Ray McGovern: "Torture in Our Name"

We have become our worst nightmare.

From truthout.org:
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Wednesday's article by the Washington Post's Dana Priest regarding CIA-run secret prisons abroad and the intense maneuvering this week in Congress over whether to legislate another ban on torture have again brought the issue of torture front and center. The next several days will show whether Congress has slipped its moral mooring.

Seldom have moral lines been so clearly drawn as they are on the issue of torture - the morality of which, until recently, was not controversial. I thought we knew, as a country, where we stood on torture.

The immediate issue is whether American armed forces and intelligence personnel should be permitted or forbidden to torture detainees. Very shortly, lawmakers on Capitol Hill will have to decide whether to approve a blanket ban on torture that applies to all US personnel, to limit the ban to the Defense Department (thus exempting the CIA), or to duck the issue entirely by dropping an amendment offered by Senator John McCain to the defense appropriations bill that would ban "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of persons under the custody or control of the United States government."

That amendment passed the Senate on October 5 by a 90-9 vote. But immediately Vice President Dick Cheney, with CIA Director Porter Goss in tow, descended on McCain pleading for an exemption for the CIA. The proposed exemptions stated that the measure:

Shall not apply to clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States, that are carried out by an element of the United States government other than the Department of Defense ... if the president determines that such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack.

You Mean Cheney/Bush Seek Authority to Torture?

It's not that they seek such authority. They believe they already have it - and do not want Congress messing with what they see as the president's authority as commander in chief. The context for the White House position is key. The words are stuck in a quagmire of gobbledygook, but what the administration has already authorized is clear.

After the publication in spring 2004 of the photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib, the administration released a raft of documents with a rhetorical flourish claiming the documents showed that there was no policy allowing the abuse of prisoners. The whole thing was rather surreal; the documents showed just the opposite. It was as though the White House thought we couldn't read.

Most striking was a memorandum of February 7, 2002, signed by President George W. Bush, on the treatment of al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees. That memorandum records the president's unilateral determination that the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war "does not apply to either al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees." The determination was of dubious validity because there is no provision in the Geneva Conventions that would countenance a unilateral decision to exempt prisoners from Geneva protections.
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[Read more.]

Personally, I do not believe in an afterlife or heaven/hell. However, at times like this, I find myself wishing that there were a hell which could bring justice to torturers.

Meantime, wouldn't it be nice if the U.S. legal system and/or international legal system could get the job done? (I won't hold my breath.)

God bless America.