|
Torture trail seen starting with Bush
Jason Leopold
Online
Journal
Monday, Dec 15, 2008
A bipartisan congressional report traces the U.S. abuse of detainees
at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to President George W. Bush’s
Feb. 7, 2002, action memorandum that excluded “war on terror”
suspects from Geneva Convention protections.
The Senate Armed Services Committee’s report said Bush’s
memo opened the door to “considering aggressive techniques,”
which were then developed with the complicity of then-Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice, and other senior officials.
Three months ago, Rice admitted that she led high-level discussions
beginning in 2002 with other senior Bush administration officials
about subjecting suspected al-Qaeda terrorists to the harsh interrogation
technique known as waterboarding, according to documents released
by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, committee chairman.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
“The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be
attributed to the actions of ‘a few bad apples’ acting
on their own,” the committee report said. “The fact
is that senior officials in the United States government solicited
information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the
law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized
their use against detainees.”
The Dec. 11 report also disputed the Bush administration’s
rationale that the harsh interrogation methods were effective
in extracting valuable intelligence and protecting the country
from terrorist attacks.
Instead, the report said, “Those efforts damaged our ability
to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened
the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.”
The findings, which were released by Sens. Levin and John McCain
of Arizona, this year’s Republican presidential nominee,
drew no dissent from the 12 Republicans on the 25-member committee.
The 19-page report is the final installment in the Armed Services
Committee’s 18-month investigation, which generated 38,000
pages of documents and relied upon the testimony of 70 people.
The White House declined comment, but Keith Urbahn, an aide to
Rumsfeld, told the Washington Post that the allegations were “unfounded”
and called the committee report a “false narrative.”
The narrative
The report’s narrative of the prisoner abuse begins in
early 2002 when Rumsfeld’s Defense Department inquired about
what limits should be placed on interrogations of terror suspects
detained during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
Those questions sparked an internal administration debate and
led to Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, memo stating that the Third
Geneva Convention, which sets standards for treatment of prisoners
from armed conflicts, “did not apply to the conflict with
al-Qaeda and concluding that Taliban detainees were not entitled
to prisoner of war status or the legal protections afforded by
the Third Geneva Convention,” the report said.
“The president’s order closed off application of
Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded
minimum standards for humane treatment, to al-Qaeda or Taliban
detainees.
“While the president’s order stated that, as ‘a
matter of policy, the United States Armed Forces shall continue
to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and
consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with
the principles of the Geneva Conventions,’ the decision
to replace well established military doctrine, i.e., legal compliance
with the Geneva Conventions, with a policy subject to interpretation,
impacted the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.”
What followed were senior-level meetings deciding which interrogation
techniques could be used and which couldn’t.
“In the spring of 2002, CIA sought policy approval from
the National Security Council (NSC) to begin an interrogation
program for high-level al-Qaeda terrorists,” Rice said,
according to the report. Rice is now Bush’s Secretary of
State.
“Secretary Rice said that she asked Director of Central
Intelligence George Tenet to brief NSC Principals on the program
and asked the attorney general, John Ashcroft, ‘personally
to review and confirm the legal advice prepared by the Office
of Legal Counsel.’ She also said that Rumsfeld participated
in the NSC review of CIA’s program,” according to
the report.
In July 2002, Rumsfeld and his legal counsel, William Haynes,
solicited input from military psychologists about developing harsh
methods that interrogators could use against detainees who were
being held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“Mr. Haynes was not the only senior official considering
new interrogation techniques for use against detainees,”
the report said. “Members of the president’s cabinet
and other senior officials attended meetings in the White House
where specific interrogation techniques were discussed.”
John B. Bellinger, Rice’s legal adviser at the State Department,
said they recalled participating in meetings with Ashcroft and
Rumsfeld in July 2002 about an Army and Air Force survival training
program called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE),
which was meant to prepare U.S. soldiers for abuse they might
suffer if captured by an outlaw regime.
“SERE training techniques were designed to give our troops
a taste of what they might be subjected to if captured by a ruthless,
lawless enemy so that they would be better prepared to resist,”
Levin said Thursday. “The techniques were never intended
to be used against detainees in U.S. custody.”
Last April, President Bush told an ABC News reporter during an
interview that he approved meetings of the NSC’s Principals
Committee to discuss specific interrogation techniques the CIA
could use against detainees. The Principals Committee included
Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA
Director George Tenet and Attorney General Ashcroft as well as
Rumsfeld and Rice.
Spreading abuse
On Dec. 2, 2002, Rumsfeld authorized “aggressive interrogation
techniques,” leading to “interrogation policies and
plans approved by senior military and civilian officials [that]
conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were
appropriate treatment for detainees in US. military custody,”
the committee report said.
“What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that
detainees be treated humanely.”
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and amid the rising
Iraqi insurgency against the American occupation in 2004, the
harsh interrogation tactics, which had been used at Guantanamo,
spread to Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, memo prompted Lt. Gen. Ricardo S.
Sanchez, who became the top commander in Iraq, to institute a
“dozen interrogation methods beyond” the Army’s
standard practice under the convention, according to a report
by a panel headed by James Schlesinger on the Abu Ghraib prisoner
abuses in 2004.
Sanchez said he based his decision on “the President’s
Memorandum,” which he said had justified “additional,
tougher measures” against detainees, the Schlesigner report
said.
The abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib exploded into an international
scandal in 2004 when photos were leaked showing American prison
guards parading detainees around naked and forcing them into mock
sexual positions.
Bush, Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials expressed
outrage over the Abu Ghraib photos and blamed the abuses on low-level
soldiers acting on their own.
Eleven enlisted soldiers, who were guards at Abu Ghraib, subsequently
were convicted in courts martial.
Cpl. Charles Graner, Jr., received the harshest sentence –
10 years in prison – while Lynndie England, a 22-year-old
single mother who was photographed holding an Iraqi on a leash
and pointing at a detainee’s penis, was sentenced to three
years in prison. Their superior officers either were cleared of
wrongdoing or received mild reprimands.
The Bush administration’s handling of the Abu Ghraib scandal
drew especially sharp criticism from the Armed Services Committee
chairman.
“Attempts by senior officials to pass the buck to low-ranking
soldiers while avoiding any responsibility for abuses are unconscionable,”
Levin said. “The message from top officials was clear; it
was acceptable to use degrading and abusive techniques against
detainees.”
Regarding the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, the committee’s
report concluded that it “was not simply the result of a
few soldiers acting on their own.” The report added, “Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive
interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay was a direct
cause of detainee abuse there.”
Obama’s response
Human rights organizations have pressed Barack Obama to aggressively
investigate the Bush administration’s actions once he is
sworn as president next month.
In a recent interview with “60 Minutes,” President-elect
Obama told correspondent Steve Kroft “that America doesn’t
torture and I’m going to make sure we don’t torture.
Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s
moral stature in the world.”
But Obama has not indicated whether Eric Holder, his choice for
attorney general, will pursue an investigation into Bush’s
interrogation policies.
Rep. Silvestre Reyes, Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee, said this week that he told Obama’s transition
team that some of the Bush administration’s interrogation
policies should remain intact.
In an interview with Congress Daily, Reyes, D-Texas, said dealing
with suspected terrorists requires that “some options”
beyond interrogation rules in the Army Field Manual need to be
available.
“There are those that believe that this particular issue
has to be dealt with very carefully because there are beliefs
that there are some options that need to be available,”
Reyes said. “We don’t want to be known for torturing
people. At the same time we don’t want to limit our ability
to get information that’s vital and critical to our national
security. That’s where the new administration is going to
have to decide what those parameters are, what those limitations
are.”
Meanwhile, Attorney General Michael Mukasey has argued that there
is no legal basis to prosecute current and former administration
officials for authorizing torture and warrantless domestic surveillance
because those decisions were made in the context of a presidential
interest in protecting national security.
“There is absolutely no evidence that anybody who rendered
a legal opinion, either with respect to surveillance or with respect
to interrogation policies, did so for any reason other than to
protect the security in the country and in the belief that he
or she was doing something lawful,” Mukasey said during
a Dec. 3 roundtable discussion with reporters.
“If the word goes out to the contrary, then people are
going to get the message, which is that if you come up with an
answer that is not considered desirable in the future you might
face prosecution, and that creates an incentive not to give an
honest answer but to give an answer that may be acceptable in
the future,” Mukasey told the reporters.
Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee,
immediately took issue with the “breadth” of Mukasey’s
statement “and the blanket conclusion that everyone involved
in approving these policies believed they were acting within the
law.”
Conyers reminded Mukasey that reams of evidence -- including
testimony from career military and law enforcement officials --
show that top White House officials may have broken the law by
authorizing torture and warrantless domestic surveillance.
Indeed, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led an early investigation
of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, said “there is no
longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has
committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered
is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to
account.”
Christopher Anders, the American Civil Liberties Union senior
legislative counsel, said the Armed Services Committee’s
report “makes clear the role of top White House and Defense
Department officials in authorizing torture and abuse.”
|
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
|
|
