Complicity Of American Forces In Torture And War Crimes Is More Than "A Few Bad Actors"

by Steve

"Torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture."
--George W. Bush, January 27th, in an outright lie.

Abu Grhaib and the administration’s treatment and abuse of prisoners is a cancer upon this country that won’t go away. Today, we had three different and troubling stories surface that show how corrupt and still unaccountable the Pentagon and White House are over these abuses. And the New Yorker breaks a piece that outlines how the White House is shipping prisoners all around the globe to other countries that practice torture, under a legal and political rationale fashioned by Alberto Gonzales and his friends, which maintains that the president can do whatever he wants, especially now after the election.

First, Time Magazine broke a story today about the how Rummy short staffed Abu Ghraib with medical staff, leading to a situation where amputations were performed on Iraqi prisoners by internists, and not surgeons. Furthermore, there were shortages of medical supplies and medications, leading to medical staff having to re-use dirty and unsanitary medical equipment on Iraqi prisoners and to use harnesses and leashes on mentally unstable prisoners. This is in addition to previous testimony which indicates that military medical personnel were complicit in administering torture.

Second, six former Kuwaiti prisoners allege today that they were tortured, beaten, and sodomized by American military personnel in Afghanistan until they confessed to being associates of Al Qaeda.

Third, this piece by Tara McKelvey in the current American Prospect magazine reports on how American forces physically and sexually abused female Iraqi prisoners.

And our disgrace in handling ordinary citizens of other countries who we suspect of being terrorists or their assistants runs rampant, as this piece by Jane Mayer in today’s New Yorker points out. The CIA is out of control in its practice of outsourcing the interrogation of suspects to countries that practice torture, and we have none other than Alberto Gonzales to thank for this. Here is a troubling paragraph from Mayer’s piece about the thoughts of former Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, a good friend of Gonzales’s:

Yoo also argued that the Constitution granted the President plenary powers to override the U.N. Convention Against Torture when he is acting in the nation’s defense—a position that has drawn dissent from many scholars. As Yoo saw it, Congress doesn’t have the power to "tie the President’s hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique." He continued, "It’s the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can’t prevent the President from ordering torture." If the President were to abuse his powers as Commander-in-Chief, Yoo said, the constitutional remedy was impeachment. He went on to suggest that President Bush’s victory in the 2004 election, along with the relatively mild challenge to Gonzales mounted by the Democrats in Congress, was "proof that the debate is over." He said, "The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum."

That is precisely how the White House views itself, and exactly why they are guilty of war crimes.