(no subject)
Nov. 14th, 2005 11:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ebonlockI'm sure this comes as no great surprise to...well...everyone:
"Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, wrote that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion" in a 1985 document obtained by The Washington Times.
"I personally believe very strongly" in this legal position, Mr. Alito wrote on his application to become deputy assistant to Attorney General Edwin I. Meese III.
The document, which is likely to inflame liberals who oppose Judge Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court, is among many that the White House will release today from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library."
via Pandagon
I must say it's a good deal more honest and straightforward a statement from a potential SC nominee than I'm accustomed to, it's almost refreshing really.
That may not have surprised you, but this should at least inspire a sad shake of the head:
SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. Based on studies of North Korean and Vietnamese efforts to break American prisoners, SERE was intended to train American soldiers to resist the abuse they might face in enemy custody.
[...]
The Pentagon appears to have flipped SERE's teachings on their head, mining the program not for resistance techniques but for interrogation methods. At a June 2004 briefing, the chief of the United States Southern Command, Gen. James T. Hill, said a team from Guantánamo went "up to our SERE school and developed a list of techniques" for "high-profile, high-value" detainees. General Hill had sent this list - which included prolonged isolation and sleep deprivation, stress positions, physical assault and the exploitation of detainees' phobias - to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who approved most of the tactics in December 2002.
[...]
the Pentagon cannot point to any intelligence gains resulting from the techniques that have so tarnished America's image. That's because the techniques designed by communist interrogators were created to control a prisoner's will rather than to extract useful intelligence.
via Hullabaloo
So I think this removes the final argument against using the term "gulag" to reference our secret torture prison system. It's nice to know that our government not only has decided to use the same techniques developed by vicious totalitarian governments that we once vilified for doing the same, but we don't even understand how to use them properly. The incompetence of this administration is truly dazzling at times.
As Digby points out:
Can you believe it? It's not just that torture doesn't work generally, which it doesn't. And it's not just that torture is morally repugnant and stains all who are involved with it. It does. The most amazingly thing about this (Commie) torture regime is that it's specifically designed to extract false confessions for propaganda purposes. Dear gawd, can they really be so incompetent that they didn't understand the difference between creating propaganda and gaining intelligence?
Sadly yes, I can believe that quite easily. Though some would argue that propaganda has been the goal all along and that actually stopping the "terrorist threat" is hardly even on the list of things to do. But I'll leave those conclusions for my readers to draw on their own.
"Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, wrote that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion" in a 1985 document obtained by The Washington Times.
"I personally believe very strongly" in this legal position, Mr. Alito wrote on his application to become deputy assistant to Attorney General Edwin I. Meese III.
The document, which is likely to inflame liberals who oppose Judge Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court, is among many that the White House will release today from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library."
via Pandagon
I must say it's a good deal more honest and straightforward a statement from a potential SC nominee than I'm accustomed to, it's almost refreshing really.
That may not have surprised you, but this should at least inspire a sad shake of the head:
SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. Based on studies of North Korean and Vietnamese efforts to break American prisoners, SERE was intended to train American soldiers to resist the abuse they might face in enemy custody.
[...]
The Pentagon appears to have flipped SERE's teachings on their head, mining the program not for resistance techniques but for interrogation methods. At a June 2004 briefing, the chief of the United States Southern Command, Gen. James T. Hill, said a team from Guantánamo went "up to our SERE school and developed a list of techniques" for "high-profile, high-value" detainees. General Hill had sent this list - which included prolonged isolation and sleep deprivation, stress positions, physical assault and the exploitation of detainees' phobias - to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who approved most of the tactics in December 2002.
[...]
the Pentagon cannot point to any intelligence gains resulting from the techniques that have so tarnished America's image. That's because the techniques designed by communist interrogators were created to control a prisoner's will rather than to extract useful intelligence.
via Hullabaloo
So I think this removes the final argument against using the term "gulag" to reference our secret torture prison system. It's nice to know that our government not only has decided to use the same techniques developed by vicious totalitarian governments that we once vilified for doing the same, but we don't even understand how to use them properly. The incompetence of this administration is truly dazzling at times.
As Digby points out:
Can you believe it? It's not just that torture doesn't work generally, which it doesn't. And it's not just that torture is morally repugnant and stains all who are involved with it. It does. The most amazingly thing about this (Commie) torture regime is that it's specifically designed to extract false confessions for propaganda purposes. Dear gawd, can they really be so incompetent that they didn't understand the difference between creating propaganda and gaining intelligence?
Sadly yes, I can believe that quite easily. Though some would argue that propaganda has been the goal all along and that actually stopping the "terrorist threat" is hardly even on the list of things to do. But I'll leave those conclusions for my readers to draw on their own.
