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by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
"The electro shocks are
administered without warning. This process is called 'loosening up'.
When the person is screaming constantly between the shocks, the
interrogators start talking to him in Arabic"
Memo
by former British Army Officer Peter Wright, Recording Testimony of US
Army Officer John Peirce, US Army Airfield Coleman Barracks, Mannheim,
Germany
The Death of Democracy. CIA-style.
It's here folks. And it's official.
The
final nail in the coffin comes with the instituting of the Military
Commissions Act 2006, yet another draconian piece of anti-terrorism
legislation that grants the US government almost absolute jurisdiction
to act as judge, jury and executioner in the "War on Terror".
It's safe to say that, thanks to this and previous legislative attempts to consolidate unchecked state-power,
the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights have been well and truly
chain-saw massacred, by a "national security" bureaucracy intent on
protecting its already stupendous ability to do exactly what it likes,
regardless of the rule of law, democracy, or any of the other values
and principles that are supposed to have been the prizes of western
civilization.
This new Act demolishes habeas corpus,
the basic element of due process, not only for non-US citizens, but
also for anyone categorized as an "enemy combatant" -- as defined by
none other than Mr. President. Does he have to give a reason or
justification for such categorization? Does he have to supply any
evidence for the decision? Is there any mechanism for assessing the
strength of this evidence?
No.
It's unilateral. All Mr.
President has to do is a sign a piece of paper claiming that the
prospective detainee has "purposefully and materially supported
hostilities against the United States." This vacuous phrase means that
anyone could be detained for the rest of their life, simply for
contributing or participating in a group that Mr. President doesn't
like; or even for simply criticizing the US government.
And worse still, unnoticed by many, this is the first piece of legislation that allows for US citizens
to be defined as "unlawful enemy combatants", on the basis of which
they can be detained with their civil and human rights severely
curtailed.
Once detained, the Act deprives the detainee of all
rights derived from the Geneva Convention. Civilians who have nothing
to do with war can still be tried by a military commission rather than
a normal civil court. There is no time-limit on the length of the
trial, which could theoretically continue for until the detainee dies.
The Act permits the use of classified intelligence evidence, and
evidence extracted through torture. Evidence that the detainee is not
necessarily allowed to even see or properly challenge. The Act also
immunizes government officials for past war crimes.
Although the
CIA practice of extraordinary rendition and torture has come under
increasing scrutiny, the Military Commissions Act has now made it
officially legal. Thousands of non-American innocent people have been
abducted, trafficked across Europe and the Middle East, and then
indefinitely detained for months and years, interrogated and tortured
in secret prison centres,
without charge. Even repeated decisions by the US Supreme Court
condemned the practice, ordering the White House to put the detainees
on trial or release them.
Britain is complicit,
as is western Europe in general. The Council of Europe named the UK as
among 14 countries assisting the CIA in the illegal rendition
programme. So western civilization as we know it has been long engaged
in the demolition of democratic principles enshrined in the will of the
people governed by the rule of law. But the United States has led the
way in stamping its seal of approval on the whole process. Neither
Britain, nor Europe, is in any moral position to criticize the Act's
legalization of practices categorized as flagrantly illegal under
international law, as they, too, have been deeply involved.
New
evidence from credible witnesses provides shocking new information
about the scale of torture that the CIA, working secretly with various
UK and European state authorities, has been involved in. A memo from a
former British Army officer Peter Wright, who is currently head of one
of the biggest scientific research organisations in Germany, recounts
evidence from an American military police officer, John Peirce,
stationed at the US Army Airfield Colman Barracks in Mannheim.
According to the Wright memo, which is considered credible by Amnesty
International Berlin, Peirce witnessed the torture of no less than
three individuals by US Army and CIA officers. Below are excerpts from
the document:
"... the 3 individuals were kept lying on
their backs on a Standard US Army issue metal bed frame without a
Mattress, all 3 of them were fitted to this bed with hand cuffs and
foot cuffs so that they were in principle immobile. This condition had
been [in place] for weeks which is easy to prove due to the very deep
wounds due to pressure. The normal Toilet activates of a human being
were also not allowed; they simply did this fixed to the bed and when
the smell appeared US Army Inmates have to hose down the people with a
fire hose and clean up.
The US Army has
apparently selected this site due to the fact that a Detention site
already exists and also due to the Airstrip also on site to allow ease
of transport. The PFC [John Peirce] then went on to inform me of a more
disgusting act that he has observed personally. The US Army fly in on
regular occasions of 3 people 2 men one woman who are dressed not in
uniform. It is common knowledge that they are from the CIA amongst the
soldiers on base. They come to interrogate the 3 still chained to their
beds by using electro-shocks by connecting one electrode to the bed
frame and the other to a piece of copper wire wrapped around the
Genitals, they bring with them each time a Device to allow this to be
done.
First of all no questions are asked.
The electro shocks are administered without warning. This process is
called 'loosening up'. When the person is screaming constantly between
the shocks, the interrogators start talking to him in Arabic, and the
other detainees when they hear the screaming clap their hands and make
other gestures and comments as they know also of what is happening.
When the interrogators leave the Guard room, personnel have learned
that to keep the men quiet they replace the professional electro-shock
device with a field telephone. All 3 are wired-up to 3 field telephones
in the Guard room office and if someone moans or cries they crank up
the field telephone to give him a jolt of electricity to make him shut
up. It is even a fun game to allow anyone who is willing to give a
donation to a Serviceman’s widows organization, to crank the handle."
The
US Army officer, John Peirce, who originally provided this information
to Peter Wright has now disappeared, and efforts are underway in
Germany to track him down.
The Wright memo is consistent with separate findings
of evidence suggesting that German territory and airspace are being
used for the rendition and torture of US prisoners. However, this is
the first time that the kinds of interrogation methods being used by
the CIA have been exposed in such detail, in particular the use of
electro-shock torture.
This episode reveals the appalling depths
to which western security services have sunk in the name of fighting
the "War on Terror", and the extent to which western states hold the
rule of law in contempt, when it comes to the pursuit and protection of
vested interests.
Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly this morning talked about "non-negotiable"
British values, such as respect for the law. But while government
ministers preach to the public, and to the Muslim community, about the
dangers of extremism and terrorism, western intelligence agencies have
been busy terrorising and torturing thousands of innocent people in the
name of defending our "security."
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--Throughout the 60s and into the 70s, the CIA, in collaboration with the DoD, systematically tortured, murdered, and terrorized thousands upon thousands of Southeast Asians during the execution of their so-called Operation Phoenix. The project's single mission was to intimidate (i.e., terrorize) the civilian population of Vietnam into ending their support of the VC.
--In his opening remarks to the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1977, Sen. Ted Kennedy informed the American people:
The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over 30 universities and institutions were involved in an "extensive testing and experimentation" program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens "at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign." Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to "unwitting subjects in social situations." At least one death...resulted from these activities. The Agency itself acknowledged that these tests made little scientific sense. The agents doing the monitoring were not qualified scientific observers.
That was the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Critics inside the intelligence community and out have always maintained that the project, known as MKULTRA, claimed many more deaths than the one referenced by Sen. Kennedy, something entirely plausible given that the Agency's ex-director, Richard Helms, revealed that he had destroyed much of the project's paperwork. But enough of the papertrail survived, and it reads like an SS manual on human experimentation: torture via electro-shock and sensory deprivation 'treatments' and coma-inducing dosages of drug cocktails was routine.
--In 1994, the U.S. General Accounting Office released a report that the DoD, between 1940 and 1974, was conducting a parallel project on "volunteer" soldiers; Gary Matsumoto has alleged that human experimentation persists in the US military to this day in his book Vaccine A.
--In 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb published a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News charging that the CIA was responsible for the importation and distribution of crack cocaine that led to the epidemic in South-Central L.A. during the 80s. Subsequent investigations have proven many of Webb's allegations.
The US Government--through its Mr. Hyde-like alter, the CIA--has systematically tortured, terrorized, drugged and experimented on US citizens, non-US citizens, soldiers, "combatants", and civilians alike. All of this to say: What can we expect from a pig but a grunt?