Free Republic

The Arizona lawmaker—who was tortured himself while a prisoner of war in Vietnam — said the controversial practice was both illegal and ineffective. BY ALIYAH SHAHID Republican Sen. John McCain is ripping presidential candidates in his party who insist waterboarding is an effective technique for interrogating suspected terrorists. The Arizona lawmaker—who was tortured himself while a prisoner of war in Vietnam — said the controversial practice was both illegal and ineffective on Monday evening. “Very disappointed by statements at SC GOP debate supporting waterboarding,” he tweeted. “Waterboarding is torture.” McCain, who ran for President in 2008, elaborated on CNN later,...

Sen. John McCain, a critic of President George W. Bush's use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the war on terror, reflected on the “issue of torture” a decade after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. “Abu Ghraib and the torture of prisoners hurt us a great deal and did provide a propaganda tool for our enemies including Al Qaeda,” the Arizona Republican said on "Fox News Sunday." Noting that on the 10th anniversary of those attacks he did not want to dwell on his differences with the current and previous administration, McCain applauded both Bush and President Barack Obama for...

The convicted ringleader of detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib was released Saturday from a military prison, an Army spokeswoman said. Charles Graner Jr., 42, was released from the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., around 10 a.m. Saturday after serving more than 6 1/2 years of a 10-year sentence, spokeswoman Rebecca Steed said. Graner will be under the supervision of a probation officer until Dec. 25, 2014, she said. Steed said she could not release any information about Graner's whereabouts or his destination after release. Neither Graner nor his wife — who was a fellow Abu Ghraib defendant —...

The Obama administration is reviving the Abu Ghraib prison scandal eight years after the fact, with a pending determination about whether a former leader of the CIA interrogation team at the facility will be charged with war crimes.

Seven years after the release of shocking images of tortured prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the Supreme Court has turned back the appeal of 26 inmates from that infamous facility who wanted to sue two military contractors for damages. The military's official investigation revealed "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" committed by military personnel and civilian contractors who provided support services at the prison. More than two dozen soldiers were reprimanded or court-martialed for their conduct. But those who were tortured want to sue two firms that hired the civilians who helped the military with...

In 1984 the photographer Tom Cahill smashed a plate-glass door in a fit of fury at the San Francisco Chronicle. He had just unsuccessfully attempted to get the paper’s reporters to write about rape in America’s jails and prisons. Cahill was a desperate man at the time, tormented by flashbacks and nightmares, his personal and professional life in ruins. Cahill’s story began in 1968, when he was arrested in Texas during a peaceful antiwar protest. An Air Force vet who opposed the Vietnam War, he did not prove popular among jail staff in the heavily military town of San Antonio....

In 1984 the photographer Tom Cahill smashed a plate-glass door in a fit of fury at the San Francisco Chronicle. He had just unsuccessfully attempted to get the paper’s reporters to write about rape in America’s jails and prisons. Cahill was a desperate man at the time, tormented by flashbacks and nightmares, his personal and professional life in ruins. Cahill’s story began in 1968, when he was arrested in Texas during a peaceful antiwar protest. An Air Force vet who opposed the Vietnam War, he did not prove popular among jail staff in the heavily military town of San Antonio....

A federal prosecutor has launched a secret grand jury to investigate possible CIA war crimes at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Time magazine reported. Federal prosecutor John Durham, who was first appointed to probe the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes by Attorney General Michael Mukasey in 2008, is now working on an expanded probe authorized by the Obama Justice Department that includes cases of alleged abuse of terror suspects in U.S. custody. Time reported on Monday that one Durham-issued subpoena said the federal grand jury “is conducting an investigation of possible violations of federal criminal laws involving War Crimes...

A federal prosecutor has launched a secret grand jury to investigate possible CIA war crimes at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Time magazine reported. Federal prosecutor John Durham, who was first appointed to probe the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes by Attorney General Michael Mukasey in 2008, is now working on an expanded probe authorized by the Obama Justice Department that includes cases of alleged abuse of terror suspects in U.S. custody. Time reported on Monday that one Durham-issued subpoena said the federal grand jury “is conducting an investigation of possible violations of federal criminal laws involving War Crimes...

It has been nearly a decade since Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi prisoner known as "the Iceman" — for the bungled attempt to cool his body and make him look less dead — perished in CIA custody at Abu Ghraib. But now there are rumbles in Washington that the notorious case, as well as other alleged CIA abuses, could be returning to haunt the agency. TIME has learned that a prosecutor tasked with probing the CIA — John Durham, a respected, Republican-appointed U.S. Attorney from Connecticut — has begun calling witnesses before a secret federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., looking...

The unity and pride inspired by the killing of Osama Bin Laden has quickly deteriorated into a nasty debate over the effectiveness of torture. The administration is reportedly upset by this diversion. But President Barack Obama has nobody to blame but himself. While President George W. Bush took the nation down the dark path to torture, Obama ensured that it remained part of our national debate by failing to investigate and hold to account those who tortured. His failure to do so means that we now debate publicly whether or not to torture based on assessments of whether or not...

Democrats think they have a candidate who can win Texas’ open Senate seat: Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. Democrats appear to have recruited retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez to run for the U.S. Senate in Texas, setting the stage for the party to field a well-known candidate in the 2012 race to replace retiring Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, a Democrat, confirmed that Democratic Senate campaign chief Patty Murray, D-Wash., was referring to Sanchez on Thursday when she said Democrats were close to announcing a candidate in Texas. Sanchez, reached by phone at his...

Islamic protesters sparked fury today after they burned a model of a poppy and deliberately broke the silence at Armistice Day commemorations in central London. As millions of Britons fell silent to remember those who have died in war, members of a group called Muslims Against Crusades clashed with police during an 'emergency demonstration' in Kensington, west London. As the clock struck 11am, the Islamic protesters burned a model of a poppy and chanted 'British soldiers burn in hell'. They held banners which read 'Islam will dominate' and 'Our dead are in paradise, your dead are in hell'. The Muslims...

Afghan prisoners taking part in a US study have claimed they were abused at a secret jail inside the main American military base in Afghanistan. Share Yahoo StumbleUpon Google Technorati del.icio.us Digg Reddit Mixx Propeller Former inmates told the Open Society Institute they were subjected to sleep deprivation, extended periods of isolation and a lack of food and blankets. Some of the claimed abuses date from this year, despite President Barack Obama's pledge to overhaul prison practices. Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi said this does not surprise him because “the Obama administration is many respects worse than the Bush administration.”...

WASHINGTON -Fending off demands that he resign over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress in 2004 that he had found a legal way to compensate Iraqi detainees who suffered "grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty at the hands of a few members of the United States armed forces." "It's the right thing to do," Rumsfeld said. "And it is my intention to see that we do." Six years later, the U.S. Army is unable to document a single payment for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. Nor can the more than 250 Iraqis or their...

Today’s Los Angeles Times is featuring a report by Ned Parker that reveals the existence a secret prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki (L.A. Times photo above). Sunni Muslim prisoners and others there-in were allegedly tortured by beatings, electrical shocks, and anally raped. I am not surprised by this report. I have long believed that an invading Infidel army would never be able to broker a truce, ameliorate, assuage, mitigate, tranquilize, becalm, or otherwise call a halt to the centuries-old war between Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims over the lawful ascension to leadership of the Muslim...

FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. (Jan. 12, 2009) — Department of Defense personnel announced Monday that Maj. Gen. David E. Quantock, who currently heads American prison facilities in Iraq, will succeed Maj. Gen. Gregg Martin as Fort Leonard Wood’s commanding general. Quantock, a career military policeman who previously served as the commandant of the Military Police School at Fort Leonard Wood, is known as the American commander brought in to repair the damage caused by the 2004 detainee abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in which several American soldiers abused Iraqi detainees and photographed them in various sexually humiliating positions....

War On Terror: As Khalid Sheikh Mohammed receives the benefits of U.S. justice, three Navy SEALs face court-martial for allegedly punching a captured terrorist who hanged Americans from a bridge in Fallujah. Apparently our efforts to impress the world about the marvels of our criminal justice system require us to give foreign terrorists such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the man who invented the manned cruise missiles that flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and plowed into a Pennsylvania field on its way to the Capitol Building, the full rights and protections of the American citizens he conspired...

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And for their trouble, three of the SEALs, members of the Navy's elite commando unit, are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com. The three have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral's mast — and requested a trial by court-martial. Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it....

War On Terror: Sen. Dick Durbin calls a plan to transfer 100 Guantanamo detainees to northwest Illinois "a dream come true." It would paint a bull's-eye on America's heartland in time for the 2012 Iowa caucuses. It seems the question of where to put the Guantanamo detainees is being settled as we speak, with liberal Democrats in the very blue state of Illinois welcoming them with open arms and outstretched hands for the federal dollars that will come with them. Federal officials last Friday inspected the Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Ill., a town of 500 on the Iowa border,...

Link only, per FR copyright and excerpt rules

Republican Senator John McCain has denounced the use of torture on terrorism suspects during the administration of former president George W. Bush. "I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan," said McCain. In an interview with CBS News on Sunday, the Arizona senator said that the enhanced interrogation techniques also helped al Qaeda recruit additional members. "I think these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq,” said McCain, who added that he...

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator John McCain, a torture survivor from his days as a captive during the Vietnam War, says his private comments about harsh interrogation methods were misrepresented by the Bush Administration in a recently released legal document intended to justify a six-day-long course of sleep deprivation for one CIA detainee in November of 2007. The newly declassified memo by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel mentions a secret briefing McCain and other members of Congress received sometime before October 17, 2006. The memo says the lawmakers were told about six CIA interrogation techniques, including prolonged sleep deprivation....

Says Abuse of Detainees Helped al Qaeda Recruit Terrorists, But Opposes Investigation into "Enhanced" Interrogations. BY MICHELLE LEVI Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he thinks it is a "serious mistake" for the administration to focus on the past when investigating the interrogation techniques of the CIA under President Bush on "Face the Nation" Sunday. "For us now to go back, I think, would be a serious mistake. "I believe that the president was right when he said we ought to go forward and not back. I worry about the morale and effectiveness of the CIA. I worry about this thing...

And the Democrats have won. President Obama will use the emotional capital of the Senator's passing to push through--via reconciliation--legislation that SHALL include the public option that the Pelosi wing of the party wants. Any Republicans who dare to speak against this will be portrayed as heartless demagogues, spitting on the grave of a liberal legend.

WASHINGTON – A lecture by the woman who became the public face of the Abu Ghraib scandal was canceled Friday at the Library of Congress after threats led to concerns about staff safety. Former Army reservist Lynndie England had been scheduled to discuss her biography as part of a veterans forum on Capitol Hill. The book by author Gary S. Winkler is called "Tortured: Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib and the Photographs That Shocked the World." Members of the Library of Congress Professional Association, the employee group holding the talk, received an e-mail from president Angela Kinney saying the event was...

Five years after the infamous Abu Ghraib torture photos came to light, Lynndie England says the government's "softening up tactics" are acceptable ways to get information from prisoners. In an interview with the BBC, England defends herself and fellow soldiers who posed Iraqi prisoners in degrading positions for photographs in 2004. "Compared to what they do to us, that's like nothing," England says in the BBC video, referring to instances where Americans were decapitated, burned, dragged through the streets or hung from a bridge by insurgents. She likens the physical degradation that appears in the Abu Ghraib photos to the...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. John McCain said Thursday the United States must recover from the "moral failures" of human rights abuses and called for Americans to stand on the "right side" of history as a leader of the free world. "I believe American leadership in opposition to human rights abuses, not silence, is the truest expression of our national character," McCain said in a speech to the Junior State of America, a civics education organization for high school students. "The United States since its founding has embraced a set of moral duties, among which I believe is the obligation to...

KEYSER, W.Va. – More than two years since leaving her prison cell, the woman who became the grinning face of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal spends most of her days confined to the four walls of her home. Former Army reservist Lynndie England hasn't landed a job in numerous tries: When one restaurant manager considered hiring her, other employees threatened to quit.

In this deeply disturbing interview, the trailer trash torturer who appalled the world by appearing in shocking 'souvenir' photographs remains utterly unrepentant and says she has 800 MORE torture photos that could rock the White House Normally, not much happens in Keyser, West Virginia, but today the folks in this quaint little railroad town, nestling in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, are spoilt for choice. Either they can whoop and holler along to fiddle music at the annual Strawberry Festival or head down to the bookshop, where a local 'celebrity' - as her agent-cum-lawyer describes her - is signing...

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee. Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

In our view May 14: Obama Flip-Flops By trying to hide truth about prisoner abuse, president abuses public's right to know Thursday, May 14 | 1:00 a.m. Much of President Barack Obama's success in last year's election was based on his promise to foster open government, transparency and accountability. Now he has reversed that course as he tries to block the release of hundreds of photos showing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan being abused. How many more times will Obama reverse or abandon positions that he articulated in his campaign for the presidency? His reasons for changing his mind in...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says the detainee abuse photos he wants to block from release are "not particularly sensational" and would do no good if published. He said he will not tolerate abuse of prisoners. But he also said Wednesday he had directed his legal team to fight the court-ordered release of the photos because he was concerned about how they might affect the safety of U.S. troops. Obama spoke on the South Lawn of the White House, not long after his decision to fight in court to block the photos' release was made public by aides.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will try to block the court-ordered release of hundreds of photos showing U.S. troops allegedly abusing prisoners, reversing his position after military commanders warned the graphic images could stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger soldiers. ... The White House announced Obama's decision Wednesday, after top military commanders in the two wars expressed fears that showing the pictures could put their troops at higher risk. ...

Obama Opposes Releasing Photos of U.S. Detainee Abuse President Obama has decided not to release the photos which the Pentagon had planned to release by May 28 in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. A senior administration official told FOX News that President Obama told his legal advisers last week that he did not feel comfortable with the release of the photos because he believes they would endanger U.S. troops, and that the national security implications of such a release have not been fully presented in federal court. "Obama would be...

If President Obama wanted to refrain from releasing these photos in order to protect the military forces he commands or promote the security of Americans — his two highest obligations as president — he could do so by simply issuing an executive order. The applicable statute expressly allows for it, just as it provides for Congress — now in the firm control of the president and his party — to withhold the photos from disclosure. Instead, Obama and congressional Democrats are choosing to release the photos. They are making that choice fully aware that it will cost lives. It is...

News reports described the meeting as a touching and powerful coming together of the president and these long-suffering families. Mr. Obama had won over even those who opposed his decision to close Gitmo by assuaging their fears that the review of some 245 current detainees would result in dangerous jihadists being set free. “I did not vote for the man, but the way he talks to you, you can’t help but believe in him,” said John Clodfelter to the New York Times. His son, Kenneth, was killed in the Cole bombing. “[Mr. Obama] left me with a very positive feeling...

Link only, per FR copyright and posting policy

White House says Holder will decide on prosecutions; Obama opposes special commission on Bush-era policies. BY WILL DUNHAM WASHINGTON, April 26 (Reuters) - Releasing classified memos showing whether harsh Bush-era interrogation methods yielded useful information from terrorism suspects is not necessary, Republican Senator John McCain said on Sunday in a public disagreement with former Vice President Dick Cheney. After President Barack Obama released four memos this month revealing the Bush administration's legal justification for methods such as waterboarding -- a form of simulated drowning -- Cheney called for declassifying any memos showing that these techniques succeeded in producing valuable information....

WASHINGTON (AP) — A leading Democratic senator said Sunday independent investigators should determine whether Bush administration officials ought to face charges over the harsh interrogation techniques used against suspected terrorists. The White House had hoped to put the matter behind it by letting the attorney general make that call. Other liberal Democratic lawmakers appearing on the Sunday news shows joined Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., in pressuring the Obama administration to pursue investigations into the interrogations policies. But they stopped short of demanding charges against the Bush-era lawyers and other officials who devised the policies that critics have denounced as torture....

America is bracing itself for another Abu Ghraib-style scandal as Washington agreed to release fresh pictures depicting the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Defense Department will release a 'substantial number' of photos before May 28, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The move is in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the group in 2004 and will include images from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan at locations other than Abu Ghraib, the group said. 'These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far...

FYI: The org "World Can't Wait" is an "anti-war" front for the Revolutionary Communist Party. The RCP, on their website, calls for the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Former Abu Ghraib Brigadier General, Janis Karpinski, is listed as an "endorser" of the WCW movement on the World Can't Wait website. House Judiciary Committee chairman/Bush administration "torture investigators", democrat John Conyers Jr of Michigan, and HJC member, Maxine Waters, have also each given their endorsements to the Revolutionary Communist Party movement/organization, "World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime" (they'll probably be dropping the "Drive Out the Bush Regime" portion of...

WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing "war crimes" and called for those responsible to be held to account. The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who's now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices. "After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to...

Sen. John McCain warned that a pursuit for charges against Bush administration officials who helped design harsh interrogation tactics used on terrorist suspects would turn into a "witch hunt." Speaking on CBS' The Early Show, the former Vietnam POW and Republican opponent of President Barack Obama in the 2008 election, said there is no evidence that he knows of that shows the officials who approved the tactics weren't giving plausible legal advice. This will have a "chilling effect on legal counsel," McCain said. McCain, who was himself tortured as a U.S. soldier by his North Vietnamese captors, was a vocal...

Janis Karpinski, the former commander of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison who was demoted in the wake of the revelations of abuse there, tells Al Jazeera about her reaction to a report that says senior Bush administration officials were involved in approving torture. Report also says Cheney and Rumsfeld were behing the mistreatment at Abu Ghraib. Scott Horton, a human rights lawyer and writer on national security issues based in New York, tells Al Jazeera's Shihab Rattansi a new senate report links the White House to the abusive techniques used in US prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In an attempt to win sanctions against a former top Bush administration official over brutal interrogations of prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, a lawyers group deployed a strategy Monday that worked against Presidents Nixon and Clinton. Former Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes II is the first of several former policy makers the National Lawyers Guild wants reprimanded, suspended or disbarred for their roles in detainee abuse, said Carlos Villarreal, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area guild chapter that filed a complaint against Haynes with the California Bar Assn. Haynes, now an attorney with Chevron Corp....

Two weeks ago, I was among a small group of USS Cole and 9/11 victims’ families who met with President Obama at the White House. Despite President Obama’s assurances that the safety and security of the American people is his number one priority, I left the meeting with little confidence that the President appreciates the grave consequences of shutting down Guantanamo or the complex problems associated with adjudicating detainee cases in the federal court system. Indeed, he told us that he is “not at all concerned” about the security issues of bringing the detainees to the U.S. His rationale for...

Abu Ghraib prison is reopening under Iraqi control(video). Abu Ghraib prison is reopening under Iraqi control. The prison was closed in 2006. It was handed over to the Iraqis and never used in any significant way until now. Abu Ghraib will now be called the "Baghdad Central Prison". We can all sleep well knowing the Iraqis treat their prisoners in a more humane manner than the Americans did. If you believe that, you have stopped drinking the Cool-aid and started eating the powder straight from the package.

Academic Creeds by: Malcolm A. Kline, February 18, 2009 It’s one thing when jaundiced observers such as your servant dissect higher education. It’s quite another when the dissection is done by insiders, particularly when they haven’t left their day jobs yet. “Here is the question: Are we really free today, or are we now becoming more and more enslaved by the constructs of the Übermensch-the superman-the power brokers, the elites, the ‘fittest’ who have survived in the political arenas of campaigns or campuses?” Oklahoma Wesleyan University president Everett Piper asks in the January 2009 issue of Perspective magazine. “Are we...

BAGHDAD – Iraq will reopen the notorious Abu Ghraib prison next month, but it's getting a facelift and a new name, a senior justice official said Saturday. The heavily fortified compound of gray, stonewalled buildings and watchtowers has come to symbolize American abuse of some prisoners captured in Iraq after photos were released showing U.S. soldiers sexually humiliating inmates at the facility. The scandal stoked support for the insurgency and was one of the biggest setbacks to the U.S. military effort to win the peace in Iraq. The renovated facility will be called Baghdad's Central Prison because the name Abu...