Did 24 ever feature a plotline about capturing and abusing suspects’ children? If not the torture fetishists at FOX have some catching up to do.
WASHINGTON – At least 39 people from a half-dozen countries have been held in secret U.S. detention centers worldwide for three or more years, and their fates remain unknown, six human-rights groups say in a report to be released today.
Human-rights advocates said the report, which they called the most comprehensive account yet of so-called ghost detainees, raised new alarms about the Bush administration’s practice of secretly detaining terror suspects without legal proceedings.
In five instances, the report says, U.S. authorities detained the wives or young children of suspects held in secret prisons. And in four instances, terror suspects in U.S. custody may have been transferred to Libya, once a major U.S. adversary.
Detaining innocent children without charges, in essence “disappearing” them just like any other inmate in our black prison system, already defies every value that sets America apart. But the abuses alleged in the actual report and discussed in this post by Hilzoy make me physically ill.
It seems likely that this tactic of capturing and abusing innocent family members was copied from a successful Jordanian campaign against Palestinian terrorists led by abu Nidal.
One hard question is what lengths the C.I.A. should go to. In an interview, two former operations officers cited the tactics used in the late nineteen-eighties by the Jordanian security service, in its successful effort to bring down Abu Nidal, the Palestinian who led what was at the time “the most dangerous terrorist organization in existence,” according to the State Department. Abu Nidal’s group was best known for its role in two bloody gun and grenade attacks on check-in desks for El Al, the Israeli airline, at the Rome and Vienna airports in December, 1985. At his peak, Abu Nidal threatened the life of King Hussein of Jordan—whom he called “the pygmy king”—and the King responded, according to the former intelligence officers, by telling his state security service, “Go get them.”
The Jordanians did not move directly against suspected Abu Nidal followers but seized close family members instead—mothers and brothers. The Abu Nidal suspect would be approached, given a telephone, and told to call his mother, who would say, according to one C.I.A. man, “Son, they’ll take care of me if you don’t do what they ask.” (To his knowledge, the official carefully added, all the suspects agreed to talk before any family members were actually harmed.) By the early nineteen-nineties, the group was crippled by internal dissent and was no longer a significant terrorist organization. (Abu Nidal, now in his sixties and in poor health, is believed to be living quietly in Egypt.) “Jordan is the one nation that totally succeeded in penetrating a group,” the official added. “You have to get their families under control.”
Note the bolded sentence. Even the Jordanians, an undemocratic mideastern state with little history of respecting civil liberties, stopped short of actually harming innocent family members. It stuns the mind to think that America (by America I mean the vice president’s office) might have looked to their example and found it too soft.
Pb
In that case, you might not want to read the comments to that post, or follow the links in those comments…
Dungheap
Tim F. is objectively pro- young children and wives of terrorists.
Zombie Santa Claus
We have to torture them there so we don’t have to torture them here. Or something like that. I guess.
Can we talk about a jackalope now? Clinton used to fuck his jackalopes. Except Vince Foster, he had that one killed. Sandy Berger likes to stuff jackalopes down his pants.
Did you guys hear they just put that one slutty jackalope back in jail? Can we talk about her now?
Comrade Mattski
The only time I feels truly safe is when entire world is either Jail, Dead or being tortured. I find imprisonment of innocent foreign child good for country. Is step in right direction for the safety of homeland.
incontrolados
Answer to your initial question is: yes, in season 2.
David
In one episode of season 2, Jack Bauer appeared to order the execution of a terrorist’s young son while his mother and siblings watched, with video of the killing broadcast to the suspect in a holding cell.
Of course, that “execution” turned out to be an act, and he probably let the family go afterward. So Jack’s got a ways to go yet.
Jake
And the difference between the mob and the White House is …
Um.
Hang on, I’ll think of something.
terry chay
@David: Yeah, I remember that scene (Season 2 of 24, or “48”). It’s one of those things that you don’t realize when you’re watching TV why that stuff is outlawed under the Geneva Convention until you think about it.
Unfortunately, TV turns off the part of the brain that would do that thinking…
Teak111
Probably get flamed for saying this, but what are the alternatives if you want to get to a terrorist? You certainly don’t want to harm family members, because that would inflame them, but like the Mob, you want to let the terrorists know you can get to the people they care about. That’s what Tony would do. BTW, can we have a Soprano open thread please, dying to know what people is gonna happen.
Pb
The mob might have some legitimate activities as well?
Zombie Santa Claus
The mob is successful in its endeavours.
tBone
Jack, maybe, but not CTU.
In season 4, the innocent son of a terrorist couple is rescued/captured by CTU, questioned, tortured, and ultimately traded back to the terrorists (who want him dead) in exchange for the release of Jack Bauer.
Then the producers cut several scenes of the character’s eventual escape/rescue, leaving the viewer to assume that he was unceremoniously killed by the terrorists after being abandoned by CTU.
That season really put the guilt in “guilty pleasure.”
Tim F.
Well, mock executions count as torture so I will have to give 24 priority on this one. Torture fetishists FTW.
Sri Ramkrishna
Disgusting. I read this and felt physically ill. It’s particularly sickening because we seem to be indundated about Paris Hilton and her 3 day jail time. Jeezus. Why are our priorities so fucked up?
sri
kchiker
Ratings tend to drop when you make your viewers physically ill. Unfortunately, the American public is grasping whatever distractions it can…to deny/ignore some really disgusting truths.
Jake
Slight nit-pick but the phrase always strikes me as creating a distinction that doesn’t exist.
Wilfred
Because that’s how we’ve managed our most recent ‘banality of evil’ process. There’s nothing extraordinary about the people who do these things, they’re all just following up on what Americans have been taught to want – security. Americans are the most insecure, paranoid people on the planet, more than willing to destroy the country in order to save it.
Tsulagi
Don’t think so, but if they ever do, you can be sure our brave lemon chicken warriors of the fighting 28%er Short Bus Brigades will be on board.
For others to do it of course. While they man the homefront keeping their sofas safe from attack. Giving manly tongue lashes to seditious evildoers within who dare utter hate America speech like this…
Plus you can bet some pussy might say this about unreleased photos and videos regarding glorious “enhanced” interrogation techniques…
The first blockquote was from the maverick Lindsey Graham in May 04 at Abu Ghraib hearings who two years later helped push through MCA. The second was from Rumsfeld in the same hearings.
These people truly are a waste of air.
tBone
You need to spend more time around children, then. My four-year-old will quickly demonstrate why such distinctions are necessary.
Dreggas
This is nothing more than text-book Mack Bolan, ( insert other Rambo like person here). Others have said 24 did it and it’s been a part of mafia tactics (from the russians to the mexicans to yakuza) and indeed the tactics of even nation states for a long, long time. It’s disgusting that we are just following that “tradition”.
RLaing
Perhaps there was a time in the past when torture was not an American ‘value’, I don’t know. Certainly it has been a thing that America ‘does’ for a long time, usually but not always by proxy.
But I think we can now safely say that torture is in fact, an American ‘value’, and that this condition of seeing torture as a legitimate tactic does indeed ‘set America apart’, even though the practice of torture does not.
mrmobi
BAD ZOMBIE! BAD!
This reminds me… W.C. Fields was asked by a reporter if he liked children, to which he replied,
“Yeeesss, but only if they’re properly cooked.”
Tim, you’re being too kind to the supreme deciderator. I believe that’s where the proverbial buck stops, not in the offices of the worst Vice-President we’ve ever had. This Iraq war and all of its’ horrors belong squarely on his diminutive shoulders.
I’m deeply ashamed that so many millions could vote for such a pathetic excuse for a leader.
Perry Como
“[There were] homicide bombings at three shopping centers near major U.S. cities. With hundreds dead and thousands injured, a fourth attack is averted when the attackers and their families are captured off the Florida coast and taken to Guantanamo Bay to be questioned. U.S. intelligence believes another, larger attack is planned and could come at any time. How aggressively should the detainees and their families be interrogated about the where the next attack might be?”
Are you willing to waterboard a 5 year old, or do you hate America?
Zombie Santa Claus
What? Santa doesn’t deserve a cookie now and then?
I have a comprehensive list of which children have been naughty and which ones have been nice. Surely the CIA can use such a list to leverage confessions from these children!
Jake
No thanks, bad kids give me gas.
RSA
More from the article:
I expect moral people to be able to say, “No, we do not punish innocent people for the suspected crimes of others.” Why is that so hard? I guess it might bring the entire foreign policy of the Bush administration into question.
Perry Como
With talk like that, don’t be surprised if your neighbor’s door gets busted down…