Wednesday, April 2, 2008

NEW TORTURE MEMOS AND "CLASSIFIED INFORMATION"

Click on the title to read the Washington Post story about the latest release of Yoo's illegal memos that justified and made torture legal in these United States.
There are really two stories here... the memos again show how third rate lawyers with no ethical principles have been running the "justice" system in the United States but beneath that is the story about the classification system being misused by our criminal government to keep inconvenient information from the rest of us. Although we have long known about these additional memos they were withheld all these years "for national security reasons."
I have written about the things withheld on the basis of national security in Mr. Al-Ghizzawi's case but to remind you.... They have tried to keep half of his torture secret (Al-Ghizzawi wrote a six page letter outlining his torture at US hands... the first three pages are "classified" the last three pages are "cleared".) A letter describing Al-Ghizzawi's still failing health has recently been "classified" and I have to fly to DC to the "secret facility" and have a "cleared" translator meet me there to translate the letter for me... and the letter must remain at the secret facility in my secret drawer. (last time that happened the letter was about Al-Ghizzawi's health and the fact that he misses his family..I resubmitted the letter for clearance in English and it cleared, go figure...)... The complete record of Al-Ghizzawi's CSRT (combat status review tribunal) is "classified" but the full version only shows that there is no evidence against him.. a fact found by the first panel that reviewed his case and found him to not be an enemy combatant. Clearly the classification is used to make it seem like there is some secret evidence that warrants his continued imprisonment.
Most recently drawings from Guantanamo prisoner and Al-Jazeera reporter, Sami Al Haj, have been "classified." His attorneys found an artist to reconstruct the drawings based on a description by Al Haj of his pictures (the descriptions of the pictures were cleared!) So we have an artist on this side of the wire redrawing Sami's pictures so we can have a look at his suffering.... (go to Reprieve's website to view the artist's rendition of the 4 pictures that are apparently classified because of national security concerns). (http://www.reprieve.org.uk/Press_Sami_Al_Haj_Fourth_Sketch_2008.03.28.htm)

So who's national security is at stake and why does everyone accept this?