The risk of blowback

Scott Horton says that classified Department of Defense documents show how the enforced nudity practices used on Bradley Manning is deliberate policy to a break prisoner’s will but can have unpleasant repercussions.

Manning’s special regime raises concerns that abusive techniques adopted by the Bush Administration for use on alleged terrorists are being applied to a U.S. citizen and soldier. Classified Defense Department documents furnish an alternative explanation for the use of enforced nudity: “In addition to degradation of the detainee, stripping can be used to demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor or to debilitate the detainee.” Other documents detail how enforced nudity and the isolation techniques being applied to Manning can be used to prepare the prisoner to be more submissive to interrogators in connection with questioning.
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Under established rules of international humanitarian law, the detention practices that a state adopts for its own soldiers are acceptable standards for use by a foreign power detaining that state’s soldiers in wartime. So by creating a “special regime” for Bradley Manning, the Department of Defense is also authorizing all the bizarre practices to which he is being subject to be applied to American soldiers, sailors, and airmen taken prisoner in future conflicts. This casual disregard for the rights of American service personnel could have terrible ramifications in the future.

It amazes me that people in authority take these measures assuming that their own people will never be at the receiving end. Remember that Ray Davis, a reputed CIA agent, is currently being held for murder in a Pakistan jail. What would be the US reaction if the Pakistani authorities subjected him to this kind of treatment? He is already being kept in isolation with round-the-clock monitoring.

Meanwhile, authorities stressed the stringent measures they have put in place to protect Davis in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail, following angry rallies in which his effigy was burned and threats from extremist clerics.

Surveillance cameras are trained on his cell in an isolation wing, his guards have been disarmed and a ring of paramilitary Punjab rangers are posted outside. About 25 jihadi prisoners have been transferred to other facilities.

What if the authorities torture him to get him to talk? What if they forced him to be naked for extended periods of time to break him psychologically? The US would have absolutely no standing to protest, since they are doing it to their own soldier.

Maybe the US authorities just don’t care since it is never the policymakers who are at risk of such retaliation but lowly people way down the totem pole and thus expendable.

The Ray Davis mystery

Reports are now emerging that Ray Davis, the American arrested in Pakistan for gunning down two people in the crowded streets of Lahore, was not just a CIA agent but acting head of the CIA in Pakistan, thus making lies of the claim by the US government that Davis was just an ordinary US consular official going about his business who had shot the two people in self-defense as they tried to rob him.

This revelation was hardly a surprise since the official US story right from the beginning simply did not make sense. Look at the items found in Davis’s car: a 9mm gun and 75 bullets, bolt cutters, a GPS unit, an infrared light, telescope, a digital camera, an air ticket, two mobile phones and a blank cheque. Hardly the things that a mere consular official would carry around on a shopping trip. Furthermore his behavior during and after the incident was not that of an ordinary person.

On 27 January, Raymond Davis, a bulky 36-year-old CIA agent with a shock of grey hair, was winding through the chaotic Lahore traffic when he stopped at a red light. A motorbike carrying two men, coming from the opposite direction, swerved in front of his Honda Civic. The pillion passenger was carrying a gun. Davis, a former special forces soldier, whipped out his 9mm semi-automatic Glock pistol and, still behind the wheel, opened fire. Five shots sliced through the windscreen. Muhammad Faheem, a 19-year-old street criminal, fell dead.

Davis got out of the car and took aim at the motorbike driver, Faizan Haider, who had started running. Another five shots rang out and Haider fell to the ground, having run 30ft; a postmortem indicated he was hit three times in the front and twice in the back.

Davis walked back to his car, called for help on a military-style radio, then started to photograph the dead men. Anwar Khan watched from his restaurant across the street, amazed at the American’s sang-froid. “He was very peaceful and confident. I was wondering how he could be like that after killing two people,” he said.

The US government sent John Kerry to Pakistan in an attempt to get Davis released. Kerry pledged that “the U.S. Department of Justice would open a criminal investigation against Davis.” The attempt failed. Did Kerry really think that people there would believe his statement, since the US is now notorious for not investigating and punishing anyone in the government who torture their own citizens and murder foreigners? As Scott Horton writes

In order to secure Davis’s freedom, Senator Kerry and Secretary Clinton need to be able to argue to their Pakistani counterparts that the United States is capable of investigating the Lahore incident fairly and taking criminal or disciplinary action as appropriate. Davis claims he acted in self defense, attempting to stop a daytime robbery. The use of lethal force in such circumstances may well be justified. That’s the sort of call that a prosecutor would normally make after a thorough investigation.

The problem is that America’s track record shows clearly that it doesn’t investigate or act on claims involving either intelligence agents or contractors. As I noted in earlier Congressional testimony, the United States has a de facto policy of impunity for its security contractors and agents who kill or injure foreign civilians.

But apparently Kerry did manage to spirit out of the country the other shadowy Americans who, in rushing to Davis’s aid in a failed attempt to get him away from the scene, sped along a crowded one-way street in the wrong direction and in the process killed an innocent motorcyclist.

A Pakistani judge has now denied the US government’s claim that Davis has diplomatic immunity and thus should be freed and allowed to leave the country. The Pakistani government, a US client, would prefer the higher courts to overturn this decision but there is so much popular anger against Davis and the US that doing so might cause riots and de-stabilize the government. The opposition to his release has intensified ever since the 19-year old widow of one of the victims committed suicide because in addition to her grief she felt that Davis would escape punishment. It is not helping that there are reports that the victims’ family members are now being threatened to not give evidence against Davis, and suspicions abound that these thugs are acting on behalf of the US.

So what exactly was Davis doing in Pakistan? The Pakistani newspaper Dawn reports:

Sources have revealed that a GPS chip recovered from Davis was being used in identifying targets for drone attacks in the tribal region.

It was also learnt during the probe that Davis made upto 12 visits to the tribal areas without informing Pakistani officials.

The 36- year-old US official was reluctant in giving out information about his visits to the tribal region, sources added.

The US Embassy officials were exerting pressure on the authorities, asking them not to expose the information received from Davis.

Why was he going to remote tribal areas? David Lindorff, who has been following the case closely and first brought to my attention his murky background, says:

As I reported earlier, both Pakistani and Indian news organizations are claiming, based upon intelligence sources, that Davis was involved in not just intelligence work, but in orchestrating terrorist activity by both the Pakistani Taliban and the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has been linked to both the assassination of Benezir Bhutto and the capture and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Multiple calls to members of both groups were found by police on some of the cell phones found on Davis and in his car when he was arrested in Lahore.

There are so many unanswered questions swirling around this story. Why would the CIA be working with terrorist groups in Pakistan that are ostensibly opposed to the US? What about the long-standing links between the Pakistani intelligence service ISI and groups like the Taliban? Was Davis going behind the backs of the ISI to create direct links with those groups? What about the allegations in the Pakistani media that the two people shot dead by Davis were members of the ISI who were tailing him? I have no idea what the answers to these questions are. Davis clearly has information that may not be palatable to a lot of people and his life is in danger.

In the meantime, Davis is being held under rather extraordinary security because of rumors that the Americans will try to spring him, or even poison him. Davis is being shielded from any direct contact with U.S. officials, and a box of chocolates sent to Davis by the Embassy was confiscated.

I frankly cannot see how this is going to end. The US and Pakistani governments would undoubtedly like to bring this to a quick close and send Davis back to the US, where he will very likely not even be investigated let alone tried. He may even be promoted if past actions are any guide. But people in Pakistan are furious about the matter and releasing him could cause an explosion of anger.

The Saudi Arabia problem

Robert Fisk reports that a demonstration against the Saudi regime is planned for Friday and the government is mobilizing troops to quell it. The regime has a reputation for coming down hard on protestors and has reportedly told the leader of neighboring Bahrain that if he does not crack down on dissent within his country, they will do it, to prevent the contagion from spreading. Bahrain’s protestors have been having daily demonstrations in that country and this is making the Saudi government uneasy.

If there is a brutal crackdown, this will put Obama and Clinton in a quandary. It is fairly easy for them to condemn Libya’s leader for brutality and threaten retaliation against him, although their options are limited. But the corrupt autocrats who rule Saudi Arabia are longtime US allies and friends of US leaders.

Problems in ‘real’ America

About a decade ago, when I was on Ohio’s advisory board that was revising the state’s science standards, there was the big debate over teaching so-called ‘intelligent design’ (ID) in science classes. One of the people attending those meetings was the superintendent of schools in a largely rural district that was in the southern part of the state close to the Ohio river that separates us from Kentucky.
[Read more…]

Further abuse of Bradley Manning

Glenn Greenwald highlights how the US government’s disgraceful abuse of Bradley Manning continues and how they shamelessly lie about it.

A lawyer for Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking secret government files to WikiLeaks, has complained that his client was stripped and left naked in his cell for seven hours on Wednesday.
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The soldier’s clothing was returned to him Thursday morning, after he was required to stand naked outside his cell during an inspection, Mr. [David E.] Coombs said in a posting on his Web site.

“This type of degrading treatment is inexcusable and without justification,” Mr. Coombs wrote. “It is an embarrassment to our military justice system and should not be tolerated. Pfc. Manning has been told that the same thing will happen to him again tonight. No other detainee at the brig is forced to endure this type of isolation and humiliation.”

First Lt. Brian Villiard, a Marine spokesman, said a brig duty supervisor had ordered Private Manning’s clothing taken from him. He said that the step was “not punitive” and that it was in accordance with brig rules, but he said that he was not allowed to say more.

“It would be inappropriate for me to explain it,” Lieutenant Villiard said. “I can confirm that it did happen, but I can’t explain it to you without violating the detainee’s privacy.”

Notice that after requiring Manning to be naked for hours on end, they touchingly say they cannot explain the reasons in order to protect his privacy!

UPDATE: Greenwald says today that Manning will be forced to be naked every night and for morning inspection for the indefinite future.

Can anyone doubt that Manning, who has not even been tried let along convicted, of any crime is being humiliated as a form of punishment and to destroy him mentally in order to warn anyone else who might think of crossing the government of its unchecked power to abuse people?

The Daily Show on attacking teachers

Jon Stewart and The Daily Show writers were really on a roll on Thursday about the campaign being waged against teachers. I find it extraordinary that public school teachers of all people are being demonized as a major cause of the country’s economic problems. It is a sign of a government, business, and media chattering class that has lost its collective mind and is seeking the destruction of the public school system.

Here are the main clips:

The interview with Diane Ravitch also dealt with education and is worth watching.

Man prosecuted for publicizing jury nullification

I have written before (here and here) about how few people know about ‘jury nullification’, which is the right of juries to acquit some one even if there is no doubt that the law had been broken, if they think that the law used to convict is itself unjust. It is thanks to jury nullification that we now have constitutional protections of freedom of the press and association and assembly.

Although the right of juries to nullify is well established, judges and prosecutors tend to not like it to be well known, the former because it means that juries have the right to ignore their instructions and the latter because they want juries to convict.

Now there is a case where a retired Penn Sate chemistry professor standing outside a courthouse handing out leaflets informing potential juries of their right to nullify has been arrested and charged with jury tampering.

Scott Horton also talks about the case and the history of jury nullification. Sam Smith also discusses the case.