Center for International Policy

Bush and the U.S. descent into torture

By Wayne S. Smith, Senior Fellow
South Florida Sun-Sentinal
June 19, 2004

Not in memory has the image of the United States been so stained in the eyes of the world. Now, when most people think of our invasion of Iraq, they think not of happy liberated people, but of that hooded Iraqi prisoner with electrodes hooked to his fingers and penis. As for the Iraqis themselves, a recent poll showed that only 2 percent had a favorable view of Americans.

When the annual State Department report was recently issued, grading the records of other countries in respecting human rights, it was met with derisive guffaws in press conferences around the world. With those hideous pictures of American soldiers laughingly abusing prisoners, the United States was suddenly in no position to pass judgment on other countries.

President Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and their usual cast of supporting characters tried to pass the abuses off as the isolated acts of a few misguided soldiers. But that will not wash. Documents are beginning to surface which make it clear that this was part of a pattern condoned all the way to the top.

Most damning so far is the 50-page Justice Department memo, dated Aug. 1, 2002 , for Alberto R. Gonzales, counsel to the president. In other words, it was written for the White House, and it states, among other things, that the Geneva Conventions against torture do not apply to "unlawful combatants" captured during the war on terrorism. It also states that anti-torture provisions in various international conventions may well not apply and that the acts themselves may not really represent torture. The memo asserts, for example, that "certain acts may be cruel, inhuman or degrading, but still not produce pain and suffering of the requisite intensity to fall within [the] proscription against torture."

If you're still breathing, in other words, then you must not have been tortured!

In my darkest, most pessimistic moments, I would not have imagined the U.S. Justice Department -- indeed, any official U.S. agency, except possibly the CIA -- coming up with so brutal a definition, and one so obviously at odds with the law.

Almost equally damning is a 56-page memo dated March 6, 2003, written by Pentagon lawyers for Rumsfeld. It stresses that the president has "complete authority over the conduct of war" and goes on to say that legal prohibitions against torture "must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander in chief authority."

In other words, according to Rumsfeld's lawyers, the president can do whatever he wishes in the conduct of the war on terror, even direct the torture of prisoners.

On June 10, Bush fended off questions, claiming he didn't remember reading the Justice Department memo, but that the actions of U.S. officials must "conform to U.S. law and … be consistent with international treaty obligations."

But that left open the question of which law: the one established by the Geneva Conventions and by the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which was given the force of U.S. law in 1996, or the law as newly interpreted by the president's own lawyers in the Aug. 1, 2002, memo saying that torture was not inconsistent with international treaty obligations?

The fact is that these memos, and others like them soon to surface, circulated widely and set a certain tone. Never did Bush take issue with their conclusions or dissociate himself in any way from them. They set the stage for what happened at Abu Ghraib and at other prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo, and the president allowed that stage to be set. In effect, he sanctioned the crimes even if he did not specifically order them.

More is coming out all the time. It turns out, for example, that Iraqi Theater Commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez authorized the use of dogs to frighten prisoners, removal of clothing, stress positions, extreme temperatures and long-term solitary confinement, most of which were already in use at Guantanamo. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who commanded at Abu Ghraib but was relieved of duty, has stated publicly that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, now the prison chief in Iraq but once in charge at Guantanamo, told her the prisoners at Guantanamo had to be treated like dogs. "If you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog, then you've lost control of them."

And so that, we can assume, is the way he wanted prisoners treated in Iraq as well -- like dogs -- and, we might add, that is the way they were treated.

And then there is the question of the "ghost detainees," prisoners who are held but not placed on the rolls, thus avoiding requests by the International Red Cross to visit them. At least one of these has been held at the specific instructions of Rumsfeld. And yet this, and most of the other measures mentioned above, are clear violations of international law. But when did the Bush administration ever care about international law?

The conduct of the Bush administration in all this brings shame to our proud standards and serves not the interests of our country in the world at large. It is a sad day in the history of our nation.