Reuters is reporting that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was tortured into falsely confessing a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda and became the primary source of faulty prewar intelligence, has committed suicide in a Libyan prison. His death comes a month after the Obama White House declassified OLC reports about American coercive interrogation practices ( Read more... )

There's a review up on waterboarding.org of the recent executive order ensuring lawful interrogations. Most people seemed excited enough on Thursday about closing Guantanamo, but many missed what I think is an even more important turning point in the history of civil and military justice. Obama's other executive order:

• Requires all interrogation ( Read more... )

If you could stop a terrorists' nuclear attack on New York City by molesting 11 year old Abigail Breslin, would you do it ( Read more... )

After four years of captivity, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has confessed to being "responsible for the 9/11 Operation, from A to Z". Waterboarding KSM was previously helpful in revealing many details that we already knew about the plot that we'd already foiled.

There's a technique called "cold reading" in which a mentalist watches their subjects' ( Read more... )

I spent my high school and college years in Arizona, represented by John McCain. I've always admired McCain as an example of a sensible conservative.

When S.3930 passed I felt betrayed. I wrote a letter to Senator John McCain, the author of that bill, expressing how betrayed I felt. Senator McCain wrote me back, and in his form letter he ( Read more... )

On Friday, Fox News announced that they would demonstrate waterboarding. ( AttributionDammit!) On Saturday I found the video.

Fox's demonstration is much closer to what I've read about than the than the current.tv video. They go through three different procedures: "water on the face", "mouth covered with cloth", and the most severe "cellophane" ( Read more... )

This article mentions Spc Alyssa R Peterson, who was C Company, 311th Military Intelligence Battalion of the 101st Airborne Division. She died in Telafar, Iraq from a "non-combat weapons discharge".

This digg article adds some extra information: she objected to the interrogation techniques that were being used on prisoners, refused to participate ( Read more... )

I recently addressed this question on a closed email list:

is it completely impermissible to exert any kind of pressure at all to get information about who is co-conspirators are? No pressure all, just ask him very nicely, pretty please, and that's it? If some degree of pressure is permmissible, no matter how small, then like the old joke, "We've ( Read more... )

After talking with sploof I've taken down the original content of this post which was featured on BoingBoing. We appreciate the encouragement, but we think the original submission jumped the gun a little. The amount of planning we've done so far has been too minimal. There are still too many uncertainties and unsolved problems. There are still too ( Read more... )

I've been considering the accuracy of calling waterboarding "a mild form of torture" or "torture lite".  I try to avoid semantic argument, but if you were disregarding every form conscience, morality, and international treaty to design the most purely effective/optimal form of torture here are the features that you'd look for:

1. Maximize physical ( Read more... )