Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiThe NYT Calls Iranian Interrogation Tactics "Torture"
Today is the ideal day to celebrate America's specialness, and America's paper of record inspirationally leads the ritual:
Clark Hoyt, New York Times Public Editor, April 26, 2009:
A LINGUISTIC shift took place in this newspaper as it reported the details of how the Central Intelligence Agency was allowed to strip Al Qaeda prisoners naked, bash them against walls, keep them awake for up to 11 straight days, sometimes with their arms chained to the ceiling, confine them in dark boxes and make them feel as if they were drowning.
Until this month, what the Bush administration called "enhanced" interrogation techniques were "harsh" techniques in the news pages of The Times. Increasingly, they are "brutal". . . . .
The word had appeared a few times before in this context, most recently on April 10, when the Central Intelligence Agency said it was closing the network of secret overseas prisons where interrogations took place. Scott Shane, who covers national security, said he and his editor in the Washington bureau, Douglas Jehl, negotiated over the wording of the first paragraph. Shane wrote that methods used in the prisons were "widely denounced as illegal torture." Jehl changed that to the "harshest interrogation methods" since the Sept. 11 attacks. Shane said he felt that with more information coming to light, including a leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the words harsh and even harshest no longer sufficed. He proposed brutal, and Jehl agreed. . . .
And why not, then, go all the way to torture? Jehl said that when the paper is discussing what is generally regarded as the most extreme interrogation method the C.I.A. used, waterboarding, "we’ve become more explicit in saying in a first reference that it’s a near-drowning technique" that Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and many other experts "have called torture." But he said: "I have resisted using torture without qualification or to describe all the techniques. Exactly what constitutes torture continues to be a matter of debate and hasn’t been resolved by a court. This president and this attorney general say waterboarding is torture, but the previous president and attorney general said it is not. On what basis should a newspaper render its own verdict, short of charges being filed or a legal judgment rendered?" Jehl argued for precision and caution. I agree.
Top Reformers Admitted Plot, Iran Declares
CAIRO -- Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top reformist officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a "velvet" revolution. Such confessions, almost always extracted under duress, are part of an effort to recast the civil unrest set off by Iran’s disputed presidential election as a conspiracy orchestrated by foreign nations, human rights groups say. . . .
The government has made it a practice to publicize confessions from political prisoners held without charge or legal representation, often subjected to pressure tactics like sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and torture, according to human rights groups and former political prisoners. . . .
In 2001, Ali Afshari was arrested for his work as a student leader. He said he was held in solitary confinement for 335 days and resisted confessing for the first two months. But after two mock executions and a five-day stretch where his interrogators would not let him sleep, he said he eventually caved in.
"They tortured me, some beatings, sleep deprivation, insults, psychological torture, standing me for several hours in front of a wall, keeping me in solitary confinement for one year," Mr. Afshari said in an interview from his home in Washington. "They eventually broke my resistance."
Virtually every tactic which the article describes the Iranians as using has been used by the U.S. during the War on Terror, while several tactics authorized by Bush officials (waterboarding, placing detainees in coffin-like boxes, hypothermia) aren't among those the article claims are used by the Iranians. Nonetheless, "torture" appears to be a perfectly fine term for The New York Times to use to describe what the Iranians do, but one that is explicitly banned to describe what the U.S. did. Despite its claimed policy, the NYT has also recently demonstrated its eagerness to use the word "torture" to describe these same tactics . . . when used by the Chinese against an American detainee.
Notably, the NYT article today seems to take particular offense that the Iranian Government is putting people on trial using confessions they obtained via torture ("the government planned to put on trial several Iranian employees of the British Embassy — after confessions were extracted"). Just two days ago, The Washington Post reported:
The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday accused the Obama administration of using statements elicited through torture to justify the confinement of a detainee it represents at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The ACLU is asking a federal judge to throw out those statements and others made by Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan who may have been as young as 12 when he was captured. His attorney argued that Jawad was abused in U.S. custody, threatened and subjected to intense sleep deprivation.
"The government's continued reliance on evidence gained by torture and other abuse violates centuries of U.S. law and suggests the current administration is not really serious about breaking with the past," said ACLU lawyer Jonathan Hafetz, who is representing Jawad in a lawsuit challenging his detention."The government's continued reliance on evidence gained by torture and other abuse violates centuries of U.S. law and suggests the current administration is not really serious about breaking with the past," said ACLU lawyer Jonathan Hafetz, who is representing Jawad in a lawsuit challenging his detention.
Just read the details of what we did to this adolescent to marvel at what the NYT (and, of course, NPR) refuse to call "torture" when done by us. Though the human rights abuses of the Iranian Government are well-documented and severe, there's also no mention in the NYT article of these interrogation tactics being applied by Iran to teenagers (such as Jawad) or resulting in numerous detainee deaths (as happened during the Bush era).
During the presidential campaign, Rudy Giuliani was widely ridiculed for arguing that whether these tactics are "torture" depends, at least in part, on who uses them (it's torture if They do it, but not when We do it). But he could take that definitive moral relativism to any leading American newspaper, become an Editor, and fit right in, since that's exactly the editorial policy of our leading media outlets. What's most striking about all this media behavior is that people around the world -- outside of the U.S. -- aren't fooled by these sorts of blatant double standards, whereby the U.S. even claims the power to change the meaning of words based on whether it or another country is doing something. The target of this government and media behavior is purely domestic.
It's not particularly unusual for a government to permit itself to do something that it prohibits others from doing. The U.S. is hardly the only country that does that. But when that country's media collectively abets that government effort by molding its language to reflect that exceptionalism, it elevates the propaganda to a much different level. When I documented the American media's obsession with journalists detained by other countries and its virtually complete blackout of much, much longer (and often more oppressive) detentions of foreign journalists by the U.S., that was the central point I tried to emphasize:
Pointing to other governments and highlighting their oppressive behavior can be cathartic, fun and gratifying in a self-justifying sort of way. Ask Fred Hiatt; it's virtually all he ever does. But the first duty of the American media -- like the first duty of American citizens -- is to oppose oppressive behavior by our own government. That's not as fun or as easy, but it is far more important. Moreover, obsessively complaining about the rights-abridging behavior of other countries while ignoring the same behavior from our own government is worse than a mere failure of duty. It is propagandistic and deceitful, as it paints a misleading picture that it is other governments -- but not our own -- which engage in such conduct.
Since the American Government has acted -- and continues to act -- overtly to protect and shield those who engaged in this conduct, will it condemn Iran for torturing detainees? As for The New York Times, at this point, they don't even seem interested in pretending that they make these editorial judgments independently or with a pretense of objectivity. They're perfectly happy to have you know that when the U.S. Government does X, it is called one thing, but when foreign governments do X, it is called something else entirely.
35 Comments so far
Show Allas a jewish entity NYT is duty bound to report the way they do. there is no other way.
Just to illustrate NYT's slant,in a news item today on a Biden comment that the US would not stand in the way of an Israeli attack on Iran, NYT said "Officials there say that the victory by Mr. Ahmadinejad, who has called for the destruction of Israel, underscored the Iranian threat and bolstered the argument for tough action."
This is a frequently repeated falsehood in the US MSM. As even the Jerusalem Post knows, Ahmadinejad said nothing of the sort.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881801325&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
He has said that Israel will disappear from the map, but did not say that Iran would be involved in that event. NYT knows this - it was reported by many sources, including Reuters. He has also said the same about Britain and the US,
How can anyone purchase the Times with any idea of getting a perspective on the world - beyond the anthropological study of a substrain of *homo mannahattensis*?
Cheers, Mr. Greenwald! - to the Judith Millers of all walks and stations and a hot buttered slalom to Hades.
OK so the NYT is showing its Zionist tendencies - making Iran look bad so that US won't complain when Israel decides to bomb or perhaps persuades US to its dirty work again. What's new? This bias has been going on for as long as I can remember. My personal rule is "Never read the NYT on the Middle East - except to know what the Zionists are thinking and what is being believed by Americans". Certainly don't expect unbiased reporting. You don't expect unbiased reporting from Fox and the same applies but with a bit more subtlety from NYT. You'll get less biased reporting from the English website of al Jazeera than from NYT - and if that's too hard to stomach, try the London Independent.
Ahmidinijad in an exclusive to the NYT--
"I want to make sure the American people understand once and for all--we don't torture. It's against our laws and customs and if anyone is found to be guilty of it I will personally make sure that they are prosecuted to the full extent of the law."
Hahahahaha!
Poet
What a wonderful, inspiring quote!
I reject the criticism that it is mere plagiarization of the President of the United States!
I prefer to consider the "half-full" aspect: here are two heads of very different, even antagonistic, nations bound together by a common lie.
Surely this is state-sponsored Mendacity We Can Believe In!
· Yr Obd't Servant
There is no reason to spend a penny on the NY Times or Washington Post. They sold out long ago to the looting class of corporatist/militarists who run (ruin) the country.
Let them go out of business.
The Christian Science Monitor was once great. Now it is gutted, a rare good article instead of a dozen a day.
The NYT's too, once readable is now an organ of Spin. The moneyed elites used to read it to know what was really going on.
Now the moneyed elites only think they know what's up; they read The Times over coffee while their worlds rot and decay and run towards Revolution.
The string pullers don't the the times.
http://www.webneveshteha.com/en/
This is Abtahi's- former Minister of Culture- website. The homepage has a notice that he has been arrested but all his previous postings are up and running. It's actually a good source for insight into what was happening in Iran up to the point of his arrest. He also has a facebook page.
As for the Time's credibility reporting events in Iran- it has none, never has, probably never will. Well, at some point decades ago they had a first hand report by Dick Gregory in the Magazine that wasn't all that bad. Since then I havn't seen anything wrth paying attention to. Maybe a few pieces by Robin Wright which she subsequently hastened to exonerate herself from by writing a book or two.
Doesn't everybody know that the publishers of the Times have a penchant for a Zionist slant on everything, a peculiarly strong bias even by comparison to the other major papers in the U.S.? It's economic reporting is also often inaccurrate and misleading, far more so than even the Wall Street Journal. Thomas Friedman, and that Brookes numbskull? Give me a break.
So what's the real problem here? People that expect to get a good story from the N.Y. Times, especially Congressman and Senators who actually believe that all they have to do is read their paper every morning and that's sufficient to make all the decisions their called upon to represent the American people. IT'S AN ABSOLUTE DISGRACE!
Mr. Abtahi's English is not all that great but he states plainly that it was not possible for the opponents of Ahmad Nejad to match his campaign in the countryside, nor were they able to effectively counter his demogoguery during the debates. The President distorted the record and made patriotic appeals much like "Dubya" did in his campaigns. While the President had all the natural advantages of encumbancy and the largest part of the press on his side he was still able to claim that he was being "unfairly" attacked. Furthermore, even Abtahi was worried that the enthusiasm exressed by overwelming numbers of youth in pre-election rallies would not hold up when it came to voting. Like Americans, many Iranians also have a tendancy to favor those candidates who appear to be a head in the pre-election polls. These were circumstances that Abtahi was referring to when he suggested the election was "a fake"- circumstances that normally apply to any election in practically every democracy in the world- not actual rigging of the ballots. As the situation was the best he was hoping for was that the vote would be close enough to necessitate a run-off.
Of course what happened after the first pre-mature annoucement of results by all parties made things get worse. Not all the demonstrations were peaceful. Radical elements and provacateurs took advantage of the situation. Bitter disappointment and recrimination started to take over. Hopes for "change" that might be accomplished beyond what could provided for by the election itself started to get in the way of orderly disposition of the whole affair. Ahmad Nejad's supporters also became embittered by the insults being hurled at their leader and,perhpas above all, the negative response of the international press played into their hands.
It still does.
The problem is caused by these dumb foreign people who think everything is a 2-way street and they can act like morally superior people (i.e. Americans). Their wrong of course. It's very simple, really. It's torture when foreign people do it to us, and enhanced interrogation techniques when we do it to foreign people. Especially their women and children.
Happy fourth to the home of the brave and the land of the free.
apologize for double post
http://pubrecord.org/torture/977-obama-vows-to-prosecute-torturers-b
Obama Vows to Deal With Torture, But His Pledge Doesn't Apply to the Bush Administration
By Jason Leopold
President Barack Obama just announced that the U.S. government "must stand against torture wherever it takes place," but it’s clear that his pledge does not apply to torture committed by officials from the Bush administration.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Obama quietly released a statement on Friday in which he said, “My administration is committed to taking concrete actions against torture and to address the needs of its victims.”
Obama's statement left out his decision to “look forward, not backward” on the issue of Bush-era torture or how he has discouraged any investigation of former President George W. Bush, ex-Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials involved in sanctioning and practicing torture, brutal tactics that human groups claim killed at least 100 prisoners in U.S. custody
Instead, in his statement, Obama simply declared that “today, we join the international community in reaffirming unequivocally the principles behind that Convention, including the core principle that torture is never justified.”
The 1984 Convention Against Torture was approved by 145 nations, including the United States which signed it in 1988 under President Ronald Reagan. He hailed the treaty as "a significant step" in preventing torture, "an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today."
The Convention declares that: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
Moreover, the Convention says individuals who resort to torture cannot defend their actions by saying they were acting on orders from superiors and it mandates that torturers be prosecuted wherever they are found. According to that provision, "each state party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution."
In a May 20, 1988, message to the U.S. Senate, Reagan noted, "the core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called 'universal jurisdiction.'"
Evading the Treaty
It was this Convention, ratified by the Senate in 1994, that Bush administration officials sought to bypass with legal memos, many drafted by John Yoo of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
On Monday, Reagan administration associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein said Obama has “shut his eyes” to confessions of war crimes."
Fein told a news conference at the National Press Club that in Obama, "we have an instance where the President of the United States -- Harvard Law Review, a constitutional law professor who knows what the law is -- shuts his eyes to open confessions. ... We authorized torture, for which there is no exception."
Fein’s comments were made after a group known as Velvet Revolution, which is made up of more than 100 peace organizations, unveiled torture-related complaints they intended to file with the Washington D.C. Bar Association against CIA acting general counsel John Rizzo and Jonathan Fredman, currently an attorney in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The complaint asks the Bar Association to strip Rizzo and Fredman of their law licenses.
Obama’s declaration on Friday came at a time when the international community has become acutely aware of the policy of torture implemented by the Bush administration – and of Obama’s resistance to any type of comprehensive investigation whether it be by a congressional committee, a blue-ribbon commission or the Justice Department.
It’s also clear that the United States is guilty of many of the offenses that the U.S. government has in the past accused “rogue regimes” of committing, such as hiding torture victims from human rights monitors. For example, under the Bush administration, the military routinely hid prisoners in U.S. custody from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
In a Jan. 2, 2004, memo drafted for military police and interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and signed by Col. Marc Warren, the top legal adviser to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, was entitled “New plan to restrict Red Cross access to Abu Ghraib.” The contents of that memo have never been released.
In 2004, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that at the request of then-CIA Director George Tenet, he authorized the U.S. military in the fall of 2003 to hide an Iraqi prisoner from the ICRC and other organizations that monitor the treatment of prisoners.
Rumsfeld told reporters at a June 17, 2004, press briefing that Tenet sent him a letter asking the U.S. military to imprison the Iraqi who was believed to be a high-ranking member of Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish terrorist group suspected of links to al-Qaeda. Tenet further told Rumsfeld to be sure the detainee was kept off the prisoner rolls, which he was for six months.
"We were asked not to immediately register the individual, and we did that," Rumsfeld told reporters at the time.
Documents obtained by the Senate Armed Services Committee go even further. Minutes of an Oct. 2, 2002, meeting at which Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, then the chief military lawyer at Guantanamo whose responsibilities included working with the ICRC, discussed concealing abusive interrogation tactics when ICRC officials visited.
"We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around," Beaver said, according to the minutes. "It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques."
...... follow link for rest...
A rose by any other name is but a rose. Torture by any oher name is but torture.
camus13
Have you noticed that the NYT has recently raised it price per copy. Where I live it $2.00 per day and $6.00 per day on Sunday. Realllllllly. For what BS and lies.
As Camus said in his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 that a writer "cannot serve today those who make histoy; he must serve those who are subject to it."
But the NYTimes serves Obama and Bush not the tortured......
The Israeli Government holds Cynthia McKinney under detention and imprisonment and does this whenever it wants to Palestinians in mass arrests as collective punishment before it tortures them, yet the Zionist state does so without any real criticism in places like the New York Times.
The New York Times is very shallow and shows its double-standard by allowing Israel to escape real scrutiny from its war crimes and crimes agaimst humanity but quickly points out Iran.
In my opinion, the U.S. and Israel need to start respecting human rights law and start to view people with darker and yes brown skin as full human beings, rather than people you can just kill or torture any time you say so.
It is unbelievable to me that Cynthia McKinney is in jail. It is virtually unreported in the mainstream media. What other so called "civilized" country in the world would prevent the distribution of food and medical supplies to a populace in need. The US government should be demanding her immediate release as well as her fellow travelers. Our government's silence adds to our national shame. We should support humanitarian relief to the people of Gaza.
Yes, that true blue "liberal-progressive President Obama" has allowed that sister Cynthia McKinney to remain in an Israeli prison camp. Who knows if Ms. McKinney and her fellow travellers have not yet been tortured by the Zionist criminals. I would not rule out that McKinney's Zionist capturers have not tortured her either.
Israel is known for torturing those they do not kill first. Israel spies on America and you think they would not torture those trying to give aid and medical supplies to Gazans?
Obama is a spineless, useless president who has allowed Sister McKinney to remain in Israel's prison camp. Obama is so spineless as not even speak of her being held captive as well.
Obama has no shame and is a big fraud.
If Mckinney was a Iranian/American beauty queen journalist NPR spy Congress would be passing resolutions on her release.
The "American exception" double standard continues.
torture is torture is torture, unless your the US. And the press plays right into it.
I don't think the people of the United States understand what is meant by a double standard.
Let's just gather up some of these NYT (et al) fellas and do stuff to 'em, whatever comes to mind and as we do this 'stuff', they can scream out, 'Torture!' or, "Not Torture!'
We'll write down the results and put 'em in a little book or something.
That will clarify things.
We won't kill 'em though, 'cuz we'll keep a couple of doctors handy.
you expect moral consistency from the Times? I thought not.
Oh just wait until you hear the shitstorm that will erupt if the American soldier that was captured recently in Afghanistan ends up being tortured. That's when the hypocrisy will really hit the fan.
One can only hope that George Bush and Dick Cheney choke on their own vomit. Soon. I want to watch.
I think the difference here is that the US soldier is a combatant, as presumably the prisoners in "enemy combatant" prisons are. Iran has arrested and tortured journalists, diplomats, and citizens who were executing their duties as such. Pat
As Chris Hedges writes the USA sponsors kidnappings,targeted assassinations of leaders, scientists and government officials, beheadings and sabotage in Iran.
And Pat I hope you already realize the most common covers for a spy is "Journalist" and "Diplomat"
Yes, I am aware of that, and once again we arrive at the fact that "We don't know" if those arrested and tortured lived by the sword or were civil. Still, I think if we were to split hairs, spying is quite a bit closer to civil than carrying a weapon. Perhaps the predators who tortured them don't know either. For that matter, we don't know what might motivate an individual to become a soldier - too much marching music / john Wayne movies, or a desire to confront armed repression and thugs. I did want to point out that there are differences in the "victims" of armed conflict and that torture is no worse than murder. Too often killing retains the luster of honor in our congressation.
Do you have a link to the writing you mentioned? I don't doubt it, just wanted to read it. Pat
That makes no difference whatsoever. No one is allowed to be tortured by conventions, law, morality, or common decency.
But combat is OK? If people want to sign up and go play glorious soldier boy, they can expect the worst of humanity, because it's a life / death struggle. People who are serious about living and affecting positive change should not be forced to be part of their delusion. Pat
"They're perfectly happy to have you know that when the U.S. Government does X, it is called one thing, but when foreign governments do X, it is called something else entirely."
I've learned throughout my years to be skeptical and question what I see and hear. That the NYT is biased or that the WaPo tries to sell access to bidders, is no longer news. This shit really has been going on a long time. After all, it was Mark Twain who wrote "...the liberty of the Press is called the Palladium of Freedom, which means, in these days, the liberty of being deceived, swindled, and humbugged by the Press and paying hugely for the deception."
What news media do we believe? CNN, FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, the Lehrer News hour, and all the major (and minor?) print news seem to be corporate body organs. Americans are ignorant because they trust the above-mentioned propaganda machines.
So, where do you get your news? Who do you trust? I'm really interested in knowing. I would love to learn who to turn to for _unbiased_ news.
Hi Ted~
This is nedlud. I was just reading about Helen Thomas, the 89 year old White House reporter and her exasperation at the rehearsal and staging of questions at White House press meetings. She said Nixon was nowhere near this bad. As what is going on now with Obama. You apparently cannot ask a freechoice question. It is all rehearsed. Staged.
Similar it is with Organic Valley. My wife was at a rural type conference recently and met a free-lance woman journalist, covering farm topics. She told my wife that Organic Valley will not provide information for media pieces unless they have complete control of the edit. This nonplussed this woman journalist so much, that she said to my wife that she refuses to buy Organic Valley products anymore.
Just letting you know. Just in case you want to inform your buyers, where you work.
your friend,
nedlud
RNC troll
Poet
My best guess is that you are trying to say Helen Thomas is an RNC troll. On the other hand, I am making a personl comment to Ted Markow on another topic, that of secrecy and manipulation of perception by 'powers that be'. By 'powers that be', I mean those who have concentrated the material wealth into their own limited positions and perspectives and therefore have monopolized and controlled much of the human dialog of this planet.
Our only hope as a species, lies in uncontrolled dialog. In other words, our hope lies with enough people exhibiting free choice and movement in opposition to controlled dialog.
FREEDOM.
... and Orwell laughed.
What can you expect from a press that sells out to the highest bidder? If the Iranians offered them MORE money or had the power of intimidation that OUR governemnt wields, they would be calling it "enhanced interrogation".