| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Enkidu the Atheist" |
| Date: |
28 Nov 2005 04:56:08 PM |
| Object: |
Torturers 'R' Us: President Bush denies reality |
Torturers 'R' Us
President Bush denies reality
By Kristian Williams November 28, 2005
The national debate on torture reached a new level in October when the
Senate voted 90 to nine to restrict Defense Department interrogation
techniques and prohibit the "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or
punishment" of anyone in U.S. custody. The vote came as a major rebuke to
President George Bush, who threatened to veto the military spending bill
if the proposals were included.
Bush responded to the vote by publicly defending the United States'
existing practices. During his Latin American tour in early November, he
said, "We are gathering information about where the terrorists may be
hiding. We are trying to disrupt their plots and plans. Anything we do
.... in this effort, any activity we conduct is within the law. We do not
torture."
Yet earlier that very week, Vice President ***** Cheney pleaded with
Republican senators in a closed door meeting to exempt the CIA from the
cruelty ban. The administration clearly does not like having its bluff
called.
To understand the panic buzzing through the White House, you have to
understand its philosophy. The administration has consistently read the
law so as to minimize the protections offered to official enemies and
maximize the power of the president. This approach has shaped almost
every aspect of the "war on terror"--the suspension of the Geneva
Conventions in Afghanistan, the designation of prisoners as "enemy
combatants," the establishment of "military tribunals" immune to the
usual rules of evidence and procedure, and the effort to establish
prisons beyond any court's jurisdiction (first in Guantánamo, now
secretly in Eastern Europe), as well as the exceedingly narrow definition
of "torture" crafted by the Justice Department in 2002.
In keeping with this approach, the administration has cast certain
adversaries beyond the protection of human rights law. As John McCain,
the author of the Senate's anti-torture amendment, explained, "a strange
legal determination was made that the prohibition in the Convention
Against Torture against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment does not
legally apply to foreigners held outside the U.S. They can, apparently,
be treated inhumanely. This is the administration's position. ... What
all this means is that America is the only country in the world that
asserts a legal right to engage in cruel and inhuman treatment." The
proposed changes would close the loophole.
President Bush is clearly in a precarious position. The McCain amendment
is just one of a whole barrage of challenges currently aimed at his style
of government. Along with the Senate's vote on the treatment of
prisoners, the administration is facing uncertain domestic and diplomatic
consequences following the revelation of secret CIA prisons in Poland and
Romania. At the same time, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture is
demanding full access to the captives at Guantánamo Bay, and the Supreme
Court has agreed to rule on the legitimacy of the planned military
tribunals. In September, soldiers with the 82nd Airborne gave Human
Rights Watch detailed accounts of brutality against prisoners--including
beatings with baseball bats--and the refusal of commanding officers to
intervene. More recently, the Army indicted five soldiers with the 75th
Ranger Regiment--bringing the total number facing discipline for abusing
prisoners to 230 since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. And an
Italian prosecutor has indicted 13 CIA operatives for kidnapping a Muslim
cleric in Milan and flying him to Egypt to be tortured.
The question of torture also links to the broader crisis concerning the
legitimacy of the war itself. Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Colin
Powell told the U.N. Security Council that Iraq had trained al-Qaeda in
the use of chemical and biological weapons. The source for this erroneous
information was an al-Qaeda trainer, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was
arrested in Pakistan, handed over to the CIA and sent to Egypt for
questioning. Recently declassified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
documents show that intelligence analysts recognized the Iraq–al-Qaeda
connection as fictitious before Powell's speech. A DIA report concluded
that "it is more likely this individual [al-Libi] is intentionally
misleading the debriefers." And why would he do that? Well, as a former
FBI agent involved with the investigation told the New Yorker,
"Administration officials were always pushing us to come up with links,
but there weren't any. The reason they got bad information is that they
beat it out of him."
Under the circumstances, Bush's "We do not torture" has all the
persuasive force of Nixon's "I am not a crook."
http://tinyurl.com/9rwv2
--
Enkidu AA#2165
http://www.musings.leaddogs.org/
EAC Chaplain and ordained minister,
ULC, Modesto, CA
PGP ID: 0xC4CE8CF0
"The joy I felt as the prospect before me of being the instrument
destined to take away from the world one of its greatest calamities
[smallpox] was so excessive that I found myself in a kind of reverie."
* Edward Jenner
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