Some nights in the ICU are busy, and other nights it just doesn't stop. This one one of those "non-stop" nights last night. My feet feel like they are going to fall off. And let me just say, sometimes you have to let go of the ones you love. That proves you care far more than letting them slowly rot on a ventilator, brain swollen, kidneys and liver failing, oozing out of every pore in their body, and keeping a blood pressure only because of some medications they are getting by IV drips. As hard as it would be, I don't think I would want to see any of my loved ones looking like that.
    OK enough of that. Now on to what I titled this post. Mother Jones recently featured a couple pieces that I wanted to bring up. First let me ask you, if there is an ongoing Federal investigation, and you destroy evidence, haven't you committed a crime? I thought so. With that in mind...

White House Destroyed Hard Drives That May Have Contained Missing Emails

The White House has responded to a judge's order asking it to
explain why it shouldn't be required to make copies of all of its hard
drives to ensure the recovery of missing emails by claiming that many
of the relevant hard drives have been destroyed. You read that
correctly: the White House position is "We don't have to preserve hard
drives containing missing email because we already destroyed them."
"[T]he vast majority of computer workstations used during the
relevant time period would have been replaced approximately every three
years in connection with this refresh program," writes Theresa Payton,
the Chief Information Officer of the White House Office of
Administration (OA) in her declaration to the court.
This latest revelation appears to present a major obstacle to the
efforts of two non-profits, the National Security Archive (NSA) and
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which are
suing to recover what may be up to 10 million missing emails and to
ensure no more are lost. (Need to catch up? Read our full coverage of
the missing White House emails story.) If the original hard drives exist, even deleted emails can
probably be recovered from "slack space" on each hard drive, although
the passage of time makes that process harder. But according to
Payton's declaration, when the White House removes old machines, it
usually only copies "active data" to the new machine. Any previously
deleted emails or archive files would then be unrecoverable. This means
it may be virtually impossible to dig up emails from March to October
2003, a period that is not covered by White House backup tapes.
Given the dictates of the Federal Records Act, which governs the
preservation of White House email, the administration's destruction of
the hard drives is curious....
More in the link provided.
    The second piece that I thought most of you would find interesting is also from Mother Jones, but was featured in Alternet as well.

In Iraq, Was I a Torturer?

By Justine Sharrock, Mother Jones
Posted on March 27, 2008, Printed on March 27, 2008
https://www.alternet.org/story/78649/

....

It got even hotter in the Conex container, the kind you see on top
of 18-wheelers, where Ben kept his prisoners. Not uncommonly the
thermometer inside read 135, even 145 degrees. The Conex box was the
first stop for all prisoners brought to the base, most of them Iraqis
swept up during mass raids. Ben kept them blindfolded, their hands
bound behind their backs with plastic zip ties, without food or sleep,
for up to 48 hours at a time. He made them stand in awkward positions,
so that they could not rest their heads against the wall. Sometimes he
blared loud music, such as Ozzy or AC/DC, blew air horns, banged on the
container, or shouted. "Whatever it took to make sure they'd stay
awake," he explains.
Ben was not a "bad apple," and he didn't
make up these treatments. He was following standard operating procedure
as ordered by military intelligence officers. The MI guys didn't make
up the techniques either; they have a long international history as
effective torture methods. Though generally referred to by
circumlocutions such as "harsh techniques," "softening up," and
"enhanced interrogation," they have been medically shown to have the
same effects as other forms of torture. Forced standing, for example,
causes ankles to swell to twice their size within 24 hours, making
walking excruciating and potentially causing kidney failure.
Ben
says he never saw anything like that. The detainees didn't faint or go
insane, as people have been known to do under similar conditions, but
they also "weren't exactly lucid." And, he notes, "I was hardly getting
any sleep myself."
....
"These aren't POWs; they're detainees," he was told. "Those rules
are antiquated and don't apply. You can't get any information without
breaking that stuff." Ben asked other officers, but "it was basically
like, 'Dude, you're actually worried about how we're treating them?
They wouldn't afford you the same respect.'"
If there is anything
Ben hates, it's not having all the information. Like most, he hadn't
listened when the Geneva Conventions were covered in basic training.
But as it happened, when first arriving in the country, he'd asked a
military lawyer for a CD-ROM of various documents, just to have on
hand. Now, scrolling through the text on his laptop, Ben saw what
anyone could: All prisoners -- civilians and combatants -- are
protected against violence. There is no separate category for unlawful
combatants. "Outrages upon personal dignity" and "humiliating and
degrading treatment" are prohibited. Abuses like those at the Tiger
base were "grave breaches." War crimes.
    You see, this is how this administration works, its semantics. The "name game." Change your "language" and you can bypass said law or whatever. Personally, I am sick of the name game. Someone needs to call this administration what they really are.... Enemy combatiants.