torture

Issue #44

Last Update March 2, 2006

National Torture by Gerry Krownstein Now that some time has passed since the shocking revelations of torture in Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan and Guantanamo, what impact have they had? For those who see us as being in a total, no-holds-barred war, and for those clinging to the belief that America can do no wrong, there is denial. For everyone else, the domestic and international consequences are just becoming to be clear.

The deniers comfort themselves with three thoughts: this was an aberration practiced by a few misguided soldiers; this wasn't really torture, it was “hard interrogation” or mere discomfort; the intelligence gained was worth the cost. These points are easily disposed of. First, this clearly was no aberration, being standard operating procedure not only in Abu Ghraib, but also in Afghanistan and, behind a curtain of secrecy, in Guantanamo; furthermore, the basic techniques and policies were approved at the highest Pentagon levels, with a sign-off by the Secretary of Defense himself and supporting memoranda from the Justice Department under that noted civil libertarian, Attorney General Ashcroft. The contention that these permissions were misapplied, carried too far or were directed at the wrong class of prisoner is irrelevant; the door was opened to the events that occurred. Second, this really was torture, not some form of military or CIA hazing. Criminal murder investigations have been opened in around a dozen cases, in which prisoners died under interrogation, or were driven to suicide. Beatings, semi-drownings, sleep deprivation, rape and sexual humiliation, contorted positioning reminiscent of the Viet Cong tiger cages that symbolized cruelty in the Rambo movies, all were part of the arsenal of techniques used. This wasn't yet the Gestapo or Pinochet's Chile, but it was close enough and getting worse. Third, no notable information resulted from this torture. It was used mainly against low-level prisoners who had very little information to give; it was continued long after any information they possessed became out if date; and no effort was made to sort out detainees that would eliminate those innocently caught up in a sweep of a general area. In fact, most of the high-level Al Qaida and Ba'ath Party detainees were exempt from this torture. The deniers' comforting arguments, besides being mutually contradictory, are just not true.

While the total impact of these revelations is yet to be measured, certain things are already clear:

!Our international image, already murky, is now irremediably tarnished
!The United Nations has declined to renew the exemption our soldiers and civilian contractors enjoyed from war crimes prosecution
!In future wars, captured American soldiers must now worry about their treatment, since our disregard of the Geneva Conventions and other international treaties has called into question their applicability to our military
!We have generated enormous outrage among the people we are supposed to be helping; our occupying forces must now live with this outrage from ordinary citizens as well as Ba'ath hard-liners and Islamic terrorists
!The recent Supreme Court decisions on the Bush Administration assertions of Presidential autocracy during wartime had to have been affected by the torture issue; a Supreme Court inclined to be deferential to the President they put in office issued harsh rulings against him by large majorities
!Our own support of prosecutions against other international torturers is now compromised.

There are revelations yet to come. They will not be comfortable for the Bush Administration or for America. Our future depends on a strong repudiation of torture, the political atmosphere that made it thinkable, and the Administration that promoted it.