War on Terror Flashback: How US Delivered Detainees to Torture in Qaddafi's Libya (Human Rights Watch)

Laura Pitter of Human Rights Watch talks to the Guardian about the report of US delivery of detainees to torture in Muammar Qaddafi's Libya

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When rebel forces overtook Tripoli in August 2011, prison doors were opened and office files exposed, revealing startling new information about Libya’s relations with other countries. One such revelation, documented in this report, is the degree of involvement of the United States government under the Bush administration in the arrest of opponents of the former Libyan Leader, Muammar Gaddafi, living abroad, the subsequent torture and other ill-treatment of many of them in US custody, and their forced transfer to back to Libya.

The United States played the most extensive role in the abuses, but other countries, notably the United Kingdom, were also involved.

This is an important chapter in the larger story of the secret and abusive US detention program established under the government of George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and the rendition of individuals to countries with known records of torture.

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The Punishment for Torture? Former US Intelligence Officials Take a Caribbean Cruise (Shephard)

About 30 minutes into an interview on an outdoor deck aboard the “spy cruise,” the issue of Osama bin Laden arises.

“What can you do with him?” asks Porter Goss, the former head of the CIA, as he settles back in a padded lounge chair.

“Are we going to sit him on a deckchair and ask him to cooperate? Or are we going to put him in a place where he can’t leave?”

Goss’s point is this: Now that the Obama administration has outlawed harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, shut the CIA covert “black sites” around the world and frowned upon renditions, what are the options open to America’s intelligence service?

He insists the CIA “enhanced” methods worked.

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George Bush's Torture: Taking Apart the President's Claims

He’s back. He's unrepentant. He's proud.

President George W. Bush, re-emerged into the media spotlight to plug his memoirs, has made headlines with his justification of waterboarding as an interrogation tool. “Damn right,” said Bush when asked to approve the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the planner of the 9-11 attacks. His argument, which the media has repeated with varying degrees of skepticism, is that it isn’t torture, it worked, and it saved lives.

Let’s take a look at these one at a time.

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