WHO AUTHORIZED TORTURE?

For some time now, the debate has gone on about who authorized the kind of torture that has been routinely used at Guantanamo Bay and that so visciously surfaced at Aby Ghraib. A few addle brained guards are paying the price for the Ab Ghraib horror, but no one up the line has ever been fingered for the offenses committed there.

On April 9, ABC News blew the cover off with a story that names names. (See: http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4583256) It seems that many meetings were held under the chairmanship of Condasleeza Rice. Attendees included Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet, Vice-President dick Cheney and Attorney General John Ashcroft – whose primary role was to assure the participants that their actions were legal - to decide in great detail just what forms of interrogation techniques American forces and CIA agents would be allowed to use in questioning senior al-Qaida officials.

The Attorney General of the U.S. might say their decisions were legal, but the rest of the world could and does reasonably disagree.

None of those gentle folks responded to ABC’s request for an interview on the subject. Isn’t that a surprise?!

I’m sure that they can each and all easily slip the yoke of any responsibility for what happened at Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib because the stated intent was to decide what to do with senior al-Qaida officials, so they can say that they never intended such techniques (They approved waterboarding for one thing.) to be used on anyone else.

That may be technically true, but the fact is that if such high level people authorize this kind of thing for any use, their underlings can rightfully judge that they will not be found at fault for using them as they see fit. In fact, there is some evidence that their behavior was openly condoned.

For instance, I have no doubt that Donald Rumsfeld approved of the general use of harsh techniques at Guantanamo Bay. There was a period of time, back when General Janet Karpinski was in charge of the physical facility of Abu Ghraib (before she was scapegoated out of the Army), when Mr. Rumsfeld expressed his displeasure with the lack of good intelligence that was being gathered by interrogators there. His solution was to call for the kind of results that he said were being attained at Guantanamo Bay. In an effort to duplicate those results, he transferred General Sanchez from his post as commander at Gitmo to Abu Ghraib.

Gen. Karpinksi reported that immediately after Sanchez’ arrival, non-military people (read CIA) began arriving and conducting interrogations in that prison. These people also gave orders to guards to “soften up” prisoners for interrogation. It was those “softening up” sessions that Lindy England and friends captured on film for the world to shudder at.

To me the bottom line is this: No government that believes there is any value in torturing anyone for any reason has any place in the capital of the United States of America.
Nor should any such government or any official of that government be immune from prosecution for the actions of those who follow their orders. It doesn’t matter to me that there is no evidence of a direct order from Donald Rumsfeld to Lindy England directing her to do the horrendous things she did to those prisoners at Abu Ghraib. What matters is that Mr. Rumsfeld and all his cronies could find it in their hearts to agree that there were circumstances under which such behavior is acceptable.

The Lindy Englands of the world are guilty of moral deficiency, but they are not nearly as guilty as those whose example they follow. The Lindy Englands of the world are just followers; sheep incapable of weighing and evaluating the morality of their culture and refusing to go along with immoral pressures; the kind of folks who made such excellent black shirts for the SS.

The real evil resides far above them. The real evil now resides in the White House and under the Capital Dome on the hill. This is one case where trickle down theory really works and Donald Rumsfeld knows it. He didn’t have to command anyone to do anything. He only had to let it be known that his office believed it was OK.

And of all of those awful people who gathered together to approve of this stuff, Colin Powell, a retired military many has the most to feel guilty about. He not only stood by and let it happen – he participated in decision-making that made every American soldier in uniform vulnerable to torture. Yes, people were tortured before. American soldiers were tortured in Vietnamese POW camps, but everyone knew that those administering the torture were criminals. Now America has no more moral leg to stand on than those North Vietnamese torturers. Now American soldiers no longer have the protection of the Geneva Convention because we have eschewed its restrictions.

Colin Powell should suffer every night for the role he played in this tragedy.


Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR

The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle