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The Crime of Torture
Torture and kidnapping are violations of the Geneva Conventions, which, as the U.S. has signed and ratified the treaties, have the legal force as supreme law of the land under the Constitution.
The primary source of international humanitarian law (also called the laws of war) is the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which the United States ratified in 1955. The Third Geneva Convention concerns prisoners-of-war; the Fourth Geneva Convention safeguards so-called “protected persons,” most simply described as detained civilians. Detainees must at all times be humanely treated (Geneva III, art. 13, Geneva IV, art. 27). Detainees may be questioned, but any form of “physical or mental coercion” is prohibited (Geneva III, art. 17; Geneva IV, art. 31). Women shall be protected from rape and any form of indecent assault (Geneva IV, art. 27).
Torture or inhuman treatment of prisoners-of-war (Geneva III, arts. 17 & 87) or protected persons (Geneva IV, art. 32) are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and are considered war crimes (Geneva III, art. 130; Geneva IV, art. 147). War crimes create an obligation on any state to prosecute the alleged perpetrators or turn them over to another state for prosecution. This obligation applies regardless of the nationality of the perpetrator, the nationality of the victim or the place where the act of torture or inhuman treatment was committed (Geneva III, art.129; Geneva IV, art. 146).
Under the Conventions, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
• Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
• Taking of hostages;
• Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;
• The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
It is an established fact that the U.S. forces, including the armed forces, the CIA, and Contractors to the U.S., have committed extensive violations of all the above Geneva prohibitions.
It is further an established fact that the direction for these acts and violations arose at the very top of the Bush Administration, in the persons of Bush, Cheney, Addington, Gonzales, and Yoo.
Jane Mayer’s extensively researched new book, The Dark Side, shows how the Bush Administration and the CIA interrogators twisted the approach of the Navy SERE program, which was intended to train U.S. personnel how to resist torture, into a mechanism and training program for how to inflict torture. The SERE program was developed to help U.S. personnel resist the expected torture methods of the Soviet Union, Communist China, North Korea, and other justly reviled totalitarian states.
In flipping the SERE program on its head, the Bush Admistration adopted precisely the techniques of torture and abuse detailed in Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. In a crowning irony, some of the prisoners were actually held in former Communist prisons in Eastern Europe.
In his new book, Torture Team, Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at University College London, reveals that:
• Senior Bush administration figures pushed through previously outlawed measures with the aid of inexperienced military officials at Guantánamo.
• Myers believes he was a victim of "intrigue" by top lawyers at the department of justice, the office of vice-president Dick Cheney, and at Donald Rumsfeld's defence department.
• The Guantánamo lawyers charged with devising interrogation techniques were inspired by the exploits of Jack Bauer in the American TV series “24”.
The lawyers, all political appointees, who pushed through the interrogation techniques were Alberto Gonzales, David Addington and William Haynes. Also involved were Doug Feith, Rumsfeld's under-secretary for policy, and Jay Bybee and John Yoo, two assistant attorney generals.
Many detainees have simply been tortured to death. Most of these were innocent. (See above, Murder under Trust).
The United States now tortures people in secret prisons. The methods used are based on those developed by the worst Communist totalitarian regimes of the past and on the fevered imaginings of Hollywood scriptwriters.
The Bush administration has tried to explain away the ill-treatment of detainees by blaming junior officials. Mayer’s and Sands' and books establish that pressure for aggressive and cruel treatment of detainees came from the top and was sanctioned by the most senior lawyers. Much more in the way of testimony and documentation will be easily available to the House in an impeachment proceeding.
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