Pres. Obama Never Rescinded Bush Memo On Torture- Still Part of Military Interrogation Doctrine

[bigtree]

Jeffrey Kaye @jeff_kaye · 3h
Obama never rescinded ALL the Bush-era torture memos, only those "that were inconsistent w/ EO 13491, as determined by the Attorney General"


____ Nearly a year ago, I asked If Obama Withdrew the Yoo, Bradbury Torture Memos, What Government Opinion Now Covers The AFM and Appendix M? The question has direct relevance today, because the Army Field Manual on interrogation (FM 2-22.3) and its Appendix M governs current interrogation policy at Guantanamo, where a major hunger strike of over 100 detainees has paralyzed operations. Detainees are protesting the hopelessness of indefinite detention, and the harassment they must endure, including searches of their holy book, the Koran.

This article answers the question I asked earlier. It documents the fact the Obama administration never rescinded a Bush-era memo on the use of controversial interrogation tactics for use by the U.S. military. The memo concerned “restricted” techniques to be included in the 2006 revision of the Army Field Manual. As a result, today torture and abuse remain a part of U.S. military interrogation doctrine.

The April 13, 2006 memo was written by Stephen Bradbury, who was also author of two 2005 memos on the CIA torture-interrogation program that were subsequently withdrawn.

According to LTC Todd Breasseale in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), Obama’s January 2009 Executive Order EO 13491, “Ensuring Lawful Interrogation,” widely understood and cited as voiding the Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel torture memos, “did not cancel Mr. Bradbury’s legal review” of a rewritten Army Field Manual and its controversial Appendix M.

The latter, with its provisions for use of isolation, sleep deprivation, and forms of sensory deprivation, has been denounced as torture or abuse by a number of human rights and legal groups (see here and here, for example).

LTC Breasseale explained in an email response to my query last year:

Executive Order (EO) 13491 did not withdraw “‘All executive directives, orders, and regulations… from September 11, 2001, to January 20, 2009, concerning detention or the interrogation of detained individuals.’” It revoked all executive directives, orders, and regulations that were inconsistent with EO 13491, as determined by the Attorney General…. [bold emphasis added]

One last point – you seem suggest below that EO 13491 somehow cancelled Steven Bradbury’s legal review of the FM. EO 13491 did not cancel Mr. Bradbury’s legal review of the FM.”

read more: http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/05/01/the-torture-memo-obama-never-rescinded/

related:

from January-
Contrary to Obama's promises, the US military still permits torture
The Obama administration has replaced the use of brutal torture techniques with those that emphasize psychological torture
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/25/obama-administration-military-torture-army-field-manual

[RufusTFirefly]

1. Note to the sanctimonious crowd: I feel quite confident that the Obama Admin. has its reasons.

[nilesobek]

2. This has always been one of my main questions concerning the torture scandal.

Are we still doing it? And, if they get away with it, who will be next?

[Maedhros]

4. We still maintain black sites in places like Somalia.

http://www.thenation.com/article/161936/cias-secret-sites-somalia

According to former detainees, the underground prison, which is staffed by Somali guards, consists of a long corridor lined with filthy small cells infested with bedbugs and mosquitoes. One said that when he arrived in February, he saw two white men wearing military boots, combat trousers, gray tucked-in shirts and black sunglasses. The former prisoners described the cells as windowless and the air thick, moist and disgusting. Prisoners, they said, are not allowed outside. Many have developed rashes and scratch themselves incessantly. Some have been detained for a year or more. According to one former prisoner, inmates who had been there for long periods would pace around constantly, while others leaned against walls rocking.

A Somali who was arrested in Mogadishu and taken to the prison told The Nation that he was held in a windowless underground cell. Among the prisoners he met during his time there was a man who held a Western passport (he declined to identify the man’s nationality). Some of the prisoners told him they were picked up in Nairobi and rendered on small aircraft to Mogadishu, where they were handed over to Somali intelligence agents. Once in custody, according to the senior Somali intelligence official and former prisoners, some detainees are freely interrogated by US and French agents. “Our goal is to please our partners, so we get more [out] of them, like any relationship,” said the Somali intelligence official in describing the policy of allowing foreign agents, including from the CIA, to interrogate prisoners. The Americans, according to the Somali official, operate unilaterally in the country, while the French agents are embedded within the African Union force known as AMISOM.

Since the Bush-era torture protocols have not been officially rescinded, it's reasonable to think that torture is still occurring at these sites.

[grasswire]

3. crickets, crickets..........nt

Where does the perfidy end?

[nilesobek]

5. Sorry about the crickets they called me into work on my night off.

But I'm back and willing to hash out this issue completely.

I'd really like to know the sick sadist who thought all of this up. President GWB? I don't think so. That's probably what's in the redacted information, the names of the psychos who proposed and planned all this torture. The "patriots."

[xocet]

6. K & R for visibility. n/t