US TORTURE POLICY: Grossly Mistreating A Detainee Now Justifies Keeping Him Quiet

[kpete]

Top-Secret Torture
The Bush administration claims detainees can't disclose how they were treated.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006; Page A26


BURIED WITHIN a recent government brief in the case of Guantanamo Bay inmate Majid Khan is one of the more disturbing arguments the Bush administration has advanced in the legal struggles surrounding the war on terrorism. Mr. Khan was one of the al-Qaeda suspects who was detained in a secret prison of the CIA and subjected to “alternative” interrogation tactics — the administration’s chilling phrase for methods most people regard as torture. Now the government is arguing that by subjecting detainees to such treatment, the CIA gives them “top secret” classified information — and the government can then take extraordinary measures to keep them quiet about it. If this argument carries the day, it will make virtually impossible any accountability for the administration’s treatment of top al-Qaeda detainees. And it will also ensure that key parts of any military trials get litigated in secrecy.

But this is the money quote:

The trouble is that at least some of the secrets the government is trying to protect are the very techniques used against people such as Mr. Khan -- and its means of protecting them is to muzzle him about what the CIA did to him. CIA official Marilyn A. Dorn said in an affidavit that Mr. Khan might reveal "the conditions of detention and specific alternative interrogation procedures." In other words, grossly mistreating a detainee now justifies keeping him quiet.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/20/AR2006112001134.html?referrer=email

[gratuitous]

1. See, if you know we tortured this guy

You might not believe this blood-stained confession he signed. So we can't let him testify as to the beatings, the abuse, the stress positions, the sleep deprivation, the waterboardings, and so on and so forth. It all makes perfect sense if you're a heartless criminal cabal. :crazy:

[Jim__]

2. Kafka could not have dreamed up this bureaucratic bullshit.

Yet, our society will have a serious debate about this. We've all gone insane.

[grizmaster]

3. I've been meaning to reread The Trial

to help me remember when this stuff was just make believe.

[bullimiami]

4. the crime and the ongoing coverup in black and white.

both criminal enterprises breaking the laws of both the us and in treaty obligations to the world.