Torture and the Lawless “New Paradigm”

[RBHam]

by Lisa Hajjar

December 10, 2005
Middle East Report Online

The president who campaigned on a pledge to “restore honor and dignity to the White House” has now been compelled to declaim: “We abide by the law of the United States, and we do not torture.” In the closing months of 2005, President George W. Bush has been forced to repeat this undignified denial several times, most recently with the head of the World Health Organization standing beside him, because a dwindling number of people believe him.

In fact, as witnessed by the International Committee for the Red Cross and as verified by numerous US military and intelligence officers, during the ongoing “war on terror” the United States has repeatedly employed interrogation tactics that constitute torture and inhumane treatment and are proscribed by the Geneva Conventions and US law. Of the 108 deaths of prisoners in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002, at least 26 were classified as homicides, including cases where people were tortured, beaten, frozen or suffocated to death. In addition, and despite Bush’s denial, the US does “render to countries that torture” -- sending captured or kidnapped detainees off to Egypt, Jordan and other countries, where they have, on several documented occasions, suffered illegal forms of abuse.

Even as Bush issued his latest denial on December 6, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was issuing a “non-apology” in Germany for the CIA’s abduction and detention in Afghanistan of the German citizen Khalid al-Masri, who they wrongly suspected of complicity in terrorism and who is now suing the CIA alleging that he was tortured while in custody. Rice was in Europe to assuage the public furor at the revelation in the November 3 Washington Post of secret CIA prisons -- termed “black sites” -- in two eastern European countries. ABC News reported on December 5 that in advance of Rice’s visit the CIA had “scrambled” to move 11 “high-value al-Qaeda detainees” from the European locations to a new “black site” somewhere in North Africa.

The steady leaks about the Bush administration’s detention policies forced Rice to attempt to reassure Europeans further on December 7: “As a matter of US policy, the United States’ obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture, which prohibits cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment -- those obligations extend to US personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States.” But given the scope of the revelations of US torture that have poured out since the first Abu Ghraib photos hit the airwaves in late April 2004, “policy talk” will not satisfy or quiet Bush administration critics, since by definition policy can be adjusted as circumstances require. The ban on torture is a matter of law, not policy, and violations are a crime, not a bureaucratic error. The Bush administration, moreover, has sought to narrow the accepted legal definition of torture and to “legalize” the option of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.

These efforts not only subvert the law of the land, but they may also thwart the pursuit of justice for planners and abettors of the September 11, 2001 attacks that prompted the Bush administration to launch its war on terror.

more...
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=HAJ20051210&articleId=1442

[filthyrichkleptocrat]

1. Let's see how many hot potatoes the neocons can juggle at once.

They've got the US monopoly on torture, and black offshore prisons, etc. I say we cede to them exclusive ownership of the drug war, the world's biggest prison industrial complex, manditory minimums, three strikes, the death sentence, black helicopters, and anything else in the man's inhumanity to man franchise.

No charge.

Merry Christmas GOP