Leaked Details of IG Report Include Use of Mock Executions

Posted by KATHY KATTENBURG in Breaking News, International, Politics, Society, War.
Aug 22nd, 2009 | 9 responses

This is sickening:

According to two sources—one who has read a draft of the paper and one who was briefed on it—the report describes how one detainee, suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was threatened with a gun and a power drill during the course of CIA interrogation. According to the sources, who like others quoted in this article asked not to be named while discussing sensitive information, Nashiri’s interrogators brandished the gun in an effort to convince him that he was going to be shot. Interrogators also turned on a power drill and held it near him. “The purpose was to scare him into giving [information] up,” said one of the sources. A federal law banning the use of torture expressly forbids threatening a detainee with “imminent death.”

The report also says, according to the sources, that a mock execution was staged in a room next to a detainee, during which a gunshot was fired in an effort to make the suspect believe that another prisoner had been killed. The inspector general’s report alludes to more than one mock execution.

As the Newsweek article states, mock executions were not one of the “authorized enhanced interrogation techniques” contained in the memos put out by attorneys at the Office of Legal Counsel. and of course are “expressly forbidden” by U.S. statute.

9 Responses to “Leaked Details of IG Report Include Use of Mock Executions”

1. Leonidas says:

   August 22, 2009 at 3:00 pm

   In full agreement with Kathy on this one, sickening indeed if true (and I think that likely). If we are to win the culture War vs. Militant fundamentalist Islam, we have to be better than them, not similar to them.
2. DLS says:

   August 22, 2009 at 3:39 pm

   I would place this and other torture (like water-boarding) in the category of behavior similar to the kinds of abuse prisoners had at Abu Ghraib (the first definitive bad news after the invasion of Iraq).
3. kathykattenburg says:

   August 22, 2009 at 4:43 pm

   Okay, I think hell just froze over.
4. Leonidas says:

   August 22, 2009 at 5:19 pm

   I think you mistake people who believe in fiscal conservatism and personal responsibility with the creature from the Black Lagoon Kathy.
5. shannonlee says:

   August 22, 2009 at 5:50 pm

   I don't have a problem with mock executions. This may not make sense, but I do have a problem with making them think that they are next…having a gun, or drill, in the room.

   A federal law banning the use of torture expressly forbids threatening a detainee with “imminent death.”

   As long as we aren't trying to make them thing that they are next, I see nothing wrong with letting them think someone was executed…..I guess this is one of those fine lines that only makes sense in my head.
6. kathykattenburg says:

   August 22, 2009 at 7:28 pm

   You don't believe in fiscal conservatism and personal responsibility, Leonidas. I know you think you do, but you don't, because you support policies that increase costs and oppose those that control costs. And there is no one who believes less in personal responsibility than a conservative Republican. Sink or swim is not an expression of belief in personal responsibility.
7. kritt11 says:

   August 23, 2009 at 11:48 am

   What Republicans who are now in Congress, serving as Governor , or who served in the recent GOP administration have resigned once it was found that they were involved in a scandal?

   There is a long list of those who have clung to power despite the airing of their dirty laundry– so obviously this is not the party of personal responsibility anymore.
8. Rudi says:

   August 23, 2009 at 1:43 pm

   Torture or the use of mock executions don't work. Even mock executions disgust me!! Winning over a prisoners confidence and other methods work better.
   http://www.dialoginternational.com/dialog_inter…
   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ar…
   

   The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.

   When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.

   Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners' cells with listening devices. They felt bad about censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften them up. They played games with them.

   “We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.

   Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. Across the river, President Bush defended his administration's methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects during an Oval Office appearance.

   Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept honors from the Army's Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

   Showing some humanity has lasting effect:
   http://www.traces.org/germanpows.html
9. Leonidas says:

   August 24, 2009 at 12:34 pm

   Kathy

   You don't believe in fiscal conservatism and personal responsibility, Leonidas. I know you think you do, but you don't, because you support policies that increase costs and oppose those that control costs. And there is no one who believes less in personal responsibility than a conservative Republican. Sink or swim is not an expression of belief in personal responsibility.

   Spending other people's earned wages to fulfill your political agenda is not personal responsibility. No you don't have to be a Republican to be personally responsible, too many Republicans aren't, you could also be a Libertarian or independent, and maybe in a few rare cases a democrat, but you cannot be one if your solution to everything is spending money that you did not earn or advocating it.