Clearly the idea of these incarcerations and tortures wasn't to fight a Global War on Terror.

What was the purpose?

Could it be they just needed some stage props to make it appear we were at war and had "the worst of the worst" already in captivity? Could it be this was just part of a political campaign to re-elect King George?

Is it time to set the table Nancy?

I thought only my country (India) had such inept and devious minded bureaucrats.

"Fear is the mind killer."

I can, in some ways, understand why those who support torture and casting a wide if unwieldy net when dealing with national security are reluctant to admit mistakes or change course. It's a tricky, highly controversial, very political subject with serious consequences. But if their goal really is to protect the country--and despite our profound differences with their tactics and how they are manifested politically, I believe that's what conservatives are trying to do--then you'd think that at some point, they'd realize that what they've done so far isn't that effective. Even though it's inhumane, I could see a justification for torturing suspected terrorists if it actually yielded some information. But as far as I know, it's had about the same level of success as I would have if I tried to hit a fastball pitch out of Shea Stadium with a tennis racket.

This guy is part of the answer to the "ticking bomb" argument. When you give people the power to torture, they torture indiscriminately, even the innocent. They convince themselves that, even if they think there's no ticking bomb, maybe there's one they don't know about somewhere, and since they don't know where it is, every prisoner might know its location, so they tend to torture every prisoner, to find the non-existent ticking bomb. So they tortured this poor, innocent guy.

And our national principles and our national reputation and our national power to persuade lie in ruins. As a result of this sort of illegal behavior:

They used to beat me when my head is underwater. They beat me into my stomach and everything," he says.

"They were hitting you in the stomach while you're head was underwater so that you'd have to take a breath?" Pelley asks,

"Right. I had to drink. I had to…how you say it?" Kurnaz replies.

"Inhale. Inhale the water," Pelley says.

"I had to inhale the water. Right," Kurnaz says.

Where was Mr. Kurnaz's "ticking bomb"?

Josef Stalin would be so proud of us!

Is it time to set the table Nancy?
Posted by: MarkH on March 31, 2008 at 11:53

Absolutely. This (mal)administration has damaged our country and its reputation beyond repair.

Anything less than impeachment and convicition of the whole sick crew is complicity, and if we can't make our elected representatives act on this, it's on all our hands.

Hey, if he had been released, and had told the world what we do, then we'd have opened our playbook to the Enemy.

Admitting a mistake shows weakness. It gives aid and comfort to the Enemy.

The Enemy is everywhere, and always watching. Defeating the Enemy must be our first priority. If that requires some collateral damage, well, that's how it's gotta be.

Victory over the Enemy!

[IP check verifies a banned troll. Comment deleted.]

"I thought only my country (India) had such inept and devious minded bureaucrats."

Oh no. There are plenty of countries with inept bureaucrats. Just look at Zimbabwe. Or Cambodia. Granted, they're not exactly countries we'd wish to emulate.

Criminals commit greater crimes to keep from being caught. Witness elimination capitalizes the petty crimes of thieves and spies. This man's German citizenship probably saved his life, which raises the question of how many others like him have been eliminated by our criminal national security forces?

"Except, of course, that one of his own lawyers admitted that the circumstantial evidence early on did not look good for him: Kurnaz had flown from Frankfurt to Karachi just three weeks after the 9/11 attacks and was connected to a strict Sunni Islam group: Tablighi Jamaat."

Well OK then.

Except, of course, that one of his own lawyers admitted that the circumstantial evidence early on did not look good for him: Kurnaz had flown from Frankfurt to Karachi just three weeks after the 9/11 attacks and was connected to a strict Sunni Islam group: Tablighi Jamaat.

Yes. How accurate. He went to Pakistan. And he was part of a conservative Islamic group. So we torture and imprison by the equivalent of racial profiling. That's how fuc*ing Uzbekistan deals with national security issues. Note the corresponding tyrannical incompetence.
The only difference between GW's inner circle and Uzbekis lies in the systems they inherited.

[I'm sure Charlie here is the worlds foremost authority on Tablighi Jamaat. Not. He googled it five minutes before posting his comment. You are banned, chuckles. And now that you have tipped your hand I'm deleting all those comments by Jen and John and all your other handles that didn't raise suspicion.]

Let us not kid ourselves. The Administration held him as long as they could because they didn't want the world to know we were holding and torturing innocent people. In the civilized world that kind of behavior is considered criminal. A European or Japanese public official can go to jail for committing such a crime.

Undoubtedly some in the Administration didn't realize that America has abandoned the rule of law cherished by members of civilized world. There simply is no longer any consequence if a member of the administration commits a heinous crime.

Maybe if Ms Nancy hadn't taken impeachment off the table, America's reputation wouldn't be in tatters.

"The U.S. never any serious evidence against him . . ."

Except, of course, that one of his own lawyers admitted that the circumstantial evidence early on did not look good for him: Kurnaz had flown from Frankfurt to Karachi just three weeks after the 9/11 attacks and was connected to a strict Sunni Islam group: Tablighi Jamaat.

Posted by: Jeff

Thanks, Jeff, for making my point. It doesn't take a ticking bomb to justify torture once you start down that path. Even purely coincidental stuff gets turned into circumstances warranting torture.

"If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear." Just keep saying it over and over and over...

Kurnaz had flown from Frankfurt to Karachi just three weeks after the 9/11 attacks and was connected to a strict Sunni Islam group: Tablighi Jamaat.

And that connected him to 9/11 or terrorism how?

Jeff: how does torturing and indefinitely detaining an innocent man who was an adherent to a certqin conservative religion work to de-radicalize them? Seems to me Bushco has just created a LOT more terrorists with that logic. They are sadistic and incompentent. The Spanish Inquisition had better management and tactics.

Purple people attacked us and killed some of our citizens.

Therefore, all purple people are our enemies.

Therefore, we can capture and torture all purple people, because it's just a matter of time until they show their true "purpleness" and attack us.

Because we are NOT purple, we are the good guys.

Ahh, I see how it works...

Anything less than impeachment and conviction of the whole sick crew is complicity, and if we can't make our elected representatives act on this, it's on all our hands.

How do we 'make' our elected representatives act on this? I haven't figured that one out.

Maybe we could beat them whilst holding their heads underwater...no, wait. I guess not.

I find Al's absence telling.

As usual, Wikipedia provides a good start for the subject of Tablighi Jamaat, raised by Jeff:

The Tablighi Jamaat movement is an Islamic missionary and revival movement founded in India in the early twentieth Century, as a response to Christian evangelists working among poor and poorly educated Muslims in British India.[1][2][3][4] In recent years, allegations and concerns have risen about whether, or how much, the organization is linked to Islamic terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda.[5] However Tablighi followers insist that they do not preach violence and have denied any involvement with terrorist groups.[6] [7]

It seems to me that it's like Al Qaeda torturing someone affiliated with some Christian missionary group because of their ties to the U.S. military...

low-tech cyclist : How do we 'make' our elected representatives act on this?

I like to imagine that there must be a critical mass of phone calls/emails/letters which cannot be ignored. We have to reach that mass, somehow.

But you could say that I'm a dreamer.

The election of 2000 was stolen. The election of 2004 may or may not have been. But it is to our eternal collective shame that, knowing what we should have known by November 2004, we could not defeat these criminals by a theft-proof majority.

And if we can't make enough noise now to force our "representatives" to act, we disgrace ourselves yet again.

The sad thing is that this story has quite literally been around for years.

One can never rule out bureaucratic ineptitude, but the more likely explanation is that they were afraid he'd tell the world about his treatment. So they just kept him locked up instead. Lovely.

The technical term is disappeared.

you could say that I'm a dreamer

But you're not the only one.

I agree, sean. It was on public radio a couple of years ago -- the German's lawyer was telling the story, since the German couldn't tell his own story.

But nothing will change. The Dems will bend over once again for the Repubs. No one stands up to the Repubs except for bloggers and their responders.

Doesn'nt this seem vaguely(or not) like the Dreyfus Affair? The French Army kept on even though they knew Dreyfus was not the spy rather early on.

I remember watching 60 mn. in past decades, when they would interview some despot or other loathsome person/country about their lack of civil liberties. "What awful people", I would think.

Now I'm an awful person. That story made me ashamed.

[Trolling deleted]

What is beyond me is after he was cleared and to be set free, he was still shackled on his flight home.. the administration just had to impose this one last sadistic humiliation..

petek: so we lock up everyone who's "no angel?"
where will we get the guards?

Petek, if you have to piss yourself, do it in private.

Petek says "It's so painful to see so many people refuse to think. This guy is no angel and you guys are his willing fools."

Yes - let's give up our human and legal rights as a result of abject and pathetic fear of terror.

What ever happened to guts and fortitude? Can all the scaredy cats stop quivering for long enough for America to get our reputation back, bring back habeas corpus, and quit torturing suspects? We'll see come the November elections I suppose...

Wake-up people! Heads out of the sand. He's a German (by the way you can't be a citizen if you're just born there, wouldn't that be frustrating?) of Turkish descent. He decides to "learn" about Islam by going to Pakistan instead of Turkey where he speaks the language, probably has some family and where the majority of people are Muslim. His own mother and friends are worried that he's becoming an Islamic fundamentalist (you know like Christian Jerry Fallwell-except with bombs and guns). It's so painful to see so many people refuse to think. This guy is no angel and you guys are his willing fools.

Posted by: Petek

That's why racism is such a resilient feature of human societies. Makes the world really simple for the weak-minded. You convict people just because they're like other people, even though they haven't done a thing. Simple. Revolting.

Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

Oops.

I don't think that impeaching George and Dick would send a strong enough signal to the rest of the world about how much American's repudiate their actions. I think that both of these individuals should be stripped of their U.S. citizenship.

Proving, once again, that the boos were not loud enough at the Nationals home opener. Bush once had nice things to say about not condemning people for their religion. Clearly, he was lying to us about what he thinks.

On Feb 12, John McCain voted to uphold Bush's veto of a bill forbidding torture. John McCain at one time was an honorable man. Now, he is a whore. He has no more principles of any value. He is the same as Osama bin Laden. What a whore he is.

Gee, it is too bad that we can't torture Petey. He would scream like a woman after 3 minutes. You can always tell the chickenshit repukeliscum.

Hey, Petey, come o my house. we will have fun with my thumbscrews.

"the more likely explanation is that they were afraid he'd tell the world about his treatment. So they just kept him locked up instead. Lovely."

That's the whole intent of keeping all the others in Guantanomo. They would be in deep doo-doo if they let out all the innocent detainees, which is probably 90 percent.

Yes, but if it weren't for Ahmed Fathy Mehalba Germany wouldn't have known Kurnaz was at Gitmo.

Gee, it is too bad that we can't torture Petey. He would scream like a woman after 3 minutes.

Wrong. I was there when my wife gave birth. She didn't scream once.

Tolerance for pain is not gendered. Lots of women are tougher and braver than men.

Really my capacity to be scandalized has been so overwhelmed that I don't know how to react. The first 30 seconds of this story made me so furious that I couldn't bear to watch the rest, but I don't know any productive way to express my fury.

I do know that my temporary move back to my native Alabama (even the intelligent, moderately well-educated sliver of Alabama) has got to end. I can't stand the thought of living among voters who are dumb as bricks and willing to support this kind of sadistic and fascist tomfoolery. If that makes me arrogant then long live arrogance.

Philip,

Sadly even in 'blue' states there are some Republicans who not only support this they enthusiastically cheer them some "torturing of terrists."

Re the detainee's
If they are keep long enough then some evidence will turn up against them sometime, eventually, maybe sometime in the distant future.

Until then let give guilt the benifit. And we have to vigillent that we don't give the guilty they advantage or let them do us harm.

An we know that they are guilty so we must get the truth from them because being criminal they will try and hide the truth from us.

An if they are harmed or die whilst hiding the truth from us then it is their own fault for not coming clean and telling us the truth.

Can't you see the logic here. They are guilt.. Really.. They must be guilty because if they were not then they would not be there..

And never.. ever.. enter the thought that maybe WE might be wrong..