against CIA employees.” (Maybe they should have let the FBI could waterboard him 80 or 90 times to get him to cough up the truth…)
The issue here is that there were people in the government who raised objections, serious objections. Most importantly, the FBI raised objections and they were the government experts on the subject. (Remember, until the Bush administration the CIA was not responsible for interrogations.) The idea the “everybody” lost their heads after 9/11 simply because they were desperately trying to keep the boogeyman from killing us all in our beds is simply not true. There were grown-ups around. They just weren’t listened to.
Buckling Under
by digby
In case you were wondering how the village idiot sees the politics of the torture debate:
Chris Matthews: In the politics fix tonight, this whole torture debate is likely to tell us a lot about the kind of president Barack Obama intends to be. Will he buckle to the left, the netroots, and pursue an investigation into torture having said he didn’t want to? Or will he go post-partisan and leave the past to the historians.
This is how its being framed all over the gasbags shows today. Not that I give a damn. If “buckling under to the left, the netroots” is how they need to portray having the moral backbone to be against torture and hold those who torture accountable for doing it, it’s fine by me. It’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it.
For some reason, nobody in Washington DC seems to realize that Obama has to be against torture if he wants a successful foreign policy. If he doesn’t denounce this, how much cooperation can he get from allies around the world? How ridiculous do we look to our enemies? Apparently they all still think Cheney’s schoolyard tough guy bullshit actually works.
They just don’t get that this isn’t about partisan politics. It’s not even just about morality and the constitution. It’s about national security. A superpower that tortures and invades other countries for no good reason is seen by the rest of the world as a rogue nation and a threat. How that makes us safer I simply do not know.
Religion And Science? Religion Vs. Science? Whatever
by tristero
I have given the matter of religion/science compatibility a great deal of thought. I am quite serious when I say that I’ve concluded that it’s a profoundly uninteresting question, as silly as the arguments we used to have as to whether Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix was the better guitarist. In the blogosphere, if not elsewhere, I know people think this is important. Do you stand with the New Atheists Dawkins and Myers? Or with the Catholic Ken Miller? And all I can answer is, “I don’t care enough to form an opinion one way or another. I guess I like ’em all.”
There’s only one thing that matters: preventing christianists from (further) establishing religion in the American government. Jerry Coyne has done great work in that regard. So has NCSE. But Dr. Coyne is concerned:
…the NCSE’s pragmatism has taken it far outside its mandate. Their guiding strategy seems to be keep Darwin in the schools by all means necessary. [emphasis in original]
And that’s a problem? But, ok, let’s even concede that it is a problem. It’s simply not true, not even close to true, to assert that NCSE would use “all means necessary” to keep Darwin in the schools, not by a long shot. For example, I sincerely doubt that Eugenie Scott would argue that if Texas wants to teach creationism, they should secede from the Union – and let’s not forget before you dismiss me as arguing from absurdity that the issue of secession was recently broached by the governor of, you know, Texas . Nor is anyone at NCSE prepared to lie about facts, as their opponents do at the drop of a hat. The implication by Dr. Coyne that Eugenie Scott, Glenn Branch, and others at NCSE are somehow prepared use whatever means necessary to achieve their end is ludicrous.
Finally, Dr. Coyne sums up his concern:
I want religion and atheism left completely out of all the official discourse of scientific societies and organizations that promote evolution. If natural selection and evolution are as powerful as we all believe, then we should devote our time to making sure that they are more widely and accurately understood, and that their teaching is defended. Those should be the sole missions of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Center for Science Education. Leave theology to the theologians.
I completely agree but I don’t care enough to make a stink about it. Why?
Because so far, the combined efforts of Jerry Coyne, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, Barbara Forrest, Eugenie Scott, Ken Miller, John Haught and many others have done an excellent job at defending science against an incredibly well-funded and organized assault from American theocrats. Could they do better? Of course, they haven’t been entirely successful. But it is far from clear to me that asserting only one position on religion/science compatibility will , in any real way, increase the chances of preventing the establishment of religion in the public school science classes.
And that’s something I care about. Really care about.
Sure, in a perfect world, NCSE should be consistent. Then again in a perfect world even Jerry Coyne wouldn’t resort to a statement of faith in order to make his arguments:
I can’t tell people that faith and science are compatible, because I don’t believe it [emphasis added]
And if you take the trouble to read that entire post, you’ll note that Dr. Coyne doesn’t argue from evidence but from his, that’s right, beliefs about what he thinks religion is. In fact, he argues in circles, saying essentially that since religion is that which is incompatible with science, therefore religion is incompatible with science. Of course, in the real world, there really are religions that are incompatible with science. And there are religions that seem perfectly compatible with science, eg Methodism:
The most fundamental distinction of Methodist teaching is that people must use logic and reason in all matters of faith.
And there are, or course, plenty of Methodists who have no problem whatsoever practicing their religion and understanding science. They simply define religion and belief very differently than Dr. Coyne. And the question as to who is right or wrong simply is of no importance.
The concern that all our allies must agree with us completely is misplaced. And if Dr. Coyne disagrees with me, that’s cool. In fact, that’s my whole point. Whatever.
As Bad As It Gets
by digby
Obviously, there’s a lot of news today about the torture regime and it’s looking as though the cover stories are starting to seriously unravel. Obviously, you’ll want to check in frequently with Marcy Wheeler and Spencer Ackerman as they connect the dots. (And throw some change Marcy’s way if you have it, so she can continue to do what she does while you’re at it.)
Today, Jon Landay of McClatchy focuses in on something in the SASC Report released yesterday that should rise to the top of the concerns of those who believe this torture regime should be investigated and prosecuted. He notes that while the alleged reason for the torture was to stop future terrorist attacks, there was another one. A big one:
The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.
Such information would’ve provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush’s main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network and Saddam’s regime.
[…]
A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.
“There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used,” the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.
“The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”
It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document.
“There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder,” he continued.
“Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn’t any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies.”
Senior administration officials, however, “blew that off and kept insisting that we’d overlooked something, that the interrogators weren’t pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information,” he said.
A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under “pressure” to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.
“While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,” Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. “The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”
This makes perfect sense with all we know about the pressure to find those links. But I have to wonder if the torture techniques that were brought into Iraq may have had another, similar purpose as well. Way back in 2004, I speculated about this:
Following up my post below, in reading today’s NY Times description of the disagreement between general Taguba and Stephen Cambone yesterday at the hearings, I was reminded of something. First, here’s the relevant excerpt from the Times:
[Taguba] told the Senate Armed Services Committee that it had been against the Army’s doctrine for another Army general to recommend last summer that military guards ‘set the conditions’ to help Army intelligence officers extract information from prisoners. He also said an order last November from the top American officer in Iraq effectively put the prison guards under the command of the intelligence unit there. But the civilian official, Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence, contradicted the general. He said that the military police and the military intelligence unit at the prison needed to work closely to gain as much intelligence as possible from Iraqi prisoners to prevent attacks against American soldiers. Mr. Cambone also said that General Taguba misinterpreted the November order, which he said only put the intelligence unit in charge of the prison facility, not of the military police guards.
Many of you will recall the following passage from Time Magazine last July:
Meeting last month at a sweltering U.S. base outside Doha, Qatar, with his top Iraq commanders, President Bush skipped quickly past the niceties and went straight to his chief political obsession: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, ‘Are you in charge of finding WMD?’ Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it wasn’t his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment, someone volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone, a little known deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, back in Washington. Pause. ‘Who?’ Bush asked.
This is pure speculation, but it is worth looking into what those interrogators were after in Abu Ghraib. Cambone framed it yesterday as “trying to prevent attacks against American soldiers.,” which, I supose, you could interpret in a number of ways. But, if the focus was finding the non-existent WMD, then you’d have to ask whether the man whose “chief political obsession” was finding them gave the order to take off the gloves.
If Cambone came to the attention of President as the man who was supposed to find the WMD, I would imagine he felt quite a bit of pressure to deliver. And he was the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence in charge of interrogations in Iraq and was intimately involved in the “Gitmoization” of Abu Ghraib.
And regardless of whether or not they used torture and extreme coercive techniques on Iraqi prisoners specifically for that purpose, the quote from Bush certainly adds evidence to the notion that pressure from the White House to provide evidence of their claims prior to the invasion was severe.
If the SASC report is correct, then much of the torture regime was devised to justify the invasion of Iraq. It explains why Cheney is out there behaving like he’s on methamphetamines. If that’s the case, he and Bush and all those who signed off on it are subject not only to prosecution, they are subject to the kind of historical legacy reserved for the worst of the worst. This is as bad as it gets.
Election, What Election
by dday
I’m watching Hillary Clinton school a bunch of wingnuts in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Particularly, she responded to Mike Pence, who put on his very serious voice to denounce that devastating smile and handshake between President Obama and Hugo Chavez. The Secretary of State responded that, and I’m paraphrasing, we tried to isolate enemies for eight years, and where did it get us? President Obama won an election, and won a primary against me, offering a different vision, and the people agreed with his approach.
The Republican Party and its allies, simply put, act as if there was no election in November. In some cases they quite literally act that way, trying to stall Democratic victories. But that’s the overall tenor as well. Washington remains wired for Republicans, and the focus continues to be on either relentlessly trivial issues or the fundamentally conservative slant on those issues, and thus the key questions never get asked.
Meanwhile, I haven’t seen any reporter ask Cheney or his staff what seems like an obvious question: If there exist documents that prove that torture prevented attacks on the US, and those documents can be released without jeopardizing national security, why didn’t the Bush administration release them before leaving office?
It isn’t like it’s a surprise that the Obama administration has made some changes in Bush administration torture policy; Cheney and Bush had to know that was a possibility. So why didn’t they release this evidence that supposedly proves that torture is a necessary national security tool? (If the answer is that they feared releasing the documents would jeopardize national security, there’s an obvious follow-up: Why does Cheney want them released now?)
But of course the election has been essentially disappeared. That “accountability moment,” as George W. Bush once famously called it, where the public considered the options and made their will known, didn’t happen. And the likely loss of the bare minimum seats to sustain a filibuster, which even the man running the Senate races has acknowledged, doesn’t impact this outlook, either. They have bought the Kool-Aid that they have a silent, non-voting (apparently) majority and refuse to be moved by public opinion but to retrench. It’s actually quite remarkable and ahistorical:
After losing ground in 2006, you might have expected Republicans to start distancing themselves from the hugely unpopular president and his failed conservative policies. Instead, the caucus held remarkably firm behind Bush’s agenda. And then they lost a bunch of additional seats in 2008. At this point you again might have expected them to start acting conciliatory. But they haven’t been. Which might lead you to suspect that they have some kind of secret master plan to explain why this makes sense. But, clearly, they don’t—Cornyn acknowledges that his side is likely to lose more seats.
I’ve heard this called the Republican death spiral, as the rump Southern contingent gathers more and more power inside the party while eroding the party throughout the rest of the country. That the Republican Party is now less popular than Venezuela makes no difference. They have become less a political concern than a weird theater group obsessed over slights toward Miss California or Presidential public gestures than the clear expressed will of the public. And now that the torture regime is becoming exposed, these obsessions seem more irrelevant than ever.
And wait until they get a load of this. Hissy fit alert!
Egyptians are cautiously rejoicing over the recent appointment of a veiled Egyptian American Muslim woman as an advisor to President Obama.
Dalia Mogahed, senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, was appointed this month to Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
“I don’t consider (Dick Cheney) a particularly reliable source.”
.
Liar For Christ
by tristero
Blood pressure too low? Watch this. It’s testimony before the Texas School Board regarding the teaching of evolution by “Dr.” Don Patton, a man who not only knows he is lying (see PS below if you think the scare quotes around “Dr.” are unfair or that I’m exaggerating), but does so with enormous enthusiasm and glee.
Just one example. I’ve read Niles Eldredge. He never so much as implied anything remotely like what this clown says he did. His words are ripped entirely out of context. Eldredge wasn’t for a moment claiming that the fossil record contradicts evolution, or evolution by natural selection, but rather that the patterns revealed were far more complex and curious than Darwin ever imagined. (No kidding: 150 years of intensive scientific research will often do that to a great theory.) Eldredge was making a criticism within evolutionary theory, not of it.
Notice something else about this jerk. He calls scientists “people with great faith in evolution,” “devout evolutionists,” and “fervent dogmatists,” even “evolutionary religious fanatics.” This is a by-now ancient extreme right tactic, twisting and co-opting liberal rhetoric in ludicrous ways (am I the only one who remembers the pro-coathanger abortion chant, “All we are saying is give life [sic] a chance?”).
And listen to the questions, as dishonest as Patton. These are not misinformed people. Patton can read Eldredge just as well as I can. Ditto the school board members. These are liars, deliberate liars, liars for whom a christianist agenda trumps everything.
And Patton has the unmitigated gall to declare that it’s a lie to assert the reality that the overwhelming consensus among scientists is that evolution is as much a fact as anything in science is.
Given the extent of his lying, it would make perfect sense if you came to the conclusion that even his professions of religious belief were also a lie, that in fact all he cares about is political legitimacy for his lunatic, far-right ideas.
h/t PZ Myers.
PS Normally, when I write posts that are this angry, people in comments object to the shrill take-no-prisoners putdown. So…just in case you don’t believe Patton would lie about everything, go here:
Since early 1989, Don Patton, a close associate of Carl Baugh and leader of Metroplex Institute of Origins Science (MIOS) near Dallas, has claimed a Ph.D. (or “Ph.D. candidacy”) in geology from Queensland Christian University in Australia.[33] However, QCU is another unaccredited school linked to Clifford Wilson. [34] When questioned about this at a recent MIOS meeting, Patton indicated that he was aware of some problems relating to QCU, and was withdrawing his Ph.D. candidacy.[35]
However, the printed abstracts of the 1989 Bible-Science conference in Dayton, Tennessee (where Patton gave two talks) stated that he was a Ph.D. candidacy in geology, and implied that he has at least four degrees from three separate schools.[36] When I asked Patton for clarification on this during the conference, he stated that he had no degrees, but was about to receive a Ph.D. degree in geology, pending accreditation of QCU, which he assured me was “three days away.”[37] Many days have since passed, and Patton still has no valid degree in geology. Nor is the accreditation of QCU imminent. Australian researcher Ian Plimer reported, “PCI, QPU, PCT, and PCGS have no formal curriculum, no classes, no research facilities, no calendar, no campus, and no academic staff….Any Ph.D. or Ph.D. candidacy at QPU by Patton is fraudulent.”
And in case you think that web page is outdated, go here and check out Patton’s academic credentials:
Four years, Florida College, Temple Terrace, FL (Bible)
Two years, Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, TN (Geology)
Two years, Indiana Univ./Purdue Univ., Indianapolis, IN (Geology)
Two years, Pacific School of Graduate Studies, Melbourne, Australia (Education)
Ph.D. in Education granted 12/10/1993
That’s right, folks. He claims he’s a geologist but he didn’t finish a degree in geology in either school he attended for that science. He spent two years studying education at a bogus school in Melbourne and was awarded a “PhD in Education.”
Actually, that, too, is a lie. Go here and read, really read the document Patton claims proves he graduated with a “PhD In Education” because it doesn’t and he didn’t. If he got a doctorate at all from this school, he is a “Doctor of Christian Education.”
Let’s not mince words here. Don Patton is the real thing. Oh, he’s not a geologist. But he is, without a doubt, a genuine, 100% authentic liar and con man who doesn’t know a damn thing about science and has no business being taken seriously by anyone truly concerned with a child’s education.
The Wish List
by digby
A report by the Senate Armed Services Committee released Tuesday night says that torture techniques used at Abu Ghraib prison and approved by officials in the George W. Bush administration were applied only after soliciting a “wish list” from interrogators. President George W. Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. This act, the committee found, cleared the way for a new interrogation program to be developed in-part based on “Chinese communist” tactics used against Americans during the Korean War, mainly to elicit false confessions for propaganda purposes. The committee’s report was made available in Dec. 2008, but was delayed by the Pentagon’s declassification program. Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) concluded that the findings were enough to warrant serious consideration by the Department of Justice.[…]“In SERE training, U.S. troops are briefly exposed, in a highly controlled setting, to abusive interrogation techniques used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions,” the report reads. “The techniques are based on tactics used by Chinese Communists against American soldiers during the Korean War for the purpose of eliciting false confessions for propaganda purposes. Techniques used in SERE training include stripping trainees of their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, subjecting them to face and body slaps, depriving them of sleep, throwing them up against a wall, confining them in a small box, treating them like animals, subjecting them to loud music and flashing lights, and exposing them to extreme temperatures. Until recently, the Navy SERE school also used waterboarding.
[..]
“The Committee’s investigation revealed that, following Secretary Rumsfeld’s authorization, senior staff at GTMO drafted a standard operating procedure (SOP) for the use of SERE techniques, including stress positions, forcibly stripping detainees, slapping, and ‘walling’ them,” the committee found. “That SOP stated that ‘The premise behind this is that the interrogation tactics used at U.S. military SERE schools are appropriate for use in real-world interrogations.’ Weeks later, in January 2003, trainers from the Navy SERE school traveled to GTMO and provided training to interrogators on the use of SERE techniques on detainees.” “According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE […] had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans,” reported the New York Times. “Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.” “In mid-August 2003, an email from staff at Combined Joint Task Force 7 (CJTF-7) headquarters in Iraq requested that subordinate units provide input for a ‘wish list’ of interrogation techniques [to be used at Abu Ghraib], stated that ‘the gloves are coming off,’ and said ‘we want these detainees broken,’” the report found.
We already knew most of this, of course. And we also knew that these techniques were developed by the “Chinese Communists” for the explicit purpose of eliciting false confessions. (David Gergen and the villagers were lolling around on Nantucket when that news was first revealed, apparently.) But newly declassified memos revealed in this report shed a lot of light on just how systemic this was.
Excerpts from Carl Levin’s memo accompanying the report:
Impact of Secretary Rumsfeld’s Authorization on Interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan
The influence of Secretary Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002, authorization was not limited to interrogations at GTMO. Newly declassified excerpts from a January 11, 2003, legal review by a Special Mission Unit (SMU) Task Force lawyer in Afghanistan state that “SECDEF’s approval of these techniques provides us the most persuasive argument for use of ‘advanced techniques’ as we capture possible [high value targets] … the fact that SECDEF approved the use of the… techniques at GTMO, [which is] subject to the same laws, provides an analogy and basis for use of these techniques [in accordance with] international and U.S. law.” (p.154).
The Committee’s report also includes a summary of a July 15, 2004, interview with CENTCOM’s then-Deputy Staff Judge Advocate (SJA) about Secretary Rumsfeld’s authorization and its impact in Afghanistan. The Deputy SJA said: “the methodologies approved for GTMO… would appear to me to be legal interrogation processes. [The Secretary of Defense] had approved them. The General Counsel had approved them. .. I believe it is fair to say the procedures approved for Guantanamo were legal for Afghanistan.” (p. 156).
The Committee’s report provides extensive details about how the aggressive techniques made their way from Afghanistan to Iraq. In February 2003, an SMU Task Force designated for operations in Iraq obtained a copy of the SMU interrogation policy from Afghanistan that included aggressive techniques, changed the letterhead, and adopted the policy verbatim. (p. 158) Months later, the Interrogation Officer in Charge at Abu Ghraib obtained a copy of the SMU interrogation policy and submitted it, virtually unchanged, through her chain of command to Combined Joint Task Force 7 (CJTF-7), led at the time by Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. On September 14, 2003, Lieutenant General Sanchez issued an interrogation policy for CJTF-7 that authorized interrogators to use stress positions, environmental manipulation, sleep management, and military working dogs to exploit detainees’ fears in their interrogations of detainees.
The Committee’s investigation uncovered documents indicating that, almost immediately after LTG Sanchez issued his September 14, 2003, policy, CENTCOM lawyers raised concerns about its legality. One newly declassified email from a CENTCOM lawyer to the Staff Judge Advocate at CJTF-7 – sent just three days after the policy was issued – warned that “Many of the techniques [in the CJTF-7 policy] appear to violate [Geneva Convention] III and IV and should not be used . . .” (p. 203). Even though the Bush administration acknowledged that the Geneva Conventions applied in Iraq, it was not until nearly a month later that CJTF-7 revised that policy.
Not only did SERE techniques make their way to Iraq, but SERE instructors did as well. In September 2003, JPRA sent a team to Iraq to provide assistance to interrogation operations at an SMU Task Force. The Chief of Human Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the Task Force testified to the Committee in February 2008 that JPRA personnel demonstrated SERE techniques to SMU personnel including so-called “walling” and striking a detainee as they do in SERE school. (p. 175). As we heard at our September 2008 hearing, JPRA personnel were present during abusive interrogations during that same trip, including one where a detainee was placed on his knees in a stress position and was repeatedly slapped by an interrogator. (p. 176). JPRA personnel even participated in an interrogation, taking physical control of a detainee, forcibly stripping him naked, and giving orders for him to be kept in a stress position for 12 hours. In August 3, 2007, testimony to the Committee, one of the JPRA team members said that, with respect to stripping the detainee, “we [had] done this 100 times, 1000 times with our [SERE school] students.” The Committee’s investigation revealed that forced nudity continued to be used in interrogations at the SMU Task Force for months after the JPRA visit. (pp. 181-182).
Over the course of the investigation, the Committee obtained the statements and interviews of scores of military personnel at Abu Ghraib. These statements reveal that the interrogation techniques authorized by Secretary Rumsfeld in December 2002 for use at GTMO – including stress positions, forced nudity, and military working dogs – were used by military intelligence personnel responsible for interrogations.
· The Interrogation Officer in Charge in Abu Ghraib in the fall of 2003 acknowledged that stress positions were used in interrogations at Abu Ghraib. (p. 212).
· An Army dog handler at Abu Ghraib told military investigators in February 2004 that “someone from [military intelligence] gave me a list of cells, for me to go see, and pretty much have my dog bark at them… Having the dogs bark at detainees was psychologically breaking them down for interrogation purposes.” (p. 209).
· An intelligence analyst at Abu Ghraib told military investigators in May 2004 that it was “common that the detainees on [military intelligence] hold in the hard site were initially kept naked and given clothing as an incentive to cooperate with us.” (p. 212).
· An interrogator told military investigators in May 2004 that it was “common to see detainees in cells without clothes or naked” and says it was “one of our approaches.” (p. 213).
The investigation also revealed that interrogation policies authorizing aggressive techniques were approved months after the CJTF-7 policy was revised to exclude the techniques, and even after the investigation into detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib had already begun. For example, an interrogation policy approved in February 2004 in Iraq included techniques such as use of military working dogs and stress positions. (p. 220).
A policy approved for CJTF-7 units in Iraq in March 2004 also included aggressive techniques. While much of the March 2004 policy remains classified, newly declassified excerpts indicate that it warned that interrogators “should consider the fact that some interrogation techniques are viewed as inhumane or otherwise inconsistent with international law before applying each technique. These techniques are labeled with a [CAUTION].” Among the techniques labeled as such were a technique involving power tools, stress positions, and the presence of military working dogs. (pp. 220-221).
Warnings about Using SERE Techniques in Interrogations
Some have asked why, if it is okay for our own U.S. personnel to be subjected to physical and psychological pressures in SERE school, what is wrong with using those SERE training techniques on detainees? The Committee’s investigation answered that question.
On October 2, 2002, Lieutenant Colonel Morgan Banks, the senior Army SERE psychologist warned against using SERE training techniques during interrogations in an email to personnel at GTMO, writing that:
[T]he use of physical pressures brings with it a large number of potential negative side effects… When individuals are gradually exposed to increasing levels of discomfort, it is more common for them to resist harder… If individuals are put under enough discomfort, i.e. pain, they will eventually do whatever it takes to stop the pain. This will increase the amount of information they tell the interrogator, but it does not mean the information is accurate. In fact, it usually decreases the reliability of the information because the person will say whatever he believes will stop the pain… Bottom line: the likelihood that the use of physical pressures will increase the delivery of accurate information from a detainee is very low. The likelihood that the use of physical pressures will increase the level of resistance in a detainee is very high… (p. 53).
Likewise, the Deputy Commander of DoD’s Criminal Investigative Task Force at GTMO told the Committee in 2006 that CITF “was troubled with the rationale that techniques used to harden resistance to interrogations would be the basis for the utilization of techniques to obtain information.” (p. 69).
Other newly declassified emails reveal additional warnings. In June 2004, after many SERE techniques had been authorized in interrogations and JPRA was considering sending its SERE trainers to interrogation facilities in Afghanistan, another SERE psychologist warned: “[W]e need to really stress the difference between what instructors do at SERE school (done to INCREASE RESISTANCE capability in students) versus what is taught at interrogator school (done to gather information). What is done by SERE instructors is by definition ineffective interrogator conduct… Simply stated, SERE school does not train you on how to interrogate, and things you ‘learn’ there by osmosis about interrogation are probably wrong if copied by interrogators.” (p. 229).
It shouldn’t have taken any warnings. You don’t have to be an expert to know that there is a huge difference between having your own people train you to withstand these techniques and using them on prisoners. And you don’t have to be a historian to figure out that malevolent torture techniques have been considered poisonous and evil by civilized people for quite some time now. (That nobody even bothered to find out where these techniques came from is just another example of the “Brownification” of the US Government under the idiot Republicans.) It was bloodlust, plain and simple. They gave themselves permission to become barbarians.
That we now have even more proof they consciously sent these SERE techniques to Iraq to “Gitmoize” it — a country which we invaded under false pretenses and which had not attacked us first — takes these crimes to yet another level. If nothing else, allowing a bunch of low level grunts to pay the price while the men and women who gave the orders publicly pretended they were appalled at the behavior they themselves had sanctioned, makes all arguments that these leaders shouldn’t be held accountable completely untenable.