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Archive for 'Torture'

Institutionalizing a Mess is not the Same as Fixing it

Opinion: It’s Still George Bush’s World – AOL News
Even more than a year after his inauguration, President Barack Obama’s foreign policy agenda is still largely devoted to fixing the messes he inherited from Bush. And that’s likely to continue to be the case for quite some time to come, unless Obama makes a more fundamental [...]

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Posted in: Afghanistan, Civil-Military Relations, Guantanamo Bay, National Security, Terrorism, Torture

Evidence of Radicalization at Guantanamo

Many Ex-Detainees Said to Be Engaged in Terror – NYTimes.com
Administration officials said Wednesday that a classified Pentagon report concludes that of some 560 detainees transferred abroad from the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, about one in five has engaged in, or is suspected of engaging in, terrorism or militant activity.
The detainees released are by definition [...]

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Posted in: Guantanamo Bay, Terrorism, Torture

What to Do In Response to the CIA Report?

There is an interesting editorial in the Washington Post today, highlighting the indignities of the previous administration’s torture policies laid out in the recently released 2004 report from the CIA inspector general, and explaining the predicament the current administration finds itself in assessing whether or not to prosecute:
The line between authorized interrogation techniques and those [...]

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Posted in: Torture

Checking Presidential Power

An editorial in yesterday’s Washington Post states:
“We reject the distorted interpretations that underpin the OLC memos and that serve as legal justification for harsh interrogation techniques that either border on or constitute torture. But those who relied on the memos and shaped their behavior in the good-faith belief that they were following the law should [...]

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Posted in: Torture

Ex FBI Agent Decries Torture; Former Bush Administration Lawyer Calls for Inquiry

In a Senate hearing on torture today, former FBI Special Agent and Abu Zubaydah interrogator Ali Soufan decried so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques used against detainees, calling them less effective than traditional methods of information gathering.
From CNN:
Soufan, who was involved in the interrogation of CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah, took issue with former Vice President Dick Cheney, [...]

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Posted in: Torture

New York Times on Professionalism in the Executive Branch

ASP Senior Fellow Dr. Bernard I. Finel recently penned an op-ed about the restoration of professionalism in the executive branch after the administration of George W. Bush, where aides were permitted to dispense advice that led to illegal acts, and subsequently have not been held accountable for their actions.
From Bernard’s piece:
In the last administration, lawyers [...]

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Posted in: Torture

What We Know about Torture

Ali Soufan, a supervisory special agent in the FBI from 1997 to 2005, writes a compelling op-ed in today’s New York Times, in which he rebuts claims that the use of torture on Abu Zubaydah produced actionable intelligence where traditional methods had failed. 
He writes:
It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. [...]

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Posted in: Terrorism, Torture

A Long Walk Home Begins

The Senate Armed Services Committee today released the declassified version of its investigation into the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody since the start of the so-called “War on Terror.”  You can read the whole report here.
What they found, in a bipartisan report, is striking and horrifying.  In essence, the United States government adopted techniques [...]

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Posted in: Terrorism, Torture, Uncategorized

Looming Crisis in Trans-Atlantic Relations

Blogger Andrew Sullivan has likened torture to a cancer on America’s democracy, that “metastasizes quickly and poisons everything it touches.” Today’s Washington Post has a story about likely investigations in Europe of torture during the Bush Administration:
European prosecutors are likely to investigate CIA and Bush administration officials on suspicion of violating an international ban on [...]

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Posted in: Guantanamo Bay, Homeland Security, Torture

Adjunct Fellow Dr. Evelyn Farkas on MSNBC

American Security Project Adjunct Fellow Dr. Evelyn Farkas appears on MSNBC on Friday, April 17th to discuss President Obama’s release of the CIA torture memos and U.S. policies towards Pakistan.  You can view Dr. Farkas’ interview on our website here.

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Posted in: Pakistan, Torture

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