War Handwavium

Israel has been tearing down Palestinian homes in East Jeruselem.

Israel says the buildings didn’t have the proper “permits”. East Jeruselem is Palsetinian territory. Israel is occupying it militarily. So, the Palestinians and their government should be the ones to decide whether the buildings meet the local building codes, not Israel.

Meanwhile, Israel is demolishing Palestinian homes in Palestinian land so Israel can build more Jewish settlements on that Palestinian land and claim it as Israeli territory that cannot be part of a Palestinian state. These Jewish settlements have been consistently ruled illegal by the international community.

So, Isreal is tearing down Palestinian homes on Palestinian land because Israel says they are “illegal”, and then Israel uses that land to build Jewish settlements on Palestinian land that violates international law.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/10/200910282211496109.html

Even if he isn’t there.

In a speech to the UN, Netanyahu criticized the UN’s Goldstone report on Israel’s actions during Operation Cast Lead. Netanyahu said: “Rather than condemn terrorism, some at the UN are condemning its victims”

Ah, yeah, about that. In the entire year of 2008, Palestinian militants killed 17 Israeli civilians. In response, Israel bombarded and invaded Gaza killing about 1,000 Palestinian civilians.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/09/20099241860875369.html

A 90-year-old former German army commander was convicted of war crimes for ordering the killing of 14 civilians. He was sentenced to life in prison 65 years after the crime happened.

I wonder how long it will take the United States to start convicting its own war criminals who ordered the torture of thousands of prisoners and resulted in at least 100 deaths in US custody.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090811/wl_afp/germanyitalyhistorytrialwarcrimes

Glenn Greenwald found this bit about a skit that took place on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” show back in 2004. It isn’t specifically about language misdescribing violence, but it’s close.

I’m a reporter, Jon, and my job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other. Little thing called “objectivity” — �might want to look it up some day.

News “Reporters” have found it easier to simply parrot what the politicians babble than to take down their words, investigate the claims objectively, and call them on their lies. If you call politicians on their lies, they might not give you “access” any more, and many news “reporters” have given high priority to “access” than to truth, honesty, or integrity.

So, the short of it is this: any newsperson who takes down what people say and then mindlessly parrots those words and pretends that’s “objective” news, those people are NOT reporters, they’re stenographers.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/02/npr/index.html

http://www.fair.org/extra/0411/stenographers.html

17 Chinese prisoners held in Guantanamo for years, having been declared innocent by the American military’s own review system back in 2005, were finally released to the island nation of Palau in 2009.

The prisoners were Uighur (Uhghur), an ethnic group in central Asia. The Chinese government has often referred to Uyghur nationalists as “terrorists”. None of the Uyghurs wanted to be returned to China for fear of being executed. The United States declined to grant the Uyghurs political asylum, or to allow them parole, and instead continued to imprison them at Guantanamo for years after declaring them innocent. The US had transferred some Uighur’s to Albania. But China threatened Albania and Albania said it would not take any more Uighurs.

So the United States promised the tiny island nation of Palau a lot of money 200 million dollars in exchange for Palau taking 17 of the Uighur from Guantanamo. The entire population of Palau is 20,000 people. Two hundred million dollars is a lot of money for a country that small. Not surprisingly, on 10 June 2009, Palau agreed to take the Uighurs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_captives_in_Guantanamo

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/06/2009610224138374759.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_people

A map that shows who has controlled the middle east throughout history.

From http://www.mapsofwar.com/

In 2004, the CIA’s Inspector General John Helgerson found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped thwart any specific imminent attacks.

President Bush told a September 2006 news conference that one plot, to attack a Los Angeles office tower, was “derailed” in early 2002 — before the harsh CIA interrogation measures were approved, contrary to those who claim that waterboarding revealed it.

Some officials at CIA headquarters insisted on the repeated waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, the first prisoner to undergo the technique, even after the interrogators on the scene sought to discontinue the technique.

Some interrogators went beyond what the Justice Department initially authorized in an Aug. 1, 2002, memo

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/66895.html

Ali Soufan was an FBI interrogator at Quantanamo and reports some interesting facts.

“The first [torture memo], dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working.”

But Ali Soufan had been interrogating Abu Zubaydah from March to June 2002.

“Under traditional interrogation methods, [Abu Zubaydah] provided us with important actionable intelligence.”

“We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives.”

“There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics.”

“Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23soufan.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Dick “Palpatine” Cheney, the man who spent the last 8 years burying the truth of what the government was doing under layer after layer of secrecy and lies, has just announced that the government should release more torture memos to show what intelligence torture has produced.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/20/cheney-calls-release-memos-showing-results-interrogation-efforts-1862515294/

Never mind the fact that the entire time Cheney was in power, he wanted to keep as much power as possible, and now that he’s out of power, and more importantly, his actions as the Dark Sith Lord might land him in front of the Hague, now he’s calling for transparency in government.

Never mind that that Cheney trying to defend torture on the grounds that it “works” is morally equivalent to arguing that we should use criminals and the mentally and physically challenged as sandbagging material because they do in fact hold back water when tied up in burlap bags.

Never mind the fact that immediately after 9/11, the US tortured Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who then gave us the “intelligence” that al Quaeda had sent operatives to Iraq to acquire chemcial and biological weapons and training, that this “intelligence” was the entire basis for how Bush justified linking Iraq to 9/11, and that this entire linkage was not only a LIE, but it was a lie that Bush and Cheney eagerly believed so they could launch an invasion of Iraq in an effort to give reconstruction contracts to Cheney’s Haliburton company.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070517165922rn_2/www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5197853/site/newsweek/

http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2005/DIAletter.102605.pdf

Never mind that Bush and Cheney’s precious “intelligence” , i.e. the NIE, to the US congress back in 2002 said with “high confidence” that Iraq “has now established large-scale, redundant and concealed BW agent production capabilities.” It said “all key aspects” of Iraq’s offensive BW program “are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War.”

NEVER MIND THAT EVERY BIT OF THIS PRECIOUS INTELLIGENCE WAS WRONG. Never mind that this intelligence was used to justify a war we are still fighting years later and still have no exit in sight.

http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/iraq-wmd.html

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1120-01.htm

Never mind any of that.

What I realized was that Cheney is right, at least in this one particular instance. We need more transparency. We need to see ALL the things that EVERY PERSON EVER TORTURED BY US HANDLERS EVER CONFESSED TO. And put them all up side by side and see what there is to see.

I thought I’d provide a starting list. So, here are some of the things that people have confessed to while being tortured by US agents:

1) Hijacker of United Airlines Flight 175

2) Driver of small craft that attacked the USS Cole

3) Kaiten submarine crew

4) Selbstopfereinsatz pilot

When you’re tortured long enough, you’ll confess to anything that will make the torture stop. This is why the system of torture doesn’t work. It’s morally wrong, but it doesn’t work either. Darth Cheney wants to argue that torture does work that it did produce good information. Well, even a broken clock is right two times a day.