Reading Orwell and the Washington Post

Serv, it is a dangerous thing to be the single voice of reason, so if you
don't mind, I'll join you.

Isn't it possible that life actually imitates art, in this case? The Bush
Dogma seems to be taking its script almost word for word from Orwell:

Washingtonpost.com
Orwell at Guantanamo
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, April 3, 2007; Page A23

Here's what the Bush administration has done to the values, traditions
and honor of the United States of America: An accused terrorist claims he
confessed to heinous crimes so that agents of the U.S. government would
stop torturing him, and no one is shocked or even surprised. There's
reason to believe, in fact, that what the suspect says about torture is
probably true.

There's also reason to doubt that the suspect -- Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri,
held in U.S. custody without charges for more than four years -- is the
Zelig-like innocent bystander he claims to be. But we can't be sure,
because George W. Bush disgraced himself and his country by ordering
extrajudicial kidnappings of suspects in the war on terror, indefinite
secret detention and interrogation by "alternative" methods that the
civilized world calls torture.

On Friday, the Defense Department released a heavily redacted transcript
of a March 14 hearing, held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to determine
whether Nashiri should be classified as an "enemy combatant." I
apologize for resorting to cliche, but the only way to describe this
amazing, infuriating document is to call it Orwellian. Reading it gives you
the chills.

None of the members of the military tribunal sitting in judgment is
named. The officer serving as Nashiri's "personal representative" likewise
is not named. Unclassified evidence is presented in summary -- an
unnamed "recorder" reads a document quoting statements by witnesses
that attest to Nashiri's involvement in the 1998 bombings of U.S.
embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, in which 224 people died, and the
2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 U.S. sailors. The witnesses
are not present, so, of course, there is no opportunity to challenge their
statements.

Nashiri's representative, a lieutenant commander in the Navy, presents a
stunning response: "The Detainee states that he was tortured into
confession and once he made a confession his captors were happy and
they stopped torturing him. Also, the Detainee states that he made up
stories during the torture in order to get it to stop."

The response states that Nashiri confessed under torture not only to the
East Africa and USS Cole bombings but also to the 2002 bombing of the
French oil tanker Limburg, some bombings and rocket attacks in Saudi
Arabia, a plan to bomb American ships in the Persian Gulf, and "a plan to
hijack a plane and crash it into a ship." Oh, and he also told investigators
that Osama bin Laden had acquired a nuclear bomb.

"I just said those things to make the people happy," Nashiri tells the
tribunal. "They were very happy when I told them those things."

One gets the sense that he would have confessed to the murders of
Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls if that would have made his interrogators
happy.

Nashiri denies having anything to do with terrorism, although he
acknowledges taking money from bin Laden. He paints himself --
unconvincingly, in my view -- as a simple merchant who makes poor
choices in friends and has a habit of being in the wrong place at the
wrong time.

The Navy captain serving as president of the tribunal gets around to
asking Nashiri about the alleged torture. Who did it? They were
Americans, Nashiri says. When did it happen? "From the time I was
arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me."

Only George Orwell could have written what comes next in the transcript.
The following is what we are allowed to know of Nashiri's response when
asked how he was tortured:

"What else do I want to say? [REDACTED]. Many things happened. There
were doing so many things. What else did they did? [REDACTED]. They do
so many things. So so many things. What else did they did? [REDACTED].
After that another method of torture began. [REDACTED]. They used to
ask me questions and the investigator after that used to laugh. And, I
used to answer the answer that I knew. And, if I didn't reply what I heard,
he used to [REDACTED]. So many things happened. I don't in summary,
that's basically what happened."

I guess that's how the U.S. government extracts information from
detainees: [REDACTED].

The Pentagon told reporters that Nashiri's claims were censored because
of "national security concerns" about disclosing where detainees were
held and how they were treated. But that would be unnecessary if Nashiri
were lying, since no harm could come from disclosing a bunch of made-
up stories. The censorship makes sense only if some or all of what
Nashiri alleges is true.

But we're not permitted to know what he alleges.

Orwell had it figured out: "Ignorance is Strength.