The theological justification for al Qaeda’s wholesale slaughter of civilians was provided by Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, also known as Dr. Fadl, one of the founding fathers of al Qaeda. Because the murder of innocents is forbidden in Islam and the murder of Muslims in particular, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden required some sort of theological framework for justifying terrorism. This was provided by al-Sharif, who essentially argued in his book, “The Compendium of the Pursuit of Divine Knowledge,” that apostates could be murdered, and that approach, takfir (which has come to be known as takfirism) allowed al Qaeda to, for all intents and purposes, kill anyone they wanted without violating the laws of Islam by declaring them to be apostates. In other words, Dr. Fadl helped provided a theological justification for something that everyone involved knew was wrong.
The legal memos justifying torture aren’t very different in terms of reasoning–it’s clear that John Yoo and his cohorts in the Office of Legal Counsel saw their job not as binding the president to the rule of law, but to declare legal any tactic that the executive branch believed necessary to fight terrorism. They worked backwards from this conclusion, and ethics officials at the Department of Justice, we now know, decided that they they had violated professional standards in doing so. Whereas al-Zawahiri and bin Laden turned to al-Sharif for a method to circumvent the plain language of the Koran, Bush and Cheney went to Yoo and Jay Bybee to circumvent the plain language of the law. Most Islamic scholars, just like most legal experts, reject their respective reasoning as unsound.
The head of US Central Command, General David Petraeus, appeared on NBC Television’s Meet the Press, first to walk viewers through the US interventions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq and then to take a tour around other issues from Iran to Guantanamo Bay to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays and lesbians in the military.
In contrast to previous appearances, when Petraeus was fighting his own President to get his version of US foreign and military policy, this was a stay-the-course interview behind agreed approaches. The message on Afghanistan was long-haul effort to win. On Pakistan, it was supporting Pakistani forces to vanquish the Taliban. He spoke in generalities about maintaining pressure on Iran, and beyond his main agenda, on the tricky issues like Guantanamo Bay and “enhanced interrogation” (torture), he evaded any definitive statements.
MR. DAVID GREGORY: General David Petraeus joins us live from U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida.
General, welcome to MEET THE PRESS.
GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS: Thanks, David. Good to be with you.
UPDATE 1115 GMT: Spectacle has posted the video of an interview with Omar Deghayes, speaking about his interrogation by British Intelligence agents while detained in Islamabad, Pakistan and Bagram, Afghanistan. – Long-time EA readers will know that I have been none-too-happy with the evasions of the British Government over torture in the War on Terror, criticising Foreign Secretary David Miliband for using deceptions as well as court action to prevent the truth from emerging.
This week Human Rights Watch brought out a bit of that truth, publishing a 46-page report on Britain’s involvement (not observation, involvement) in the torture of detainees in Pakistan. This is the summary, followed by a link to the full report:
A key lesson from the past eight years of global efforts to combat terrorism is that the use of torture and ill-treatment is deeply counterproductive. It undermines the moral legitimacy of governments who rely on it and serves as a recruiting sergeant for terrorist organizations. This is recognized in the UK government’s counterterrorism strategy, “CONTEST II,” which asserts that the protection of human rights is central and that the UK’s response to terrorism will be based on the rule of law.
However, this principled and pragmatic assertion of core values is being undermined by the official whitewash surrounding the complicity of UK intelligence and security agencies in torture in Pakistan, with ministers repeatedly rejecting calls for an independent judicial inquiry from a cross-party parliamentary committee and human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) alike. Research by Human Rights Watch and path-breaking investigative reporting by The Guardian newspaper makes it clear that British hands are not clean. The refusal of the government to order an independent and transparent investigation has been an important missed opportunity. Read the rest of this entry »
Apparently a former Vice President spoke last night and said he kept the world safe and the current President doesn’t. Sort of like my Dad saying each time we meet, “You know in my day 1) there was no crime 2) kids knew their place 3) music was much better.”
Within hours of the British court order for the release of documents connected with the alleged torture of detainee Binyam Mohamed, and British Foreign Minister David Miliband’s insistence that release of the material would risk the US-UK intelligence relationship, I spoke with Peter Allen of BBC Radio 5 about the case (and, yes, I did use the word “lie” with reference to Mr Miliband). The interview starts just before the 2:20.00 mark.
This afternoon a British court issued an important and long-awaited ruling in the case of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident tortured in Pakistan and then detained at Guantanamo Bay. The court ordered the British Government to present documents, demanded by Mohamed’s lawyers, that established not only the torture but also US and British complicity in the “enhanced interrogation”. The British Government had maintained that, because the documents contained information which originated with their US counterpart, its revelation could jeopardise the US-UK intelligence relationship.
In the last hour, I have heard British Foreign Secretary David Miliband maintain in two radio interviews that he would be happy to release the documents but that Washington has insisted they be withheld. Therefore, before getting into the details and implications of his argument — for example, that any decision of a British court should be set aside because of the demands of the “intelligence” relationship, indeed that torture must not be investigated if there is a US-UK intelligence dimension — let’s re-state:
Miliband is lying.
Reprinted below is our entry from March 2009, after an earlier court decision reluctantly accepted the withholding of the documents. Then as now, Miliband trotted out the line that the decision was up to the Americans; unfortunately, his cover was blown by a State Department official who revealed that the Brown Government had asked Washington to make that statement to the court. That way, the material would still not see the light of day but the British Government could claim that it was not hiding evidence alleging London’s own involvement in the torture of Mohamed.
David Miliband, the foreign secretary, is to be questioned by senior MPs over what he and his officials knew about the ill-treatment and secret interrogation of Binyam Mohamed, the former UK resident recently released from Guantánamo Bay. The move was announced yesterday by the Commons foreign affairs committee, which said it also intends to investigate other key issues where recent evidence has thrown up uncomfortable questions for ministers to answer. They are allegations of British complicity in torture in Pakistan, in the US practice of rendering terror suspects to countries where they risked being tortured, and in the transfer of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read the rest of this entry »
First of all, Dick Cheney has all sorts of nerve purporting to speak in defense of the CIA. His administration outed a senior CIA operative, Valerie Plame, in retaliation for her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, exercising his freedom of speech (because he exercised it to criticize the Bush administration’s lie-filled, one-way propaganda train to the Iraq war).
Second, CIA interrogators themselves have said that they believed that Cheney’s torture policy put individual CIA personnel in legal jeopardy. As Greg Sargent has pointed out, on page 94 of the recently released Inspector General’s report, we learn the following:
“During the course of this Review, a number of Agency officers expressed unsolicited concern about the possibility of recrimination or legal action resulting from their participation in the CTC program….One officer expressed concern that one day, Agency officers will wind up on some “wanted list” to appear before the World Court for war crimes…”
This is not even to mention, in a broader sense, the risk to any US personnel that possibly ended up in “enemy” hands where captors of US prisoners could justify their own acts of torture by pointing to US tactics. Read the rest of this entry »
It has been thoroughly depressing to watch the spiralling descent of public discussion of the Bush Administration’s policies and operations that put torture into practice from 2002. My fear is that the mounting evidence (much of which we had known years ago, before the advent of the Obama Administration opened up a space for revelation) of a systematic use of “enhanced interrogation” is being swept away by a hyper-active campaign of distortions, excuses, and pretexts.
The debate is now being framed as to whether the US Government going to cripple the dedicated personnel of the Central Intelligence Agency. That is a deliberate screen to hide a bigger goal: to keep Bush Administration officials from facing a reckoning, in public opinion if not criminal court, for their actions.
Thank goodness, therefore, for Dan Froomkin, who has fought diligently for years to keep the story of torture before readers. Pushed out the door by The Washington Post in part because of this effort, he is now writing for The Huffington Postin:
Cheney Still Manipulating People — Now In Public
When he was vice president, Dick Cheney got his way by secretly wielding the instruments of power. Now that he’s no longer in government, Cheney is still pulling levers and pushing buttons – he’s just doing it in plain view. And it’s the media that he’s manipulating.
After years of speaking in whispers, operating by proxy, and leaving as few fingerprints as possible, Cheney has figured out that he can say pretty much anything he wants, the networks will show it on TV, and the newspapers will dutifully print it. And best of all, they will fail to put it in any context whatsoever.
Adam Serwer writes in The Atlantic:
The legal memos justifying torture aren’t very different in terms of reasoning–it’s clear that John Yoo and his cohorts in the Office of Legal Counsel saw their job not as binding the president to the rule of law, but to declare legal any tactic that the executive branch believed necessary to fight terrorism. They worked backwards from this conclusion, and ethics officials at the Department of Justice, we now know, decided that they they had violated professional standards in doing so. Whereas al-Zawahiri and bin Laden turned to al-Sharif for a method to circumvent the plain language of the Koran, Bush and Cheney went to Yoo and Jay Bybee to circumvent the plain language of the law. Most Islamic scholars, just like most legal experts, reject their respective reasoning as unsound.
UPDATE 1115 GMT: Spectacle has posted the video of 
Within hours of the British court order for the release of documents connected with the alleged torture of detainee Binyam Mohamed, and British Foreign Minister David Miliband’s insistence that release of the material would risk the US-UK intelligence relationship, I spoke with Peter Allen of BBC Radio 5 about the case (and, yes, I did use the word “lie” with reference to Mr Miliband). 
This afternoon 
Update (3 March): The Guardian reports….
It has been thoroughly depressing to watch the spiralling descent of public discussion of the Bush Administration’s policies and operations that put torture into practice from 2002. My fear is that the mounting evidence (much of which we had known years ago, before the advent of the Obama Administration opened up a space for revelation) of a systematic use of “enhanced interrogation” is being swept away by a hyper-active campaign of distortions, excuses, and pretexts.
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