On June 24th 2009 a BBC investigation of Bagram finds detainees were
'beaten,' 'hung from the ceiling.' They recently interviewed 27 former detainees who were held at the Bagram Airbase detention facility between 2002 and 2008. All but two of the detainees said they had been ill-treated. According to the investigation, the detainees were "beaten, deprived of sleep, hung from the ceiling and threatened with dogs. Four claimed officials had put a gun to their head and threatened to kill them."
The
The article "CIA Urges White House to Keep Parts of Detainee Report Secret" at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/16/AR2009061603516_pf.html
details that after the May 2004 comprehensive internal account of the agency's interrogation program the CIA knew they were committing crimes and that is why they insisted on getting W's administration support as the article states "After the report was issued, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet demanded that the Justice Department and the White House reaffirm their support for the agency's harsh interrogation methods, even when used in combination, telling others at the time, "No papers, no opinions, no program." At a White House meeting in mid-2004, he resisted pressures to reinstate the program immediately, before receiving new legal authorization, according to a source familiar with the episode."
Why was Tenet so adamant? He was simply because he knew that what the CIA was illegal.
The article--"It Could Happen to Yoo: Criminal Prosecution and Accountability" at
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/22410
regarding a beautiful 42-page order by a judge, states "Usually such things don't strike me as beautiful, but this one says that leading torture lawyer John Yoo can be sued in court by one of his victims. It also says that his arguments for immunity are a load of crap, his arguments for the legality of torture are at least plausibly as fetid a pile of feces as they appear to the naked eye, and the treatment received by Jose Padilla is rather glaringly in conflict with our laws, basic standards of decency, and the wisdom of those who have gone before us and warned against sacrificing our rights on the temple of war."
The article gets Orwellian as it continues "So, while Congress and the Ministry of Truth, er ... I mean the Department of Justice (DOJ), hold off on any attempts to hold anyone accountable for torture until the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility releases a report on the conduct of Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Steven Bradbury -- a report already delayed for six weeks of integrating edits made by the three men who are supposedly the subject of the report -- a judge, by simply comparing Yoo's publicly available confessions in the form of torture memos with actual legal standards, has produced the outline of an indictment that a special prosecutor could pick up and use to put John Yoo behind bars."
The article's author, David Swanson, is pessimistic that a special prosecutor will be appointed by Attorney General Eric Holder so he provides us with a method to demonstrate with a Torture Accountability Action Day, as soon as June 25th, 2009.
Regarding just how guilty Yoo is the article "John Yoo ordered to testify on torture." at
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/13/yoo-testify-torture/
states "The government had asked Judge Jeffrey S. White of
Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley has said that Yoo's memos "provide the very definition of tyranny."
