Month: January 2005

More blood to halt democracy in Iraq.

Insurgents shot and killed Baghdad’s provincial governor and struck at the headquarters of an elite police unit yesterday in a series of attacks against Iraqi government targets aimed at disrupting the January 30 elections.

With only four weeks to go, the increase in violence, particularly in the capital, led to renewed calls for the poll to be delayed. Ghazi al-Yawer, interim president, suggested that the United Nations should decide whether elections would be held on time. However, a senior US state department official said that “absolutely” the elections would go ahead as planned. The security situation was not deteriorating and was actually “a little better” than six weeks ago.

….

Iraq’s electoral commission has also insisted that the Transitional Administrative Law governing the elections states they must be held before January 31, with no mechanism for delay.

The growing insecurity has already diminished participation in the elections. There are virtually no activists out canvassing in the capital and some parties have not even announced a candidate list for fear their members will be targeted.

The shooting of Ali al-Haidari, provincial governor, was the latest in a string of assassinations of local officials that appears to be deterring influential Iraqis, particularly in the Sunni Arab areas, from seeking high-profile political roles. Witnesses said three cars loaded with gunmen pulled alongside Mr Haidari’s four-car motorcade as he drove through the north-east part of the city and then opened fire.

Insurgents associated with the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the killing, warning that “every traitor and supporter of the Jews and Christians” would suffer the same fate.

Do. Not. Delay. The. Vote.

To do so now would trumpet the message that assassination can prevent putting the government into the hands of the Iraqi people.

The U.S. continues to wrestle with detritus of human civilization, that collection of terrorists and pondscum currently being detained at Guantanamo Bay. Neither prisoners of war nor criminals of any real value, what is to be done with them and those to be similarly detained in the future?

A reported plan by the Bush administration to keep some suspected al-Qaeda members imprisoned for a lifetime without trial has come under attack.

The Washington Post newspaper says the Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for those it was unwilling to set free or turn over to domestic or foreign courts.

Some detentions could potentially last a lifetime, the newspaper said.

Influential senators quickly denounced the idea as probably being unconstitutional.

“It’s a bad idea. So we ought to get over it and we ought to have a very careful, constitutional look at this,” Republican Senator Richard Lugar said.

Democratic Senator Carl Levin, who serves on the Armed Services Committee, cited earlier US Supreme Court decisions.

“There must be some modicum, some semblance of due process… if you’re going to detain people, whether it’s for life or whether it’s for years,” he said.

I have little problem with achieving a “semblance of due process,” assuming there’s any actual applicable definition of the status of these pigs.

The story claims the Defence Department, which holds 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, is about to ask Congress for $25m to build a new, 200-bed prison, dubbed Camp 6.

The newspaper said its purpose will be to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal due to a lack of evidence.

The new prison would allow inmates more comfort and freedom than they have now, and would be designed for prisoners the government believes have no more intelligence to share, the newspaper said.

“Since global war on terror is a long-term effort, it makes sense for us to be looking at solutions for long-term problems,” Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, was quoted as saying.

“This has been evolutionary, but we are at a point in time where we have to say, ‘How do you deal with them in the long term?’”

The paper said the outcome of a current review would also affect those expected to be captured in the course of future counterterrorism operations.

One proposal being discussed is transferring many Afghan, Yemeni and Saudi detainees – the majority of the 500 suspects at Guantanamo Bay – to new US-built prisons in their home countries.

Those countries would still run the prisons, but the US State Department, where this idea originated, would monitor them for compliance to human rights standards.

I agree with building more secure but humane facilities for the detainees. Perhaps we should also look for other isolated areas under U.S. control for future facilities.

As to the return of nationals to prisons in their homelands, I am skeptical as to the level of security available for this to be a viable option for any sizable number.

Human rights groups say there is little hard evidence against many of the Guantanamo Bay suspects.

But the Pentagon and the CIA argue that the post-September 11 era requires a new tougher approach and that many of the suspects are hardened terrorists who, if released, would plot fresh atrocities.

In fact, this has already been seen from previous detainees thought harmless enough for release.

The U.S. Department of Justice has revised its 2002 stances on torture, tightening restrictions on what is acceptable during interrogations.

American troops in Iraq will no longer be allowed to inflict “severe pain” while interrogating suspects after US justice officials broadened their controversial definition of torture in the wake of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal.

The Justice Department has quietly revised a previous legal memorandum which held that mistreatment amounted to torture only “if it produced severe pain equivalent to that associated with organ failure or death”.

The memorandum signalling the U-turn was posted unannounced on the Justice Department’s website on Thursday night. Human rights groups say the change amounts to a tacit admission that the previous definition was too loose and paved the way for the abuses of Iraqi prisoners by American troops at Abu Ghraib last year.

Trent Duffy, a spokesman for George W Bush, said that the Justice Department sought comments from the president’s office of legal counsel before pressing ahead with the changes. He said it was to “reiterate the president’s determination that the United States never engage in torture”.

I think the description “u-turn” is quite an exaggeration of what actually amounts to a scope change.

In fact, the president goes further than I personally would. I am against torture as being generally counter-productive and unwarranted but, were the situation dire enough, I would say all bets were off. I guess I’m not a fan of the word “never” when its usage places restrictions that may eventually have tragic consequences. This ties in with my opposition to ever taking the nuclear option off the table during any conflict or ruling out putting boots on the ground as needed.

Michael Ratner, the president of the US-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, which has sued the Bush administration over its interrogation policies, said that the redefinition “makes it clear that the earlier one was not just some intellectual theorising by some lawyers about what was possible. It means it must have been implemented in some way,” he said.

“It puts the burden on the administration to say what practices were actually put in place under those auspices.”

I disagree with Ratner here. It does not necessarily follow, though it is possible, that anything now restricted was actually implemented as policy, nor is there any requirement on the Bush administration to spell out any actual application of the now-altered policy.

In the original memorandum, which is devoted to a US convention against torture, officials from the Justice Department say that torture should cover only “extreme acts and severe pain”.

It adds: “When the pain is physical, it must be of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure. Severe mental pain requires suffering not just at the moment of infliction but it also requires lasting psychological harm.”

The new memo revises the definition to say that torture could include “severe physical pain” and “severe physical suffering”. It notes that physical suffering is difficult to define.

It also rejects an assertion in the original memo that torture could be said to occur only if the interrogator intended to cause the harm that resulted.

David Scheffer, a senior human rights official in the State Department during the Clinton administration, said that while the Justice Department’s revision exercise was commendable, it still left too many judgments in the hands of interrogators.

We are still fighting a civilized war against an uncivilized foe. That’s fine — let’s proceed with one hand potentially tied behind our back. However, if things go poorly, I’d rather a few later suffer the anguish of their actions than we willingly surrender our society for the sake of niceties.