Little Twist of the Thumbscrew, Little Jab of the Eyeball, Among Friends: Part Two, Hiding From Truths

The 'Principal'

Typecasting Peter Lorre ( pictured) in this administration would have improved it so much, artistically. His remarkable gifts would have expressed so well the enjoyment of the macabre that they practice. It's torture to listen to them mouth principals while practicing their opposites, indeed. But the torture is ingrained, and comprises the inner spirit of the worst administration in history.

The scenario of these 'principals' discussing details of torture is almost too perfect for these Disciples of Yoo. Here, they really get with the pogrom.

Highly placed sources said CIA directors Tenet and later Porter Goss along with agency lawyers briefed senior advisers, including Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Powell, about detainees in CIA custody overseas.

"It kept coming up. CIA wanted us to sign off on each one every time," said one high-ranking official who asked not to be identified. "They'd say, 'We've got so and so. This is the plan.'"

Sources said that at each discussion, all the Principals present approved.

"These discussions weren't adding value," a source said. "Once you make a policy decision to go beyond what you used to do and conclude it's legal, (you should) just tell them to implement it."

Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

The Principals also approved interrogations that combined different methods, pushing the limits of international law and even the Justice Department's own legal approval in the 2002 memo, sources told ABC News.

At one meeting in the summer of 2003 -- attended by Vice President Cheney, among others -- Tenet made an elaborate presentation for approval to combine several different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time, according to a highly placed administration source. (Emphasis added.)

Anyone else reminded of the infamous research project ("Lucifer Effect") on dehumanization in which research subjects were directed to shock other research subjects, and most of them did it although the other subjects exhibited signs of real pain? Of course, next experiment may be on the adult propensity to torture indicated by exploding frogs in youth. Maybe subjects could be found in the near future, in the Hague.

These 'principals' are left over from Inquisition behavior standards, putting their ideologies ahead of the basic values of decency. When those two conflict, the problem is not with decency.

This needs to be a part of the campaign, that the administration has destroyed any claim the U.S. ever had to operating on a high plane, discarding greatness as part of our heritage. Those real virtues all have been sacrificed to electioneering and greed.

Replacing every member of the existing administration with decent, functional, sane personnel, should be our immediate goal on accessing the White House.

Perhaps incarceration of the 'principals' should be at psychotic research centers, to find out what basic quality of humanity they are missing.

************************************************

What our own service members can't be ordered to do, are we leaving it to other agencies? It seems the war criminals have been turning over detainees to Afghan courts for their reviews, and we have no authority over them there. Although it used to be a given, that American justice was preferable, that seems to be a disappearing concept. However, ceding our own authority to Afghanistan does not seem like a move toward rational behavior, or treatment.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Dozens of Afghan men who had been held by the United States at Bagram Air Base and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are being tried here in secret Afghan criminal proceedings based mainly on allegations forwarded by the U.S. military.

The prisoners are being convicted and sentenced to as much as 20 years' confinement in trials that typically run between 30 minutes and an hour, according to human-rights investigators who have observed them.

Witnesses don't appear in court and cannot be cross-examined. There are no sworn statements of their testimony. Instead, the trials appear to be based almost entirely on terse summaries of allegations forwarded to Afghan authorities by the U.S. military.

"These are no-witness paper trials that deny the defendants a fundamental fair-trial right to challenge the evidence and mount a defense," said Sahr Muhammed Ally, a lawyer for the group Human Rights First who has studied the proceedings.

Afghan authorities have tried 82 detainees since October and referred more than 120 other cases. Of those, 65 have been convicted and 17 acquitted, according to a report on the prosecutions by Human Rights First.

U.S. officials defended their role.

"These are prosecutions that are being done by Afghans for crimes committed on their territory by their nationals," said Sandra Hodgkinson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detention policy.

The worst administration in history does not want anyone to hear the other side. The same administration has not gained by public exposure of its methods, or of the nature of its arguments.

When a losing side is being brought to trial, it would obviously be better for that side to avoid having to defend itself. It is horrible for this country that no defense is being allowed of the accused. Basic rights are being stomped out. This fascism may not be shown only to foreign nationals if it is allowed to continue.