The Torture Tape Fingering Bush As a War Criminal by Andrew Sullivan
"A former FBI agent who was involved in the interrogation, Daniel Coleman, said last week that the CIA knew Al-Qaedas leaders all believed Zubaydah was crazy, and they knew he was always on the damn phone. You think theyre going to tell him anything? Even though preliminary, legal interrogation gave the US good - though not unique - information, the CIA still asked for and received permission to torture him in pursuit of more data and leads.
The Washington Post reported that current and former officials said the torture lasted weeks and even, according to some, months, and that the techniques included hypothermia, long periods of standing, sleep deprivation and multiple sessions of waterboarding. All these alternative procedures, as Bush described them, are illegal under US law and the Geneva conventions. They are, in fact, war crimes. And they were once all treated by the US as war crimes when they were perpetrated by the Nazis. Waterboarding has been found to be a form of torture in various American legal cases.
And that is where the story becomes interesting. The Bush administration denies any illegality at all, insists it does not torture but refuses to say whether it believes waterboarding is torture or not. But hundreds of hours of videotape were recorded of Zubaydahs incarceration and torture. That evidence would settle the dispute over the extremely serious question of whether the president of the United States authorized war crimes.
And now we have found out that all the tapes have been destroyed."
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/24/5985/
"A former FBI agent who was involved in the interrogation, Daniel Coleman, said last week that the CIA knew Al-Qaedas leaders all believed Zubaydah was crazy, and they knew he was always on the damn phone. You think theyre going to tell him anything? Even though preliminary, legal interrogation gave the US good - though not unique - information, the CIA still asked for and received permission to torture him in pursuit of more data and leads.
The Washington Post reported that current and former officials said the torture lasted weeks and even, according to some, months, and that the techniques included hypothermia, long periods of standing, sleep deprivation and multiple sessions of waterboarding. All these alternative procedures, as Bush described them, are illegal under US law and the Geneva conventions. They are, in fact, war crimes. And they were once all treated by the US as war crimes when they were perpetrated by the Nazis. Waterboarding has been found to be a form of torture in various American legal cases.
And that is where the story becomes interesting. The Bush administration denies any illegality at all, insists it does not torture but refuses to say whether it believes waterboarding is torture or not. But hundreds of hours of videotape were recorded of Zubaydahs incarceration and torture. That evidence would settle the dispute over the extremely serious question of whether the president of the United States authorized war crimes.
And now we have found out that all the tapes have been destroyed."
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/24/5985/
