Torturing From The Top
In case you missed it amidst all the shoe-tossing hubbub, a new report shows that the Constitution isn’t the only document the Bush administration has been using as a doormat. There’s also the Geneva Conventions. At the end of last week, we finally got definitive proof that, despite the soothing slogan from George W. Bush and others that “We don’t torture,” we did in fact … torture. And it wasn’t just a couple of isolated incidents by a few rogue agents either. From the AP:
The physical and mental abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was the direct result of Bush administration detention policies and should not be dismissed as the work of bad guards or interrogators, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Thursday.
Here’s Senator Carl Levin, one of the report’s lead authors:
“The Committee’s report details the inexcusable link between abusive interrogation techniques used by our enemies who ignored the Geneva Conventions and interrogation policy for detainees in U.S. custody. These policies are wrong and must never be repeated … The abuses at Abu Ghraib, GTMO and elsewhere cannot be chalked up to the actions of a few bad apples. Attempts by senior officials to pass the buck to low ranking soldiers while avoiding any responsibility for abuses are unconscionable. The message from top officials was clear; it was acceptable to use degrading and abusive techniques against detainees.”
Just how high up in the administration did the torture policy go? The report doesn’t specify. But earlier stories, especially outside the U.S. suggest that “the top officials” involved in torture policy included the highest, most senior top official there is: President shoe dodger himself. From January in the Guardian UK:
Under questioning from a Democratic senator, US attorney general Michael Mukasey today suggested that George Bush might have personally authorised the waterboarding of suspected terrorists.
And yet, despite damning evidence that the highest levels of the executive branch violated the Geneva Conventions, the only people to be punished thus far–and probably ever–are a few low level army grunts. In other words, even though there was a system-wide abuse of power and clear top-down criminality going on, it’s all been pinned on one on or two “bad apples.” And the Washington establishment, especially the beltway media, has been complicit in the fraud.
Hmm … one or two patsies getting blamed for system-wide corruption. That sounds familiar. Where have we seen something like that recently?
PS: Andrew Sullivan has been covering this story relentlessly, and heroically, for years now. Back in May of 2007 he posted a copy of a World War II-era memo from the Gestapo on what they called “sharpened interrogation.” He reposted the memo today. With the release of the Senate report, it should be required reading for all Americans. Here’s a chilling experiment: take away the word Gestapo in the memo and replace it with “CIA” or “Pentagon” and try to tell the difference between us and them.
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