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Peter Finn, Joby Warrick and Julie Tate, "How a Detainee Became An Asset: Sept. 11 Plotter Cooperated After Waterboarding," The Washington Post (August 29, 2009)
The argument comes up here that torture provides a religiously legitimate "excuse" for detainees to cooperate with interrogators. In other words, Islamic law permits a person to violate certain other legal obligations while under threat of harm. (This is debatable, though. I discovered this article via Daily Kos, http://j.mp/2pNBNe, where there's a contradictory Islamic legal opinion.) Archived: http://sqrl.it/?840yg and http://www.webcitation.org/5jXqQh8wS
Agog over Bush's comments on Gog and Magog - James A. Haught - The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports
This article seems to have the best account I've seen yet of how the story broke -- first in a university publication in Lausanne in 2007 (in French), then in a couple of French opinion journals. Then the story was ignored. In 2009, a French journalist's memoir confirms the story, in the context of interview with Chirac. Then a few English-speaking outlets pick it up, but not many -- in fact, the Charleston Gazette appears to be the only mainstream U.S. outlet to mention it.
Un petit scoop sur Bush, Chirac, Dieu, Gog et Magog | Rue89
On Bush's supposed secret phone call to Chirac, asking him for his help in Iraq in wiping out "Gog and Magog."
Intelligence briefings from Rumsfeld's Pentagon to Bush featured Bible quotations: GQ slideshow
These are pretty disturbing images.
Bush Officials Try to Alter Ethics Report - washingtonpost.com
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Add Sticky NoteRepresentatives for John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, subjects of the ethics probe, have encouraged former Justice Department and White House officials to contact new officials at the department to point out the troubling precedent of imposing sanctions on legal advisers, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the process is not complete.
- So, sanctioning legal advisors for authorizing torture sets "troubling precedents," but authorizing torture doesn't? We're really through the looking glass now. - on 2009-05-06
Mark Danner, "US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites (review of ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA Custody by the International Committee of the Red Cross)," The New York Review of Books 56.6 (April 9, 2009)
In case there was any doubt, yes, the U.S. did use torture during the Bush administration (and yes, Bush lied about it). According to Danner, the resulting intelligence gains were probably not all that significant, and are outweighed by the devastating moral effect on U.S. standing abroad. In addition, most torture victims are now legally immune from prosecution, since their long-term treatment has rendered them unfit for trial.
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The political damage to the United States' reputation, and to the "soft power" of its constitutional and democratic ideals, has been, though difficult to quantify, vast and enduring. In a war that is essentially an insurgency fought on a worldwide scale—which is to say, a political war, in which the attitudes and allegiances of young Muslims are the critical target of opportunity—the United States' decision to use torture has resulted in an enormous self-administered defeat, undermining liberal sympathizers of the United States and convincing others that the country is exactly as its enemies paint it: a ruthless imperial power determined to suppress and abuse Muslims. By choosing to torture, we freely chose to become the caricature they made of us.
Barack Obama, meet Lyndon Johnson | Salon
Juan Cole on Obama's orders to renew bombing in Waziristan.
Jeff Zeleny, "Bush offers a look into spirituality," Chicago Tribune (Jan. 7, 2002)
Archived version of a news story cited by Bruce Lincoln in Holy Terrors.
globeandmail.com: Hutterites challenge post-9/11 security rules (refuse to be photographed for ID cards)
Hutterites refuse to be photographed for driver licenses and are making their case in Canadian court.
Doonesbury, Sept. 28, 2008 on "24" and torture
Sort of funny. Sort of ... not.
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- Ouch - on 2008-10-09
Internal DHS Documents Detail Expansion of Power to Read and Copy Travelers' Papers | Electronic Frontier Foundation
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Add Sticky NoteWhile CBP agents could previously read travelers' documents only if they had "reasonable suspicion" that the documents would reveal violations of agency rules, in 2007 officers were given the power to "review and analyze" papers without any individualized suspicion. Furthermore, whereas CBP agents could previously copy materials only where they had "probable cause" to believe a law had been violated, in 2007 they were empowered to copy travelers' papers without suspicion of wrongdoing and keep them for a "reasonable period of time" to conduct a border search.
- The policy change in question - on 2008-09-23
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