Two Mormons & Two Different Ethics on Torture

As a Bush administration political appointee Assistant Attorney General
in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice, Jay Bybee,
a Mormon, wrote one of four torture memos released last month. Bybee's
August 1, 2002, 20 page memorandum laid out in excruciating detail the
interrogation techniques he was authorizing the Central Intelligence
Agency to use on al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah.

Bybee authorized ten "enhanced interrogation techniques" to encourage
Abu Zubaydah to disclose "crucial information regarding terrorist
networks in the United States or in Saudi Arabia and information
regarding plans to conduct attacks within the United States or against
U.S. interests overseas." The torture techniques authorized were (1)
attention grasp, (2) walling, (3) facial hold, (4) facial slap, (5)
cramped confinement, (6) wall standing, (7) stress position, (8) sleep
deprivation, (9) insects placed in a confinement box, and (10)
waterboarding.

The current Attorney General of the United States Eric Holder has
stated that waterboarding is torture, while the previous Attorney
General Judge Mukasey refused to comment on whether waterboarding is
torture.

From recently released CIA documents we know the CIA waterboarded Abu Zubaydah 83 times and Khalid sheik Mohammed 183 times.

But, we know that from March through June, 2002, according to FBI
interrogator Ali Soufan in an Op-Ed to the New York Times on April 23,
2009, FBI interrogators had already gotten "actionable intelligence" from
Zubaydah using traditional, non-torturing interrogation techniques,
including that Khalid sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11 and
that Jose Padilla was planning to be a "dirty bomber."

90 of the 92 interrogation videotapes the CIA admits it destroyed were
interrogations of Abu Zubaydah. Zubaydah's British attorney Brent
Mickum in the most detailed account the public has had of Zubaydah's
life, states that after all the waterboarding and other torture methods
used, the CIA finally recognized Zubaydah was not the senior al-Qaeda
leader they had portrayed him to be. According to Mickum, the Military
Commissions at Guantanamo are now "airbrushing" his name from the
charge sheets of other Guantanamo prisoners. Mickum reveals Zubaydah
was severely wounded in Afghanistan in 1992 while fighting communist
insurgents after the withdrawal of Soviet forces. He has two pieces of
shrapnel in his head which have affected his memory to the extent that
"he cannot remember his mother's name or face." Mickum states that
Zubaydah was shot and severely wounded when he was picked up in
Pakistan, His life was saved by a John Hopkins
surgeon flown to the region. After being saved from death, he was
almost tortured to death by CIA operatives. Mickum says that Zubaydah
is a stateless Palestinian with no country to argue on his behalf and a
United States government now embarrassed at being caught in its own
illegal conduct.

We know that combinations of the other nine techniques authorized by
Jay Bybee can be classified as torture, as the Convening Authority of
the Military Commissions at Guantanamo Susan Crawford declared when she
dismissed the charges against Guantanamo prisoner Mohammed al-Qahtani,
in January, 2009, in the last days of the Bush Administration.

Crawford said that for 160 days al-Qahtani's only contact was with the
interrogators and that 48 of 54 consecutive days he was subjected to
18-to-20-hour interrogations. He was strip searched and had to stand
naked in front of a female agent. Qahtani was forced to wear a woman's
bra and had a thong placed on his head during the course of his
interrogation and was told that his mother and sister were whores. With
a leash tied to his chains, he was led around the room "and forced to
perform a series of dog tricks. He was threatened with a military
working dog named Zeus. The interrogations were so severe that twice
Qahtani had to be hospitalized at Guantanamo with bradycardia, a
condition in which the heart rate falls below 60 beats a minute and
which in extreme cases can lead to heart failure and death. At one
point Qahtani's heart rate dropped to 35 beats per minute, the
interrogation records showed.

The torture techniques Jay Bybee authorized in 2002 migrated to Iraq in
2003. Major General Geoffrey Miller travelled to Iraq from Guantanamo
to demonstrate to soldiers in Iraq the techniques the military and CIA
were using in Guantanamo.

In September, 2003, another Mormon, a woman soldier, U.S. Army
Specialist Alyssa Peterson, said refused to use the interrogation
techniques that Bybee had authorized on Iraqi prisoners. An Arabic
linguist with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division at Tal Afar base,
Iraq, 27 year old Peterson, refused to take part in interrogations in
the "cage" where Iraqis were stripped naked in front of female
soldiers, mocked and their manhood degraded and burned with cigarettes,
among other things. Three days later, on September 15, 2003, Peterson
was found dead of a gunshot wound at Tal Afar base. The Army has
classified her death as suicide.

Jay Bybee, in thanks for his being the loyal soldier to the Bush
administration's policies of torture, was nominated and confirmed by
the U.S. Senate as a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where
he sits to this day in his lifetime appointment. Jay Bybee, an author
of torture, reportedly has a placard in his home for his children "We
don't hurt each other."

Alyssa Peterson, for saying no to torture, is dead, perhaps by her own hand.

To help Army Specialist Alyssa Peterson rest in peace, I say we should
demand accountability from our officials and IMPEACH the torture judge,
Jay Bybee.