TORTURE — SECRET RED CROSS REPORT SAYS THE CIA TORTURED AL QAEDA DETAINEES: “Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level al Qaeda prisoners constituted torture,” according to a new book by investigative reporter Jane Mayer set to be released next week. The report found that the Bush administration “may have committed ‘grave breaches’ of the Geneva Conventions” and that the officials who approved the methods could be “guilty of war crimes.”  The report, which Mayer cited in less detail last year in the New Yorker, says that al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah told the Red Cross “that he had been waterboarded at least 10 times in a single week and as many as three times in a day.” Abu Zubaydah also was confined in a box “so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position” and was “one of several prisoners to be ‘slammed against the walls.’” The Red Cross concluded that the methods used on Zubaydah were “categorically” torture. In August 2007, after Mayer’s initial New Yorker article on the report was published, President Bush replied, ”[I] haven’t seen it; we don’t torture” when asked about the report. But according to Mayer’s book, the CIA showed the report to both Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

www.americanprogressaction.org

Waterboarding=Torture  Watch This!

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/video/2008/hitchens_video200808

 

 

 

ETHICS — MILITARY OFFICIALS INCREASE MEDIA RESTRICTIONS AT SOLDIERS’ FUNERALS: Today, Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank reports that Gina Gray, the newly appointed public affairs director at the Arlington National Cemetery, appears to have been fired for her efforts to restore media access to military interments. In April, Milbank wrote an article about how Pentagon officials had obstructed reporters from viewing the burial ceremony of Lt. Col. Billy Hall, who had been killed while serving in Iraq, even though Hall’s family had granted permission to the media to cover the funeral. After Milbank’s initial column, which noted that Gray was shot down by her superiors for attempting to allow reporters to access the ceremony, Gray says she was demoted, that her BlackBerry had been disconnected, and that she received various forms of pressure before eventually being fired. Milbank notes the strict rules at Arlington Cemetery are a continuation of policies started under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who rigorously censored images of American dead and even flag-draped caskets returning home from the war. CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan also recently raised the issue of the Pentagon concealing the death of American soldiers, asking on the Daily Show, “Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier?”

 

When you love to read and you revere the written word as much as I do, you never forget the first time you see your name in print. I had never aspired to be a writer, never realized I could write anything but radio news when I was presented with the opportunity to write my own opinion column. Since I had lots of opinions, I figured I would take a swing at being a columnist and it turned out really well. I’ve actually won awards from Women in Communications for my writing in Metro Beat and I was honored to have had the opportunity to write on a regular basis and hone my skills. When the last incarnation of Metro Beat-The Beat folded I bade good-bye to my brief foray into writing for print.

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