THE SET-UP: Remember when we “tortured some folks”?
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is one of them and, after nineteen years at Guantanamo Bay, the Saudi national is scheduled to finally stand trial on June 1, 2026. He is charged with helping to plot the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. But he, much like the other forever prisoners at Gitmo, was tortured by the CIA during a four year tour of covert “black sites” after he was snatched off the streets of Dubai sometime in October 2002.
Al-Nashiri was officially subjected to “enhanced interrogation,’ which is arguably the Global War On Terror’s most Orwellian euphemism. Like “Overseas Contingency Operations” (war) and “extraordinary rendition” (kidnapping), “enhanced interrogation” is an excellent example of multi-syllabic obfuscation.
The torturous reality of al-Nashiri’s “enhanced interrogation” was exposed yet again by a defense lawyer representing another forever prisoner. James G. Connell III used the Freedom Of Information Act to obtain a largely-redacted nine-page cable from 2003 that revealed just how “enhanced” al-Nashiri’s “interrogation” became during his time in the CIA’s dark world of black sites:
—Placing a pistol to Subject’s head.
—Placing Subject in the standing Stress Position with arms affixed over his head hooded for a period of approximately two and one half days.
—Hitting Subject lightly (“cuffing” Subject) on the back of the head.
—Operating a cordless drill near Subject’s body.
He was, of course, waterboarded, but, as the great Carol Rosenberg explained today in The New York Times, “psychologists working for the C.I.A …. nearly drowned Mr. Nashiri while waterboarding him.” Upon reevaluation, his tormentors were forced to refrain. Apparently he was “too small for the gurney that served as the board.”
With simulated drowning off the menu, the CIA’s sadists cooked up new ways to fry al-Nishiri’s brain. But their success as sadists translated into legal failure in 2007 when a military judge disallowed the use of statements al-Nishiri made, for instance, after two days of sleep depravation. He’d been forced to remain in a standing “stress position” by shackling his arms above his head. He was naked, save for a hood that kept him the dark while he was taunted with a drill and a gun. The hood was removed to reveal the gun was pointed at his head. Although al-Nishiri became understandably “confessional,” a military judge ruled out those statements back in 2007:
“Any resistance the accused might have been inclined to put up when asked to incriminate himself was intentionally and literally beaten out of him….”
As Rosenberg observed, the cable is a “relic” that reminds us..
…how the legacy of torture has impeded the terrorism cases of former C.I.A. prisoners whose lawyers are still uncovering details from the now defunct black sites more than two decades later.
“Two decades later.”
It’s sobering to think it’s been twenty years since the United States of America abandoned the Constitution and the Geneva Accords, passed the Patriot Act, ramped-up mass surveillance and sent goon squads around the world to abduct foreign nationals and send them to prisons in foreign countries.
It’s equally jarring to hear the story of a one-time fighter in Iraq who was detained by masked government agents and spirited away to a prison cell where he was held incommunicado for three days. No charges were filed and he was denied access to a lawyer. He described some of the cruel and unusual conditions he experienced while in custody:
“They put me on suicide watch and they put me in the cell, I’m naked, in like a hospital dress and just a concrete bed with like a mattress, like a thin mattress and, they leave the light on 24/7, there’s a glass door, and officers just always standing, like sitting out there, the psychiatric nurse comes and checks on me once a day, and so from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon when I’m released, I’m literally on In that cell, naked just in that room, with the light on this real, like this is a nightmare.”
That’s the story George Retes told Tim Miller of The Bulwark last week. Retes is a US citizen who served in Iraq during the Global War On Terror. The DHS predictably disputes Retes’ account, claiming he…
…became violent and refused to comply with law enforcement. He challenged agents and blocked their route by refusing to move his vehicle out of the road. CBP arrested Retes for assault.
By the way, the use of bold is theirs, including missing the “v” in “violent.” The bold-enhanced “v” isn’t the only thing missing, though. Retes responded to DHS in a post on Home Of The Brave:
First, I was not violent, I simply asked the officers to let me pass through because I needed to get to work; and I also complied with ICE’s demands by backing up my car.
We won’t know for sure who is telling the truth without footage from a bodycam or a bystander. But given the mendacity that suffuses the administration and, in particular, their conduct during their “mass deportation,” it does seem wise to give Retes the benefit of the doubt. Even more convincing is this:
Second, the statement ignores the three days I spent in federal custody with no charges, no phone call to my family, no access to a judge or an attorney, no shower, and no explanation for their actions.
No, it’s not nearly the ordeal Mr. al-Nishiri endured … two decades of torture, derailed due process, human rights abuses and isolation doesn’t compare with Mr. Retes’ three days of extra-constitutional detention. But Retes’ story does expose a rain-softened ledge on a very slippery slope.
During Bush’s Global War, we were told there was an enemy abroad who also threatened us from within. The Patriot Act was passed by a complicit and cowed Congress. They traded away some of the very freedoms we were told inspired the terrorists to kill us in an act murder/suicide. Racial profiling made even law abiding citizens targets for a government that pushed the Constitutional boundaries designed to constrain the Executive Branch. People were plucked off the street and, instead of due process, they were sent to third countries to be held incommunicado and tortured. The surveillance state expanded to ensnare the entire nation under the guise of preemptively stopping violence and systematically “uprooting” the “terrorist networks” that supposedly lurked around every corner. And they used a color-coded alert system to keep the narrative of existential threat alive, even as one FBI-groomed plot after another fell apart upon closer examination.
The Bush Administration lied. They lied about the threat. They lied about their conduct. And they got away with it.
Now, with Trump’s Domestic War On Terror … we are seeing an eerily similar formula being applied exclusively at home. Today’s version of extraordinary rendition plucks suspects from jobsites and ships them to El Salvador to be held incommunicado and abused, due process be damned. Palantir is helping the State Department target foreigners who commit thought crimes and some the surveillance industry’s Biggest Brothers are working with ICE to identify, track and sort Americans and immigrants alike. Racial profiling has been rubberstamped by the Supreme Court. And the Justice Department has turned a snipe hunt for Antifa into a narrative of existential crisis and they will do and say anything to make it appear so, including goading the people of Portland into protesting.
Even the National Guard fits. They were deployed in the days after 9/11. Washington, DC and cities with possible targets saw a Guard presence. And don’t be surprised if Trump’s Domestic War On Terror goes Hemispheric when he, like Bush before him, starts a regime-change war of choice on a country that poses no threat. Every day that passes brings more rain to a slope that Trump has scorched with incendiary epithets and phony claims of impending violence. Slippery slopes like that become mudslides.
The main difference this time is the enemy. Today’s “terrorists” are not hiding in a cave in Afghanistan, a mosque in Queens or somewhere in Iraq guarding elusive WMDs. They are the people who live and work all around us every day. They are a threat to the nation because they don’t have the right papers or the right politics. They are the enemy within. - jp
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