Secret Prisons, Torture, and Lies

The issue of the CIA having secret prisons has resurfaced in the news. As expected, the Bush administration isbrushing off the accusations, while former Soviet Block nations rush to deny they are hosting these sites. Why would they deny the CIA has secret prisons in their nations? Because torture is illegal in the European Union.

I am unclear why this is making the news now as it truly is not news. In the various investigations into U.S. violations of the Geneva Conventions, the highly public abuse and torture "scandals, and the use of secret planes for "extraordinary rendition," certainly this isn't "news."

Despite ongoing claims that torture is not an official policy of the United States, it has been clear for over two years that it definitely is. The memos, reports, and investigations clearly show that. If all of the thousands of pages of documentation don't give lie to Bush administration claims that torture is only the responsibility of a "few bad apples," then why was Cheney personally arguing against banning torture (Cheney Plan Exempts CIA From Bill Barring Abuse of Detainees)?

The McCain amendment was included in S. 1042 - The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006. (Interestingly, in a search under the Thomas Legislative Guide, I can not find that amendment included.) Cheney went to the Senate to argue for excluding governmental entities outside the U.S. military from using torture as an interrogation method. This is not too surprising with an established practice of secret detentions, and the use of CIA operatives and private contractors, as "interrogators." The administration seems to have tacitly given in on having the military involved in torture, but what is considered torture is still open for interpretation. To the best of my knowledge, Rumsfeld's guidelines have not changed, nor has the insistence that detainees are not "prisoners of war."

If you thought that Clinton's hair splitting on what counted as "sexual intercourse" begged the question, then you have to be foaming at the mouth over the Bush administration dodges over prisoners vs detainees vs enemy combatants, and exactly what counts as "torture." The average person, and certainly the international community, have little tolerance for the lines the administration is attempting to draw. It is also clear that the administration sees the Constitution as a barrier. That is why detainees are not held on U.S. soil, and why "black" sites being utilized by the CIA (and who else).

As a citizen of the United States, I am shamed by the use and open support of torture by the U.S. government. There is no legal twisting that changes my feelings on this. It is clear that this abuse of human rights and humanity is an official policy of the United States, whether that is supported by legislation or not. To claim on one hand that the U.S. does not engage in torture, while on the other arguing to allow "entities" to engage in torture, is not hypocrisy. It is an outright lie. To argue that this policy makes us safer is also an outright lie.

What both the policy and the practice do is to undermine the credibility and any moral authority that the United States might once have had. It stimulates resentment of the United States and rouses the people of the world against the U.S. and U.S. policies. It is a policy that takes us outside the community of nations and clearly identifies the United States as a rogue nation.

The use and promotion of torture by the United States is not new. The history of the School of the Americas (renamed though not re-tasked to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), has long taught the techniques of torture and terrorizing the citizenry. However, the techniques of the "school" were not the official policy of the United States, and were explicitly banned by the military code of conduct. That is no longer the case, and that is clearly a change.

The official policy of circumventing both domestic and international law goes directly to the administration's perception of the role of the United States in the world. That statement is clearly that the U.S. will do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, to whoever it wants. It is a clear statement that the U.S., and the U.S. alone has the right to "rule" and that anyone who opposes that is subject to being an "enemy" of the United States. This threat is backed up by the official policy change of preemptive war. In other words, the Bush administration has set the United States up to be an imperial power. If people think that makes anyone, much less the United States, "safer," then the lessons of empire have truly been forgotten.

Pertinent resources for further reading may be found at Uncommon Thought's Prisoner Abuse and Torture special archives

Posted by rowan at November 5, 2005 8:56 AM | [eMail this article!] |