Rogue Soldiers or Rogue President? Scapegoating Small-Fry

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/100105Y.shtml

 

Rogue Soldiers or Rogue President? Scapegoating Small-Fry

By Ray McGovern

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

 

Saturday 01 October 2005

 

The news that yet another Army private, Lynndie England, 22, of

Fort Ashby, West Virginia, has been convicted and sentenced for posing

for the infamous photos of torture at Abu Ghraib, while her superiors

duck responsibility, is a sad commentary on the extent to which the

Bush administration has corrupted the US Army.

 

The reminder of the photos of those inexcusable activities was

sickening enough, and England deserves to be punished. But I am of the

old-Army school where officers took responsibility for the actions of

those under their command. For anyone who cares to look, there is

abundant documentary evidence that the Army brass and its civilian

leadership are responsible for the torture. They continue to dance

away from taking responsibility.

 

They choose, instead, to stone the woman, like the hypocrites of

Bible fame, contending that the photos inflamed the insurgency in

Iraq. It is the torture, not the photos, that inflames the insurgency.

And responsibility for the torture reaches directly up the chain of

command to the commander-in-chief himself. Perhaps when even more

repulsive photos and videos of torture at Abu Ghraib are released, as

a federal judge has now ordered, the American people finally will be

jarred awake.

 

So far, the silent acquiescence with which Americans - including

our institutional churches - have greeted President George W. Bush's

open assertion of a right to torture some prisoners evokes memories of

the unconscionable behavior of " obedient Germans " of the 1930s and

early 1940s. Thankfully, despite the hate whipped up by administration

propagandists against people branded " terrorists, " polling conducted

last year showed that most Americans reject torturing prisoners.

Almost two-thirds held that torture is never acceptable.

 

Yet few speak out - perhaps because President Bush says he too, is

against torture, and our domesticated media have successfully hidden

from most of us the fact that the president has added a highly

significant qualification. On February 7, 2002, the president issued

an order instructing our armed forces " to treat detainees humanely

and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity,

in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva " (emphasis

added). In the preceding paragraph, the president determined that

Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees " do not qualify as prisoners of war. "

Never mind that there is no provision in the Geneva Conventions for

such a unilateral determination.

 

Speedy Gonzales

 

In taking this position, Bush had to overrule then-Secretary of

State Colin Powell, the only one of his senior advisers with

experience in combat. On January 26, 2002, Powell sent to then-White

House counsel Alberto Gonzales formal comments on the latter's

MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT: " DECISION RE APPLICATION OF THE GENEVA

CONVENTION ON PRISONERS OF WAR TO THE CONFLICT WITH AL QAEDA AND THE

TALIBAN. "

 

This is the Mafia-like memorandum in which Gonzales not only

branded some Geneva provisions " quaint " and " obsolete, " but also

reassured the president that he could probably escape domestic

criminal prosecution for violating the US War Crimes Act of 1996 (18

USC 2441), as well. Here is what Gonzales told the president on this

key point:

 

... it is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and

independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue

unwarranted charges based on Section 2441. Your determination would

create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply,

which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution.

 

Meanwhile, back at the State Department, Powell apparently thought

the memorandum was still in draft. But Gonzales, who knew what the

president wanted, did not wait for Powell's formal comments. Rather,

on January 25, Gonzales sent his final draft to the president, thereby

shielding him from dissonance like Powell's written observation that

exempting detainees from Geneva protections " will reverse over a

century of US policy and practice in supporting the Geneva conventions

and undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops. "

 

Gonzales was already aware of Powell's opposition, and in his own

memo the former White House counsel and now attorney general was

dismissive of Powell's request that the president reconsider the

argument that al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees are not prisoners of war

under Geneva. In a short paragraph tacked onto the bottom of a list of

" negatives, " Gonzales took brief note of Powell's objections.

Gonzales's paragraph speaks volumes in the light of subsequent abuses

in Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo:

 

A determination that the GPW [Geneva Convention on Prisoners of

War] does not apply to al-Qaeda and the Taliban could undermine US

military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of

conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in

the status of adversaries.

 

Last week, over a dozen high ranking military officers sent a

letter to President Bush, pointing out that " It is now apparent that

the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and elsewhere took

place in part because our men and women in uniform were given

ambiguous instructions, which in some cases authorized treatment that

went beyond what was allowed by the Army Field Manual. "

 

A pity that Colin Powell limited himself to writing memos to the

president's lawyer.

 

The photos from Abu Ghraib, and the more recent Human Rights Watch

report describing " routine " torture by the once highly professional

82nd Airborne Division, offer graphic evidence that Powell's

misgivings were well-founded. The report relies heavily on the

testimony of a West Point graduate, an Army Captain who has had the

courage to speak out after 17 months of trying in vain to go through

Army channels.

 

Human Rights Watch Director Tom Malinowski has noted, " The

administration demanded that soldiers extract information from

detainees without telling them what was allowed and what was

forbidden. Yet when the abuses inevitably followed, the leadership

blamed the soldiers in the field instead of taking responsibility. " A

Pentagon spokesman has dismissed the report as " another predictable

report by an organization trying to advance an agenda through the use

of distortion and errors of fact. " Judge for yourselves; the report

can be found at http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us0905/. Grim but required

reading.

 

Pictures Worth a Thousand Words

 

After seeing the photos from Abu Ghraib last year, Senate Armed

Forces Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia took a strong

rhetorical stand against torture. But then he quickly succumbed to

White House pressure to postpone Senate hearings on the subject until

after the November 2004 election.

 

In July, Warner joined two other Republican Senators, John McCain

and Lindsey Graham, in attempts to introduce amendments against

torture to the defense authorization bill. The amendments would

require that US forces revert to the standards set forth in Army Field

Manual (FM 34-52) for interrogating detainees held by the Defense

Department. The manual prohibits the use of torture and cruel, inhuman

and degrading treatment. Another amendment that has been discussed

would require that all foreign nationals " be registered with the

International Committee of the Red Cross. " This would prohibit

sequestering unregistered " ghost detainees " at prisons like Abu Ghraib

and secret CIA interrogation centers.

 

Inured as I thought I had become to the gall of top Bush

administration officials, I found the White House reaction shocking.

On the evening of July 21, Vice President Dick Cheney went to Capitol

Hill to dissuade the three Senators from proceeding with the

amendments. But the Senators were not cowed - not then, at least. Four

days later on the floor of the Senate, John McCain - who knows

something of torture - made a poignant appeal to his colleagues to

hold our country to humane standards in treating captives, " no matter

how evil or terrible " they may be. " This is not about who they are.

This is about who we are, " said McCain.

 

The following day Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist pulled the

Pentagon spending bill off the floor, sparing Bush the political risk

of vetoing the much needed defense authorization bill simply because

it included amendments requiring the protections for detainees -

protections already required not only by international law but also by

US criminal statute.

 

Yesterday, the White House again warned lawmakers not to add any

amendments on the treatment of detainees. It will be interesting to

see if, in the end, the Senators cave in to White House pressure. For

if they do, they will be providing yet another congressional nihil

obstat for the general approach so succinctly voiced by the president

to then-terrorism czar Richard Clarke and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld

in the White House on the evening of 9/11. According to Clarke, the

president yelled, " I don't care what the international lawyers say, we

are going to kick some ass. "

 

Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the

ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. A former Army

officer and CIA analyst, he is now a member of the Steering Group of

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

 

This article appeared first on TomPaine.com.

 

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