Secret Memos Connect Bush and the Global Campaign of Torture

[Guest guest]

Secret Memos Connect

Bush and the Global Campaign of Torture

 

 

In Washington, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld fumed

that the " distraction " of Abu Ghraib prison has to

end. This theme has been taken up by the Republican

Right. One congressman said that he was " outraged over

the outrage. " Fox TV ranted that nothing the U.S. has

done can compare with the " evil " of its opponents

(past or present). Radio reactionary Rush Limbaugh

pooh-poohed the pictures as no worse than a

" fraternity hazing. " When leading generals were called

to testify before a Senate committee, Republican

congressmen and TV pundits said this had all gone too

far--these generals and the national discussion, they

said, needed to focus again on winning this war.

 

At the same time the military command is carrying out

heavy-handed actions to prevent any new " whistle-

blowing. " Units of former military prison guards have

been restationed to remote desert locations to prevent

leaks to reporters. A low-level Abu Ghraib prison

guard has been sentenced to a year in prison, mainly

for taking photos of the abuse -- a warning that other

soldiers should destroy any pictures they may have

taken. The military has also threatened Sgt. Samuel

Provance, who told ABC News that there was a major

coverup of the atrocities in Abu Ghraib prison.

Provance may be charged by the military because, he

was told, his comments were " not in the national

interest. "

 

Meanwhile many official " probes " have been launched.

Most are " internal investigations " by the Pentagon and

CIA that can be expected to find and destroy new

evidence before it gets leaked to the public.

 

And in a public relations flurry of ridiculous

" reforms, " the U.S. military claims to be ending

abuses. The general in charge of Iraq's military

prisons says he has banned the use of hoods to cover

detainees during transport. His innovation? Using

" pressure bandages " or black goggles to blind the

prisoners instead.

 

These are all attempts to end the scandal and suppress

any future exposure. But meanwhile, the government

admits it has over 1,800 slides and several videos

that document extreme abuse (including rape and

vicious beatings). And every day more incriminating

documents come to light.

Torture: Global, Deadly, and Approved

 

Through all the scandal, the U.S. government leaders

have insisted that Abu Ghraib was an isolated

unauthorized incident--the action of a few low-level,

freelance sadists. Day after day, new evidence is

shredding this lie.

 

This evidence shows that the torture operations of Abu

Ghraib employed the standard practices of the U.S. war

machine--in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo, in Iraq and in

all the still-secret CIA interrogation centers. In

addition, it is now documented that the U.S. forces

were repeatedly torturing people to death all over the

world.

 

Two recently released pictures show the dead, battered

body of an Iraqi prisoner, and over him crouch U.S.

prison guards, grinning wildly and giving the thumbs

up.

 

In a Pentagon briefing, the U.S. Army acknowledged at

least 37 cases where prisoners died in custody -- 32

in Iraq and five in Afghanistan. Army medical

examiners already admit that at least eight of these

deaths were " possible homicides " --including " acts

committed before or during an interrogation. " Among

the deaths being investigated is the treatment of one

of Saddam Hussein's top generals who " died under

interrogation " last November.

 

In addition the CIA has admitted that it too has a

growing list of cases where prisoners " died under

interrogation " by their agents.

 

There is every reason to believe that this is just the

tip of a still-secret iceberg. Only a very select

group of murder cases is being made public. The U.S.

military is not publicly discussing the many killings

of prisoners that they officially list as " escape

attempts " or " suppression of riots. " They are not

questioning the mass execution of many hundreds of

prisoners-of-war during their Afghanistan invasion of

2001. It has been reported by prison guards at Abu

Ghraib that the professional CIA and military

interrogators made sure that there were no records

kept on many of the prisoners they brought in--so they

could kill people under interrogation and dispose of

their bodies without leaving a trace.

 

As extreme torture, rape and murder comes to light,

some of the same rightwingers who say " don't dare

compare us to our enemies " are also openly defending

the torture, saying " Anything that might save a single

American soldier's life is justified. " And that is,

after all, exactly what the civilian and military

command have been telling their torturers and

assassins in secret . Rumsfeld has released a

once-secret list of Pentagon-approved interrogation

methods--and is vigorously defending them.

 

The photos made the abuse of prisoners public, and now

the scandal is forcing these imperialists to defend

their fascist methods in public. And they are doing

this because they have every intention of pressing

ahead ruthlessly to do " whatever it takes to win " --to

conquer Iraq, suppress the people, and carry out their

larger agenda of global domination and " preemptive "

war.

Paper Trail in the White House

 

The rules are `Grab whom you must. Do what you

want.'

 

A former CIA official on global interrogation

operations New Yorker , May 24

 

After September 11 the gloves came off.

 

Cofer Black, a former head of CIA Counter Terrorism,

Senate testimony, September 26, 2002

 

Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and

Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret

system of detention and interrogation that opened the

door to such methods. It was an approach that they

adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of the

Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of

detainees and prisoners of war. they left underlings

to sweat the details of what actually happened to

prisoners in these lawless places.. These techniques

entailed a systematic softening up of prisoners

through isolation, privations, insults, threats and

humiliation --methods that the Red Cross concluded

were `tantamount to torture.'

 

Newsweek 's summary of its investigation, May 24

 

As we have reported in previous coverage,

systematic torture was approved at the highest levels

of the U.S. government-- including by Secretary of

Defense Donald Rumsfeld, CIA head George Tenet,

Attorney General John Ashcroft and President Bush

himself.

 

Now, secret memos have been leaked that show the

details and inner workings of this White House

approval. Newsweek (May 24) documents how the U.S.

administration decided to ignore international laws on

the interrogation of prisoners and how they debated

the best legal ways to avoid later prosecutions for

war crimes.

 

Key players of the Bush administration-- Vice

President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and his right

hand man Paul Wolfowitz--argued, during the decade

before Bush Jr. came to power, that since the U.S. was

now " the world's only superpower " it no longer needed

to respect international treaties, international

organizations like the United Nations, or the demands

of its allies.

 

In their view, all of this unnecessarily constrained

U.S. superiority. They felt these agreements prevented

the U.S. from exercising the global dominance that

(they felt) this military superiority entitled them

to.

 

September 11 was a historic turning point where these

forces believed they could carry out the global

strategies and military moves they had been advocating

all along. So it should not be surprising that White

House memos now show that, soon after September 11, it

was openly argued that in its new wave of military

actions, the U.S. should not stick to the " rules of

war, " international treaties and even the Geneva

Conventions.

The Legal Equivalent of Outer Space

 

While waging war in the name of " freedom and

democracy, " the U.S. government worked systematically

to declare itself and its agents outside any rule of

law. Attorney General John Ashcroft's Office of Legal

Counsel was turned into a Think-Tank of Fascist

Justifications and Shameful Legal Double-Talk .

 

This Office of Legal Counsel produced secret legal

opinions that said the opponents the U.S. was fighting

should be considered " unlawful combatants " who did not

deserve any legal rights under international law.

 

In fact, this was a plan to make the U.S. government

" unlawful " --operating without regard to any law,

whether international treaty or U.S. laws. Newsweek

magazine writes that this Justice Department scheme

was then " endorsed by the Department of Defense and

ultimately by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales,

according to copies of the opinions and other internal

legal memos obtained by Newsweek . "

 

On Dec. 28, 2001, this Office of Legal Counsel argued

in a memo that U.S. courts and laws should not apply

to prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay. One former

administration lawyer said that the U.S. prison camp

was turned into " the legal equivalent of outer space. "

 

On Jan. 9, 2002, the Office of Legal Counsel signed a

sweeping 42-page memo concluding that neither the

Geneva Conventions nor any of the laws of war applied

to the conflict in Afghanistan.

 

Newsweek writes: " One Justice Department memo, written

for the CIA late in the fall of 2001, put an extremely

narrow interpretation on the international

anti-torture convention, allowing the agency to use a

whole range of techniques--including sleep

deprivation, the use of phobias and the deployment of

`stress factors'--in interrogating Qaeda suspects. "

 

These decisions represented a obvious break with

previous standards--and provoked opposition from the

State Department and sections of the military's own

legal staff.

 

A " smoking gun " memo written on January 25, 2003 by

White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales documents

that President Bush had already by then personally

made the decision that the Geneva Conventions would

not be followed.

 

Gonzales argues that the new global situation requires

" a new kind of war " and ignoring international law

would enable the U.S. president to " preserve his

flexibility. " Gonzales ends with this sentence: " In my

judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's

strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners

and renders quaint some of its provisions. "

 

Gonzales also points out that there is a 1996 U.S. law

that penalizes " war crimes, " including " any grave

breach " of the Geneva Conventions. With that in mind,

Gonzales argues that some careful legal footwork is

needed to make sure that future " prosecutors and

independent counsels " can't charge U.S. officials

(including obviously the President himself) with war

crimes (including the specific ones the White House

was at that very moment actively planning to commit).

Gonzales approves the official decision to declare

that Afghani opponents are " illegal combatants, "

saying: " Your determination would create a reasonable

basis in law that [the War Crimes Act] does not apply,

which would provide a solid defense to any future

prosecution. "

 

Over the week following that January 25 memo, the

inner circles of the government settled on the

double-talk they were going to use to legally cover

themselves: On Feb. 7, 2002, the White House announced

that the United States would (formally) apply the

Geneva Conventions to the Afghan war--but (a big BUT)

Taliban and Qaeda prisoners would not be considered

" prisoners of war " and so U.S. forces would not have

to stick to Geneva rules when handling them.

 

Newsweek writes that this " set the stage for the new

interrogation procedures ungoverned by international

law. " Some military " JAG " lawyers describe this

decision as " a calculated effort to create an

atmosphere of legal ambiguity. "

 

Soon a secret presidential directive authorized the

CIA to set up secret prison camps outside the U.S.,

and to use extreme means to interrogate prisoners

there. Special agreements were negotiated with foreign

governments for these secret sites. These agreements

gave legal immunity to U.S. government agents and

interrogators-- including specifically the so-called

" private contractors. " Some of these sites were run

directly by U.S. torturers, others were run by foreign

governments. In a process called " rendering, " the U.S.

turned some of its prisoners over to allied

intelligence agencies for torture.

 

Newsweek reports that CIA Director George Tenet

described these " rendering " arrangements in a

classified briefing to senators shortly after

September 11, 2001. In other words, the secret torture

operations were known by leading officials of both

parties more than two years before the abuses of Abu

Ghraib leaked out.

 

Newsweek says this rendering-for-torture was so

established that by 2004 the U.S. government was

running a " covert charter airline " to move prisoners

from one secret facility to another.

Getting the Orders Out

 

Anyone who opposed extreme methods was simply

overruled or removed.

 

The first commander of the Guantánamo camp (nicknamed

" Gitmo " ), Brig. Gen. Rick Baccus, was fired and the

new commander, Gen. Geoffrey Miller, announced a new

" 72-point matrix for stress and duress " which laid out

approved forms of coercion and torture. This is the

same list Secretary Rumsfeld has now publicly released

and defended--including the use of extreme heat and

cold, starving prisoners, keeping them hooded and

naked for long periods of time, and threatening them

with vicious dogs. It also called for using " stress

positions " -- forcing prisoners into painful positions

for long periods of time.

 

Newsweek reports, " later Rumsfeld himself, impressed

by the success of techniques used against Qaeda

suspects at Guantánamo Bay, seemingly set in motion a

process that led to their use in Iraq, even though

that war was supposed to have been governed by the

Geneva Conventions. "

 

The R has previously reported that Gen. Miller went

to Iraq to " Gitmoize " the prison operations there.

Newsweek has now documented that this was done on

Rumsfeld's orders.

 

Newsweek reports that Rumsfeld's undersecretary for

intelligence, Steve Cambone, send Lt. Gen. Jerry

Boykin to order Gen. Miller to go to Iraq. This

General Boykin is the fascist who announced that

George W. Bush had gotten into office without a

majority of votes " because God put him there " (in

other words, his god supports rightwing power grabs in

the U.S.!) Boykin also said he had been confident of

defeating a Somali Muslim general because " I knew that

my God was a real God and his was an idol. "

 

When these Christian-fascist remarks caused a

worldwide scandal, the Pentagon insisted Boykin was

too valuable to fire. Now we all know what his tasks

were.

 

Under Gen. Miller's direction, Abu Ghraib was put

under the control of the professional interrogators

from the CIA and Military Intelligence. These torture

experts organized the MP prison guards to " soften up "

prisoners using depraved methods.

 

Conditions in Abu Ghraib were so extreme that in

December 2003, women prisoners smuggled out a note

saying U.S. soldiers were raping them and begging the

Iraqi resistance to bomb their jail and kill them so

the nightmare would end ( Guardian , May 20). At least

one of the photos from Abu Ghraib shows a U.S. soldier

raping a woman prisoner. Reports of rape are being

documented from U.S. prison camps across Iraq.

" Terrorist " Label: Their Justification for Anything

 

Starting right after 9/11, torture was approved

against " terrorists " and the " sponsors of terrorism. "

Then the growing resistance forces in Iraq were also

labeled " terrorist. " And soon, anyone who might know

about the Iraqi resistance was treated like " a

terrorist. "

 

One CIA source summed up that torture was used on " cab

drivers, brothers-in-law and people pulled off the

streets. "

 

When the Abu Ghraib photos came out, Bush said, " This

does not represent the America that I know. " Well,

these photos certainly represent the America that the

world knows.

 

This so-called " war on terrorism " was never about

" defending freedom and democracy. " " Fighting

terrorism " served as a justification for the bloody

business of conquest. And from the very beginning, the

U.S. agents used torture and collective punishment

against those who opposed them.

 

Bush, his whole ruling clique, those top Democrats who

got secret briefings, and all the military and legal

institutions that carried out these operations--all of

them are deeply, deeply involved in unleashing this

nightmare on the world.