CIA Committed ‘War Crimes,’ Bush Official Says

Wired
Spencer Ackerman

A top adviser to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned the Bush administration that its use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading” interrogation techniques like waterboarding were “a felony war crime.”

What’s more, newly obtained documents reveal that State Department counselor Philip Zelikow told the Bush team in 2006 that using the controversial interrogation techniques were “prohibited” under U.S. law — “even if there is a compelling state interest asserted to justify them.”

Zelikow argued that the Geneva conventions applied to al-Qaida — a position neither the Justice Department not the White House shared at the time. That made waterboarding and the like a violation of the War Crimes statute and a “felony,” Zelikow tells Danger Room. Asked explicitly if he believed the use of those interrogation techniques were a war crime, Zelikow replied, “Yes.”

Zelikow first revealed the existence of his secret memo, dated February 15, 2006, in an April 2009 blog post, shortly after the Obama administration disclosed many of its predecessor’s legal opinions blessing torture. He briefly described it (.pdf) in a contentious Senate hearing shortly thereafter, revealing then that “I later heard the memo was not considered appropriate for further discussion and that copies of my memo should be collected and destroyed.”

At least one copy survived in the files of the department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The State Department has now disclosed it to Danger Room, mostly without redactions — three years after this reporter filed an official request for it. You can read the memo for yourself, below.

Zelikow’s memo was an internal bureaucratic push against an attempt by the Justice Department to flout long-standing legal restrictions against torture. In 2005, he wrote, both the Justice and State Departments had decided that international prohibitions against “acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture” do not “apply to CIA interrogations in foreign countries.” Those techniques included contorting a detainee’s body in painful positions, slamming a detainee’s head against a wall, restricting a detainee’s caloric intake, and waterboarding.
Zelikow wrote that a law passed that year by Congress, restricting interrogation techniques, meant the “situation has now changed.” Both legally and as a matter of policy, he advised, administration officials were endangering both CIA interrogators and the reputation of the United States by engaging in extreme interrogations — even those that stop short of torture.

Muslims did not attack the U.S. on 9/11

DigWithin
Kevin Ryan

Since September 11, 2001, the United States has initiated a number of wars in Muslim countries. These wars, which would be more correctly called massacres, have resulted in the deaths of countless innocent Muslims.  In some cases, attempts have been made to present these aggressions in the guise of humanitarian efforts to promote democracy.  But the limited public support for U.S. military action around the world goes back to the U.S. government claim that Muslims were responsible for 9/11. This claim is untrue and it is past time for people to recognize that fact.

There are many ways to see that Muslims were not responsible for 9/11.  Author David Ray Griffin has previously made arguments in this regard.[1]  As time goes on, however, more facts lead people to realize that claims of Muslim responsibility for terrorism in the U.S. should be highly suspect. These facts include that the October 2001 anthrax attacks were blamed on Muslims only to be later traced to a U.S. military facility and to non-Muslim, U.S. scientists.  Moreover, a number of FBI-planned acts of terrorism since 2001 have been falsely attributed to young Muslims who were victims of appalling acts of entrapment by the FBI.[2]

According to the official account of 9/11, nineteen young Arab Muslims were responsible for the entirety of the mass murder that day. The FBI accused these young men within 72 hours of the attacks and, although the list changed slightly at first, it has remained the same since shortly after the attacks.  To support the accusations, U.S. authorities pointed to passports that were found under implausible circumstances, luggage containing unbelievably convenient documents, and other dubious evidence.
In October 2001, reporter Seymour Hersh wrote –

“Many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues that were uncovered about the terrorists’ identities and preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found. A former high-level intelligence official told me, ‘Whatever trail was left was left deliberately—for the F.B.I. to chase.’”[3]

Years later, the 9/11 Commission Report (911CR) was written by a professional myth-maker, Phillip Zelikow, who was also a Bush Administration insider.  Oddly enough, the outline for the report was written by Zelikow and his colleague Ernest May even before the investigation began.  It is now widely accepted that the 9/11 Commission and the FBI did very poorly in terms of investigating most aspects of the attacks. In just one example, the FBI never even interviewed the people suspected of engaging in 9/11 insider trading.[4]

Despite the poor quality of the investigation, the 911CR used inflammatory language which focused on Muslims as “the enemy.”  The Commission told us that “the enemy rallies broad support in the Arab and Muslim world by demanding redress of political grievances, but its hostility toward us and our values is limitless.”  The Commission was being false and misleading when it made these statements, however, as the evidence shows that 9/11 was not a Muslim crime.

Muslims do not murder innocent people

The most obvious reason that the Commission was off-track is that Muslims do not murder innocent people.  Some people find this statement outrageous.  Of course Muslims murder innocent people, they say, that’s what al Qaeda does.