Where torture got him

[Guest guest]

Bush's effort to gut the Geneva Conventions has antagonized the

military, split Republicans, and undercut his war on terror.

 

By Sidney Blumenthal

From Salon.com

 

Sept. 21, 2006 | President Bush's torture policy has provoked perhaps

the greatest schism between a president and the military in American

history, deeper, broader and more fundamental than those of previous

presidents with individual generals. Seen from the outside, this

battle royal over his abrogation of the Geneva Conventions appears as

a shadow war. But since the Supreme Court's ruling in Hamdan v.

Rumsfeld in June, which decided that Bush's kangaroo court commissions

for detainees " violate both the UCMJ [uniform Code of Military

Justice] and the four Geneva Conventions, " especially Article 3

forbidding torture, the struggle has been forced more into the open.

 

After Hamdan, Bush could have simply allowed the Geneva Conventions to

stand. Rather, he sought legislation to reinstate his commissions,

permitting hearsay -- that is, uncorroborated information gathered by

torture -- and denying the accused the right to know the charges

brought against them, or even that they are being tried or being held

for life without trial.

Atlas

 

On Sept. 6 he made his case for torture, offering as justification the

interrogation under what he called an " alternative set of procedures "

of an al-Qaida operator named Abu Zubaydah. Bush claimed he was a

" senior terrorist leader " who " ran a terrorist camp, " had identified a

member of the Hamburg cell, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and provided accurate

information about planned terrorist attacks. In fact, Zubaydah was an

al-Qaida travel agent (literally, a travel agent), who did not finger

al-Shibh (already known), and under torture spun wild scenarios of

terrorism to gratify interrogators that proved bogus. Zubaydah, it

turns out, is a psychotic with multiple personalities and the

intelligence of a child. " This guy is insane, certifiable, split

personality, " said Dan Coleman, an FBI agent assigned to the bureau's

al-Qaida task force.

 

Bush's argument for torture is partly based on the unstated premise

that the more sadism, the more intelligence. While he referenced

Zubaydah, he did not mention Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, described by the

FBI, according to the New Yorker, as " arguably the United States' most

valuable informant on al Qaeda, " and who is wined, dined and housed by

the Federal Witness Protection Program.

 

On the same day that Bush made this speech, Lt. Gen. John F. Kimmons,

the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, presented the

Army's new field manual on interrogation, which pointedly encoded the

Geneva Conventions. Kimmons went out of his way to say, " No good

intelligence is going to come from abusive interrogation practices. "

 

On Sept. 15, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved an

alternative to Bush's proposal, a bill affirming the Geneva

Conventions, sponsored by three Republicans with a military

background: John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Former

Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bush's " good soldier, " released a

letter denouncing Bush's version. " The world, " he wrote, " is beginning

to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism, " and Bush's

bill " would add to those doubts. " That sentiment was underlined in

another letter signed by 38 retired generals and admirals and Powell's

State Department legal counsel, William Taft IV. Retired Maj. Gen.

John Batiste, former commander of the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq,

appeared on CNN to scourge the administration's policy as " unlawful, "

" wrong " and responsible for Abu Ghraib.

 

 

Before the committee vote, the administration had tried to coerce the

military's top lawyers, the judge advocates general, into signing a

statement of uncritical support, which they refused to do. The

Republican senators opposing Bush's torture policy had first learned

about the military's profound opposition from the JAGs. For years, the

administration has considered the JAGs subversive and tried to

eliminate them as a separate corps and substitute neoconservative

political appointees.

 

In the summer of 2004, Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Fiscus, the top Air Force

JAG and one of the most aggressive opponents of the torture policy,

privately informed senators that the administration's assertion that

the JAGs backed Bush on torture was utterly false. Suspicion instantly

fell upon Fiscus as the senators' source. Military investigators were

assigned to comb through his e-mails and phone calls, and within weeks

he was drummed out under a cloud of anonymous allegations by Pentagon

officials of " improper relations " with women. The accusations and his

discharge were trumpeted in the press, but his role in the torture

debate remained unknown.

 

Bush had intended to use his post-Hamdan bill to taint Democrats, but

instead he has split his own party and further antagonized the

military. His standoff on torture threatens to leave no policy

whatsoever -- and threatens to leave his war on terror in a twilight

zone beyond the rule of law.