Team Bush Goes Unpunished for Torture

[Guest guest]

C

 

Tue, 03 May 2005 22:24:21 -0400

Team Bush Goes Unpunished for Torture

 

 

 

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/050205B.shtml

 

Team Bush Goes Unpunished for Torture

By Marjorie Cohn

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

 

Monday 02 May 2005

 

When the torture photographs began to emerge from Iraq's Abu

Ghraib prison one year ago, Bush said, " Those mistakes will be

investigated, and people will be brought to justice. " As fingers began

to point up the chain-of-command, some prisoners were released and

commanders were reassigned. Congress held hearings, investigations

were undertaken, and some low-ranking soldiers were prosecuted. But

those responsible for setting the policy that led to widespread and

systemic torture of prisoners in United States custody remain

uninvestigated and un-indicted.

 

Last week, the Army inspector general cleared four of the five top

Army officers who oversaw prison policies and operations in Iraq. Lt.

Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who authorized the use of vicious dogs to

exploit " Arab fear of dogs, " was exonerated, as was his deputy, Maj.

Gen. Walter Wojdakowki. Col. Marc Warren, the command's top legal

officer who failed to report abuses witnessed by the Red Cross to his

boss for more than one month, escaped unscathed. And the report

cleared Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, former chief intelligence officer in

charge of the Abu Ghraib intelligence center, who failed to properly

advise Sanchez about the management of interrogations.

 

Only Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski was reprimanded. Although she was

in charge of the prison, Karpinski was discouraged from visiting the

cellblock where most of the torture occurred.

 

In his State of the Union address, Bush said, " Torture is never

acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture. "

Yet former CIA Director George Tenet, who approved the illegal

renditions of prisoners to Egypt and Syria where they were formally

tortured, has not been charged with any crime.

 

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the man who, according to

Seymour Hersh, personally approved physical coercion and sexual

humiliation of prisoners, has not been prosecuted. And Alberto

Gonzales, responsible for some of the most egregious torture memos,

remains the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. When

asked by Senator Richard Durbin at the confirmation hearing in the

Senate Judiciary Committee, " Can US personnel legally engage in

torture under any circumstances? " , Gonzales refused to give a

categorical " no " answer. He waffled, " I don't believe so, but I'd want

to get back to you on that. " The would-be attorney general surely knew

that the Convention against Torture prohibits torture at any time,

including wartime.

 

In fact, even if the United States had not ratified the torture

treaty, which, under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, is part

of the supreme law of the land, US personnel would still be legally

forbidden from torturing prisoners. The international prohibition

against torture is on par with slavery and genocide. It is considered

a preemptory norm of international law, which means that torture can

never be justified in any circumstances. The first Congress of the

United States decided that the law of nations could be directly

enforced in US courts. It enacted the Alien Tort Claims Act in 1789,

which provides victims the right to sue for a violation of the law of

nations. In its recent case of Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, the Supreme

Court upheld the preemptory nature of the ban on torture.

 

On Thursday, the one-year anniversary of the release of the Abu

Ghraib photos, the New York Times reported that the Army is preparing

to issue a new interrogations manual that bans interrogation practices

that weren't even in the old manual. Tom Malinowski, Washington

advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, said, " The existing manual

was clear. It was the exceptions that caused problems. "

 

Indeed, most of the torture did not occur during interrogations.

Sodomy with foreign objects, forced masturbation, stacking of naked

prisoners in pyramids, threatening prisoners with dogs, and leading

crouching prisoners around with leashes like dogs were not carried out

to secure information. They were designed to humiliate the Arabs in

captivity.

 

Just as US soldiers who fought in Vietnam were trained to think of

the Viet Cong as " gooks, " making it more palatable to kill and abuse

them, so did the US forces objectify their Iraqi prisoners when they

sexually abused and sadistically humiliated them. One US official told

the Los Angeles Times, " There was a mentality that the people we're in

charge of are not humans. "

 

When the Abu Ghraib photos first emerged, there was a sense of

outrage. But even though allegations of torture, not just in Iraq, but

also in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo Bay, and in secret CIA prisons,

continue to surface, the indignation has died down. When the subject

of torture comes up, Bush's war on terror is often cited to deflect

attention from the disgusting images. Yet a recent Gallup Poll found

60 percent of Americans would not support torture, even against a

terrorist who had information about an impending attack.

 

So why has the revulsion disappeared? If we were confronted with

pictures of US personnel torturing Swedes, would demands that the

perpetrators be brought to justice have evaporated so easily?

 

All three branches of our government must take responsibility for

addressing these atrocities. The executive should appoint a special

independent prosecutor to thoroughly investigate and prosecute those

responsible, no matter how high up in the chain-of-command. Because of

his role in the preparation of the torture memos, Alberto Gonzales has

a conflict of interest and is thus incapable of fairly performing this

function.

 

Congress must convene an independent commission to launch an

investigation similar to that of the 9/11 commission. The military has

shown it cannot impartially investigate itself.

 

And human rights and civil liberties organizations will continue

to file litigation to bring the perpetrators to justice in the courts.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First filed a

lawsuit on behalf of eight men allegedly tortured by US forces in Iraq

and Afghanistan. The defendants are Donald Rumsfeld, Janis Karpinski,

Ricardo Sanchez, and Col. Thomas Pappas, head of military intelligence

at Abu Ghraib. The suit is based on both the Alien Tort Claims Act and

the US Constitution, which guarantees due process prohibits cruel and

unusual punishment.

 

" Brutalization doesn't work, " said Dan Coleman, a former FBI agent

who retired last year. " Besides that, " he added, " you lose your soul. "

If we stand by and permit our high government officials to maintain

impunity in the face of their torture, we, too, will have lost our soul.

 

--

Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a

professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president

of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the

executive committee of the American Association of Jurists