Zev Mo Bloggin’

Finding stories for the one other person who actually reads my blog.
May 27

Salon.com

Is America a Christian nation, as many conservatives claim it is? One American doesn’t think so. In his press conference on April 6 in Turkey, President Obama explained: “One of the great strengths of the United States is … we have a very large Christian population — we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”

Predictably, Obama’s remarks have enraged conservative talking heads. But Obama’s observations have ample precedent in American diplomacy and constitutional thought. The most striking is the Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1797. Article 11 states: “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility [sic], of Mussulmen [Muslims]; and, as the said States never have entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

Conservatives who claim that the U.S. is a “Christian nation” sometimes dismiss the Treaty of Tripoli because it was authored by the U.S. diplomat Joel Barlow, an Enlightenment freethinker. Well, then, how about the tenth president, John Tyler, in an 1843 letter: “The United States have adventured upon a great and noble experiment, which is believed to have been hazarded in the absence of all previous precedent — that of total separation of Church and State. No religious establishment by law exists among us. The conscience is left free from all restraint and each is permitted to worship his Maker after his own judgment. The offices of the Government are open alike to all. No tithes are levied to support an established Hierarchy, nor is the fallible judgment of man set up as the sure and infallible creed of faith. The Mohammedan, if he will to come among us would have the privilege guaranteed to him by the constitution to worship according to the Koran; and the East Indian might erect a shrine to Brahma, if it so pleased him. Such is the spirit of toleration inculcated by our political Institutions.”

Was Tyler too minor a president to be considered an authority on whether the U.S. is a Christian republic or not? Here’s George Washington in a letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island in 1790: “The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy — a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support … May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

Eloquent as he is, Barack Obama could not have put it better.

Contrast this with John McCain’s interview with Beliefnet during the 2008 presidential campaign: “But I think the number one issue people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United States is, ‘Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?’” Asked whether this would rule out a Muslim candidate for the presidency, McCain answered, “But, no, I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles … personally, I prefer someone who I know has a solid grounding in my faith. But that doesn’t mean that I’m sure that someone who is a Muslim would not make a good president. I don’t say that we would rule out under any circumstances someone of a different faith. I just would — I just feel that that’s an important part of our qualifications to lead.”

Conservatives who, like McCain, assert that the U.S. is in some sense a Christian or Judeo-Christian nation tend to make one of four arguments. The first is anthropological: The majority of Americans describe themselves as Christians, even though the number of voters who describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated has grown from 5.3 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008. But the ratio of Christians to non-Christians in American society as a whole is irrelevant to the question of whether American government is Christian.

The second argument is that the constitution itself is somehow Christian in character. On that point, candidate McCain said: “I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States as a Christian nation.” Is McCain right? Is the U.S. a Christian republic in the sense that according to their constitutions Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan are all now officially Islamic republics? What does the Constitution say? Article VI states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust in the United States.” Then there is the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof … ”

True, over the years since the founding, Christian nationalists have won a few victories — inserting “In God We Trust” on our money during the Civil War in 1863, adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance during the Cold War in 1954. And there are legislative and military chaplains and ceremonial days of thanksgiving. But these are pretty feeble foundations on which to claim that the U.S. is a Christian republic. (”Judeo-Christian” is a weaselly term used by Christian nationalists to avoid offending Jews; it should be translated as “Christian.”)

The third argument holds that while the U.S. government itself may not be formally Christian, the Lockean natural rights theory on which American republicanism rests is supported, in its turn, by Christian theology. Jefferson summarized Lockean natural rights liberalism in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights … that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …” Many conservatives assert that to be a good Lockean natural nights liberal, one must believe that the Creator who is endowing these rights is the personal God of the Abrahamic religions.

This conflation of Christianity and natural rights liberalism helps to explain one of John McCain’s more muddled answers in his Beliefnet interview: “[The] United States of America was founded on the values of Judeo-Christian values [sic], which were translated by our founding fathers which is basically the rights of human dignity and human rights.” The same idea lies behind then-Attorney General John Ashcroft’s statement to religious broadcasters: “Civilized individuals, Christians, Jews and Muslims” — sorry, Hindus and Buddhists! — “all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator.”

In reality, neither Jewish nor Christian traditions know anything of the ideas of natural rights and social contract found in Hobbes, Gassendi and Locke. That’s because those ideas were inspired by themes found in non-Christian Greek and Roman philosophy. Ideas of the social contract were anticipated in the fourth and fifth centuries BC by the sophists Glaucon and Lycophron, according to Plato and Aristotle, and by Epicurus, who banished divine activity from a universe explained by natural forces and taught that justice is an agreement among people neither to harm nor be harmed. The idea that all human beings are equal by nature also comes from the Greek sophists and was planted by the Roman jurist Ulpian in Roman law: “quod ad ius naturale attinet, omnes homines aequales sunt” — according to the law of nature, all human beings are equal.

Desperate to obscure the actual intellectual roots of the Declaration of Independence in Greek philosophy and Roman law, Christian apologists have sought to identify the “Creator” who endows everyone with unalienable rights with the revealed, personal God of Moses and Jesus. But a few sentences earlier, the Declaration refers to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Adherents of natural rights liberalism often have dropped “Nature’s God” and relied solely on “Nature” as the source of natural rights.

In any event, in order to be a good American citizen one need not subscribe to Lockean liberalism. Jefferson, a Lockean liberal himself, did not impose any philosophical or religious test on good citizenship. In his “Notes on the State of Virginia,” he wrote: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

The fourth and final argument made in favor of a “Christian America” by religious conservatives is the best-grounded in history but also the weakest. They point out that American leaders from the founders to the present have seen a role for otherwise privatized and personal religion in turning out moral, law-abiding citizens. As George Washington wrote in his 1796 Farewell Address:

“Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.”

In Washington’s day, it may have been reasonable for the elite to worry that only fear of hellfire kept the masses from running amok, but in the 21st century it is clear that democracy as a form of government does not require citizens who believe in supernatural religion. Most of the world’s stable democracies are in Europe, where the population is largely post-Christian and secular, and in East Asian countries like Japan where the “Judeo-Christian tradition” has never been part of the majority culture.

The idea that religion is important because it educates democratic citizens in morality is actually quite demeaning to religion. It imposes a political test on religion, as it were — religions are not true or false, but merely useful or dangerous, when it comes to encouraging the civic virtues that are desirable in citizens of a constitutional, democratic republic. Washington’s instrumental view of religion as a kind of prop was agreeable to another two-term American president more than a century and a half later. “[O]ur form of government has no sense unless it is founded on a deeply felt religious faith,” said Dwight Eisenhower, “and I don’t care what it is.” And it’s indistinguishable from Edward Gibbon’s description of Roman religion in his famous multi-volume “Decline and Fall”: “The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.”

President Obama, then, is right. The American republic, as distinct from the American population, is not post-Christian because it was never Christian. In the president’s words: “We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.” And for that we should thank the gods. All 20 of them.

May 26

The Daily Dish

Paul Krugman reflects on the demonization of cities and the people who live in them.

Basically, the accusation is that anyone with a good word for urbanism must just hate the American lifestyle.

[T]he same thing is true about pro-sprawl commentary … Conservatives really, really hate on Portland; examples here and here. Aside from the tendency to engage in factual errors, the hate seems disproportionate to the cause. But it’s an aesthetic thing: conservatives seem deeply offended by anything that challenges the image of Americans as big men driving big cars.

Me, I like dense urban areas. But I’m a pointy-headed intellectual. And bearded, too.

This trend is not new.

A disdain for cities and the diverse, open-mined people (like Krugman) who gravitate to them has long been a rallying point on parts of the right. Long before their forays into foreign policy, neoconservatives were railing against cities.  Edward Banfield’s tellingly titled, The Unheavenly City offered an incredulous chapter on “Rioting for Fun and Profit.”  Early essays in the Public Interest sported snappy titles like “The City as  Reservation” and “The City as Sandbox.” Not to mention so-called “benign neglect” which argued that cities should be left to rot and run-down so that land could become cheap enough to entice large-scale suburban-style retrofitting.

The anti-urban strain continues today, as Krugman notes. Ironically, its persistence is what’s really anti-American - anti-American economy that is, making it ever more difficult to leverage the powerful role played by cities and urban areas in innovation and economic growth for long-run economic prosperity.

May 25

Crooks and Liars

Talk about a terror plot! You got your faux jihad, you got your inadequate health insurance (nothing single payer wouldn’t fix!) and you got an FBI informant who supplied a motive. Now, I wonder how they thought all of this would play in court? I mean, we were planning to try these people, yes?

“My insurance wasn’t good enough,” said Lord McWilliams, 20, who has a deadly liver disease.

His brother, David Williams, wanted money “to speed up the process,” McWilliams said. “Medicaid only goes so far.”

He dismissed as “crazy” federal accusations that Williams was a Jew-hater who wanted to wage jihad.

McWilliams said the FBI informant who lured his brother and three other hapless petty criminals into a plot to blow up synagogues and shoot down a plane promised enough money to take care of his transplant.

“[My brother] told me, ‘Don’t worry, when you go to the doctor, tell them you got money,’” McWilliams said.

McWilliams, who has already had his spleen removed, said his brother told him he would have $20,000 for the operation.

Their mother, Elizabeth McWilliams, said her older son had told her he would be able to give her a wad of cash Thursday, which was the day after the terrorist plot was to have been carried out.

“He was a loving, sweet kid. He took his brother’s illness worse than me,” she said.

Lord McWilliams said the informant, who often drove his brother to the hospital to visit, even promised to take him to Universal Studios when he was well again.

“He said I didn’t have to pay for nothing,” McWilliams said.

Federal prosecutors say Williams, 28; James Cromitie, 44; Laguerre Payen, 27, and Onta Williams, 32, all of upstate Newburgh, were militant Muslims caught on tape railing against Jews and plotting to blow up Jewish temples.

They were arrested last Wednesday while planting what they thought were plastic explosives outside two Riverdale synagogues.

They also had a Stinger missile - phony, supplied by the FBI - with which they allegedly planned to shoot down a military plane. Family and friends say the four were down-on-their luck ex-cons who apparently thought they would be paid by the FBI informant.

In dozens of interviews around Newburgh, no one can remember hearing any of the four talk of Jews or jihad. They had converted to Islam in prison, but they drank beer, ate pork and rarely prayed, family members said.

I hardly know what to say. What’s worse: A healthcare system where someone is so desperate, he’d blow up buildings to pay for his brother’s treatment, or an FBI that thinks nothing of setting people up so they can claim they caught some “terrorists”?

May 22

NYTimes.com

Comment:

Same thing happened to us last night. Top of the 9th, we sent down to ~220 to take some close-up pics of the field. I was there with my 7 year old, very excited about being close (as opposed to our 420a seats). I asked an usher where the best place to take pics was, and the response was less than helpful. Right then 4 people were leaving the stadium and said, “hey take our seats” and handed us their tickets. The Usher bellowed, “no swapping”. The people who gave me the tickets was dumbfounded and walked off in disgust. Then as I asked what that meant, the head usher comes over and starts getting loud saying, “if you continue to talk, i’m throwing you out”. I responded, “That’s not being very nice, I am just trying to understand what the rules are.” He said, “it’s illegal, go away or I remove you.”

As my 7 year old, who was noticeably shaken by this guy, was saying “Dad, let’s just go!”, I walked off realizing that Yankee Stadium in neither friendly, nor family oriented. It is a shell of a ballpark. A commercial structure that contains an area to play baseball. Utilitarian and soulless. Policies without a human element accomplish nothing. Here my son was so excited to see the players, had to see the most ridiculous policy delivered by a group of power-hungry ushers causes them to further drive fans away from the franchise.

The ghosts of the old stadium understood that. Apparently the franchise forgot the most important factor. Citi field has friendly, courteous staff (like the went to Disney training camp), and understand that baseball is about the fans. Citi for us.

— Zev Mo Green

May 20

Think Progress »

zelikow

A newly-disclosed 2005 memo, authored by then-State Department counselor Philip Zelikow, then-Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, and then-Deputy Assistant Secretary for Detainee Affairs Matthew Waxman, gave President Bush “clear and unequivocal advice encouraging a detainee interrogation system that followed humane practices that adhered to US and international law.” The memo was authored as the Bush administration was seeking a “fresh approach” handling terror detainee and just weeks after the OLC issued its second round of torture memos.

In the memo, the three Bush administration officials argue that the President should appoint a “special board” to “review general U.S. government detainee policy and operations” and “evaluate issues of effectiveness and intelligence value.”

While that review was taking place, the authors recommended that U.S. forces treat detainees in the so-called war on terror as if they were “civilian detainees under the law of war.” “This is the system generally being used by our forces in Iraq. Adopting this interim approach allows us to handle the detainees on a well understood basis that gives our forces clear, unambiguous guidelines for conduct,” they wrote, adding:

WE ARE NOT SAYING THAT THESE DETAINEES ARE, NECESSARILY ENTITLED TO THIS STATUS. TO BE CLEAR: WE ARE GIVING THEM A TEMPORARY STATUS THEY DO NOT DESERVE. BUT WE ARE NOT DOING THIS FOR THEM. WE ARE DOING IT FOR US.

Their approach would have harmonized detainee treatment procedures in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Jane Mayer explained in The Dark Side that the differing guidelines for detainee treatment in the three different theaters had, in part, lead to the abuses at Abu Gahrib.

As the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman explained in his account of the Cheney vice presidency, Angler, the memo was a “top-to-bottom assault on the Cheney-Addington legal model. Its authors proposed to seek legislation, acknowledge secret prisons, give the worst of the terrorists Geneva rights, and bring them back within the full jurisdiction of American courts.” But the memo’s arguments were not well received. As Gellman writes, after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice showed the memo to an “intrigued” President Bush, it was shown to other high-level administration officials:

England, Rumsfeld’s deputy, brought the paper to his boss…Rumsfeld reacted coldy. He had not authorized this. … Rumsfeld directed that all copies be withdrawn from circulation and shredded. (p. 349)

National Security Adviser Steve Hadley canceled a discussion of the document upon hearing about its contents from Cheney’s office. Zelikow explained his goal in writing the memo last week in testimony before the Senate Judiciary committee saying that he wanted to “effectively prohibit ‘cruel, inhuman, and degrading’ treatment of detainees.”

May 20

Crooks and Liars

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Jesse Ventura’s been making the rounds lately by taking on all comers on the issue of torture, which has left little quivering wingnuts like Joe Scarborough having to resort to attacking him out of his immediate presence.

Because as Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends found out this morning, doing so in person can be extremely unpleasant. Especially if you try pulling the lamestain right-wing crap we’ve gotten accustomed to, namely, accusing their interlocutors of not wanting to keep us safe, you’re not patriotic enough, blah blah blah.

That’s what Kilmeade tries pulling right off the bat, and it makes for possibly the best of the Ventura smackdowns yet:

Ventura: I have been waterboarded. It is torture. I can speak from experience. It was part of SERE training that I went through as a Navy SEAL.

Kilmeade: And are you OK now?

Ventura: I’m fine.

Kilmeade: So is Khalid Sheik Mohammed. He’s about 60 pounds overweight, having a great time –

Ventura: It doesn’t matter. If it was OK, then why don’t we do it to criminals? Like, if we’ve got gang members in L.A., OK? We know that their gangs are gonna do bad things. When we arrest them, why don’t we waterboard them so we can get information out of them? Because it’s against the law.

Kilmeade: Do you want us not to be safe from attack?

Ventura: Don’t come after me with that nonsense.

[Debate over its efficacy -- "ticking time bomb"]

Ventura: OK, why didn’t we waterboard McVeigh and Nichols, then? There were more people that they thought involved at Oklahoma City. Why weren’t they waterboarded to get more information? Because it’s against the law.

Wait — and if we’re not going to be a country that goes by the rule of law when it’s convenient or not convenient, then what do we stand for?

…

But what about the difference — you bring up Timothy McVeigh and maybe gang members, and maybe those threats weren’t as imminent as the threats –

Ventura: I don’t think these threats are imminent.

You didn’t think after 9/11, that America felt threats were imminent, that more could be coming?

Ventura: Maybe. But I think our behavior has caused us to be in more trouble. Now they won’t release these photos. Why? Because they know the Muslim world will go irate. They’re all after Nancy Pelosi — when did she know? When dah dah dah — Well, if we hadn’t of tortured, it would be a dead issue, wouldn’t it?

Let’s go to the real issue: It’s called torture.

Indeed: As we pointed out the other day, the fact that we find it necessary not to release these photos is proof that not only did torture not keep us safe, it made us manifestly less safe.

At this point, however, Kilmeade goes all-out Smug Right-Wing Punk on Ventura and finds himself confronting the reality that he’s all for having someone else do his dirty work but Kilmeade himself — of prime fighting age — is too big of a spoiled, snotty rich kid to ever have to put himself on the line in a serious way. The resulting piledriver through the canvas is a sight to behold.

After all, it’s easy to root for torture when you’re not going to be one of the soldiers in the field who has to deal with the consequences. Right, Brian Kilmeade?

May 20

Think Progress »

In recent days, conservatives have been on a media blitz accusing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) of lying last week when she said that she believed she had been “misled” by the CIA during intelligence briefings regarding the use of torture. Last night on Fox News’s On The Record, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) continued this blitz, arguing that Pelosi did not want to “take accountability and responsibility for the actions that she took in 2002, 2003″ and is instead simply “blaming the CIA.”

When host Greta Van Sustern pointed out that “CIA has not been perfect” in recent years, Hoekstra explained that in his view it is okay to criticize the agency’s performance, but it is another thing to accuse the CIA of having misled Congress:

HOEKSTRA: I think you do go back and you break it into two different issues. One is the performance, how well, they’re doing their job. The second is whether they have misled or lied to Congress, two very, very different issues.

Watch it:

PopoutYesterday on CNN’s American Morning, Hoekstra made similar remarks, referring to Pelosi’s claims as “outrageous accusations.” He also appeared last night on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight and this morning on talk radio with Bill Bennett and Laura Ingraham.

Hoekstra’s repeated objections to Pelosi accusing the CIA of having lied to Congress is quite odd given the fact that he’s made nearly identical claims on multiple occasions. As Marcy Wheeler first noted, Hoekstra wrote a letter to President Bush in 2006 accusing the intelligence community of withholding information on their activities from Congress. “I have learned of some alleged Intelligence Community activities about which our committee has not been briefed,” Hoekstra wrote. He said that he believed the Bush administration’s failure to fully brief his committee could constitute “a violation of law“:

hoekstra_letterSimilarly, in 2007, Hoekstra described a closed-door briefing by representatives from the intelligence community (including CIA) on the National Intelligence Estimate of Iran’s nuclear capability, saying that the members “didn’t find [the briefers] forthcoming.” More recently, in November 2008, Hoekstra concluded that the CIA “may have been lying or concealing part of the truth” in testimony to Congress regarding a 2001 incident in which the CIA mistakenly killed an American citizen in Peru. “We cannot have an intelligence community that covers up what it does and then lies to Congress,” Hoekstra said of the incident.

May 20

Video Cafe

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Bob Graham on Washington Journal May 18, 2009. Graham continues to raise red flags about the CIA’s record keeping and whether they can be considered reliable as to when Congressional committee members were briefed. Earlier in the program Graham suggested that the CIA needed to allow members of Congress to see the documents and sign off on them with an opportunity to dissent as to the content before making them part of any official record. His suggestion certainly would put a stop to this he said/she said gamesmanship we’re seeing right now.

Q: Sen. Graham I did want to follow up on an interview that you gave to Huffington Post last week. They write “In testimony that could bolster Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claim that the CIA misled her during briefings on detainee interrogations, former Senator Bob Graham insisted on Thursday that he too was kept in the dark about the use of waterboarding, and called the agency’s records on these briefings ’suspect.’

In an interview with the Huffington Post, the former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman said that approximately a month ago, the CIA provided him with false information about how many times and when he was briefed on enhanced interrogations.”

What was your reasoning for asking the CIA for this information. What sort of raised red flags for you?

Graham: When this issue started to bubble up after the President released the so called torture memos, allegations were made that all of the leadership of the Intelligence Committee had been fully briefed on this. I knew that was not the case with me. So I called the CIA and asked what were the dates on which I, Bob Graham, was briefed.

They gave me four dates, two in April and two in September of 2002. I had a habit of carrying with me a spiral notebook such as this. I went back to my notebook to those dates and I found that on three of the four dates, there was no briefing held. I presented that information to the CIA and they concurred that their records were in error. That to me raised some question about their general records management process and I already indicated what I thought would be one important step that would make those records more reliable.

May 19

Think Progress »

Download a pdf of this report HERE

Comment on the report HERE.

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CONTENTS

I. TORTURE DOES NOT YIELD ACCURATE INTELLIGENCE
• Military, Intelligence Experts: Info From Enhanced Techniques Is Unreliable
• The Interrogations Of Zubaydah And KSM: Enhanced Techniques Produced No Actionable Intelligence
• Enhanced Interrogations Led To False Claims Of Iraq/Al Qaeda Link

II. TORTURE MAKES AMERICANS LESS SAFE
• Enhanced Interrogations Recruits Terrorists
• Enhanced Interrogations Puts American Soldiers At Risk
• Enhanced Interrogations Ruin Credibility Of Intelligence Agencies
• Enhanced Interrogations Strain Alliances
• Interrogations Ruined America’s Moral Authority
• Enhanced Interrogations Makes Terrorists Unprosecutable

III. HISTORICAL LESSONS CAUTION AGAINST ENHANCED TECHNIQUES
• Enhanced Techniques Derived From Ineffective Communist Tactics

I. TORTURE DOES NOT YIELD ACCURATE INTELLIGENCE

Military, Intelligence Experts: Info From Enhanced Techniques Is Unreliable

• Gen. Petraeus: Torture yields information ‘of questionable value.’
“Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned
torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the
enemy. That would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are
illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor
necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone ‘talk;’
however, what the individual says may be of questionable value.” [Gen.
David Petraeus, Letter to Multi-National Force-Iraq, 5/10/07]

• FBI warns military interrogators: Enhanced techniques are ‘of questionable effectiveness.’
Defense Department interrogators “were being encouraged at times to use
aggressive interrogation tactics in GTMO which are of questionable
effectiveness and subject to uncertain interpretation based on law and
regulation. Not only are these tactics at odds with legally permissible
interviewing techniques used by U.S. law enforcement agencies in the
United States, but they are being employed by personnel in GTMO who
appear to have little, if any, experience eliciting information for
judicial purposes. The continued use of these techniques has the
potential of negatively impacting future interviews by FBI agents as
they attempt to gather intelligence and prepare cases for prosecution.”
[FBI memo, 5/30/03]

• FBI cites ‘lack of evidence of [enhanced techniques’] success.’
“The differences between DHS and FBI interrogation techniques and the
potential legal problems which could arise were discussed with DHS
officials. However, they are adamant that their interrogation
strategies are the best ones to use despite the lack of evidence of
their success.” [FBI memo, 5/30/03]

• Army JAG: ‘I don’t think [torture] is all that effective.’
“If you torture somebody, they’ll tell you anything. I don’t know
anybody that is good at interrogation, has done it a lot, that will say
that that’s an effective means of getting information. … So I don’t
think it’s effective.” [Major General Thomas Romig, former Army JAG, 11/19/07]

• Special Ops Interrogator: ‘Enhanced’ interrogation causes detainees to ‘shut up.’
“When I was in Iraq, the few times that I saw people use harsh methods,
it was always counterproductive. Because the person hunkered down, they
were expecting us to do that, and they just shut up. And then I’d have
to send somebody in and build back up rapport, reverse that process,
and it’d take us longer to get that information.” [Matthew Alexander,
leader of a Special Operations interrogation team in Iraq, 12/8/08]

• FBI Special Agent Jack Cloonan: Rapport-building method yields better results.
“It is my belief, based on a 27 year career as a Special Agent and
interviews with hundreds of subjects in custodial settings, including
members of al Qaeda, that the use of coercive interrogation techniques
is not effective. The alternative approach, sometimes referred to as
‘rapport building’ is more effective, efficient and reliable.
Scientists, psychiatrists, psychologists, law enforcement and
intelligence agents, all of whom have studied both approaches, have
came to the same conclusion. The CIA’s own training manual advises its
agents that heavy-handed techniques can impair a subject’s ability to
accurately recall information and, at worst, produce apathy and
complete withdrawal.” [FBI special agent Jack Cloonan, testimony to
Congress 6/10/08]

• Military’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency [JPRA] cautioned enhanced program produces unreliable intelligence.
“The [Dec. 2001] memo [to the Department of Defense General Counsel]
cautioned, however, that while ‘[p]hyisical deprivations can and do
work in altering the prisoners’ mental state to the point where they
will say things they normally would not say,” use of physical
deprivations has “several major downfalls.’ JPRA warned that physical
deprivations were ‘not as effective’ a means of getting information as
psychological pressures, that information gained from their use was
‘less reliable,’ and that their use ‘tends to increase resistance
postures when deprivations are removed.’” [Senate Armed Services Report
on Detainee Treatment and Abuse, Nov. 2008, p.38]

• Army Intelligence Officer Col. Herrington: Enhanced techniques endanger intelligence collection.
“COL Herrington also warned that certain security procedures in place
at the time could have a negative impact on intelligence collection,
stating: ‘The austere nature of the facilities and the rigorous
security movement procedures (shackles, two MPs with hands on the
detainee, etc.) reinforces to detainees that they are in prison, and
detracts from the flexibility that debriefers require to accomplish
their mission…These views have nothing to do with being “soft” on the
detainees. Nor do they challenge the pure security gains from such
tight control. The principal at work is that optimal exploitation of a
detainee cannot be done from a cell.’” [Senate Armed Services Report on
Detainee Treatment and Abuse, Nov. 2008, p.44]

• Army psychologist: Enhanced techniques ‘do not work’ in intelligence-gathering.
“It was stressed to me time and time again that psychological
investigations have proven that harsh interrogations do not work. At
best it will get you information that a prisoner thinks you want to
hear to make the interrogation stop, but that information is strongly
likely to be false.” [MAJ Paul Burney, Army’s Behavior Science
Consulting Team psychologist, statement to Committee, 8/21/07. Senate
Armed Services Report, p.78]

• Army psychologist: Rapport techniques produce better intelligence.
“Experts in the field of interrogation indicate the most effective
interrogation strategy is a rapport-building approach. Interrogation
techniques that rely on physical or adverse consequences are likely to
garner inaccurate information and create an increased level of
resistance…There is no evidence that the level of fear or discomfort
evoked by a given technique has any consistent correlation to the
volume or quality of information obtained.” [Maj. Burney, BSCT
Psychiatrist, Oct. 2002 memo to JTF-170. Senate Armed Services Report, p.83]

• FBI to Gitmo Commander: Gitmo techniques are ‘highly skeptical.’
“Many of [JTF-GTMO's] methods are considered coercive by Federal Law
Enforcement and UCMJ standards. Not only this, but reports from those
knowledgeable about the use of these coercive techniques are highly
skeptical as to their effectiveness and reliability.” [Nov. 22, 2002
memo to MG Geoffrey Miller, who commanded JTF Gitmo. Senate Armed
Services Report, p.115]

• SERE specialist: Stress positions ‘are not effective’ for gaining intelligence.
“According to his testimony, ‘history has shown us that physical
pressures are not effective for compelling an individual to give
information or to do something’ and are not effective for gaining
accurate, actionable intelligence.” [Terrence Russell, JPRA’s manager
for research and development and a SERE specialist, testimony to
Committee, 8/3/07. Senate Armed Services Report, p.209]

• FBI Director Robert Meuller: Enhanced techniques haven’t prevented any attacks.
“So far as he is aware, have any attacks on America been disrupted
thanks to intelligence obtained through what the administration still
calls ‘enhanced techniques’? ‘I’m really reluctant to answer that,’
Mueller says. He pauses, looks at an aide, and then says quietly,
declining to elaborate: ‘I don’t believe that has been the case.’”
[Vanity Fair, 12/16/08]

The Interrogations Of Zubaydah And KSM: Enhanced Techniques Produced No Actionable Intelligence

• FBI’s Jack Cloonan: Zubaydah and KSM gave only ‘pabulum.’
“The proponents of torture say, ‘Look at the body of information that
has been obtained by these methods.’ But if K.S.M. and Abu Zubaydah did
give up stuff, we would have heard the details,” says FBI agent Jack
Cloonan. “What we got was pabulum.” [Vanity Fair, 12/16/08]

• CIA Official: CIA interrogations of KSM produced ‘total f*cking bullsh*t.’
“But according to a former senior C.I.A. official, who read all the
interrogation reports on K.S.M., ‘90 percent of it was total f*cking
bullsh*t.’ A former Pentagon analyst adds: ‘K.S.M. produced no
actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how stupid we were.’”
[Vanity Fair, 12/16/08]

• FBI Interrogator Ali Soufan: Torturing Zubaydah was unnecessary.
“I’ve kept my mouth shut about all this for seven years,” Soufan says.
But now, with the declassification of Justice memos and the public
assertions by Cheney and others that “enhanced” techniques worked,
Soufan feels compelled to speak out. “I was in the middle of this, and
it’s not true that these [aggressive] techniques were effective,” he
says. “We were able to get the information about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
in a couple of days. We didn’t have to do any of this [torture]. We
could have done this the right way.” [Newsweek, 5/4/09]

• Zubaydah revealed KSM’s Identity BEFORE being tortured.
“He [Zubaydah] was transferred from Pakistan to Thailand, where Soufan
and Gaudin immediately sought to gain his trust by nursing his wounds.
… During this time, Soufan and Gaudin also began the questioning; it
became a ‘mental poker game.’ At first, Abu Zubaydah even denied his
identity, insisting that his name was ‘Daoud.’ But Soufan had poured
through the bureau’s intelligence files and stunned Abu Zubaydah when
he called him ‘Hani’ – the nickname that his mother used for him.
Soufan also showed him photos of a number of terror suspects who were
high on the bureau’s priority list. Abu Zubaydah looked at one of them
and said, ‘That’s Mukhtar.’ Now it was Soufan who was stunned. The FBI
had been trying to determine the identity of a mysterious ‘Mukhtar,’
whom bin Laden kept referring to on a tape he made after 9/11. Now
Soufan knew: Mukhtar was the man in the photo, terror fugitive Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, and, as Abu Zubaydah blurted out, ‘the one behind
9/11.’ … Soon enough, Abu Zubaydah offered up more information – about
the bizarre plans of a jihadist from Puerto Rico to set off a ‘dirty
bomb’ inside the country. This information led to Padilla’s arrest in
Chicago by the FBI in early May.” [Newsweek, 5/4/09]

• CIA enhanced techniques ‘changed the tenor’ of Zubaydah’s interrogation.
“But the tenor of the Abu Zubaydah interrogations changed a few days
later, when a CIA contractor showed up. Although Soufan declined to
identify the contractor by name, other sources (and media accounts)
identify him as James Mitchell, a former Air Force psychologist who had
worked on the U.S. military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape
training – a program to teach officers how to resist the abusive
interrogation methods used by Chinese communists during the Korean War.
Within days of his arrival, Mitchell – an architect of the CIA
interrogation program – took charge of the questioning of Abu Zubaydah.
He directed that Abu Zubaydah be ordered to answer questions or face a
gradual increase in aggressive techniques. One day Soufan entered Abu
Zubadyah’s room and saw that he had been stripped naked; he covered him
with a towel.” [Newsweek, 5/4/09]

• FBI’s Soufan: CIA’s ‘enhanced interrogation’ destroyed
progress with Zubaydah; traditional methods provided ‘important
actionable intelligence.’
“Abu Zubaydah was making
progress before torture techniques. One of the most striking parts of
the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first,
dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation
techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds
that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite
the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued
use. It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been
uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A.
officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the
harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional
interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable
intelligence.” [Ali Soufan, New York Times op-ed, 4/23/09]

• Soufan: Enhanced techniques on Zubaydah produced ‘no actionable intelligence.’
“Nothing gained from torture of Abu Zubaydah produced information that
wouldn’t have come from traditional techniques. We discovered, for
example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11
attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called
dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my
counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are
successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving
lives. There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced
interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have
been, gained from regular tactics.” [Ali Soufan, New York Times op-ed, 4/23/09]

• Soufan: Padilla, KSM, other plots disclosed through regular interrogation, NOT torture.
“Claims that torture led to disclosure of Khalid Shaikh Mohammad is
false. Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu
Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin
al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This
is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came
primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed
using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add
up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr.
Padilla had been arrested that May.” [Ali Soufan, New York Times op-ed,
4/23/09]

• Zubaydah made false confessions after enhanced interrogation.
“The tribunal president, a colonel whose name is redacted, asked him:
‘So I understand that during this treatment, you said things to make
them stop and then those statements were actually untrue, is that
correct?’ Abu Zubaydah replied: ‘Yes.’” [Vanity Fair, 12/16/08]

Enhanced Interrogations Led To False Claims Of Iraq/Al Qaeda Link

• Enhanced techniques led to false Iraq/AQ link claims.
“There was much more, says the analyst who worked at the Pentagon: ‘I
first saw the reports soon after Abu Zubaydah’s capture. There was a
lot of stuff about the nuts and bolts of al-Qaeda’s supposed
relationship with the Iraqi Intelligence Service. The intelligence
community was lapping this up, and so was the administration,
obviously. Abu Zubaydah was saying Iraq and al-Qaeda had an operational
relationship. It was everything the administration hoped it would be.’”
[Vanity Fair, 12/16/08]

• Interrogators resorted to ‘enhanced techniques’ after ‘pressure’ to find Iraq/Al Qaeda link.
“’While we were there [at Guantanamo] a large part of the time we were
focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we
were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,’
[BCST psychologist Maj. Paul] Burney told staff of the Army Inspector
General. ‘The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish
that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures
that might produce more immediate results.’” [McClatchy on Senate Armed
Services Report, 4/21/09]

II. TORTURE MAKES AMERICANS LESS SAFE

Enhanced Interrogations Recruits Terrorists

• FBI’s Jack Cloonan: ‘Revenge in the form of a catastrophic attack’ is possible.
“Based on my experience in talking to Al Qaida members, I am persuaded
that revenge in the form of a catastrophic attack on the homeland is
coming; that a new generation of jihadist martyrs, motivated in part by
the images from Abu Ghraib, is, as we speak, planning to kill
Americans; and that nothing gleaned from the use of coercive
interrogation techniques will be of any significant use in forestalling
this calamitous eventuality.” [FBI special agent Jack Cloonan,
testimony to Congress, 6/10/08]

• Sen. McCain: Torture is al Qaeda’s best recruitment tool.
“And most importantly, it serves as a great propaganda tool for those
who recruit people to fight against us. And I’ve seen concrete examples
of that talking to former high-ranking al-Qaeda individuals in Iraq.“
[Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Fox News, 4/20/09]

Enhanced Interrogations Puts American Soldiers At Risk

• Special Operations interrogator: Torture policies ‘directly and swiftly recruiting’ al Qaeda fighters.
“I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there
to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our
policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for
al-Qaeda in Iraq. … It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of
our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of
foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee
abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture
policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it
is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can
say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me – unless you don’t
count American soldiers as Americans.” [Matthew Alexander, Washington
Post op-ed, 11/30/08]

• Army JAG: Enhanced techniques ‘has not made it safer’ for captured U.S. soldiers.
“I don’t know how you could say we’re safer and more secure. If you
torture somebody, they’ll tell you anything. I don’t know anybody that
is good at interrogation, has done it a lot, that will say that that’s
an effective means of getting information. … So I don’t think it’s
effective. To that extent I don’t see how it’s made it safer. It has
not made it safer for our soldiers when they’re captured.” [Major
General Thomas Romig, former Army JAG, 11/19/07]

• Navy general counsel: Torture is 1st and 2nd cause of death for U.S. troops.
“[T]here are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the
first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq — as
judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into
combat — are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.”
[Former Navy general counsel Aberto Mora, testimony to Congress, 6/17/08]

• JAGs: Enhanced techniques endangers U.S. soldiers.
“Employment of exception techniques may have a negative effect on the
treatment of U.S. POWs by their captors and raises questions about the
ability of the U.S. to call others to account for mistreatment of U.S.
servicemembers.” [memos from Deputy JAG of Air Force Jack Rives, Navy
JAG Michael Lohr, and Staff JAG to the Commandant of the Marine Corps
Kevin Sandkuhler, to Air Force General Counsel Mary Walker, Feb. 2003.
Senate Armed Services Report, p.158]

• Joint Forces Command JAG: Enhanced techniques threatens soldiers in the field.
“I fail to see how anyone can reasonably say that employing such
techniques against those in our custody is worthy of the United States,
no matter how much we may need the information. In my view, for the
U.S. to do this ‘lowers the bar’ and ensures, if there is any doubt,
that similar techniques will be employed against any US personnel
captured by our enemies.” [E-mail from Capt. Daniel Donavan JFCOM
(Joint Forces Command) Staff Judge Advocate, to ADM Giambastiani, LTG
Wagner, and Maj Gen Soligan, 5/13/04. Senate Armed Services Report, p.258]

Enhanced Interrogations Ruin Credibility Of Intelligence Agencies

• Torture rebuilt ‘Chinese wall’ between FBI and CIA, making Americans less safe.
FBI’s Ali Soufan: “Torture techniques hinders intelligence by driving
wedge deeper between CIA and FBI. One of the worst consequences of the
use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called
Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the
communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to
stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these
problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the
terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague
of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the
government was not allowed to speak to him.” [Ali Soufan, New York
Times op-ed, 4/23/09]

• Enhanced interrogation destroys reputation of CIA, making Americans less safe.
“Not only are torture methods ineffective, they harm future
effectiveness of any techniques because they harm US reputation. As we
move forward, it’s important to not allow the torture issue to harm the
reputation, and thus the effectiveness, of the C.I.A. The agency is
essential to our national security.” [Ali Soufan, New York Times op-ed,
4/23/09]

• Enhanced techniques program created wedge between military officials and Bush administration/CIA.
The policy was anathema to military people, starting with Colin Powell,
a retired general and secretary of state in the first Bush term. Says
Mr. Mora [Alberto Mora, general counsel of the U.S. Navy in 2001]: “I
never met a senior military officer that didn’t object to these
policies. They caused the senior military to hold the Bush
administration in contempt.” [New York Times, 5/3/09]

• Bad intelligence wastes FBI’s time following false leads.
“At the F.B.I., says a seasoned counterterrorist agent, following false
leads generated through torture has caused waste and exhaustion. ‘At
least 30 percent of the F.B.I.’s time, maybe 50 percent, in
counterterrorism has been spent chasing leads that were bullshit. There
are “lead squads” in every office trying to filter them. But that’s
ineffective, because there’s always that “What if?” syndrome.” [Vanity
Fair, 12/16/08]

Enhanced Interrogations Strain Alliances

• Enhanced tactics strain alliances and threatens intelligence-sharing.
“There is another variable in the intelligence equation: the help you
lose because your friends start keeping their distance. When I worked
at the State Department, some of America’s best European allies found
it increasingly difficult to assist us in counterterrorism because they
feared becoming complicit in a program their governments abhorred. This
was not a hypothetical concern.” [Philip Zelikow, former deputy to
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, New York Times op-ed, 4/24/09]

• FBI: Torture makes allies less willing to work with us.
“Torture degrades our image abroad and complicates our working
relationships with foreign law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”
[FBI special agent Jack Cloonan, testimony to Congress 6/10/08]

Interrogations Ruined America’s Moral Authority

• Gen. Petraeus: U.S. must occupy ‘the moral high ground.’
“Adherence to our values distinguishes us from our enemy. This fight
depends on securing the population, which must understand that we – not
our enemies – occupy the moral high ground.” [Gen. David Petraeus,
Letter to Multi-National Force-Iraq, 5/10/07]

• Military Intelligence Officer: ‘We need to…remember who we are.’
“As for ‘the gloves need to come off…’ we need to take a deep breath
and remember who we are. Those gloves are most definitely NOT based on
Cold War or WWII enemies – they are based on clearly established
standards of international law to which we are signatories and in part
the originators. Those in turn derive from practices commonly accepted
as morally correct, the so-called ‘usages of war.’ It comes down to
standards of right and wrong — something we cannot just put aside when
we find it inconvenient…BOTTOM LINE: We are American soldiers, heirs to
a long tradition of staying on the high ground. We need to stay there.”
[Maj. Nathan Hoepner, Operations Officer of 501st MI Battalion e-mail,
8/14/03. Senate Armed Services Report, p.200]

• Army JAG: U.S. has always set the moral standard.
“The United States had always taken the high road and set the standard
internationally on treatment. There had never been any doubt. We had
always set the standard. And now the danger is there’s going to be a
perception that, ‘Well, the United States doesn’t live to that standard
— why should we?’” .” [Major General Thomas Romig, former Army JAG, 11/19/07]

• Colin Powell: Torture has made people ‘question whether we’re following our own high standards.’
“If you just look at how we are perceived in the world and the kind of
criticism we have taken over Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and
renditions…whether we believe it or not, people are now starting to
question whether we’re following our own high standards.” [Washington
Post, 9/17/06]

• America’s negative reputation ‘strengthens the hand of our enemies.’
“The fact that America is seen in a negative light by so many
complicates our ability to attract allies to our side, strengthens the
hand of our enemies, and reduces our ability to collect intelligence
that can save lives.” [Conclusion of Senate Armed Services Report, p.27]

Enhanced Interrogations Makes Terrorists Unprosecutable

• Bush official forced to suspect suspect’s trial after deeming he was tortured.
“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her
first interview since being named convening authority of military
commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His
treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not
refer the case” for prosecution. [Washington Post, 1/14/09]

• Enhanced interrogations make Guantanamo detainees ineligible for prosecution.
The fear that some Guantanamo cases are not prosecutable in federal
court has sharpened debate within the Obama administration about the
need to maintain military commissions, in which the rules of evidence
are less stringent, according to sources involved in the discussions. …
Responding to complaints from military groups that Marri’s sentence is
too short, a Justice Department spokesman said the possible 15-year
term was the best deal the government could strike, given concerns
about the release of classified evidence and the impact of possible
testimony regarding Marri’s mental state after prolonged solitary
confinement. [Washington Post, 5/4/09]

III. HISTORICAL LESSONS CAUTION AGAINST ENHANCED TECHNIQUES

Enhanced Techniques Derived From Ineffective Communist Tactics

• Enhanced techniques taken from Communists’ methods that had ‘wrung false confessions’ from Americans.
“According to several former top officials involved in the discussions
seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program,
called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been
created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample
of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods
that had wrung false confessions from Americans. … They did not know
that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in
internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were
ineffective.” [New York Times, 4/21/09]

• 1950s study concluded techniques made prisoners ‘malleable and suggestible.’
“A little research on the origin of those methods would have given
reason for doubt. Government studies in the 1950s found that Chinese
Communist interrogators had produced false confessions from captured
American pilots not with some kind of sinister ‘brainwashing’ but with
crude tactics: shackling the Americans to force them to stand for
hours, keeping them in cold cells, disrupting their sleep and limiting
access to food and hygiene. … Worse, the study found that under such
abusive treatment, a prisoner became ‘malleable and suggestible, and in
some instances he may confabulate.’” [New York Times, 4/21/09]

• Whole purpose of SERE training was to resist Communist tactics.
“Using those techniques for interrogating detainees was also
inconsistent with the goal of collecting accurate intelligence
information, as the purpose of SERE resistance training is to increase
the ability of U.S. personnel to resist abusive interrogations and the
techniques were based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used
during the Korean War to elicit false confessions.” [Senate Armed
Services Report, p.28]

• British understood that physical violence was ‘unintelligent’ and useless in gaining information.
“[Colonel Robin ‘Tin Eye’] Stephens [commander of Camp 020, the British
spy prison] did not eschew torture out of mercy. This was no squishy
liberal: the eye was made of tin, and the rest of him out of tungsten.
(Indeed, he was disappointed that only 16 spies were executed during
the war.) His motives were strictly practical. ‘Never strike a man. It
is unintelligent, for the spy will give an answer to please, an answer
to escape punishment. And having given a false answer, all else depends
upon the false premise.’” [“The Truth that Tin Eye saw,” Times of
London, 2/10/06]

May 15

Gizmodo -

It’s difficult to imagine a more epic scene, but this photo has modest origins: amateur Astronomer Thierry Legault shot it with nothing but his own telescope, a solar prism and his Canon 5D Mk II.

Shot just after launch, the image shows the faraway scene as viewed through a Takahashi TOA-130 refractor telescope (focal length 2200mm) and a Baader solar prism, which gives the Sun its muted look. Strapped to the back of the telescope, the 5D was set to ISO 100 and a 1/8000 shutter speed, the camera’s extreme low and high settings, respectively [Edit: woops, the Mk II actually does ISO 50]. Legault used the free online Celestial Observer tool to calculate the best time to shoot from his location. Meanwhile, that little silhouette is the scene of an incredibly complex and dangerous Hubble rescue mission, which will repair a number of the craft’s instruments, install a new camera and ensure that NASA’s flagship orbital telescope keeps sending us amazing images for years to come.

Check out the unbelievable uncropped photos at Legault’s site. [Thierry Legault via Daily Mail]

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