A song about Waterboarding by Jonathan Mann (video)

Jonathan Mann is writing a song a day often based on current events. In this case he uses the actual words from the waterboarding memo. It's actually has a beat and you could dance to it.




Bush Torture Memos Recut In Song (VIDEO)


Jonathan Mann, the guy who brought you the "Paul Krugman" song is back putting the Bush torture memos to music. This is the 109th video in Mann's "one song a day" project. He uses hot-button topics in the news to inspire him on his surely wearying journey, and this time he took disturbing language detailing the waterboarding technique used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times to create a song.

Last week the Department of Justice released the memos from the Office of Legal Counsel that discussed the CIA's use of torture under Bush. This decision by President Obama has been lauded by some, but several members of the last administration and their supporters have been less enthusiastic about the choice.

Click here to read the memos. Scroll down for the transcript of Mann's song.


WATCH:

The detainee is lying on a gurney
That's inclined at an angle: 10 to 15 degrees
A cloth is placed over the detainee's face
Cold water is poured on the cloth

The wet cloth creates
A barrier through which
It is difficult or in some cases not possible
For the detainee to breathe

If the detainee
Makes an effort to defeat the technique
By twisting his head to the side and breathing
Out the corner of his mouth
The interrogator may cup his hands around
The detainees nose and mouth
In which case it would not be possible for him to breathe!

As we explained
In the Section 2340A Memorandum,
"Pain and suffering"
(As used in Section 2340)
Is best understood as a single concept,
Not distinct concepts
Of "pain" as distinguished from "suffering"...

The waterboard,
Which inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever,
Does not, in our view inflict "severe pain or suffering".
Even if one were to parse the statute more finely
To treat "suffering" as a distinct concept,
The waterboard could not be said to inflict severe suffering.

The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode,
Lacking the connotation of a protracted
Period of time generally given to suffering.

Former Guard at Guantanamo Bay tells of US Abuse

Rachel Maddow on MNSBC interviews a former guard at Guantanamo




Full Transcript:

U.S. Army Specialist Brandon Neely was a guard at Guantanamo. He arrived there just before the first prisoners in early 2002. His job at Guantanamo was to guard the prisoners.

He wasn‘t an interrogator. He wasn‘t involved in any intelligence collection. He was just supposed to get prisoner in and out of their cells as necessary, to escort them around the camp.

Specialist Neely was not a witness. He was not a journalist writing about these things. He was not an international observer of some kind. He was a participant in what happened at Guantanamo—which is why his account of conditions there is so remarkable. You have not heard this story before.

You have heard a lot of political jabbering about Guantanamo over the years—much of it prompted by the Pentagon‘s intensive but ultimately failed public relations effort to try to make us think that Guantanamo was something to be proud of.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, FMR. U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: The treatment of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay is proper, it‘s humane, it‘s appropriate. And it is fully consistent with the international conventions.

GEORGE W. BUSH, FMR. U.S. PRESIDENT: You are welcome to go there yourself. Maybe you have. And take a look at the conditions. I urge members of our press corps to go down to Guantanamo and see how they are treated, and to see—and to look at the facts.

RICHARD CHENEY, FMR. U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: They‘re very well-treated down there. They are living in the tropics. They are well-fed. They‘ve got everything they could possibly want. There isn‘t any other nation in the world that would treat people who were determined to kill Americans the way we are treating these people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: In the tropics.

Tonight, you are going to hear a very different story about Guantanamo from someone who was there. The very second prisoner to get dumped off a bus at the foot at Camp X-ray Guantanamo, the second prisoner to arrive there, was transferred immediately into then Private Brandon Neely‘s custody. What happened next is in part what led Mr. Neely to go public with his story.

He has not been subpoenaed. Nobody is demanding he give this testimony. He‘s doing it because of the callings of his own conscience.

After serving as guard at Guantanamo for the first six months of its existence as a “war on terror” prison camp, Brandon Neely now says that he is ashamed by some of what he did there and he‘s still haunted by some things that he witnessed. Moved by conscience, Mr. Neely has come forward. He came forward first to the University of California at Davis Guantanamo Testimonials Project. He described incidents to them in quite graphic detail. You can read that testimony at our Web site: Rachel.msnbc.com.

And tonight, for the first time in any broadcast interview, he is here exclusively to describe what he witnessed and what he personally took part in.

Joining us now is U.S. Army Specialist Brandon Neely. His service in the Army included guarding prisoners at the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, beginning when the very first prisoners arrived in January 2002. Mr. Neely was honorably discharged from the Army last year, he‘s now president of the Houston chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Brandon Neely, thank you so much for joining us tonight.

SPC. BRANDON NEELY, FMR. GUANTANAMO PRISON GUARD: Thank you very much for having me on the show.

MADDOW: Because you were at Guantanamo from the beginning, you are one of the first—one of the first people we‘ve had a chance to ask what it was like. I was hoping that you could just describe that very first day that the prisoners arrived there. What you were told to expect and what the scene was like when they got brought into the camp?

NEELY: Well, we were just told from the get-go, you know, right after 9/11, the country‘s very upset about what happened. We were just told from the get-go that these were the guys who planned 9/11, that these are the worst people in the world, that the world had to offer and we are fixing to deal with.

The very fist day, I was there, you know, when they first came in. The marines have the Humvees with 50 cals escorting the bus unto the Camp X-ray at the time. And you could really hear a pin drop when the bus has started to come up. Everybody was quiet. Most people were nervous. We didn‘t know what to expect.

I mean, I‘ve never seen a terrorist. I didn‘t know what one would look like. The bus came on and you could hear the marines yelling at them. The next thing you know, the detainees just started coming off the bus, we‘re just picking them up. We were taking them, control of them, and taking them to the in-processing station.

MADDOW: Brandon, you have talked about a physical incident between you and an older prisoner on that very first day that the detainees arrived at Guantanamo. Could you describe what happened with that older man?

NEELY: What happened was we took custody of the man, the detainee, we took him to in-processing situation. We came up in the other side of the tent, me and my escort partner grabbed him and we could tell at that time he was literally shaking. You could you see his hands moving.

He was very tense. He didn‘t want to walk. So, we started screaming at him to walk. We made it over to Alpha block and we put him in his cage. And he was just real nervous, real tense.

We put him on his knees. My partner took off his leg irons and put the leg irons outside. And he was still shaking real bad and he still has his goggles on. My partner went in with the key to take the handcuffs off. He moved away. We started yelling at him, “Don‘t move, don‘t move.”

Interpreter was yelling at him not to move.

My partner went in to take the handcuffs off and when he did, the detainee moved, go straight, real fast to the left. And I was on the left side. And just out of reaction, I slammed him to the ground, I got on top of him. He was trying to get up and the whole time when he was trying to get up, I was holding him down by the head, and couple of seconds later, I was pulled out of the cage by the other soldiers that came to help.

They went ahead and hog-tied him, which he stayed there for—I really couldn‘t tell you how long. But next day, we arrived at the camp. I was walking by and I could see on the side of his—side of his face, he was all scraped up and bruised. And I later learned from other detainees the reason that he moved and he jerked away from us was when we placed him on his knees, he thought we were going to execute him.

MADDOW: Did you witness other incidents of detainees being beaten up or punched, any other sort of physical abuse of prisoners there?

NEELY: Yes. There is another incident. There was an accident on Charlie block, I remember, because I was working in the block. And I happened to be working night shift for about a week or two and I can‘t remember why.

But the medic was making rounds to give out medication, and there was a detainee that was supposed to take Ensure, a lot of them take Ensure because they were very malnutritioned when they showed up. And he just plain refused and this went on for a while. They finally called the internal reaction force. They came in and they briefed them on what was going on. So, me working on the block, went ahead and walked over there to see what was going to happen.

When they got there, they opened the cage. The IRF team went in. They took him down. They cuffed him. They picked him up and cuffed him to the cage. And then medic walked in.

And when the medic walked in, he looked up and saw me. And then he kind of motioned for me to move over to my left a little bit. I didn‘t know what he was doing. So, I would have to move over. So, they were holding him by face and Medic open an Ensure can and started pouring in his mouth. And he wasn‘t taking—the whole Ensure was just running down his face.

So, the medic looked up and the medic struck him one time on the side of the face. And they got out of the cage, put him back on the floor and they left. I turned around. And when I turned around, the first thing I noticed was that the guard tower was directly behind me, so, I, automatically, thought over time that he positioned me in front of that guard tower so they couldn‘t see what he was doing.

MADDOW: So, it was the medic himself that punched the detainee in the face with you in the way so that it couldn‘t be seen from the guard tower?

NEELY: Correct.

MADDOW: How much do you think that a lack of structural—lack of instruction, a lack of training about how to deal with prisoners contributed to some of these incidents that you saw that you think are now quite troubling?

NEELY: Well, I think—I think it could be a lot because nobody really knew what was going on. There was no standard operating procedures as far as how a detainee camp was supposed to be run. There was kind of like a trial-and-error period, if this didn‘t work, we‘ll try this way one day—you know, just everyday was something different until they thought it was right.

MADDOW: Why are you talking about this publicly now?

NEELY: You know, I have been to Guantanamo and I have been to Iraq. When you return from places like that, it‘s not just something you just shut off overnight. It‘s just something that you relive every day of your life. It‘s nothing you‘ll forget.

And for me, over time, it just really builds up. And every day I think about it and I relive those situations, and it gets the best of me. And the best way for me to deal with this is speak out. And around December, it just—everything just really hit me. And I just knew I had to talk. I knew I needed to speak about Guantanamo.

MADDOW: Do you think that more people should come forward to tell their stories? Obviously, you think that it has helped you personally. Do you think that it helps the country?

NEELY: I think it does. I think people have the right to know what‘s going on everywhere. You know, this helps me in an aspect to get it out. But, also, you know, you got a lot of detainees that were innocent and had proven innocent. And they are trying to tell their stories and people don‘t believe them.

I think more people do need to speak out because I think the public has the right to know what went really on. You know, whether their time there was positive or negative, the people have a right to know what‘s going on and what happened there.

MADDOW: Brandon Neely was a guard at Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Brandon, thank you for coming on and telling your story publicly. Thank you for spending time telling us about it tonight. I‘ll mention again that you are the head of the Houston chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Brandon, thank you.

NEELY: Thank you very much for having me.

MADDOW: Brandon Neely told his entire story to the University of California Davis Guantanamo Testimonials Project, which is online and it‘s pretty incredible. If there is anybody else watching this show tonight who was also at Guantanamo, who wants to tell their story, they want to hear from you at UC Davis. You can e-mail them at humanrights@ucdavis.edu.

* The Guantánamo Testimonials Project

* The Neurobiology of Psychological Torture

BRENT SCOWCROFT: Don't Attack Saddam

notes (article follows):

Snowcroft is on target with most of his assertions and predictions. Almost alarmingly so, in his Wall Street Journal Op Ed piece.

1. Saddam Hussein is a menace.

2.Saddam's strategic objective appears to be to dominate the Persian Gulf, to control oil from the region, or both.

3. There is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks.

4.He is unlikely to hand his weapons to terrorists who would use them for their own purposes and leave Baghdad as the return address.

5. Saddam Hussein is above all a power-hungry survivor.

6. Saddam Hussein has traditional regional ambitions & goals for his aggression.

7.There is little evidence to indicate that the United States itself is an object of his aggression.

8. it may at some point be wise to remove him from power.

9. Our pre-eminent security priority--underscored repeatedly by the president--is the war on terrorism. An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken.

10. Defeating Iraq " would not be a cakewalk."

11. It would be very expensive--with serious consequences for the U.S. and global economy--and bloody.

12.a military campaign very likely would have to be followed by a large-scale, long-term military occupation.

13.Israel would have to expect to be the first casualty

14. it would require the U.S. to pursue a virtual go-it-alone strategy against Iraq, making any military operations correspondingly more difficult and expensive

15. Iraq is an obsession of the US. But the obsession of the region is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To attack Iraq instead of focusing on Isreal/Palestien would be seen as ignoring the key interest of the Muslim world.

16. Attacking Iraq could swell the ranks of the terrorists.

17. We should be pressing the United Nations Security Council to insist on an effective no-notice inspection regime for Iraq--any time, anywhere, no permission required.

18.Compelling evidence that Saddam had acquired nuclear-weapons capability could be a reason for an attack.

posted by Paul Grant (follower of Basho)


Don't Attack Saddam
It would undermine our antiterror efforts.

BY BRENT SCOWCROFT
Thursday, August 15, 2002 12:01 a.m.

8888888
Our nation is presently engaged in a debate about whether to launch a war against Iraq. Leaks of various strategies for an attack on Iraq appear with regularity. The Bush administration vows regime change, but states that no decision has been made whether, much less when, to launch an invasion.

It is beyond dispute that Saddam Hussein is a menace. He terrorizes and brutalizes his own people. He has launched war on two of his neighbors. He devotes enormous effort to rebuilding his military forces and equipping them with weapons of mass destruction. We will all be better off when he is gone.

That said, we need to think through this issue very carefully. We need to analyze the relationship between Iraq and our other pressing priorities--notably the war on terrorism--as well as the best strategy and tactics available were we to move to change the regime in Baghdad.

Saddam's strategic objective appears to be to dominate the Persian Gulf, to control oil from the region, or both.

That clearly poses a real threat to key U.S. interests. But there is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks. Indeed Saddam's goals have little in common with the terrorists who threaten us, and there is little incentive for him to make common cause with them.

He is unlikely to risk his investment in weapons of mass destruction, much less his country, by handing such weapons to terrorists who would use them for their own purposes and leave Baghdad as the return address. Threatening to use these weapons for blackmail--much less their actual use--would open him and his entire regime to a devastating response by the U.S. While Saddam is thoroughly evil, he is above all a power-hungry survivor.

Saddam is a familiar dictatorial aggressor, with traditional goals for his aggression. There is little evidence to indicate that the United States itself is an object of his aggression. Rather, Saddam's problem with the U.S. appears to be that we stand in the way of his ambitions. He seeks weapons of mass destruction not to arm terrorists, but to deter us from intervening to block his aggressive designs.

Given Saddam's aggressive regional ambitions, as well as his ruthlessness and unpredictability, it may at some point be wise to remove him from power. Whether and when that point should come ought to depend on overall U.S. national security priorities. Our pre-eminent security priority--underscored repeatedly by the president--is the war on terrorism. An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken.

The United States could certainly defeat the Iraqi military and destroy Saddam's regime. But it would not be a cakewalk. On the contrary, it undoubtedly would be very expensive--with serious consequences for the U.S. and global economy--and could as well be bloody. In fact, Saddam would be likely to conclude he had nothing left to lose, leading him to unleash whatever weapons of mass destruction he possesses.

Israel would have to expect to be the first casualty, as in 1991 when Saddam sought to bring Israel into the Gulf conflict. This time, using weapons of mass destruction, he might succeed, provoking Israel to respond, perhaps with nuclear weapons, unleashing an Armageddon in the Middle East. Finally, if we are to achieve our strategic objectives in Iraq, a military campaign very likely would have to be followed by a large-scale, long-term military occupation.

But the central point is that any campaign against Iraq, whatever the strategy, cost and risks, is certain to divert us for some indefinite period from our war on terrorism. Worse, there is a virtual consensus in the world against an attack on Iraq at this time. So long as that sentiment persists, it would require the U.S. to pursue a virtual go-it-alone strategy against Iraq, making any military operations correspondingly more difficult and expensive. The most serious cost, however, would be to the war on terrorism. Ignoring that clear sentiment would result in a serious degradation in international cooperation with us against terrorism. And make no mistake, we simply cannot win that war without enthusiastic international cooperation, especially on intelligence.

Possibly the most dire consequences would be the effect in the region. The shared view in the region is that Iraq is principally an obsession of the U.S. The obsession of the region, however, is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If we were seen to be turning our backs on that bitter conflict--which the region, rightly or wrongly, perceives to be clearly within our power to resolve--in order to go after Iraq, there would be an explosion of outrage against us. We would be seen as ignoring a key interest of the Muslim world in order to satisfy what is seen to be a narrow American interest.

Even without Israeli involvement, the results could well destabilize Arab regimes in the region, ironically facilitating one of Saddam's strategic objectives. At a minimum, it would stifle any cooperation on terrorism, and could even swell the ranks of the terrorists. Conversely, the more progress we make in the war on terrorism, and the more we are seen to be committed to resolving the Israel-Palestinian issue, the greater will be the international support for going after Saddam.

If we are truly serious about the war on terrorism, it must remain our top priority. However, should Saddam Hussein be found to be clearly implicated in the events of Sept. 11, that could make him a key counterterrorist target, rather than a competing priority, and significantly shift world opinion toward support for regime change.

In any event, we should be pressing the United Nations Security Council to insist on an effective no-notice inspection regime for Iraq--any time, anywhere, no permission required. On this point, senior administration officials have opined that Saddam Hussein would never agree to such an inspection regime. But if he did, inspections would serve to keep him off balance and under close observation, even if all his weapons of mass destruction capabilities were not uncovered. And if he refused, his rejection could provide the persuasive casus belli which many claim we do not now have. Compelling evidence that Saddam had acquired nuclear-weapons capability could have a similar effect.

In sum, if we will act in full awareness of the intimate interrelationship of the key issues in the region, keeping counterterrorism as our foremost priority, there is much potential for success across the entire range of our security interests--including Iraq. If we reject a comprehensive perspective, however, we put at risk our campaign against terrorism as well as stability and security in a vital region of the world.

Mr. Scowcroft, national security adviser under President Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, is founder and president of the Forum for International Policy.

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