The Israeli Torture Template

Rape, Feces and Urine-Dipped Cloth Sacks

With mounting evidence that a shadowy group of former Israeli Defense Force and General Security Service (Shin Bet) Arabic-speaking interrogators were hired by the Pentagon under a classified "carve out" sub-contract to brutally interrogate Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, one only needs to examine the record of abuse of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israel to understand what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld meant, when referring to new, yet to be released photos and videos, he said, "if these images are released to the public, obviously its going to make matters worse."

According to a political appointee within the Bush administration and U.S. intelligence sources, the interrogators at Abu Ghraib included a number of Arabic-speaking Israelis who also helped U.S. interrogators develop the "R2I" (Resistance to Interrogation) techniques. Many of the torture methods were developed by the Israelis over many years of interrogating Arab prisoners on the occupied West Bank and in Israel itself.

Pentagon official says 9/11 suspect was tortured

Al-Qaeda suspect Mohammed al-Qahtani during his 2006 trial in Sanaa, Yemen. Qahtani -- a Saudi suspected of involvement in the September 11 terror attacks -- was tortured in Guantanamo Bay, the official overseeing trials at the detention site has told the Washington Post

A Pentagon official acknowledged in an interview published Wednesday that the United States tortured Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi man who allegedly had hoped to become the "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We tortured Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, a retired judge who was appointed convening authority of military commissions in February 2007. Crawford was interviewed by The Washington Post's Bob Woodward.

Turning a blind eye to war crimes

The US torture policy approved by George Bush and Dick Cheney should spark a public outcry. So where's the outrage?

Noting the war crimes now known and admitted to by George Bush and Dick Cheney, George Washington University's highly-respected constitutional law professor Jonathon Turley asked MSNBC's Keith Olbermann last week: "If someone commits a crime and everyone's around to see it and does nothing, is it still a crime?"

White House memos endorsed CIA waterboarding

The Bush administration explicitly endorsed the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods against al Qaeda suspects in a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

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Palestinians "compelled" to favour Israel

Two Israeli human rights groups, B’Tselem and Hamoked, found last year that seven “special” interrogation methods amounting to torture are still being regularly employed, including beatings, painful binding, back bending, body stretching and prolonged sleep deprivation.

Ex-State Dept. official: Hundreds of detainees died in U.S. custody, at least 25 murdered.

"At today’s House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil Rights hearing on torture, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, told Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) that over 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody, with up to 27 of these declared homicides."

The Semantics of Bush's Torture Policy

"The Bush administration built a legal framework – relying on semantics and secrecy – to subject detainees at Guantanamo Bay to brutal interrogation techniques and then to hide the reality from human rights observers, according to internal government documents."

A timeline to Bush government torture

Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Daniel Baumgartner Jr., testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee about detainee treatment on June 17, 2008, in Washington.

"For years now, the Bush White House has claimed that the United States does not conduct torture. Prisoner abuse at places like Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, it has asserted, was an aberration -- the work of a few "bad apples" on the night shift. When the CIA used "enhanced" interrogation techniques such as waterboarding (simulated drowning), the abuse, according to Bush officials, did not add up to torture."

General Accuses WH of War Crimes

"In his 2004 report on Abu Ghraib, then-Major General Anthony Taguba concluded that "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees." He called the abuse "systemic and illegal." And, as Seymour M. Hersh reported in the New Yorker, he was rewarded for his honesty by being forced into retirement."

Stonewalled by the C.I.A.

"MORE than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. The goal was to provide the American people with the fullest possible account of the “facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001” — and to offer recommendations to prevent future attacks. Soon after its creation, the president’s chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the commission."

CIA man 'can take White House down'

"Former head of the CIA's clandestine service Jose Rodriguez claims he can take the White House down over a torture cover-up scandal."

CIA Torture and other War Crimes

"Ethically, torture degrades the country that permits it, the organization that carries it out and the individuals who perform it. Doctors are not present during torture as it would violate the Hippocratic Oath, so it is up to the torturer to decide how far to go. If a victim dies while being interrogated by torture, as has happened a number of times in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it is both a war crime and murder."

The torture tape fingering Bush as a war criminal

"Any reasonable person examining all the evidence we have - without any bias - would conclude that the overwhelming likelihood is that the president of the United States authorised illegal torture of a prisoner and that the evidence of the crime was subsequently illegally destroyed."

Torture, Destruction of Evidence, Obstruction of Justice--Just a Typical Day in the Bush Administration

"Let's be frank here.

The recent discovery of documents related to the torture videotapes that were destoyed is old news, not new. The fact is that since 2001, our government has tortured, lied about the torture, and destroyed court ordered evidence and documents of the torture. In other words, they've done everything they can to cover their own asses."

House votes to outlaw CIA waterboarding

"On a 222-199 vote, the House approved a measure to require intelligence agents to comply with the Army Field Manual, which meets the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of war prisoners and prohibits torture."

CIA Destroyed Tapes Despite Court Orders

"The Bush administration was under court order not to discard evidence of detainee torture and abuse months before the CIA destroyed videotapes that revealed some of its harshest interrogation tactics."

Are Americans 'Better Than That'?

"The Dec. 11 report by the Post’s Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen, which describes Kiriakou’s experience in interrogating suspected terrorists, raises in an unusually direct way an abiding question: Should the United States of America be using forms of torture dating back to the Spanish Inquisition?"

Death squads, disappearances and torture

"The world is made up, as Captain Segura in Graham Greene's 1958 novel Our Man in Havana put it, of two classes: the torturable and the untorturable. "There are people," Segura explained, "who expect to be tortured and others who would be outraged by the idea.""

Ifs and Buts

"...two biggest terror trials we've had since Sept. 11 were predicated on torture evidence that was then destroyed. The government has argued that al-Qaida operatives cannot be tried because the evidence against them is secret and threatens national security. But the real rationale is much worse: The evidence against them is wholly unreliable."

Waterboarding approved at top levels of US government

"The CIA's waterboarding of a top al-Qaida figure was approved at the top levels of the U.S. government, a former CIA agent said Tuesday as agency director Gen. Michael Hayden prepared for questioning by congressional panels about the destruction of videotapes of terror suspect interrogations."