{"id":29410,"date":"2017-07-22T12:56:04","date_gmt":"2017-07-22T20:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=29410"},"modified":"2017-07-22T12:56:04","modified_gmt":"2017-07-22T20:56:04","slug":"the-torture-friendly-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/22\/the-torture-friendly-trump-administration\/","title":{"rendered":"The Torture-Friendly Trump Administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Donald Trump is pro-torture. He said on the campaign trail he\u2019d approve waterboarding \u201cin a heartbeat,\u201d plus \u201ca hell of a lot worse.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

He added<\/a>: \u201cOnly a stupid person would say it doesn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are certainly a lot of stupid people then, because everyone from interrogators to researchers have repeatedly concluded that torture doesn\u2019t work<\/a>. People will say whatever you want them to say to make the pain stop, making torture not only inhumane but also bad for intelligence.<\/p>\n

A 2009 Senate Armed Services Committee review concluded that torture \u201cdamaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.\u201d That\u2019s why the Senate voted<\/a> in 2015 to turn the presidential ban on torture into official law.<\/p>\n

To his credit, Trump did water down his original support for torture, allowing Defense Secretary James Mattis \u2013 who opposes torture<\/a> \u2013 to override him.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But if the Trump administration is now opposed to torture, why are they nominating the architects of America\u2019s torture fiasco to key posts?<\/p>\n

Take Steven Bradbury<\/a>, nominated to be general counsel for the Transportation Department. Bradbury is infamous for writing the legal memos authorizing CIA torture at the Bush Justice Department.<\/p>\n

Bradbury\u2019s confirmation was placed on hold by Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq veteran who lost her legs in the war. \u201cThe actions you helped justify put our troops in harm\u2019s way, put our diplomats deployed overseas in harm\u2019s way, and you compromised our nation\u2019s very values,\u201d she said angrily at his confirmation hearing.<\/p>\n

Or what about Donald Trump\u2019s nominee to head the FBI, Christopher Wray?<\/p>\n

Wray was at the Justice Department when attorney John Yoo and others were drafting their torture memos<\/a>. Wray knew about detainee abuse and did not, as head of the criminal division, bring charges against any of the Bush administration torturers \u2013 except for one low-level CIA contractor<\/a> who beat a prisoner to death.<\/p>\n

A third person connected to torture is Gina Haspel, who was appointed deputy director of the CIA. Haspel ran a \u201cblack site\u201d prison<\/a> in Thailand where suspects were waterboarded \u2013 and then helped destroy<\/a> video of the interrogations.<\/p>\n

The Senate Intelligence Committee meticulously documented the sordid U.S. record of torture under the Bush administration in a 6,770-page report. But the public hasn\u2019t been able to read it \u2013 only the executive summary has been released.<\/p>\n

Yet this isn\u2019t just an exercise in history. In June, Human Rights Watch and the Associated Press published explosive reports revealing a secret network of prisons in southern Yemen run by U.S.-allied United Arab Emirates and Yemeni forces.<\/p>\n

The reports reveal horrific practices in which prisoners, including children, have been arbitrarily detained, forcibly disappeared, sexually assaulted, and tortured. One torture method, known as the \u201cgrill,\u201d had victims tied to a spit like a roast and spun in a circle of fire.<\/p>\n

Reports indicate that the US military knew about the torture, received transcripts of the interrogations conducted by Yemeni interrogators, and interrogated several detainees themselves<\/a>. According to one Yemeni security officer, American forces were only yards<\/a> away from a facility where torture took place.<\/p>\n

Senators John McCain and Jack Reed immediately expressed outrage, calling on the Trump administration to investigate the allegations. But the reaction of the White House to these revolting reports is telling: radio silence.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s refusal to publicly condemn these secret prisons, together with the appointments of people who played a role in George W. Bush\u2019s torture program, should set off alarm bells.<\/p>\n

Only stupid people say torture works, and one of them is sitting in the White House.<\/p>\n

Medea Benjamin is the founder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange and the author of nine books, including the recently released <\/i>Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection<\/u><\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Donald Trump is pro-torture. He said on the campaign trail he\u2019d approve waterboarding \u201cin a heartbeat,\u201d plus \u201ca hell of a lot worse.\u201d He added: \u201cOnly a stupid person would say it doesn\u2019t work.\u201d There are certainly a lot of stupid people then, because everyone from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-29410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29410"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29412,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29410\/revisions\/29412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29410"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=29410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}