92 Torture Tapes Illegallly Destroyed by Bush Team

New Bush Crimes Revealed: 92 Torture Tapes Destroyed
As Tens of Thousands Write Congress, NY Times asks "A Truth Commission for the Bush Era?"

Last week, we put out a call for IndictBush members to tell their Congressperson to pursue the indictment of Bush for its illegal torture campaigns. Over 30,000 letters were sent within 24 hours.
Just yesterday, we received stunning confirmation of the timeliness of our efforts. It was revealed that under Bush the CIA destroyed 92 tapes of illegal interrogation tactics -- in other words, tapes showing the Bush administration's record of torture. The CIA destroyed the tapes in response to, and in direct violation of, a Congressional investigation.
Destroying tapes is not small potatoes. For many months, former President Richard Nixon refused to turn over tapes that Congress believed showed criminal wrongdoing. When the Supreme Court finally forced Nixon to reveal the tapes, they included the "smoking gun" tape that showed Nixon's role in illegal break-ins, espionage and wiretapping. The Bush administration simply destroyed its evidence, knowing it could meet a similar fate. We can't let him get away with this.

A special Senate investigative committee is what led to Nixon's undoing, and there's already evidence that a similar truth commission could be in the works for Bush. The New York Times yesterday featured a widely-read forum entitled, "A Truth Commission for the Bush Era?" The article goes on to report the poll that 62 percent of Americans favor criminal investigation of Bush. The mass media's growing coverage of this story is proof of the nationwide clamor for accountability and justice.

Now we have to keep the pressure on. We've made great progress in just a few weeks since we launched the IndictBushNow campaign. You can help take us to the next level. 

Send a letter to Congress demanding accountability for Bush's illegal torture campaigns and subsequent cover-up.

Technorati Tags: activism,actions,congress,Bush Administration,Bush,war crimes,petitions

Spain open to accepting Guantanamo prisoners

Spain has told the United States it is open 'in principle' to accepting prisoners from the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said Wednesday.

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Can Jihadis Be Rehabilitated?

By Bobby Ghosh

It's been described as the Betty Ford Center for terrorists: Saudi Arabian officials boast that the Care Rehabilitation Center, outside Riyadh, has successfully deprogrammed scores of former jihadis, including more than 100 ex-inmates of the U.S.'s Guantánamo Bay military prison. As recently as last fall, Saudi officials claimed the program had a 100% success rate.

That claim was dashed last week, when two alumni of the rehab program proudly announced to the world that they had returned to the jihad. In a video posted online, Saudi nationals Said al-Shihri and Abu al-Hareth al-Oufi — former detainees at Guantánamo Bay — boasted that they had become leaders of al-Qaeda in Yemen. (See pictures of the Care Rehabilitation Center.)

The video could hardly have come at a worse time for the Obama Administration, which has just announced that it will close Gitmo within a year and is already being accused by some Republicans of jeopardizing U.S. security. But it is doubly discomfiting for the Saudi government. Officials in Riyadh now say they have rearrested at least nine other men who had previously been rehabilitated; it's not clear how many of those are ex-Gitmo detainees.

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The Most Controversial Jail in the World - Gitmo Documentary

While the families of 9/11 victims want the Guantanamo Bay detention camps to remain open, President-elect Barack Obama and many other critics believe the military prison is a failure of the American government. After working for a year and a half to arrange media access to the camp, Adrian Baschuk reports from the controversial detention center.



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Obama orders Guantanamo shut

(01:29) Report
Jan. 22 - President Obama vowed to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center within a year.

The prison became a stain on the human rights record of the United States and a symbol of detainee abuse and detention without charge under the Bush Administration.Deborah Lutterbeck reports from Washington.

SOUNDBITE: US President Barack Obama


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Should Obama Prosecute Bush for Illegal Programs & Crimes?

Some people are calling for President-elect Obama to investigate programs associated with the torture of detainees and warrantless surveillance. But others caution to leave history to judge the Bush administration. What is to be gained in prosecuting the outgoing president?

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Torturing Democracy

"Torturing Democracy" trailer...you can also watch the 3 part documentary at http://www.torturingdemocracy.org/

"I've become an old man here. Death in this situation is better than being alive and staying here without hope."
-Detainee #232



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The Bush Administration's Most Despicable Act

"This is not the America I know," President George W. Bush said after the first, horrifying pictures of U.S. troops torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq surfaced in April 2004. The President was not telling the truth. "This" was the America he had authorized on Feb. 7, 2002, when he signed a memorandum stating that the Third Geneva Convention — the one regarding the treatment of enemy prisoners taken in wartime — did not apply to members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. That signature led directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. It was his single most callous and despicable act. It stands at the heart of the national embarrassment that was his presidency.

The details of the torture that Bush authorized have been dribbling out over the years in books like Jane Mayer's excellent The Dark Side. But the most definitive official account was released by the Senate Armed Services Committee just before Christmas. Much of the committee's report remains secret, but a 19-page executive summary was published, and it is infuriating. The story begins with an obscure military training program called Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE), in which various forms of torture are simulated to prepare U.S. special-ops personnel for the sorts of treatment they might receive if they're taken prisoner. Incredibly, the Bush Administration decided to have SERE trainers instruct its interrogation teams on how to torture prisoners. (Read "Shell-Shocked at Abu Ghraib?")

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Why Won't Bush Release the Uighur Prisoners at Gitmo?

By Daphne Eviatar, Washington Independent

As the Bush term ends, his administration is using every possible excuse to keep its captives from the "war on terror" imprisoned.

Pity the Uighurs. Originally known best in this country for their unusual name (pronounced WEE'-gurz), the group of 17 Chinese Muslims has been locked up at Guantanamo Bay for the past seven years. That has contributed to the Uighurs new-found notoriety as hapless victims of a U.S. detention policy that can't send them home, yet can't send them anywhere else.
The Bush administration has acknowledged that it no longer considers the Uighurs "enemy combatants" subject to detention. Yet on Nov. 24, it vigorously fought a court's order to release them in the United States -- insisting that only the president and his Homeland Security Dept. have the authority to make that call. (Because the 17 Chinese Muslims received weapons training in Afghanistan, the administration claimed they posed a threat and cannot be allowed to live here. Yet the government has never presented any evidence that the men intended to use their training to stage attacks in the United States.)
The case has become such a global embarrassment for the U.S. that a group of 10 distinguished conservatives recently wrote to the administration appealing for the Uighurs' release, saying their continued detention without cause "undermines our standing in the world."

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