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From Time:

According to a former senior American official, it appears another locale can be added to the international roster of interrogation sites — one both more obscure and potentially more controversial than the alleged sites in Poland and Romania. The source tells TIME that, in 2002 and possibly 2003, the U.S. imprisoned and interrogated one or more terrorist suspects on Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean controlled by the United Kingdom.
…
[CIA Director] Hayden’s attempt to set the record straight [about the US’ practices on Diego Garcia] has failed to quiet British protests about American activities on the island. Instead, an All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition has begun an investigation, raising a variety of pointed questions about the island with Gordon Brown’s Labour government. Speaking to the BBC, Labor MP and Foreign Affairs Committee member Fabian Hamilton said this week that, “I think it’s important the British government makes plain its … deep concern that it’s not being told the truth and that our territories are being used for these purposes.”
…
Hamilton’s Committee insists that Britain can no longer take at face value America’s assurances that it is not torturing prisoners, and, in a clear reference to Diego Garcia, said the U.K. now bears a “legal and moral obligation” to make certain that no British territory abets American rendition flights or interrogations.

From BBC:

Tran Trong Duyet - a sprightly retiree and amateur ballroom dancer - must rank as one of John McCain’s more unlikely supporters.
Four decades ago, during the Vietnam war, Mr Duyet was in charge of the notorious Hoa Lo prison - the place where Mr McCain says he was brutally beaten and tortured during five-and-a-half years as an American prisoner of war.
…
“But I can confirm to you that we never tortured him. We never tortured any prisoners.”

It’s to our enduring shame that America has engaged in torture, and even more disgraceful that we’ve claimed actions we call torture acceptable when we practice them.

But as John McCain has rightly asserted many times, he was tortured. Unfortunately, some of the same techniques used to torture Senator McCain have been used by the US to torture. We are a torturing nation. There’s no way to parse or equivocate that. Though it seems likely most of the people responsible won’t be tried by the US anytime soon, the rest of the world may not be so lenient. The shred of redemption in this escapade is that various leaders within the American community can use this opportunity to dust off truths we’ve let languish too long and own them again, like my pastor did in an op/ed for the Orlando Sentinel:

• The Golden Rule: The U.S. will not use any method of interrogation that we would not find acceptable if used against Americans.
• One national standard: We will adopt a single standard for interrogation across U.S. agencies and departments.
• Rule of law: The U.S. will acknowledge all prisoners to our courts and the International Committee of the Red Cross and provide fully adequate judicial processes to provide detainees an opportunity to prove their innocence.
• Duty to protect: The U.S. will not transfer prisoners in our custody to governments when there is a likelihood that they will be tortured.
• Checks and balances: The U.S. will reaffirm the legitimate role of the legislative and judicial branches in understanding, reviewing, and in some cases setting detention policies.
• Clarity and accountability: All U.S. personnel deserve the certainty that they are implementing policy that complies fully with the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law.

Unfortunately America’s reputation will likely further suffer before it can begin recovering, with so many more stories coming to light (like our alleged secret prison ships in international waters used as torture house).

From Karl Rove’s op/ed in the Wall Street Journal:

Another McCain story, somewhat better known, is about the Vietnamese practice of torturing him by tying his head between his ankles with his arms behind him, and then leaving him for hours. The torture so badly busted up his shoulders that to this day Mr. McCain can’t raise his arms over his head.

Regarding Donald Rumsfield in the Wall Street Journal (via Yale):

U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could put prisoners in “stress positions” for as long as four hours, hood them and subject them to 20-hour-long interrogations, “fear of dogs” and “mild non-injurious physical contact,” according to list of techniques Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved in December 2002.

McCain’s torture in Vietnam was, in part, being held in stress positions. The very same stress positions were approved as an interrogation technique by the US in the war on terror.

So what was considered torture to McCain is not considered torture in Guantanamo.

Yesterday, the memos written by John Yoo that became the executive branch’s rationalization for torture, among other things, became public. The 81 page brief provides the rationale the executive branch employed (provided by a junior lawyer at the justice department) for unsettling scores of years of established law and engaging in torture. Commentary abounds.

Vanity Fair has written a breath-taking account of America’s role in torture. In 2006 Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, protecting the leaders involved from any future criminal prosecution. The VF article concludes with the consideration that blanket immunity exposes these government leaders and lawyers to war crimes prosecution internationally. One of the stipulations for international prosecution of war crimes is that the country of residence of the alleged law-breakers would not prosecute on their own. So by providing absolution from American prosecution, Rumsfeld, Bush, Yoo, etc are now exposed to prosecution by the world.

I can’t say whether the American government would ever allow high ranking administration officials to be prosecuted for such heinous acts. Then again, under Nixon’s presidency high ranking officials were prosecuted for Whitewater, his vice president resigned amidst bribery and tax evasion charges and ultimately Nixon himself stepped down.

At present no ranking officials have been held accountable for any actions ranging from gross intelligence failures leading up to 9/11, the complete mischaracterization of Iraq’s involvement to generate a war, or the American sponsored torture of prisoners.

I almost long for the days of our more moral corruption.

From CBS news:

“Every five or six hours they came and pulled me back down. And the doctor came to watch if I can still survive to not. He looked into my eyes. He checked my heart. And when he said okay, then they pulled me back up,” Kurnaz says.

“The point of the doctor’s visit was not to treat you. It was to see if you could take another six hours hanging from the ceiling?” Pelley asks.

“Right,” Kurnaz says.

“I suspect you know that the U.S. military will deny this happened. The U.S. military will deny that you were shocked. It will deny your head was held in a bucket of water. It will deny that you hung from a ceiling for days at a time,” Pelley remarks.

“Doesn’t matter whatever they will say. The truth will not change,” Kurnaz says.

“And you’re telling me in this interview that this is the truth?” Pelley asks.

“This is the truth,” Kurnaz insists.

Kurnaz isn’t alone in these allegations: other freed prisoners have described electric shocks at Kandahar, and even U.S. troops have admitted beating prisoners who were hanging by their arms. Kurnaz’s story fits a pattern.
…

Six months after Kurnaz reached Guantanamo, U.S. military intelligence had written, “criminal investigation task force has no definite link [or] evidence of detainee having an association with al Qaeda or making any specific threat toward the U.S.”

…

“Have you ever in your legal career run across anything like this?” Pelley asks Baher Azmy.

“In my legal career, no,” Azmy says. “But in Guantanamo, no detainee has ever been able to genuinely present evidence before a neutral judge. And so as absurd as Murat Kurnaz’s case is, I assure you there are many, many dozens just as tenuous.”

And a U.S. federal judge agreed. She ruled the Guantanamo military tribunals violated the prisoners’ right to a defense, and she singled out Kurnaz’s case as an example.

60 Minutes asked the Department of Defense to talk to us about Kurnaz. Instead they sent 60 Minutes a statement, calling his allegations “unsubstantiated” and “outlandish,” adding that claims that the U.S. military “engaged in regular and systematic torture of detainees cannot withstand even the slightest scrutiny.” The statement didn’t address why Kurnaz was held to begin with. (Click here to read the full Department of Defense statement.)

We have zero convictions for ‘enemy combatants’ at Guantanamo, which begs the question of whether this is the exception or the norm.

John McCain:

I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. The lives of a nation’s finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is loss the veteran remembers most keenly. Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.

America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model. How we behave at home affects how we are perceived abroad. We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundation of our society. We can’t torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured. I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.

John McCain delivered a speech on foreign policy in which he appeared to move back to his recently abandoned positions on torture, and delivered a weighty appraisal of the cost of war. His assessment of the cost of war makes he belief that we can “win” the war on terror, as it’s embodied in our was in Iraq, even stranger given we’ve clearly learned at this point that Iraq was not invested in global terror on any large scale as we were led to believe prior to our invasion.

Boat cat (alt), originally uploaded by Orcinus O.