- America, don't worry. Alan Dershowitz is on your side.
He's back on the idiot tube circuit talking about our options in this interminable
war on terrorism.
-
- If Khalid Shaikh Mohammed won't talk, says the respected
lawyer, our guys need to violate the Geneva Accords and jam a "sterilized
needle" under his fingernails. Sterilized, of course, because we don't
want him to get an infection. Now that would be inhumane. As for the Geneva
Accords, "countries all over the world violate" them, so what's
the big deal?
-
- This torture thing, Dershowitz told Wolf Blizter the
other day, it should be done "with accountability," it needs
to be done "openly" so we don't "adopt the way of the hypocrite."
Maybe they can do it on Blizter's show, on CNN's dime? Get Walter Isaacson
to cut for the needles and sterilization kits.
-
- Imagine of the ratings. It'd put Joe Millionaire to shame.
-
- As a lawyer, Dershowitz knows about this kind of stuff.
For instance, he proposes "a torture warrant, which puts a heavy burden
on the government to demonstrate by factual evidence the necessity to administer
this horrible, horrible technique of torture." So, I take it al-Qaeda
evildoers will be tortured after they get their day in court? Of course,
that may take years. If anybody knows how long the legal process takes,
it's Alan Dershowitz.
-
- No, I imagine this "torture warrant" would
need be based on circumstantial evidence. Like that bin Laden tape the
experts found to be a fake. Or maybe Bush can base the evidence on the
word of some poor schmuck in an orange jumper and blacked out goggles at
Gitmo. Some people will say anything to get a good night's sleep.
-
- Dersh's against "subcontracting" our torture
work out -- to say Jordan, the Philippines, or Egypt. If magnetos need
to be attached to the testicles of al-Qaeda operatives, it's best we do
it ourselves lest we become hypocrites. Apparently it is better to be a
sadist than a hypocrite.
-
- "Candor and accountability in a democracy is very
important," asserts the Harvard Law School professor and author of
"Chutzpah," a book determined to minimize the plight of Palestinian
refugees, many who have experienced torture personally.
-
- If candor and accountability were important to the people
who make such decisions, there would have been an immediate and public
investigation into 911. Dick Cheney would have told us all about his Energy
Task Force. Bush wouldn't be locking away some 68,000 pages of discussions
between Reagan and his advisers. Ashcroft wouldn't be trashing the Freedom
of Information Act. If "candor and accountability in a democracy"
meant anything to our unelected president and his cabal of co-conspirators
he wouldn't be refusing to release the names of people arrested by the
Immigration and Naturalization Service and Department of Justice. He wouldn't
be talking about military tribunals for "battlefield detainees"
held at the naval base at Gitmo.
-
- The problem with Dersh is he likes to be on TV too much.
-
- We need to be more like Israel, says Dershowitz. "They
were the only country in the world ever directly to confront the issue,
and it led to a supreme court decision... outlawing torture, and yet Israel
has been criticized all over the world for confronting the issue directly."
-
- In 1999 the Israeli Supreme Court ruled Shin Bet's use
of "moderate physical pressure" on suspects under interrogation
to be illegal. These "moderate" techniques included violently
shaking prisoners, depriving them of sleep, exposing them to loud music,
tying them into painful positions for long periods, and covering their
heads in foul-smelling sacks.
-
- Of course, this kind of torture is likely preferable
to summary execution. Shin Bet agent Danny Yatom knows all about summary
execution. He personally crushed the skulls of two Palestinian detainees
with a large rock after they were arrested for a failed attempt to hijack
an Israeli settler bus at the Deir El Balah Junction in the Gaza Strip.
Yatom did such a good job Sharon appointed him as "Head of Counter
Terrorism."
-
- The above mentioned torture methods became institutionalized
in 1987 when the Landau commission justified the "ticking time-bomb"
scenario -- if Shin Bet and the IDF had reason to believe a suspect held
information that may prevent a terrorist attack, "moderate physical
pressure" could be used. Obviously, large rocks are out of the question.
-
- But the cops and military types in Israel had a Mack
truck-sized back door inserted in the Israeli Supreme Court ruling -- torture's
permissible if evidence of an impending threat to civilian lives is discovered.
Naturally, Shin Bet makes the call. "I am sure that GSS will find
new methods," commented Gideon Ezra, former Shin Bet official and
member of the Knessett. "Maybe they will find a chair that is a little
higher."
-
- Obviously, Dershowitz looks to Israel for his cues.
-
- The savage dust of 911 had hardly settled when the civil
libertarian Dershowitz went before a dense crowd at the Jewish Community
Center in Creve Coeur, Missouri, and told the gathered that terrorist acts
should make civil rights activists readjust their thinking on certain issues.
"Torture would only be used under court-issued warrants, which we
already use for searches and arrests," Dershowitz told the crowd.
"Society needs to be protected from immigrants and other undesirables."
-
- On November 8 2001, in Los Angeles Times editorial ("Is
There a Torturous Road to Justice?") the Dersh said, "Any interrogation
technique, including the use of truth serum or even torture, is not prohibited.
All that is prohibited is the introduction into evidence of the fruits
of such techniques in a criminal trial against the person on whom the techniques
were used."
-
- In other words, it's okay to shove needles under the
fingernails of a terror suspect if the confession extracted is not used
against him.
-
- So much for Dersh's badge as a civil libertarian.
-
- So much for the Fourth Geneva Convention. So much for
the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment
or Punishment, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
treaties the US signed.
-
- "If anybody had the ability to prevent the events
of Sept. 11," Alan Dershowitz told CBS' Mike Wallace last year, "they
would have gone to whatever lengthThe problem becomes, where do we draw
that line?"
-
- Maybe the esteemed lawyer should take counsel in the
conclusions of the Defense Science Board if he's sincerely interested where
the line should be drawn: :
-
- "Historical data show a strong correlation between
U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist
attacks against the United States. In addition, the military asymmetry
that denies nation states the ability to engage in overt attacks against
the United States drives the use of transnational actors [that is, terrorists
from one country attacking in another]."
-
- Or, as Chalmers Johnson explains:
-
- "One man's terrorist is ... another man's freedom
fighter, and what U.S. officials denounce as unprovoked terrorist attacks
on its innocent citizens are often meant as retaliation for previous American
imperial actions. Terrorists attack innocent and undefended American targets
precisely because American soldiers and sailors firing cruise missiles
from ships at sea or sitting in B-52 bombers at extremely high altitudes
or supporting brutal and repressive regimes from Washington seem invulnerable."
-
- In other words, if you don't want to be a victim of terrorism,
don't kill people. Don't use CIA, FBI, and Army Special Forces "take-down
teams" on detainees. Don't support governments that amputate limbs
for disobedience. Or those who torture and shoot children for throwing
stones.
-
- Shoving "sterilized" needles under the fingernails
of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed will not put an end to terrorism. In fact, it
will not prevent one single terrorist act -- not in America or anywhere
else.
-
- Ask Israel if its Khiam torture prison in southern Lebanon
put an end to Hezbollah rocket attacks. Or if more than a few of the thousands
of prisoners tortured at the Ketziot prison in the Negev desert emerge
to become suicide bombers. Ask the Vietnamese if the Phoenix Program put
an end to their determination to fight and eventually defeat the US. Ask
the Iranians if the Shah's torture dungeons manned by SAVAK goons prevented
the revolution in 1979.
-
- No, Dersh, torture will not end the war on terrorism.
It will only demoralize those who call for its implementation. It will
put us on par with Shin Bet and the paramilitary thugs in Latin America
and Colombia.
-
- But then, I suppose, terrorism is a good business for
you. It sells books and packs auditoriums.
-
- It also keeps your face on CNN.
-
-
- nimmo@zianet.com Kurt Nimmo's Another Day in the Empire
http://nimmo.blogspot.com/
-
-
- Comment
- From Jim
- Italicsmyn@aol.com
- 3-10-3
-
-
- Dear Jeff,
-
- It's a sad day in the neighborhood when a distinguished
attorney who's often fought for life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness
can't see the trees through the forest of what he proposes.
-
- Of course plunging needles under fingernails will extract
a confession. Who wouldn't talk under such conditions? Just one example
from history: In October, 1348, at Chatel near Geneva, a man named Agimet,
after twice being "put to torture a little," as was allowed in
continental Roman-based law, confessed in a formal judicial proceeding
before a panel of judges that he had poisoned the wells, cisterns, and
springs about Venice in order to spread the plague. He even swore on the
Torah as to the truth of his confession.
-
- Torture is already widely tolerated. Witness our prisons,
where the weak and powerless are routinely subjected to gang rapes and
mutilations. So frequently do they occur that no one can rightly say "but
we didn't know." Yet instead of doing something constructive to end
these travesties, TV shows and movies yuck funnyisms about it to get a
cheap laugh.
-
- Now government wants to torture suspects as a Standard
Operating Procedure. Why not? Having witnessed their other actions to
negate the protections granted in the U.S. Constitution, getting rid of
the prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment" shouldn't weigh
too heavily on their conscience either.
-
- But even if these 4th degree methods of interrogation
were introduced with the best of intentions, reserved only for "kingpins,"
these noble goals would soon degenerate into nothing more than a fund-raising
tactic not unlike the property seizure laws introduced some years back.
-
- In 1692, It was the usual practice that the commonwealth
(i.e., government) received 2/3 of a lawfully convicted witch's estate,
and the goody doing God's work (by reporting said suspected witch) received
the remaining 1/3.
-
- Of course, no one believes in witches in this enlightened
age, but we do believe that every soul might harbor a terrorist. And if
the Authorities can't ferret out these nefarious creatures with a simple
confession, then more persuasive methods must be exercised (pursuant to
law). At stake is not only peace in our time, but the ability to solve
today's massive billion dollar deficits at every level of government.
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