Military attorney: Waterboarding is ‘tip of the iceberg’
Published: May 20, 2009
Updated 6 months ago
A military attorney who represented a now-freed Guantanamo detainee told CNN on Wednesday that waterboarding is only “the tip of the iceberg”
Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Bradley was the lawyer for Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian national who was arrested by the Pakistani government in April 2002 on suspicion of being a member of al Qaeda. He was then shuffled through a series of CIA “ghost prisons” before being imprisoned at Guantanamo for five years. Last winter, President Obama ordered him released to the United Kingdom, where he had been a legal resident.
Bradley told CNN that when she was first assigned to represent Mohamed, she did not question he was a hardened terrorist, because “my government was saying these were the worst of the worst.” However, she now says, “There’s no reliable evidence that Mr. Mohamed was going to do anything to the United States.”
According to Bradley, when Mohamed was first held at a CIA prison in Morocco, “They started this monthly treatment where they would come in with a scalpel or a razor type of instrument and they would slash his genitals, just with small cuts.”
Following that torture, Mohamed confessed that he had attended an al Qaeda training camp and discussed plans to make a dirty bomb. He also answered “No” to the question, “While in U.S. military custody have you been treated in any way that you would consider abusive?”
Now Bradley believes, “This has nothing to do about national security, it has to do with national embarrassment.”
In February, when Mohamed was still being held at Guantanamo, she wrote an opinion piece for the Guardian saying, “It is worth bearing in mind that all charges against Binyam have been dropped and that Binyam’s chief prosecutor resigned, citing the unfairness of the system. I profoundly hope that he is not being kept in Guantánamo to avoid information surrounding his rendition and torture coming out.”
This video is from CNN’s American Morning, broadcast May 20, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.com
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For those under the impression that the U.S. hasn’t been involved with torturing human beings and even torturing completely innocent people just for practice (like homeless children) for decades and decades, might I suggest you look into the case of Dan Mitrione and the Tupamaros. “The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect”, is one of Dan’s famous lines.
The Tupamaros in Uraguay kidnapped him and murdered him, and I’m pretty sure the fucker deserved it.
I never thought I’d be talking to satan, but — I just read the Mitrioni piece at Wikipedia. Torture never had better friends than Nixon and Kissinger, but I’m sorry to see David Eisenhower at his funeral. I’m attempting to view the video “State of Seige” right now, but it ain’t loading.
Thanks for the tip
I couldn’t get the whole thing in English, but a great 5 minute clip of the French original (no titles, but a lot is obvious) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hz7iyIlmbQ
I couldn’t get the whole thing in English, but a great 5 minute clip of the French original (no titles, but a lot is obvious) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hz7iyIlmbQ
I couldn’t get the whole thing in English, but a great 5 minute clip of the French original (no titles, but a lot is obvious) at youtubeDOTcomSLASHwatch?v=6Hz7iyIlmbQ
The cat’s out of the bag. There’s no stopping this story now.
yeah…thats why i think everyone was so eager to talk about waterboarding,,,like it was the worse thing done.
no doubt.
JUSTICE !
“Because It’s not about right or left it’s about right and wrong”
~
I don’t know why they think withholding the photographs is going to effect things one way or the other.
Everyone already gets the picture, and has had the picture for years.
DUH!
If you think you’re not going to sign any confession after that kind of torture, think again. I am so incredibly DISGUSTED with the United States of America becoming a vulgar third world torture nation during the Bush administration, I have no words for it. When I hear people cry “freedom” and “national security” while they trash the Constitution, it makes me want to vomit.
But the sad part is it’s nothing new. Think: School of the Americas. Think: El Salvador. They talked about the “Salvadoran method” for Iraq, remember? Take a look at John Pilger’s excellent recent film, War On Democracy
This is just horrific. Why won’t anyone arrest Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld for torture, murder, rape, and crimes against humanity? Has the USA gone mad? What has happened to my country???
Again, it’s nothing new. But the internet has made mass recognition available, where it was only pamphleteers in the ’80’s, down in the public square. I remember those kids. I blew them off, but they were right!
We’re officially now no better than than that which we defeated in WW II. I’m truly astonished!
They have taken the exact moral fabric which makes up this great nation and eviscerated it.
There’s no turning back. We’re all fascist now.
The horror… This is the established order that our government would protect from justice. We elected Obama to ferret out and punish these people but instead we get torture apologists.
Today them, tomorrow us. its now only a matter of time when our own children start disapearing. Remember under the new laws, there is no habeaus corpus.
Thats one reason they won’t let those guys out, because they will tell that they where tortured. This isn’t about terrorists anymore, it’s about trying to keep evidence of what was going on out of public eye and the worlds eye. Can you imagine what would happen if those videos (I still believe even though the CIA said they where destroyed, there probably copies of them being held for the right time) of people being tortured are released, it would show that we are a rogue nation out of control. Using a razor to cut genitals and possibly alot more stuff, jesus. We did torture and where trying to find a way of saying that it wasn’t.
And you are correct abrahambenjudea, today it’s them tomorrow it’s us. When martial law is declared in the US, they will be able to do anything they want. They could take your kids, they could take your woman, heck they could take your husband. It’s the game of giving unlimited power to a person that shouldn’t even be responsible for tying his own shoes. Don’t people even think that one day some cop or govt. official that may like your spouse would someday decide your in violation of some federal statute and hold your spouse until she or he gives him what he wants (money, sex, property etc.). It happens in 3rd world and 1st world dictatorships where the govt. is a tool to enrich the elite and the elite minions.
Lets say our friend and extremists Elizabeth Hasselbeck from the view is detained during this time for no other reason than some govt. official or cop wants to get into her pants. He threatens, he says if you don’t do this or that I will CPS your kids away and lock up your husband etc. etc., then she does his bidding. Thats how a police state system works, the elite are enriched andd powerful and the minions get what scraps fall from the tables of the elite and as a bonus can use their position to enrich themselves. America is going to end up like a clone of mexico, and it won’t be pretty.
Yvonne Bradley is a hero. President Obama ought to take some lessons from her in openness and transparency. People like her and former Cmdr. Charles Swift are the firewall between the Constitution and a police state.
Yes. And it’s “good news” that CNN is covering it. They’re far from brave, so it’s somewhat encouraging to see them bring it up.
To me that says, there’s a sufficient groundswell — that it may have just been the last straw — they didn’t know there was a tipping point, but may have stumbled into it. That is my fondest hope.
The American people are really sick of it, I believe.