Guest post
Published in the Guardian, UK 3/5/11
Colonel Morris Davis: “As former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo, I know that until the US rights the record on torture, its human rights calls ring hollow”
Once upon a time, Americans across the political spectrum were united behind efforts to prevent torture and punish torturers. The United States signed the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT) in 1988 when Republican Ronald Reagan was president. A Democrat-controlled Congress ratified it in 1994. The CAT says, “No exceptional circumstance whatsoever … may be invoked as justification of torture,” a principle the US endorsed without reservation. The CAT requires nations to enact domestic laws criminalising torture, and in 1994, a torture statute was added to the US criminal code.
A Republican member of Congress sponsored the War Crimes Act in 1996, which made “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions – like torture – federal crimes. He wanted Americans abused by former adversaries to get the justice they deserved but had been denied. The measure passed a Republican-controlled Congress by unanimous consent and President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, signed it into law.
Americans were solidly against torture when they believed they were beneficiaries of anti-torture laws. But then, the 11 September 2001 attacks occurred – and created an exceptional circumstance used by some as justification to draw new lines between right and wrong.
Susan Crawford had held key posts in Republican administrations dating back to Reagan; then, in 2007, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates appointed her head of the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In an interview with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward published a few days before President George Bush left office in 2009, Crawford explained why she dismissed charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, the so-called 20th hijacker. “We tortured Qahtani,” she said; “His treatment met the legal definition of torture.”
US government officials in other detainee cases reached similar conclusions:
• Judge James Robertson, in the case of Mohammedou Salahi, found “ample evidence” that “Salahi was subjected to extensive and severe mistreatment at Guantanamo.”
• Military commission judge Colonel Stephen Henley concluded that Mohammed Jawad endured “abusive conduct and cruel and inhuman treatment” and that his abuse “was not simple negligence but flagrant misbehaviour”. Judge Henley suggested those responsible “face appropriate disciplinary action.” None has.
• In the trial of East Africa embassy bomber Ahmed Ghailani, federal Judge Lewis Kaplan granted a motion to block the testimony of the only witness connecting Ghailani to the explosives used in the bombings. Ghailani said he revealed the identity of the witness while being tortured at a secret CIA site, an allegation US government prosecutors did not dispute. In his opinion granting the defence motion, Judge Kaplan said:
“The court has not reached this conclusion lightly. It is acutely aware of the perilous nature of the world in which we live. But the Constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must follow it not only when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction. To do less would diminish us and undermine the foundation upon which we stand.”
In a memo in early 2003, Jack Rives, the US Air Force judge advocate general at the time and now executive director of the American Bar Association, warned senior government officials that “several of the exceptional (interrogation) techniques, on their face, amount to violations of domestic criminal law and the (military criminal code)” and put “the interrogators and the chain of command at risk of criminal accusation”. Bush administration officials ignored the warning.
Philip Zelikow, a state department attorney in the Bush administration, told Congress:
“The US government adopted an unprecedented programme of coolly calculated dehumanising abuse and physical torment to extract information. This was a mistake, perhaps a disastrous one. It was a collective failure, in which a number of officials and members of Congress of both parties played a part, endorsing a CIA programme of physical coercion.”
In a speech in May 2009, President Barack Obama said that in the wake of 9/11, the US government made some decisions “based upon fear rather than foresight” and the nation “went off course”. He rejected the notion that “brutal methods like waterboarding” were necessary to keep America safe and added that such tactics “undermine the rule of law” and “alienate us in the world”.
President Obama recently warned Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi that the brutality inflicted on his own citizens was “outrageous and it is unacceptable”, saying it violates “international norms and every standard of common decency”. He said those responsible “must be held accountable”. President Obama ended his remarks by saying “the United States will continue to stand up for freedom, stand up for justice, and stand up for the dignity of all people.”
The United States cannot stand up for justice and the rule of law when it sits idly on its own record of torture. It diminishes the weight of its moral authority to influence others around the world when it treats its binding legal obligations as options it can choose to exercise or ignore. If President Obama is sincere about standing up for fundamental values, then America’s actions must live up to its rhetoric.
Disclaimer: All guest posts are the opinion of the poster and do not necessarily represent the views of moonhowlings.net administration
M-H
“President Obama recently warned Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi that the brutality inflicted on his own citizens was “outrageous and it is unacceptable”, saying it violates “international norms and every standard of common decency”
If we were to line up dictators and rank them by their brutality, I think Saddam Hussein and his sons would be off the graph compared to Gaddafi. Were we really just motivated by “fear rather then foresight” in finally toppling that villainous regime?
@Emma, dunno. It is hard to say.
But Saddam couldn’t hold a candle to the Khemer Rouge who killed 1.7M of their own people. And we’ve still got the stunted growth people of North Korea who’ve suffered under the Dear Leader and his clan. Iraq wasn’t about concern over evil inflicted on Iraqis, it was settling the score for trying to kill poppy when he visited Kuwait and to finish the job poppy left unfinished in desert storm. Our efforts are rarely altrustic. It’s always about protecting our own interest, in this case ensuring our oil addiction gets what it needs to fuel our exceptionalism.
I know I shared the story of the town hall meeting with Congressman Davis a few years back. I started by sharing how his children attended the middle school that I was a counselor at and that I really admired him for sending his kids to public school. Then I told him how disppointed I was in my country for losing our way and becomine a nation that tortured. He gave me some blather about the show 24 and Jack Bauer. I was horrified that he thought hollywood was an appropriate model for the constitution. The rest of the conversation went downhill from there.
@Morris Davis I didn’t mean that as a justification for the Iraq war, which I never supported. I just find it odd to hear rallying cries now to bring down dictators and fuss about Gaddafi violating “international norms and every standard of common decency,” when George Bush’s efforts to bring down Saddam were dismissed as nothing more than arrogance.
Can you be just a bit clearer in your advocacy, Morris? Without all the fancy phrasing, are you asking that our CIA officers and other officials be tossed in the slammer for actions “based upon fear rather than foresight”? Does that include former President Bush II as well? Is that how you want America to “live up to its rhetoric” at this stage of the battle? Just asking.
Wolverine – Too often it’s the person at the low end of the totem pole that is held accountable while those at the top remain unscathed, and that’s wrong. The guys I knew that were on the operational end were following orders they were assured had been vetted at the highest levels of government. It is not there fault. Someone at the top needs to have the balls to say “By-God, it was my decision and the buck stops here.” You can look at the international and domestic laws I cited and they all establish an affirmative duty to investigate and prosecute. It doesn’t say, “well, if it’s not too inconvenient and won’t cause too much hassle it would be nice if you looked into it.” The laws create a duty that we’re required to follow, and if we’re not going to abide by the law we should shut the hell up when other countries do things we don’t like rather than lecture them on the rule of law and their obligations. If we’re just a NOLINO (a nation of laws in name only) then we need to stay off of the soap box and quit looking like hypocrits.
But, Morris, you are speaking of one series of incidents in one timeframe of our history and in a situation in which this country was under a type of duress never before experienced. Is it really fair to toss the apple of those specific incidents (which seem to me to be anomalies) in with the oranges of the Gaddafis of this world as some sort of moral equivalency and to somehow condemn this nation and muffle it into silence for our one Constitutional slip if we do not judicially punish certain formerly high-level Americans for those anomalies?
Do we as a generic prosecutor not have an option to scold and say “Never again” (as President Obama has done repeatedly) instead of being absolutely obliged to place someone behind bars for anomalies committed with patriotic intention and not, as far as I can see, with criminal intent? And where does this chain end? If those who actually did the deed can be excused because they thought they were following lawful orders, what is to prevent even the highest official from arguing before the court that he was only following the legal and constitutional advice of highly trained specialists whose official function it is to provide such advice? Does our docket then possibly wind up with one sole occupant: the DOJ lawyer who said the deed, in his educated and considered opinion, was a legal one?
My friend, I spent years going head to head with Gaddafi’s minions. He has been a bastard par excellence with absolutely no qualms about killing innocents. Sometimes we beat him in the shadow wars and sometimes, most grievously, we did not. If it wasn’t for a fast response by Israeli security forces, I might well have lost a significant part of an overseas civilian Jewish community just because they were Jews and Gaddafi’s people thought that that that alone merited their demise. The guy did not easily quit. It was like being in one of those old horror flicks. You know the kind. The good guys, after a bloody battle finally subdue the monster and begin to celebrate their salvation. But in the last frame you see the eyes of the supposedly dead monster pop open. Fade to black. You know that there will be a sequel. That was the Gaddafi I knew. Bomb Tripoli in 1986. In 1988 comes Lockerbie. I and many of my comrades, in a manner of speaking, have looked this devil in the eye. I just cannot accept an equivalency of any kind between him and those who mistakenly engaged in that anomaly in a moment of great national stress and fear. In fact, the only time Gaddafi has really blinked in my recollection was when we invaded Iraq, and THAT apparently scared the crap out of him at last.
I also think that we too often misjudge what will and what will not make an impression on the foreign mind with regard to this nation of ours. In my humble opinion, the redress you seek may only last a relatively short time in the public eye abroad, and then we will be right back to the same old thing. The first time I was ever in France was in 1965, a mere 20 years after our own fathers and grandfathers had shed their blood in the liberation of that nation from the Nazi yolk. Surprise. Surprise. Instead of a warm welcome, I found far too often a disdain for Americans, American culture, and the American nation. I spoke fluent French from having lived in francophone Africa, so I caught the nuances much more than the average American might. And I don’t mind telling you that it has soured my thoughts of the French ever since — not all of them, mind you, but enough to make me spitting mad for a long time.
On the other end of that spectrum, in 1986 I was abroad about to go into a room full of foreign police officers when word came that our planes were bombing Libya. My first thought was that we Americans would have to hunker down again (we did) and that I was going to hear another earful about bully America and the use of our superior military force against a member of the Third World coterie, so to speak. But, when I opened the door, I was rushed by a number of those officers. They took my hand and pumped it vigorously. The gist of their remarks were thus: “Congratulations! It is about time. We had begun to think that America had totally lost its courage.” You could have knocked me over with a feather.
All I am suggesting here is that, in exchange for creating yet another internal divide in the midst of the unheard of spectacle of placing our former highest leaders in the criminal docket for a deed which may have been wrong but still with patriotic and not criminal intent, we might get in the end only a fleeting notice abroad. In a short time, in my opinion, we will be right back to the samo, samo. If this nation was big enough to forgive Robert E. Lee and his officers, I would think we could let the words and promises of the current POTUS and our courts stand as our response to these anomalies.
My understanding is that there were several memos (e.g. famous Yoo torture memos and others from the Justice Dept) that provided legal justification for “enhanced interrogations.” Although those memos have since been repudiated, they provided those involved with the belief that their actions were on firm legal ground. The present Justice Department has decided that the memos were wrong, but the point is that the people involved acted in good faith based on the legal interpretations provided at the time.
So I am not sure what you are advocating. Do you want to go after the lawyers of the previous Justice Department? That sounds like the actions of a banana republic. Do you want to go after the SecDef or CIA Director, both of whom would have assumed their actions were legal due to those memos? Do you go after the “torturers” based on the Nurenburg War Crimes trials when low-level soldiers were convicted, because following illegal orders did not absolve their
responsibility?
I guess one could argue for better vetting of such controversial memos, but they were classified at the time so they could not be debated publicly. If you were king for a day, what would you want to happen? What steps do you want taken and what outcome would you like to see?
I have to say that your interviews with the foreign press including Pakistan seem like they have the potential to inflame foreign readers and increase the danger faced by our military. So you
damn well better have some practical outcome in mind. Otherwise, your quest appears to be nothing more than a quixotic exercise in chasing wind mills, albeit a dangerous one that can get people killed.
I suppose it’s easy to moralize and condemn your own country–that is, until the day comes when someone, somewhere, is holding knowledge about something that could destroy lives and destabilize a nation. I suppose I could hold the moral high ground until the day I find I can avert an immediate threat to my nation, to my city, to my family. Or I suppose I could sit back and let it happen, in the hopes that positive world opinion will somehow cushion the blow.
Is Moe really moralizing and condemning or is he criticizing the fact that our standards have relaxed?
I believe he has walked the walk, not just talked the talk.
Where do we draw the line? Do we torture all our prisoners to get information routinely? Should this behavior be the new norm?
We weren’t in a routine situation after 9/11, so of course my answer to your question is a resounding no. But what about immediate-danger situations? Down on our own personal levels, what if someone you loved were kidnapped? What if someone else had knowledge of their whereabouts?
At the risk of bringing Elena down on me, I have always said I would torture if I thought my family were in immediate danger.
I just don’t think it should be done routinely as a method of dealing with prisoners. Now, if someone were sitting somewhere with a vat of bio-weapons, ready to be released into the pentagon within 15 minutes and we had the person ….I would hook them up to a generator if that is what it took.
Emma, now Elena is going to get me. I do believe there are situations like we saw on 24 that might create a situation where extreme measures might have to be used. I also wouldn’t have a problem killing someone who did something like that though–at least in the abstract. Running my mouth and actually being able to do the deed might be 2 different things. i will admit to that. In my case, talk might be cheap.
I think what Morris is saying, if I read him correctly, is that torture used-at any time-undermines the Constitution and with the rule of law, as evidenced in the court cases he mentions. Obama’s statement to Gadafi is a reinforces the fact that the US can’t have it both ways. We can’t call out torturers elsewhere while acquiescing to torture inflicted by our own government. Though I believe past abuses should be examined, the importance of Morris’ statement lies in the future not in the past.
I don’t trust the wisdom of governments, ours or Libya’s or any others, to make level-headed decisions in times of extreme circumstances without the kind of protections found in the Constitution. No one is immune from unchecked government power. Morris has shown what the consequences of these bad decisions in the past and rightly warns against them in the future.
This is a great article. Thank you, Morris Davis. I’ve been enjoying your comments for a while but was unaware of your background. You speak with integrity and authority. It doesn’t matter how “bad” the other guys are. We’ve set our own standards and have fallen short. Saying it’s OK because of the level of threat following 9/11 doesn’t make sense. Our guidelines were set up SPECIFICALLY to address our conduct in war time. Tossing them out because we’re “at war” is hypocrisy. Railing against another’s inhumanity is hollow and insincere if we haven’t cleaned up our side of the street. And I don’t see how the “appropriateness” of torture can be gauged on some sort of sliding scale according to the level of patriotic intent. Going too far for one’s cause, or “zealotry,” (extremism, fanaticism) is what we fight against.
I don’t understand the apparent disconnect between a commitment to “decency and morality” in terms of people’s personal choices and the shrugging off of a national responsibility to clean up our own side of the street before casting judgment on the other side.
“I have to say that your interviews with the foreign press including Pakistan seem like they have the potential to inflame foreign readers and increase the danger faced by our military.”@Kelly3406
I refuse to wear sack cloth and ashes just to gain some fleeting bump in US approval ratings abroad. On an overseas trip last year, a street vendor was very excited to meet an American, and he asked how I liked “your President Obama.” I cheerfully replied, “I think he’s been wonderful!” I wouldn’t dream of saying anything less flattering to a foreign national, let alone publishing it in the foreign press.
@BoyThreeOne “Tossing them out because we’re “at war” is hypocrisy.”
OK, so I’d be a hypocrite. But at least innocent people would stay alive. Or would you stand on principle and watch your children die? Seems counter-evolutionary to me.
The notion that the U.S. is above reproach and that it’s “dangerous” and “unpatriotic” for anyone to speak to it’s failings in hopes of learning from them and aspiring to correct them is something I stand against and hope that others do, too. Attempting to shame people for having integrity is a low blow.
Honestly, I don’t think the choice is between principle and watching our children die. I think principle is our best hope to keep the children alive and life worth living.
I am opposed to the death penalty. That being said, the state does not capriciously and randomly go around administering lethal injection to unsuspecting citizens. So I suppose one could argue that the willful commission of a capital crime in a death-penalty state is a form of suicide. So goes it with acts of war: You make the choice to blow up our people and our buildings, and we will do what it takes to stop you. Otherwise, live in peace.
And I am NOT using 9/11 to justify the use of force in Iraq. I’m just saying that willful acts of terrorism and provocations need to be deterred and met forcefully. Stand on principle with some of these dictators and fundamentalist regimes, and soon you’ll be standing on ashes.
I’m in the midst of migrating content from one website to another … if you ever get the opportunity, pass. It’s time-consuming, tedious, and not the least bit fun.
I want to briefly address a couple of comments.
Emma – You said “I’d be a hypocrite, but at least innocent people would stay alive.” If it was always possible to accurately sort the innocent from the culpable then I’d agree with your premise, but there have been too many instances where the initial assumption a person was culpable and a willingness to use any means necessary to make him talk later proved wrong and all we could do is say oops. If that person was you or a member of your family or a friend, I doubt you’d be as cavalier about torture and its virtues. As for the death penalty, there are multiple levels of judicial review before it is carried out. With torture, the Bush administration argued the President alone had sole power as commander-in-chief and the courts and Congress had no authority to interfere or to review his decision.
I think reasonable people can disagree over what is warranted in the ticking time bomb scenario. I do, however, believe that someone needs to be accountable for the decision regardless of which way the decision goes. Someone needs to say “the buck stops here” rather than passing the buck. John Yoo, the DOJ attorney that wrote most of the legal opinions on these issues, said “I was just an attorney asked to give my opinion on a range of options … I was not the decision-maker.” President Bush, in interviews during his book tour, said “I’m not an attorney … I relied on the lawyers to tell me what was legal.” That’s called plausible deniability, a common practice in government where everyone can wash their hands and no one is accountable. There were many people in government who warned of the consequences of what we were doing … Alberto Mora, Jack Goldsmith, John Hutson, Jack Rives, among others … and they were deliberately marginalized. It was a “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists” attitude where there was no room for discussion and no tolerance for debate or dissent. I don’t believe that practice was undertaken in good faith but instead was crafted to ensure only those that supported the narrative had a seat at the table. President Bush couldn’t say “hey, I just followed the lawyers’ advice” if there had been lawyers in the room that weren’t all of a like mind.
I’d ask Wolverine, Kelly, and Emma what purpose there is for laws if we pick and choose when they apply and when they don’t? The U.S. had a lead role in drafting the Convention Against Torture back in 1984 when Reagan was President, and it says there is “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever” (specifically listing war and other public emergencies) that justifies torture. Why waste the time and effort on laws if we aren’t going to abide by them? Do you believe an every nation for itself and any means necessary policy is preferable?
Finally, with respect to Kelly’s argument about the safety of the troops, I believe the policies we’ve followed since 9/11 have put them at greater risk than anything I could ever say or do. During the first Gulf War, Iraqi troops put down their weapons and surrendered by the tens of thousands because they believed we’d treat them right. As a result, the war was over in 3 days with minimal U.S. casualties. Look at the perception of us now. If those same Iraqi troops believed that we’d sexually abuse and humiliate them and subjected them to torture, would they surrender or would they fight? We were better off and the troops were safer when we were perceived as the good guys. We need to regain that reputation. I’ve heard from troops, current and former, from junior enlisted to multi-stars over the past few years and I can count on one hand the number that ascribe to the any means necessary approach. Recall that every one of the uniformed Judge Advocates General objected to the enhanced interrogation techniques and argued that the Geneva Conventions applied, but they were ignored and the chicken hawks prevailed. But if it makes you feel better about yourself to try and guilt me then have at it.
Morris, I am not saying necessarily that we pick and choose. I am speaking only to this particular case and the potential of further criminal prosecution giving us an internal divide of immense proportions without much real dividend in terms of foreign public opinion. Memories abroad, in my personal experience are very short. Here today and gone with the next day’s headlines. But we could be left with the unprecedented situation of having an ex-president in the docket and accused of something which was technically wrong from our ex post facto considerations but, in the end, an act with patriotic intent with the primary interest being to protect the lives of American citizens. This would not be a trial at Nuremberg. This would be an awful lot of feathers flying in a bitter internal fight.
If we did that, then one could say that, if Lincoln and FDR had lived, they should have been prosecuted for violating the basic tenets of the Constitution —Lincoln for habeas corpus and exiling the Congressional leader of the Copperhead Democrats to the South without due process, and FDR for interning Japanese-American citizens without evidence. — all this in a time of national crisis. We haven’t done that in this country because of the vast sea change it would make in the nature and tenor of our political system. The closest we came was Nixon, and I believe that President Ford made a decision which was really needed to end an internal nightmare. I think President Obama is looking at this in the same way; scold, say “never again”, and close the book. I don’t think he wants to be the C-in-C who starts a precedent of putting your former opposition behind bars, especially in a case with the features of this one.
Now Obama’s stance against torture is reinforced by the court cases you cited. In point of fact, it is now quite evident from a legal standpoint that these “enhanced interrogation” tactics will not help you in putting the bad guys away. It may well result in the perps walking. So, why do it in a criminal prosecution situation? You just have to decide to do what I had to do all those years: find the hard evidence which can stand alone no matter how long it takes. I don’t mind saying that the long way can be gut-wrenching and even costly in human lives; but, if you are locked in legally, you are locked in and have to deal with it. It does, however, make you work harder, faster, and more intensively. No easy shortcuts.
As far as the other part of this equation goes, to wit “enhanced interrogation” to save American lives which are in acknowledged immediate danger, this is an entirely different ball of wax. I don’t know how to solve that one. Public trials of our former leadership over the waterboarding incidents may bring sweetness and light to a few intellectuals in parts of Europe; but I will tell you that the enemies I faced and we now face would view our actions as a sign of weakness to be exploited. In their shoes, I would smile with satisfaction and tell my troops that, if you are ever captured, all you have to do is keep your mouth shut and holler “torture” to the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and the ACLU, etc. and your interrogators will back off faster than if they had seen a snake about to strike them. I think some of the Army interrogation manual is balderdash. You may be able to establish rapport with a buck private captured in uniform on the battlefield, but you try doing that with someone so steeped in religious or political hatred that he would cut your throat on the spot if he had the chance and then consider himself a martyr for the cause with 72 beautiful virgins awaiting him in Paradise. Good luck.
That puts our shadow warfighters in the real dilemma of damned if you do and damned if you don’t. And those warfighters of today are in a conflict which makes the wars in my time pale in comparison. You can get killed getting on a bus at Frankfurt Airport as fast as you can get killed walking down a street in Karachi — by the same group of guys. In my time, most of the counter-terrorist action against target groups could be fought on a specific territory in which the enemy was concentrated — with a few exceptions such as Gaddafi, Black September, the Japanese Red Army, and a couple of others. Now the fight can be anywhere, and that causes a real increase of the tension of constant awareness of the possibility of death just about anywhere you go. That changes the game — for real. And the stakes are larger. I often had to try to solve cases where the victim was a singleton but usually one of importance because of position and rank. There were times when I did have a larger number of victims, but I never faced a situation where the victims could number in the thousands. That is also a game changer. How you control the legal actions of the shadow warfighters in such a situation, I don’t really know. That war could go even deeper into the shadows. I wallowed in enough innocent blood in my time, but, if I had to wallow in the innocent blood of thousands because I didn’t go the extra mile when I had the chance, I don’t know if I would be able to keep my sanity.
I will tell you that there were times when my emotions told me that the law was an ass. I knew with certainty who the perps were but I was having a great deal of difficulty laying my hands on the evidence to even arrest much less convict or perhaps I was having trouble with a near hopelessness of getting extradition when an arrest could be made. That can be frustrating as Hell. There were moments when I believe that, if I had come face to face with these guys, I might have pulled a weapon and shot them where they stood. My post-action thoughts might well have been: “Colonel Davis, do what you will with me in the courts; but, by God, those stinking sons of bitches will never again kill an American.” If that was me then , you can imagine what it must be like in the shadow wars now — although admittedly the warfighters now have something I never had: an unmanned silver bird in the sky armed with missiles and an official license to kill. Hmmm — Does that sound like a future criminal case against President Obama?
Morris, I am not trying to “guilt” you on this, just arguing some points from long personal experience. In point of fact, I personally think that you have already come out a winner in this thing. I have read quite a bit by you and others about the circumstances under which you left Gitmo and the USAF. When I look at the court cases you cited and when I look at the policy of the current POTUS on this issue, I have to say that a lot of high level people are echoing the points which you were among the first to make. In my book that isn’t half bad for a stubborn ex-prosecutor from Gitmo. I don’t know of too many people, including myself , who could claim that on a resume.
Morris,
I have never stated that we should pick and choose which laws to enforce. The question is: whose definition of torture prevails? My view of torture is much less subtle than that of the pansy-ass JAGs. I am looking for missing body parts, permanent scars, solitary confinement in complete darkness for months, etc.
Your definition of water boarding as torture seems to have prevailed, but let me remind you that many in the military undergo the same treatment in SERE training. When Reagan signed on to the UN Convention against Torture in 1988, it was shortly after the kidnapping, torture, and execution of William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut. His torture reportedly included being skinned alive and being chained and hooded in a dark cell, the size of a coffin for months.
So I am not sure that he would have viewed the enhanced interrogation at Gitmo as torture. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. It was certainly an order of magnitude less severe than the treatment of Buckley or the beheadings by Al Qaeda. Many did not view it as torture at the time and there were legal memos from the Justice Department to back up that view.
So it is not so much a matter of picking and choosing which laws to enforce, but rather a reinterpretation by the present Justice Dept of where the line between enhanced interrogation and torture is located. I do not think it would be fair to prosecute someone based on that reinterpretation.
If you want to prevent this from happenng again, then you should work on new legislation that specifies in detail what actions are prohibited. But it should not be left to the national security community to define this on the fly and under pressure and then try to prosecute them later for making what you consider to be an improper interpretation of what constitutes torture.
As for guilting you, that was not my intention. It was my inention to get you to THINK before you make inflammatory statements to the press in Islamic countries where we are operating. You can get your point across without injecting it directly in the foreign media where hostile elements are sure to see it.
Wolverine – I appreciate the kind words.
Kelly – We prosecuted people after WWII and during Vietnam for waterboarding. You’re right that it is a technique used in SERE training to prepare our troops for the kind of atrocity they might face if captured. Of course in SERE it’s done as part of a training program conducted by your fellow servicemembers. You know it won’t be pleasant, but you know they’re not trying to kill you. You wouldn’t have that assurance if it was being done to you by the enemy forces your at war with. You don’t know that they’re not going to kill you and you’ll say whatever they want to hear to make them stop. If the decision is that’s not torture then we have no right to condem others when they do similar things to Americans. The only statement I made to a Pakistani journalist was to a friend, Ali Cheshti, who is a journalist and a lawyer. The point I made was that in my meetings with senior officials from ISI (their version of the CIA) they were willing to assist in our preparation to prosecute some of the detainees. That wasn’t to enflame anyone, it was to set the record straight that we had a mutually voluntary arrangement and there was not sinister about it.
Wolverine – I appreciate the kind words.
Kelly – We prosecuted people after WWII and during Vietnam for waterboarding. You’re right that it is a technique used in SERE training to prepare our troops for the kind of atrocity they might face if captured. Of course in SERE it’s done as part of a training program conducted by your fellow servicemembers. You know it won’t be pleasant, but you know they’re not trying to kill you. You wouldn’t have that assurance if it was being done to you by the enemy forces your at war with. You don’t know that they’re not going to kill you and you’ll say whatever they want to hear to make them stop. If the decision is that’s not torture then we have no right to condem others when they do similar things to Americans. The only statement I made to a Pakistani journalist was to a friend, Ali Cheshti, who is a journalist and a lawyer. The point I made was that in my meetings with senior officials from ISI (their version of the CIA) they were willing to assist in our preparation to prosecute some of the detainees. That wasn’t to enflame anyone, it was to set the record straight that we had a mutually voluntary arrangement and there was not sinister about it.
a whole lot of blather about how many angels dance on a head of a needle. you want torture you should see the instruments and methods employed by the spanish inquisition. waterboarding and whatever else u.s. personnel used in iraq is child’s play; calling those means torture is simply another manifestation of pathological liberal guilt, and jihadis worldwide are laughing at our idiocy. general pershing would dip bullets in pig’s blood to ensure muslim insurrectionists in the phillipines would be denied access to paradise, cry me a river. war is hell and a grim business, keep the faculty lounge off the battlefield
e — “calling those means torture is simply another manifestation of pathological liberal guilt.”
Here’s an article that summarizes how over the course of history we called those means a crime and we held people accountable.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html
Moe,
I will never forget when Shepard Smith said “we do not fu&^%ing torture in the country”. Principals matter the most when they are is the most difficult to uphold. We express our disgust at the tactics of dictators, in order to maintain any sense of morality, and then preaching that morality to the world, America must maintain its values.
america has no values to maintain; she has pillaged and marauded her way across the north american continent for two hundred years, deliberately infected native americans with chickenpox and stole their land, enslaved and subjugated minorities, interned japanese in concentration camps, and committed innumerable acts of terrorism and gangsterism across the planet. it was only with the election of our current president that i for the first time in my adult life actually felt proud to be an american
There are no gates holding you in, e. If America is such a dreadful place to live, I would consider relocating.