Civil Liberties • LAPD • Torture

RAPE, TORTURE…AND ISOLATION

May 1, 2009
by Celeste Fremon
31 Comments

water-torturedm

I’m neck deep in writing and student paper correcting, but here are some quick things to draw to your attention:

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RAPE AND RAPE KITS: WHAT EXACTLY IS THE PROBLEM?

In the past I’ve written a little about the issue of the thousands of unprocessed rape kits , but yesterday, the NY Times’ Nicholas Kristof took quite a different angle in his interesting column on the problem titled, “Is Rape Serious?”

Here’s how it opens:

When a woman reports a rape, her body is a crime scene. She is typically asked to undress over a large sheet of white paper to collect hairs or fibers, and then her body is examined with an ultraviolet light, photographed and thoroughly swabbed for the rapist’s DNA.

It’s a grueling and invasive process that can last four to six hours and produces a “rape kit” — which, it turns out, often sits around for months or years, unopened and untested.

Stunningly often, the rape kit isn’t tested at all because it’s not deemed a priority. If it is tested, this happens at such a lackadaisical pace that it may be a year or more before there are results (if expedited, results are technically possible in a week).

Then Kristof goes on to say that he believes tthat, much of the problem is the fact that rape isn’t treated as seriously as other violent crimes. Read it. Then tell me what you think.

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SOLITARY CONFINEMENT AS TORTURE

Then earlier in the week, Wired Magazine’s Brandon Keim posed the same question that Atul Gawande posed so eloquently in the New Yorker a month ago in his remarkably elegantly written article Hellhole—namely: is solitary confinement torture?

However, Keim links his question to the discussions going on in the wake of the release of the infamous torture memos. Read it.

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WATERBOARDED IN WWII: A SURVIVOR WRITES ABOUT IT

As we continue to talk about what is or is not torture, last year a former Japanese POW, who was a victim of waterboarding in 1943, recounted the damage it did to him.

“The physical damage suffered by victims of torture can usually be repaired,” he wrote. “But the psychological damage can never be repaired.”

Read the rest.

31 Comments

  • I was raped by this gang of thugs once. I never reported it though. I had too much fun.

  • 4:56,
    There is a tacit understanding among Celeste’s commentors, that Woody alone is to be the first to comment on any post. Please reduce your stimulants and don’t rock the boat!

  • Celeste, your “Read the rest” goes to nothing…no, I don’t mean nothing as in the sense of the usual liberal screed, but really nothing.

  • Do you know that the waterboarding as conducted by the Japanese in WWII was very different from waterboarding as conducted by our interrogators? Rather than leaning a prisoner back, they would typically almost stand him on his head, and, rather than using a cloth to block the water from going into the mouth and nose, they poured the water directly into them, resulting in severe physicaly harm beyond mental fear of drowning.

    The Japs were ruthless murderers of POWs during the war, and had no problems in extreme torture. It took two A-bombs to set them straight. Oh, I shouldn’t have mentioned that. Now the left-wing will want to A-bomb America for waterboarding Islamic terrorists because “they deserve it.”

    No, you people just can’t let it go, as long as your political agenda is advanced, even at…I should say, especially at, the costs to our country and our security.

    You might consider this objective analysis of the subject.

    …the testimony of a (Japanese POW) victim:

    “They laid me out on a stretcher and strapped me on. The stretcher was then stood on end with my head almost touching the floor and my feet in the air. . . . They then began pouring water over my face and at times it was almost impossible for me to breathe without sucking in water.”

    …”For what seemed like an eternity, I just stood and waited for them to say something. At last the commander gave the interpreter instruction. A few minutes later, a guard came into the room, raised his rifle, flipped it around so that the stock of the gun was facing me, and with one swift movement hit me with the butt squarely in the face. With one fell swoop, I started to bleed from each and every part of my face. I knew that my nose was broken, that a few teeth were missing, and that it hurt like hell. Blood was gushing down my shirt to my pants. Everything was getting wet from the flowing blood. All the while the Japanese were having themselves a good laugh.”

    ..”Once outside, I saw they had another American spread-eagled on a large board. His head was about ten inches lower than his feet, and his arms and feet were outstretched and tied to the board. A Japanese soldier was holding the American’s nose closed while another soldier poured what I later found out was salt water from a tea kettle into the prisoner’s mouth.”

    …”I looked through a hole in the fence and saw a young Filipino man tied in a chair with a water hose in his mouth. I got to see the ‘water cure’ up close. Somehow, I was able to keep from making any noise and quickly crawled away from the fence. I can still see the water coming out of the Filipino’s mouth when the (Jap) soldier hit him in the stomach.”

    …It is not easy for any nation to revisit its dark history. But the Japanese people should note that waterboarding by the Japanese was not the only example mentioned in this discussion. Americans recalled and criticized examples of waterboarding by US troops in the Philippines-American War of 1898-1902 and by US soldiers during the Vietnam War. <bThe point of such discussions is not to condemn past behavior for its own sake, but to learn from the past so as to find appropriate ways for nations to protect their people from contemporary threats while hewing to their highest principles.

    Torture at the hands of the Japanese was quite different from our sanitized and closely controlled version of waterboarding, so comparisons of Japanese atrocities are not analogous to U.S. interrogation methods.

    But, will you give it up? Nope, you want blood from Bush. The left never has gotten over the fact that Gore couldn’t steal the election and they have wanted “payback” ever since. You act like scorned women.

    Now, I don’t know what kind of car to buy. I don’t want a car from that country of Nazi’s who had prisoners work in their factories and killed them, I don’t want one from the country that led the March of Bataan and had prisoners work in their factories and killed them, and I really don’t one from car companies owned by government and labor unions that want to make Americans prisoners to the goverment, which really kills me, so I may be stuck with Ford…unless I determine that there is a non-union foreign plant in the South owned by people who aren’t like those above.

  • Prosecute Gore and Clinton?

    I had no idea that Extraordinary Rendition (Kidnapping) started with Clinton and Gore in 1993, which as Gore notes is against international law.

    For those of you who are ready to prosecute Bush, maybe you should start with Clinton and Gore.

    According to Clinton administration official Richard Clarke:

    “ ‘extraordinary renditions’, were operations to apprehend terrorists abroad, usually without the knowledge of and almost always without public acknowledgment of the host government…. The first time I proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Clinton had seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: “Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, ‘That’s a no-brainer. Of course it’s a violation of international law, that’s why it’s a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.'”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition

  • Actually it’s only a violation of law if they violate Article 3 of the CAT:

    No State Party shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
    For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

    In the case of Maher Arar, he was tortured despite assurances – which the Bush administration accepted – that he would not be tortured by the Syrians. P. S. He was tortured.

    By the way, the section Pokey quoted was from Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies. Amazing how Clarke is a source when the right finds him convenient to be one.

    Keep tugging, Pokey. One of these days you or Woody may just pull your heads out of your asses.

  • Covert extraordinary rendition began as a systematic tactic on September 22, 1995, with the capture of terrorist Abu Talal al-Qasimi in Croatia; he was later transferred to Egypt for execution.

    The largest pre-9/11 CIA rendition occurred in 1998, when five suspects in Albania and Bulgaria were captured and rendered to Egypt. Two were hanged without trial; all were brutally tortured.

  • “Keep tugging, Pokey. One of these days you or Woody may just pull your heads out of your asses.”

    Randy, it will most definitely be by self-extraction, I can’t see anyone comming to their ass-sistance!

  • Znet links from Woody (I don’t generally read Znet because it’s too “leftwing” for my tastes) and analysis by Richard Clarke from Pokey. Wonderful.

    Here’s Clarke, incidentally, on torture and renditions.
    http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/01/29/the_confusion_over_renditions/

    Frankly, I’m for investigating the entire history of this stuff and establishing what our standards in fact are – I have no partisan interest in protecting Clinton or anyone else from daylight. I would, incidentally, favor a congressional or independent commission on torture and rendition rather than a prosecutor. I think it’s more in the public interest to understand what has gone on and lines of responsibility than it is to get prosecutions. A prosecutor would disclose less than a commission. Right now I’m concerned that the torture issue is tending to focus on waterboarding and not on exactly how the regimes were set up for dealing with prisonsers at Abu Graib and Guantanamo. I don’t believe for a minute in the “bad apples” thesis. The regime there which resulted in torture and deaths was systematic.

    Woody’s tortured distinctions are an act of desperation, incidentally.

  • Woody’s “tortured distinction” from the last sentence in his znet quote above:
    The point of such discussions is not to condemn past behavior for its own sake, but to learn from the past so as to find appropriate ways for nations to protect their people from contemporary threats while hewing to their highest principles.

    reg’s “brilliant” distinctions above:
    I think it’s more in the public interest to understand what has gone on and lines of responsibility than it is to get prosecutions.

    Wow, reg! Thanks for showing us our follies and adding such riveting corrections and clarifications to us.

  • Pokey: Prosecute Gore and Clinton?
    Randy: Then go after Clinton and Gore with this, rght after Bush and Cheney.

    Well, also be ready to accept the “crimes” of your heroes. The Kennedy’s authorized covert torture and assassination. Randy, with your knowledge of Brazil, this should be quite familiar to you.

    LA Times: U.S. has a 45-year history of torture

    By A.J. Langguth, May 3, 2009

    (Langguth is a Professor Emeritus at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, School of Journalism and a former correspondent for LOOK magazine, the New York Times, and the New York Times Magazine.)

    …The meddling in Brazil began in earnest during the early 1960s under a Democratic administration. At that time, Washington’s alarm over Cuba was much like the more recent panic after 9/11. The Kennedy White House was determined to prevent another communist regime in the hemisphere, and Robert Kennedy, as attorney general, was taking a strong interest in several anti-communist approaches, including the Office of Public Safety.

    …When Brazil seemed to tilt leftward after President Joao Goulart assumed power in 1961, the Kennedy administration grew increasingly troubled. Robert Kennedy traveled to Brazil to tell Goulart he should dismiss two of his Cabinet members, and the office of Lincoln Gordon, John Kennedy’s ambassador to Brazil, became the hub for CIA efforts to destabilize Goulart’s government.

    On March 31, 1964, encouraged by U.S. military attache Vernon Walters, Brazilian Gen. Humberto Castelo Branco rose up against Goulart. Rather than set off a civil war, Goulart chose exile in Montevideo.

    Ambassador Gordon returned to a jubilant Washington, where he ran into Robert Kennedy, who was still grieving for his brother, assassinated the previous November. “Well, he got what was coming to him,” Kennedy said of Goulart. “Too bad he didn’t follow the advice we gave him when we were down there.”

    The Brazilian people did not deserve what they got. The military cracked down harshly on labor unions, newspapers and student associations. The newly efficient police, drawing on training provided by the U.S., began routinely torturing political prisoners and even opened a torture school on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro to teach police sergeants how to inflict the maximum pain without killing their victims.

    One torture victim was Fernando Gabeira, a young reporter for Jornal do Brasil who was recruited by a resistance movement and later arrested for his role in the 1969 kidnapping of Charles Burke Elbrick, the U.S. ambassador. (Elbrick was released after four days.) In custody, Gabeira later told me, he was tortured with electric shocks to his testicles; a fellow prisoner had his testicles nailed to a table. Still others were beaten bloody or waterboarded. When Gabeira’s captors said anything at all, they sometimes boasted about having been trained in the United States.

    During the first seven years after Castelo Branco’s coup, the OPS trained 100,000 Brazilian police, including 600 who were brought to the United States. Their instruction varied. Some OPS lecturers denounced torture as inhumane and ineffectual. Others conveyed a different message. Le Van An, a student from the South Vietnamese police, later described what his instructors told him: “Despite the fact that brutal interrogation is strongly criticized by moralists,” they said, “its importance must not be denied if we want to have order and security in daily life.”

    Brazil’s political prisoners never doubted that Americans were involved in the torture that proliferated in their country. On their release, they reported that they frequently had heard English-speaking men around them, foreigners who left the room while the actual torture took place. As the years passed, those torture victims say, the men with American accents became less careful and sometimes stayed on during interrogations.

    One student dissident, Angela Camargo Seixas, described to me how she was beaten and had electric wires inserted into her vagina after her arrest. During her interrogations, she found that her hatred was directed less toward her countrymen than toward the North Americans. She vowed never to forgive the United States for training and equipping the Brazilian police.

    Flavio Tavares Freitas, a journalist and Christian nationalist, shared that sense of outrage. When he had wires jammed in his ears, between his teeth and into his anus, he saw that the small gray generator producing the shocks had on its side the red, white and blue shield of the USAID.

    Still another student leader, Jean Marc Von der Weid, told of having his penis wrapped in wires and connected to a battery-operated field telephone. Von der Weid, who had been in Brazil’s marine reserve, said he recognized the telephone as one supplied by the United States through its military assistance program.

    Victims often said that their one moment of hope came when a medical doctor appeared in their cell. Now surely the torment would end. Then they found that he was only there to guarantee that they could survive another round of shocks.

    CIA Director Richard Helms once tried to rebut accusations against his agency by asserting that the nation must take it on faith that the CIA was made up of “honorable men.” That was before Sen. Frank Church’s 1975 Senate hearings brought to light CIA behavior that was deeply dishonorable.

    Before Brazil restored civilian government in 1985, Abourezk had managed to shut down a Texas training base notorious for teaching subversive techniques, including the making of bombs. When OPS came under attack during another flurry of bad publicity, the CIA did not fight to save it, and its funding was cut off.

    Looking back, what has changed since 1975? A Brazilian truth and reconciliation commission was convened, and it documented 339 cases of government-sanctioned political assassinations. In 2002, a former labor leader and political prisoner, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was elected president of Brazil. He’s serving his second term.

    Fernando Gabeira went home to publish a book about kidnapping the American ambassador and his ordeal in prison. The book became a bestseller throughout Brazil, and Gabeira was elected to the national legislature. In an election last October, he came within 1.4 percentage points of becoming the mayor of Rio de Janeiro.

    But in our country, there’s been a disheartening development: In 1975, U.S. officials still felt they had to deny condoning torture. Now many of them seem to be defending torture, even boasting about it.

    To liberals, outrage for torture seems reserved for Republicans. Your hands are just as dirty, if not more so.

    (Celeste, how did you miss this, or does torture by liberals not matter? At least the Bush era waterboarding was done in defense of our country against known Islamic terrorists.)

  • Randy, I am gobsmacked at your response.

    You have to have known about this for years, but you never expressed outrage for it. What the Kennedy’s authorized was much, much worse than under Bush – and, without a direct threat to the U.S.

    You show more care over a few Islamic terrorists than you do thousands of Brazilian citizens. From that, one can conclude that liberal outrage over torture is purely for political posturing rather than out of true concern. In other words, you’re a phony and hypocrite.

    In response to this article, let’s rename everything previously named for Kennedy for Bush.

  • I’m dumbfounded that Woody is not making a critique from “the left” – apparently he has no other recourse, since every other argument he’s made has been found false.

    Desperate little man. Desperate for attention. Desperate not to admit his views are totally fucked and he’s lint in the world’s navel.

  • Woody – you didn’t make the statement you quote. Your “conclusion” such as it was focused on some idiotic shit about buying cars.

  • I have to say that Woody’s stupidity in using the very real (and well-known) wrongs of the Kennedy era – and of various Democratic administrations – to try to give cover to his comrades borders on the bizarre.

  • Money quote:

    “purely for political posturing rather than out of true concern”

    No shit…

  • Randy and reg have futiley attempted and failed to duck the exposing of their obvious contradictions and hypocrisy concering torture. Trying to throw dirt on me doesn’t justify your political agenda cloaked in a fake morality.

    Since there is no sincere outrage, or any outrage at all, over torture by Democrats, then any outrage that you show over waterboarding is worthless.

    On the other hand, reg probably feels that having “his penis wrapped in wires and connected to a battery-operated field telephone” is just another fun daytrip to San Francisco.

  • You have to have known about this for years, but you never expressed outrage for it. What the Kennedy’s authorized was much, much worse than under Bush – and, without a direct threat to the U.S.

    Woody,

    One wonders how far the level of your butt-stupidity can go. Here’s a post by yours truly from April 2004 about recently declassified documents concerning the Johnson administration’s support for the 1964 coup in Brazil.

    You couldn’t even be bothered to look that up, peckerwood.

    Since there is no sincere outrage, or any outrage at all, over torture by Democrats, then any outrage that you show over waterboarding is worthless.

    Just more tu quoque nonsense from you. Your arguments are routinely filled with logical fallacies. It makes one wonder if you have a thing for phalluses or just like to behave like a dick.

    Your silly-assed arguments also lack one essential fact: Bush’s implementation of torture was initiated after the Torture Statute became law.

    You’re punching above your weight and landing no blows.

  • Randy: Bush’s implementation of torture was initiated after the Torture Statute became law.

    Oh! So, then you have no problem with the morality of torture…just if it’s illegal…even when the legality is still being debated.

    BTW, I don’t seek obscure sites to find what you posted over five years ago. Why haven’t you shown any outrage in current comments regarding the parallels of torture then and now?

    How convenient, though, that you blamed LBJ rather than Kennedy for what Kennedy started and without mentioning either JFK or RFK.

    You have hardly overcome my points and only prove that you’re incapable of hiding your hypocrisy. I haven’t intended to “land blows,” but it is clear, especially now, that waterboarding outrage is insincere and that you’re not man enough to admit it.

    Phony concerns over waterboarding and scaring with caterpillars are proof of your BDS and are distructive to the U.S., but it at least takes the eyes off of Obama’s greater distruction of our private sector.

  • Oh! So, then you have no problem with the morality of torture…just if it’s illegal…even when the legality is still being debated.

    Don’t put words in my mouth.

    How convenient, though, that you blamed LBJ rather than Kennedy for what Kennedy started and without mentioning either JFK or RFK.

    The coup took place in 1964, six months after JFK’s death.

    Why haven’t you shown any outrage in current comments regarding the parallels of torture then and now?

    Because I deal largely in current events. The torture in the 1960’s and 1970’s I have discussed before on my blog, but here is the difference you ignore: employees and contract employees of our government was not committing the torture during those years.

    In any event, you attacked me here for criticizing the support of past torture by Henry Kissinger. Why didn’t Henry Kissinger’s support of such activities like Operation Condor not bother you and cause you to leap to his defense?

    Your attacking me now is only a lame attempt to obtain a partisan advantage and that dog won’t hunt, Gomer. I’ve participated in human rights efforts concerning counties on left and right. My commitment to the issue has been free of partisan basis.

    You and the other wingnuts here have been trying to justify torture. You have no moral credibility taking others to task for shortcomings that do not exist.

    Yank that mote out of your own eye, Goober.

  • Randy: Don’t put words in my mouth.

    Randy, when you make a legal distinction regarding torture, but intentionally skip the moral distinction, then no one is putting words in your mouth.

    – – –

    Randy: The coup took place in 1964, six months after JFK’s death.

    Randy, don’t play stupid. The coup couldn’t have been set up in less than six months, and there is too much documenation that this was clearly JFK’s program. But, why not blame the failures of Camelot’s royalty on others? Yeah, Eisenhower was really to blame for the Bay of Pigs fiasco and LBJ was to blame for Vietnam. Who gets blamed for Kennedy’s tax cuts?

    – – –

    Randy: employees and contract employees of our government was not committing the torture during those years.

    This is your lamest attempt yet at trying to make a distinction between Democratic torture and Republican interogations. First, you don’t know where the CIA money was going or whom was being paid. Second, when does it make a difference when we train someone versus do it ourselves? If that’s no problem, then you shouldn’t have a problem with sending terrorists to other nations for torture.

    – – –

    Randy: you attacked me here for criticizing the support of past torture by Henry Kissinger

    Attacked? I think that I was extremely cordial. Here was my comment that you referenced as an attack:

    In seeing Randy Paul’s entry (and, despite possible perceptions, I respect Randy’s positions based on his ideology rather than politics), I noted that two paragraphs related the horrors of the dictatorship, one paragraph indicated progress and help by nations other than the U.S., and three paragraphs (50% of the entry) were dedicated to attacking the U.S. by negatively focusing on a report about one individual in our government through myopic lens.

    Essentially, the entry, in sum total, was not an attack on the dictators who committed the terror but the entry was an attack on the U.S. It described the horrors, gave praise to other nations (back-handed slap to the U.S.), and directly criticized our government. No where has there been any mention of any noble deeds of our nation and our charities in helping the people of South America. No where were there any examples of our policies or actions that helped people to live.

    To those on the left, it seems that everything about the U.S. is negative. It gets quite tiresome to hear that side blaming our goverment when there is little criticism of the real culprits–the dictators.

    No disrespect intended, Randy, but the conclusion that easily led people would reach from your entry is a conclusion that lacks reason and fairness; and, thus, the entry does a disservice to properly educating people and to our nation and it is deserves little consideration by rational people.

    That’s my opinion. No sources required.

    I wasn’t taking up for Kissinger and I wasn’t criticizing you. I expressed my interpretation of your post and took it to a level higher than one person. But, lberals call me a racist when I disagree with Obama and call me an attacker when I say something to anyone who criticizes Kissinger. You and reg are the ones who made it personal.

    (BTW, Marc needs to cutoff commenting at some point, as most of the later comments are spam.)

    – – –

    Randy: Because I deal largely in current events

    The post and comments you referenced were made over three years ago.

    – – –

    Randy, there are double standards in what you, reg, and Celeste post – one for Democrats and another for Republicans, just as the mass liberal media has. That point has been supported in my comments and analyses.

    Since Celeste likes shoes and fashion articles, here is a small but typical example of those double standards:

    Michelle Obama was stylin’ in her $540 French sneakers during a volunteering photo-op at a Washington, D.C., food bank this week. Her suede and patent trainers from the house of Lanvin are apparently all the rage among the celebrity set. Who knew there were sneakers out there that cost as much as many Americans’ monthly rent?

    Don’t misunderstand: I don’t begrudge the first lady her fashion options. But I do begrudge the Obamas for their double standards when it comes to the flaunting of wealth — and the earning of it.

    Obama’s supporters at the liberal Huffington Post website devoted an entire slideshow to John McCain’s $520 Ferragamo loafers. CNN piled on with a feature on McCain’s “well-heeled campaign.” The “report” contrasted McCain’s Italian footwear with Obama’s “average guy” shoes.

    Will they show the same indignation toward the first lady?

    During the campaign season, President Obama sneered at McCain’s houses. …

    – – –

    I’m confused. I can’t be both Gomer and Goober? I’ll accept the title of being right.

  • I just noticed this bit of idiocy:

    Randy: Because I deal largely in current events

    The post and comments you referenced were made over three years ago.

    Surely you are not so willfully dense to not understand that when I wrote that I deal largely in current events, I was talking about my blog postings.

    Randy, there are double standards in what you, reg, and Celeste post – one for Democrats and another for Republicans, just as the mass liberal media has.

    And we are expected to believe that you are a paragon of objectivity?

  • That would just make you an even more presumptuous jackass.

    One of the pleasures of being an adult is that I don’t have to justify my record defending human rights and all the work I have done on a volunteer basis over the years in human rights activism does not need to be justified to someone who refers to a disabled man as “Stumpy” and African-Americans as “darkies.”

    You’re no longer worthy of my contempt.

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