“You know what is in room 101, Winston. Everyone knows what is in room 101”
The release last week of four memos from the legal team of the George W Bush administration confirmed what many already knew. That they were using torture. Anyone who has read those memos cannot deny that and be taken seriously. The memos are chilling in their detail and purpose. They are, simply, legal advice from the official White House lawyers to CIA officials and interrogators outlining what they can do, and how they should go about doing it in order to have a possible legal defence. It should be noted that those lawyers, in the very same memos, note that their opinions are only that, that they have not been tested by the courts and probably wouldn’t be. They also note that many of the techniques allowed are considered torture by the Department of State when it is doing it’s reviews of other regimes.
This post is just to point in the direction of writers who will be covering this mess from an anti-torture perspective. A phrase one would not have thought one would need to write.
Each is to a blog rather than a news piece, because blogs are frankly, covering this kind of issue far better. Each blog will have many more stories about this already up, and many more in the coming weeks and months. I chose these links because the authors have been writing about this issue for the last few years. If you want to follow this issue, bookmark these blogs. They are all smart people. Each link here looks at a different angle and is indicative of the type of thing that blogger talks about.
This post by Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings has in it’s first line a link to the memo’s for those who have not beheld their wonder. Or for fans of Kafka, and Orwell who are looking for source material. Hilzoy is a philosopher and a brilliantly clear and effective writer.
Glenn Greenwald is a constitutional lawyer who has written books on the abuses of the Bush admin. He is abrasive and uncompromising, but as sharp as a sackful of tacks wrapped up in the razor wire they use to surround the victims of the struff he writes about. If you scroll down to the updates on this post you shall find some excerpts of the memo’s. Read this post if nothing else.
www.newshoggers.com is also very good. A variety of writers, at least one with interrogation experience. They tend to focus on the military and strategic side of things.
– Pascal’s bookie
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress