New Animation! Mercenary Madness

The news that the government has been using Blackwater for just about everything prompts this week's animated editorial cartoon. Fellow Paul Verhoeven fans will note the "Robocop" homage.

Enjoy, and happy Labor Day weekend!

SYNDICATED COLUMN: We Have Met the Nazis, And They Are Us

CIA Atrocities Revealed to a National Shrug

Nazis. Americans are Nazis. We are Nazis.

Godwin's Law be damned—it's impossible to read the newly-released CIA report on the torture of Muslim prisoners without thinking of the Third Reich.

Sadism exists in every culture. A century ago, for example, Western adventurers who visited Tibet reported that the authorities in Lhasa, that supposed capital of pacifism, publicly gouged out criminals' eyes and yanked out their tongues. But Nazi atrocities were stylistically distinct from, say, the Turkish genocide of the Armenians or the Rwandan massacres of the early 1990s. German war crimes were characterized by methodical precision, the application of "rational" technology to increase efficiency, the veneer of legality and the perversion of medical science.

Nazi crimes were also marked by public indifference, which amounted to tacit support. Here and now, only 25 percent of Americans told the latest Pew Research poll that they believe torture is always wrong.

"The CIA's secret interrogation program operated under strict rules, and the rules were dictated from Washington with the painstaking, eye-glazing detail beloved by any bureaucracy," observed The New York Times. We have much in common with the Germans.

"In July 2002," the declassified report reveals, a CIA officer "reportedly used a 'pressure point' technique: with both of his hands on the detainee's neck, [he] manipulated his fingers to restrict the detainee's carotid artery." Another agent "watched his eyes to the point that the detainee would nod and start to pass out; then…shook the detainee to wake him. This process was repeated for a total of three applications on the detainee."

The CIA's rinse-lather-repeat approach to torture is reminiscent of Dr. Sigmund Rascher's experiments at Dachau and a parallel project conducted by the Japanese Imperial Army's infamous Unit 731 in occupied Manchuria in 1942-43. Rascher, who was tried for war crimes after World War II, froze or lashed detainees nearly to death, then revived them over and over. German and Japanese doctors developed detailed protocols governing the severity of exposure to which inmates could be subjected—protocols seized by U.S. occupation forces and turned over to the OSS, predecessor of the CIA.

So it was in the CIA's prisons at Guantánamo, Bagram, Diego Garcia, eastern Europe, Thailand and elsewhere.

(Or, to be more accurate, so it is. Bush publicly banned torture in 2006, but we know it was still going on as of 2007. Obama supposedly banned it again earlier this year, but then his CIA director Leon Panetta told Congress the agency reserves the right to keep doing it. Until the entire secret prison network is dismantled and every single prisoner released, it would be absurd to assume that torture is not continuing.)

Among the verbal treasures in the CIA papers is the "Water Dousing" section of the "Guidelines on Medical and Psychological Support to Detainee Rendition, Interrogation and Detention," which "allow for water to be applied using either a hose connected to tap water, or a bottle or similar container as the water source." Ah, the glorious war on terror. Detainees may be soaked in water as cold as 41 degrees Fahrenheit for as long as 20 minutes—no longer, no colder.

For the record, the CIA's medical expertise is about as reliable as its legal and moral sense. Forty-one degrees is bracingly cold; 41 was the temperature of the Hudson River was when US Airways Flight 1549 crashed into it earlier this year. (Remember the ice floes?) "Generally, a person can survive in 41-degree water for 10, 15 or 20 minutes," Dr. Christopher McStay, an emergency room physician at New York City's Bellevue Hospital told Scientific American magazine.

Like its Gestapo and SS antecedents, the CIA is highly bureaucratic. CIA employees were informed that "Advance Headquarters approval is required to use any physical pressures [against prisoners]." And those permissions came from the very top of the chain of command: the White House, which ordered the Office of Legal Counsel and other legal branches of the federal government to draft "CYA" memoranda. The memos, wrote Joshua L. Dratel in his introduction to "The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib," a compilation of memos authorizing torture of Muslim detainees reflect "a wholly result-oriented system in which policy makers start with an objective and work backward."

Also reminiscent of Nazism is the utter absence of firewalls that has come to characterize the behavior of top government officials. Totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany corrupt the judiciary by using the courts to carry out political policy. Beginning under Bush and now under Obama, judicial independence has been eradicated.

On August 28th The New York Times reported: "In July, Leon E. Panetta, the CIA director, tried to head off the investigation [of the CIA's torture program], administration officials said. He sent the CIA's top lawyer, Stephen W. Preston, to [the Department of] Justice to persuade aides to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to abandon any plans for an inquiry." There's a term for this: Obstruction of Justice. You're not supposed to try to influence the outcome of an investigation. It was count six of the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.

To Holder's credit, he has appointed a special prosecutor. To his discredit, the focus of the investigation is narrow: he will only go after officials who went beyond the Bush Administration's over-the-top torture directives (which allow, as seen above, freezing people to death). He does not plan to go after the worst criminals, who are the Bush Administration lawyers and officials, including Bush and Cheney themselves, who ordered the war crimes—much less those like Obama who are currently covering them up.

He should change his mind. While he's at it, he should throw Leon Panetta in jail.

Holder's brief currently involves just 20 cases, which include detainees who were murdered by the CIA. But even those will be tough to prosecute, reports The New York Times: "Evidence, witnesses and even the bodies of the victims of alleged abuses have not been found in all cases."

Because, you see, the bodies were burned and dumped.

They—the CIA—are Nazis for committing the crimes.

And we are Nazis for not giving a damn. Only a third of Americans told the April 27th CBS News/New York Times poll that there ought to be an investigation of Bush-era war crimes—and they don't care enough to march in the streets, much less break a few windows. So few of my columns on torture have been reprinted by American newspapers or websites that I seriously contemplated not bothering to write this one.

We have met the Nazis, and they are us.

(Ted Rall, President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, is author of the books "To Afghanistan and Back" and "Silk Road to Ruin.")

COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL

Obama Sells Out to Military Torturers

Barack Obama is a liar.

Reneging on his earlier agreement to release some 2000+ photos of detainees being abused by American service personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq, he releases a stream of bullshit that doesn't stand up to the most casual contemplation:

"The publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals,” Mr. Obama told reporters on the South Lawn. “In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger."

To the contrary, additional information always provides additional understanding. If it's more of the same, that tells us that the incidents at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere were more widespread than was previously known. If it's less, then it tells us that maybe it wasn't. As for inflaming anti-Americanism, well, Obama's decision not to release the photos tells me one thing: they must be fucking insanely disgusting.

As, indeed, they are. An ACLU rep appeared on MSNBC yesterday to say that he had it on good (military) authority that the photos are, in fact, much worse than what we've seen from Abu Ghraib. Seymour Hersh and other reporters with first- or secondhand knowledge of the photos say they are essentially pornography—orgies between soldiers and with detainees. Whether the detainees are being forced to participate or not is unknowable.

Obama says the photos aren't as ugly as those from Abu Ghraib. If that's true, why not release them? The imagination runs wild, and only imagines the worst. Reality can't possibly be as bad.

The real reason Obama is covering up for the military is that they're scared shitless of facing prosecution for their crimes—and responsibility for them goes way up the chain of command.

Obama ought to resign in shame for being such a pussy.

Cartoon for May 14, 2009

The torture debate has come down to whether or not it's effective. Why are opponents of torture playing this game? Whether or not torture works is irrelevant. Even if it would save millions of lives--and that's a stretch, to say the least--it's wrong. What happened to Americans? Why are we so morally bankrupt? Wrong is wrong. It doesn't matter whether or not it pays.

Cartoon for May 9, 2009

Obama is amazing. First he gets credit for closing Gitmo—even though he leaves it open for a year and is moving the inmates to Bagram. Then he refuses to prosecute torturers. Now he's retaining Bush's kangaroo court system at Gitmo. When are "liberals" going to realize that our first black president is just another fascist?

NEW ANIMATION: Dharma Bums

Here it is—my latest animation with David Essman! This is closer to what these are going to look like from now on...around a minute in length, short and sweet. Fans of "Lost" may appreciate the Dharma Initiative-style training video technique. Fans of torture will appreciate the fact that the CIA thought it was necessary to waterboard one guy 183 times.

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: One Nation, Two Systems of Justice

Why Bush Must Go to Prison

Do you believe in "intelligent design"? It's the argument that the universe is so logical that it must have been planned out by a master creator. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, single-handedly disproves the existence of such a God.

Friedman is the nation's most prominent opinion writer. He wins journalistic prizes. Audiences shell out big bucks to hear him speak. Book collections of his columns become bestsellers for months on end. Yet the dude can't write. I'm not talking about his opinions. Friedman doesn't know how to arrange nouns and verbs in a way that is pleasing to readers of the English language. He is to writing what George W. Bush is to oratory.

Stranger still is Friedman's role as über barometer of conventional wisdom. When Congress, media tastemakers and thus most Americans bought into Bush's Saddam-has-WMDs story, Friedman did too. When the Iraq War started to go wrong but officially acceptable opinion wanted to stay and "finish the job," so did he. When everyone threw up their hands in disgust, Friedman was there with them.

Of course, he was wrong. He's always wrong. But he's always in perfect sync with conventional wisdom--which is almost always wrong.

Friedman's prose appears to have barely survived the linguistic equivalent of a harsh interrogation technique: "Because that is when Al Qaeda's remnants will try to throw a Hail Mary pass--that is, try to set off a bomb in a U.S. city--to obscure its defeat by moderate Arabs and Muslims in the heart of its world." Did he get this sports metaphor from some think tank neocon, or was he lame enough to make it up himself? Whether he leads or follows the average mean of the mainstream, Friedman's role as the nation's ultimate bellwether is what makes him worth reading.

Which is why it's so disquieting to read Friedman support of Obama's refusal to prosecute torturers. Times Tom may be a fool. His logic is certainly hopeless. But the people who matter--Congress, editors and producers at the big papers and broadcast networks and thus most of the public--agree with him.

Seven years after accounts of torture by American soldiers and CIA operatives first became public, the revelation that one detainee had been waterboarded 183 times in a single month has sticken a Katrina-like nerve. Conventional, mainstream, average, generic U.S. public opinion wants something done about it--an investigation, maybe prosecution of a few of the attorneys who authored the Torture Memos--but nothing close to genuine accountability. Friedman's April 29th column reflects this internal conflict:

"Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, has testified to Congress that more than 100 detainees died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, with up to 27 percent of these declared homicides by the military. They were allegedly kicked to death, shot, suffocated or drowned. Look, our people killed detainees [Friedman's emphasis], and only a handful of those deaths have resulted in any punishment of U.S. officials."

By Friedman's math, the military admits to the torture-murders of 27 people. He's low-balling. He doesn't include detainees murdered by the military in other places like Guantánamo or the Navy's fleet of prison ships, killed by the CIA at secret prisons, or slaughtered by foreign torturers after being "extraordinarily renditioned" by the U.S. Even so, 27 is a lot. No one would suggest letting a serial killer off the hook for 27 torture-murders.

Friedman does. "The president's decision to expose but not prosecute those responsible," he writes, is justified. Why? Because "justice taken to its logical end here would likely require bringing George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials to trial, which would rip our country apart."

"Rip our country apart." Wow.

Granting prosecutorial immunity to war criminals like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell is already "tearing the country apart."

First and foremost, it confirms many people's suspicion that there are two systems of justice in America: one for the rich and powerful and another for you and me. If I kidnap a man and hold him overnight, I face the death penalty or life in prison. Bush and his top officials ordered the kidnapping of tens of thousands of men as young as 12 years of age, the torture of thousands and the murder of hundreds. Until America's official mass murderers are treated as harshly as its freelance psychos, Americans will view their justice system as something to be feared rather than respected.

Not only does extending executive privilege into retirement--and not even conservatives think there's a legal basis for this--encourage lawless behavior by current and future political leaders, it feeds partisanship. Republicans impeached Bill Clinton for lying about a BJ. He was also disbarred (and rightly so). Nixon, on the other hand, resigned before being impeached and never faced a jury. If Bush and his minions get away with murder, does that mean that only Democrats are subject to the rule of law?

If the officials who ordered torture, the legislators who let it happen, the lawyers who justified it and the men and women who carried it out are not held accountable, the message will not be--as Obama seems to believe-that the Bush years represented some weird aberration in American history. Obama will be telling the world that the 2008 election changed nothing, that legal illegality could return at the drop of a hat (or the detonation of a dirty bomb), that his Administration protects the criminals and thus endorses their crimes. Millions of Americans, many of whom voted for him, already feel alienated from a country that expresses values that it doesn't live up to. Refusing to prosecute Bush deepens their cynicism.

Cynicism, Mssrs. Friedman and Obama, is what's ripping the guts out of America every second of every day. Only consistent and fair application of the law can begin the healing.

COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL

Cartoon for April 2, 2009

This is a riff on Obama's decision to push out the chairman of GM. Obviously he's fine with the way his torture operation is going, which is why it's being expanded and moved from Gitmo to Bagram.

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: Change You Can Parse

Obama Abandons Bush's Talk, Keeps His Walk

You can't blame Dick Cheney for being annoyed at Barack Obama. Obama is closing Guantánamo. He's ordering the CIA to interrogate prisoners according to the rules written in the Army Field Manual, which doesn't allow torture. He's even phasing out such classic Bushian phrases as "enemy combatant" and "war on terror."

But the dark prince of neoconservatism should relax. Obama's inaugural address may have promised to "reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals," but—in all the ways that matter—he's keeping all of Bush's outrageous policies in place. Sure, he talks a good game about "moving forward." But nothing has really changed. From reading your e-mails to asserting the right to assassinate American citizens to bailing out companies whose executives pay themselves big bonuses, Obama's changes are nothing but toothless rhetoric.

Closing Gitmo, reported The New York Times, was merely "a move that seemed intended to symbolically separate the new administration from Bush detention policies. But in a much anticipated court filing, the Justice Department argued that the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects there without criminal charges, much as the Bush administration had asserted. It provided a broad definition of those who can be held, which was not significantly different from the one used by the Bush administration."

What will happen to the 241 POWs still at Gitmo? They won't be called "enemy combatants" anymore but most won't be going home. "The filing signaled that, as long as Guantánamo remains open, the new Administration will aggressively defend its ability to hold some detainees there," wrote the Times. Where will they go after that?

Welcome to Gitmo II—courtesy of Barack Obama.

Countless victims have been tortured by U.S. military personnel at Bagram, the U.S. airbase in Afghanistan where Bush imprisoned 600 people without charges. Some were murdered in the camp's notorious "salt pit." "Even children have not been spared," says Amnesty International.

Now Bagram is being expanded—nearly doubled in size—in order to accommodate 200-plus detainees from Gitmo, as well as future POWs from Obama's expanded war against Afghanistan. As bad as Guantánamo was, conditions at Bagram are worse.

Unless you believe indefinite detention without due process to be torture, Obama says his detainees won't be tortured. Mostly. Probably. Maybe. The Washington Post quotes an Administration insider as saying that the CIA will enjoy "more leeway" than the Army Field Manual allows, in order to "take into account the differences between battlefield interrogations and those aimed at eliciting intelligence about terrorist groups and their plans."

Extraordinary renditions, the Times reports in a different article, will continue under Obama. "In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently," says the paper, "Obama nominees endorsed continuing the CIA's program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone."

During the 2008 campaign Obama's critics accused him of saying nothing, albeit beautifully. Now that we've gotten to know him a bit, it's time to refine that assessment: He's just a weasel. An eloquent weasel. But a weasel who says the right things while doing the opposite.

On March 9th Obama ordered federal agencies to suspend Bush's infamous "signing statements," sneaky documents issued after the signing of a bill that ordered government agencies not to enforce the very same bill he'd just approved in front of the cameras. Signing statements, says the American Bar Association, use one-man dictatorial rule to negate the people's will as expressed by Congress and are thus "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers."

"Yet two days later—literally—Obama signed a $410 billion spending bill and appended to it a signing statement claiming that he had the Constitutional authority to ignore several of its oversight provisions," writes Glenn Greenwald of Slate.

Greenwald regrets having to quote the vile Rich Lowry of the right-wing National Review magazine. So do I. But even the right is right sometimes:

"Barack Obama has perfected a three-step maneuver that could never even be attempted by a politician lacking his rhetorical skill or cool cynicism. First: Denounce your presidential predecessor for a given policy, energizing your party's base and capitalizing on his abiding unpopularity. Second: Pretend to have reversed that policy upon taking office with a symbolic act or high-profile statement. Third: Adopt a version of that same policy, knowing that it's the only way to govern responsibly or believing that doing otherwise is too difficult."

This week's example is Obama's grandstanding over $165 million in bonuses paid to executives of American International Group (AIG), which received billions in federal bailout money. He feigned outrage: "How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?" But his Treasury Department knew about the bonuses—which amount to roughly 55 cents per American—ages ago. He also knows there isn't much the government can do legally to claw the money back.

Unlike the word count limit of this column, Obama's perfidy knows no limits. He's already become more dangerous to democracy and basic human rights than George W. Bush. Unlike Bush, he has no political opposition. Cheney may nitpick, but most Republicans are happy to see Bush's policies remain in place. Meanwhile, liberals remain loyal, silent, and tacitly pro-torture.

COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL

Cartoon for February 2, 2009

Incredibly, mass murderer and mass torturer George W. Bush remains at large. Justice, apparently, is not something Obama cares about.

Cartoon for November 10, 2008

Obama and the Democrats have achieved a sweeping victory. Now it's time for them to dismantle Bush's gulag archipelago of torture. Not after forming a committee to look into it. Not after we've found the best way to do it. Immediately.

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: IT'S THE TORTURE, STUPID

Restoring Human Rights Must Be Next Prez's Top Priority

Both major presidential candidates have promised to roll back the Bush Administration's torture archipelago. Both say they'll close Guantánamo, abolish legalized torture, and respect the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. Obama also pledges to eliminate "extraordinary rendition," in which the CIA kidnaps people and flies them to other countries to be tortured, and says he will investigate Bush Administration officials for possible prosecution for war crimes.

If followed by other meaningful changes in behavior--withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq and foreswearing preemptive warfare--restoring the rule of law and respecting the rights of "enemy combatants" can start America's long, slow climb back to moral parity in the community of nations. But there are worrisome signs that Barack Obama and John McCain's commitment to moral renewal is less than rock-solid.

McCain, who claimed to have been tortured as a POW in North Vietnam, says a lot of the right things. "We do not torture people," he said in a 2007 Republican debate. "It's not about the terrorists; it's about us. It's about what kind of country we are." He used his Vietnam experience against fellow Republicans, bullying Congress into passing a law banning torture against detainees held by the military.

Bush signed McCain's bill in late 2005, saying it "is to make it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention of torture, whether it be here at home or abroad."

Days later, however, Bush issued a secret "signing statement" declaring that he would ignore the Detainee Treatment Act. NYU law professor David Golove, an expert on executive power, said: "The signing statement is saying 'I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it's important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me."

McCain, who says as president he would veto a bill rather than issue a signing statement negating its contents, was no doubt angry about Bush's perfidy. But, fearful of alienating Bush and the GOP leadership as he geared up for his '08 presidential campaign, he remained silent.

In February of this year, McCain backtracked still further from his anti-torture position, voting against legislation that would have blocked the CIA from subjecting inmates in its secret prisons to waterboarding, hooding, putting duct tape across their eyes, stripping them naked, rape, beatings, burning, subjecting them to hypothermia, mock executions, and other "harsh interrogation techniques."

"The CIA should have the ability to use additional techniques," he argued. He refused to explain why the CIA ought to be allowed to torture while the DOD should adhere to international standards of civilized behavior.

The U.S. continues to torture.

Unlike McCain, Obama remains a critic of officially sanctioned torture. "We'll reject torture--without exception or equivocation," Obama says. He would also end "the practice of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law."

The trouble is, Obama isn't laying the groundwork for stopping torture or closing Guantánamo or other U.S. gulags in his stump speeches. He talks a lot about energy policy, healthcare, jobs and the economy--and withdrawing troops from Iraq so they join the war against Afghanistan instead. If he becomes president, people will expect him to do those things. Without a sustained focus on human rights issues, however, any moves he makes will seem to come out of the blue--and face stronger pushback from Republicans anxious to bash him as weak on national security.

Why doesn't Obama emphasize Bush's war crimes? Maybe he's trying to play the Great Uniter, or maybe he knows that many Americans don't give a rat's ass about the pain inflicted against people they'll never meet in places they've never heard of. Who knows? All we know for sure is that, day after day, Obama fails to talk about what is arguably the worst crime of the corrupt Bush Administration.

Of course, renouncing torture isn't enough. Those who authorized it must be held to account. However, it doesn't seem likely that they will.

Asked in April whether he would prosecute Bush Administration officials for authorizing torture, Obama delivered his now-familiar duck-and-cover: say the right thing, then weasel out of it. "If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated," he said.

But not for at least four years: "I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of the Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we've got too many problems to solve."

Memo to Barack: This isn't about prosecuting Republicans. It's about prosecuting torturers.

"Prosecution of any officials, if it were to occur, would probably not occur during Obama's first term," Slate reports, citing Obama campaign insiders. "Instead, we may well see a Congressionally empowered commission that would seek testimony from witnesses in search of the truth about what occurred. Though some witnesses might be offered immunity in exchange for testimony, the question of whether anybody would be prosecuted would be deferred to a later date--meaning Obama's second term, if such is forthcoming."

First would come a South African-style "Truth and Reconciliation Commission," where the truth would come out. But the torturers would get off scot-free.
"The commission would focus strictly on detention, torture and extraordinary rendition, or the practice of spiriting detainees to a third country for abusive interrogations. The panel would focus strictly on these abuses, leaving out any other allegedly illegal activities during the Bush Administration, such as domestic spying," says Slate. Second--well, there might not be a second. Even if there is, shortsighted Americans' appetite for justice and accountability will probably have been diluted by the time 2013 rolls around.

Mainline media liberals, in conjunction with Obama supporters, are even going so far as to suggest that Bush issue his torturers with a blanket pardon in exchange for their testimony at Obama's toothless commission.

Regardless of who wins in November, we will get a president who's better on torture and other human rights issues than George W. Bush. At least their words sound nice. But real change and moral redemption will only begin if we--Democrats, Republicans and everyone else--demand the next president stands by his pretty promises.

Until they start taking taking torture, Gitmo and human rights seriously, neither Obama nor McCain should be able to appear in public without facing questions and heckling about these issues.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Cartoon for January 12

The CIA tortures, but as was the case for Nixon ordering goons to break into Democratic HQ, torture isn't the problem--it's all about the cover-up. In this case, the Justice Department is after the CIA, not for torture, but for destroying tapes of torture. America is weird.

Click on the cartoon to make it bigger.