THE VICE PRESIDENT OF TORTURE

[Guest guest]

Vice President for Torture

 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10774.htm

 

Washington Post Editorial

 

10/26/05 " Washington Post " -- -- VICE PRESIDENT Cheney is

aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an

elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that

Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans. " Cruel,

inhuman and degrading " treatment of prisoners is banned by an

international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration and

ratified by the United States. The State Department annually issues a

report criticizing other governments for violating it. Now Mr. Cheney

is asking Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA

to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad.

In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of

torture.

 

His position is not just some abstract defense of presidential power.

The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention

centers abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has

refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross

or to allow visits by its inspectors. Its prisoners

have " disappeared, " like the victims of some dictatorships. The

Justice Department and the White House are known to have approved

harsh interrogation techniques for some of these people,

including " waterboarding, " or simulated drowning; mock execution; and

the deliberate withholding of pain medication. CIA personnel have

been implicated in the deaths during interrogation of at least four

Afghan and Iraqi detainees. Official investigations have indicated

that some aberrant practices by Army personnel in Iraq originated

with the CIA. Yet no CIA personnel have been held accountable for

this record, and there has never been a public report on the agency's

performance.

 

It's not surprising that Mr. Cheney would be at the forefront of an

attempt to ratify and legalize this shameful record. The vice

president has been a prime mover behind the Bush administration's

decision to violate the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention

Against Torture and to break with decades of past practice by the

U.S. military. These decisions at the top have led to hundreds of

documented cases of abuse, torture and homicide in Iraq and

Afghanistan. Mr. Cheney's counsel, David S. Addington, was reportedly

one of the principal authors of a legal memo justifying the torture

of suspects. This summer Mr. Cheney told several Republican senators

that President Bush would veto the annual defense spending bill if it

contained language prohibiting the use of cruel, inhuman and

degrading treatment by any U.S. personnel.

 

The senators ignored Mr. Cheney's threats, and the amendment,

sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), passed this month by a vote

of 90 to 9. So now Mr. Cheney is trying to persuade members of a

House-Senate conference committee to adopt language that would not

just nullify the McCain amendment but would formally adopt cruel,

inhuman and degrading treatment as a legal instrument of U.S. policy.

The Senate's earlier vote suggests that it will not allow such a

betrayal of American values. As for Mr. Cheney: He will be remembered

as the vice president who campaigned for torture.

 

 

© 2005 The Washington Post Company