Reading notes

The full truth about Abu Ghraib torture and alleged child abuse must come out. We may not like what we see, and we may not like its repercussions. Indeed its repercussions may be horrendous. But we cannot live in darkness forever. The repercussions of further coverup will be worse, and worse still the longer we leave this unlanced boil to fester.

For 15 months now the Bush administration has insisted that the horrific photographs of abuse from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were the result of freelance behavior by low-level personnel and had nothing to do with its policies. … For some time these implacable positions have been glaringly at odds with the known facts. In the past few days, those facts have grown harder to ignore. …

The only good news in this shameful story is that … six GOP senators led by John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) have backed an amendment to the defense operations bill that would exclude exceptional interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay and ban the use of “cruel, inhumane and degrading” treatment for all prisoners held by the United States. The administration contends that detainees held abroad may be subject to such abuse. Attempts by the White House and Mr. Warner to block or gut the legislation failed, and on Tuesday the GOP leadership pulled the defense bill from the floor rather than allow a vote. The administration probably will spend the next month trying to quell this rebellion of conscience and good sense.

Would that the administration itself be overcome with conscience and good sense.

[via muledriver]

Bob Herbert is a hero for continuing to press this extraordinary rendition (torture) issue. For if we do not change this U.S. policy, we are lost. In today’s “Thrown to the Wolves“ —

In the fall of 2002 Mr. [Maher] Arar, a Canadian citizen, suddenly found himself caught up in the cruel mockery of justice that the Bush administration has substituted for the rule of law in the post-Sept. 11 world. While attempting to change planes at Kennedy Airport on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities, interrogated and thrown into jail. He was not charged with anything, and he never would be charged with anything, but his life would be ruined.

Mr. Arar was surreptitiously flown out of the United States to Jordan and then driven to Syria, where he was kept like a nocturnal animal in an unlit, underground, rat-infested cell that was the size of a grave. From time to time he was tortured. …

Among the worst moments, he said, were the times he could hear babies crying in a nearby cell where women were imprisoned. He recalled hearing one woman pleading with a guard for several days for milk for her child.

He could hear other prisoners screaming as they were tortured. …

The Syrians, who tortured him, have concluded that Mr. Arar is not linked in any way to terrorism. …

Nothing can excuse the behavior of the United States in this episode. Mr. Arar was deliberately dispatched by U.S. officials to Syria, a country that — as they knew — practices torture. And if Canadian officials hadn’t intervened, he most likely would not have been heard from again.

Mr. Arar is the most visible victim of the reprehensible U.S. policy known as extraordinary rendition, in which individuals are abducted by American authorities and transferred, without any legal rights whatever, to a regime skilled in the art of torture.

I think commenter Scarpia predicts accurately:

Humanity simply cannot countenance this kind of malevolent incompetence, and when [U.S.] power to intimidate the remainder of the globe is gone, they won’t hesitate to act on their righteous outrage.

U.S. brothers and sisters, do not hitch your wagon to this hellbound star. If already hitched, cut the chain now:

Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me. …

Depart from me, accursed ones.

—Jesus, speaking in Matthew as “the King”

Torture is one thing (turn, turn, turn)
for which there is never a season (turn, turn, turn),
yet the heavenly counsel remains:
Turn, turn, turn.

[via a new lively discussion initiated by Armando]

additional thought a few minutes later …

Most pragmatic reason to change this U.S. policy:
Torture will always return to hurt your babies

either —

• by direct abduction according to the policy (and as Mr. Arar’s example shows, innocence is no protection; there doesn’t have to be a reason) —OR—

• by others who are following our example in torturing prisoners (prisoners who are likely to be U.S. soldiers — IOW, our children and grandchildren)

Paul’s words have never been more appropriate —

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.

2005-02-28 update:
Bob has more today:

Mr. Arar’s is the case we know about. How many other individuals have disappeared at the hands of the Bush administration? How many have been sent, like the victims of a lynch mob, to overseas torture centers? How many people are being held in the C.I.A.’s highly secret offshore prisons? Who are they and how are they being treated? Have any been wrongly accused? If so, what recourse do they have?

If the U.S. mainstream media’s continuing silence about the Guckert/Gannon scandal demonstrates anything, it’s that the mainstream media can be silenced. If it can be silenced on a salacious story it’d normally spend weeks of round-the-clock headlines on, can it not be silenced on nearly anything else that paints the Administration in a bad light? I assess the answer as Yes; hence I assume we have no idea how many people have been disappeared because that info is not being reported.

Put another way, if you haven’t heard much about Guckert/Gannon, a journalistically irresistable front-page story if ever there was one, you’re certainly not going to hear much about people being extraordinarily rendered. If being informed is important, these days assuming “no news” means “good news” is bad news.

President Bush spent much of last week lecturing other nations about freedom, democracy and the rule of law. It was a breathtaking display of chutzpah. He seemed to me like a judge who starves his children and then sits on the bench to hear child abuse cases.

I can’t watch. I squint and he goes wavy transparent, then I see through the glass, darkly, something like the Mouth of Sauron speaking behind and through him. Now maybe I’ve watched too much sf/fantasy, but I think this image is not so farfetched if it’s true as Jesus says that “by their fruits ye shall know them“ — torture is, after all, an “evil fruit” that stinks to high heaven any way you slice it. It’s impossible not to ask, Where the hell did this come from? What must the tree look like that bore it?

Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit;
but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit,
neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down,
and cast into the fire.

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

2005-03-28 update:
Bob has still more today:

The Bush administration is desperately trying to keep the full story from emerging. But there is no longer any doubt that prisoners seized by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have been killed, tortured, sexually humiliated and otherwise grotesquely abused. …

The primary aim of the lawsuit [against Rumsfeld] is quite simply to re-establish the rule of law. “It’s that fundamental idea that nobody is above the law,” said Michael Posner, executive director of Human Rights First. “The violations here were created by policies that deliberately undermined the rule of law. That needs to be challenged.”

Lawlessness should never be an option for the United States. Once the rule of law has been extinguished, you’re left with an environment in which moral degeneracy can flourish and a great nation can lose its soul.

[via Melanie]

Bob Herbert writes powerfully, as usual, on the wrongness of present U.S. torture policy —

Extraordinary rendition is the name that’s been given to the policy of seizing individuals without even the semblance of due process and sending them off to be interrogated by regimes known to practice torture. In terms of bad behavior, it stands side by side with contract killings.

Our henchmen in places like Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Uzbekistan and Jordan are torturing terror suspects at the behest of a nation — the United States — that just went through a national election in which the issue of moral values was supposed to have been decisive. How in the world did we become a country in which gays’ getting married is considered an abomination, but torture is O.K.? …

Any government that commits, condones, promotes or fosters torture is a malignant force in the world. And those who refuse to raise their voices against something as clearly evil as torture are enablers, if not collaborators.

If refusing to raise voices against torture is enabling evil — and it is — then what is actively endorsing those in power who are ordering the kidnapping and torture? That is what the U.S. Christian Right is doing in effect if not in intent, and we will be held accountable.

(I keep saying “we” in a decreasingly heartfelt intent toward unity and solidarity, Christian Right, Left, and Middle. I’m less and less sure that’s wise. I sense there’s a point at which my disgust will overcome my intent and my use of first-person pronouns will fall away, though I doubt my accountability will. [two days later: I’m reminded that disgust is mostly not helpful. It’s a self-administered poison just as unforgiveness is. Working on cleanup …])

There is a widespread but mistaken notion in the U.S. that everybody seized by the government in its so-called war on terror is in fact somehow connected to terrorist activity. That is just wildly wrong. …

If seizure can so easily encompass anybody, it can too easily encompass you or me.

Jettisoning the rule of law to permit such acts of evil as kidnapping and torture is not a defensible policy for a civilized nation. It’s wrong. And nothing good can come from it.

As Pastordan reminds —

Christ died by torture in order to overcome sin and death. So why would Christians endorse exactly those things? …

God himself took human form and suffered torture and death. Therefore, we ought to look at the prisoners being tortured and see not just human faces, but the face of God.

(Boldface added.)

[via lively discussion initiated by Armando]

2005-02-25 update:
[promoted to its own entry]

[Sat 2005-01-29: Bumped back to top because it’s damned important]
[originally published Saturday, 2005-01-07 at 10:59 am]

I think the United States’ national soul is on the brink of spiritual death. Maybe it’s already dead.

Alberto Gonzales should never have been nominated for the position of U.S. attorney general, much less be on the brink of confirmation. You empower the torture and injustices he’s empowered, and you yourself may, if you’re lucky and contrite, be forgiven and rehabilitated at some point in the future, but in a just nation you have permanently disqualified yourself from any position of authority.

But we are not [being] a just nation.

Bob Herbert today captures the present situation well:

The administration that thumbed its nose at the Geneva Conventions seems equally dismissive of such grand American values as honor, justice, integrity, due process and the truth. So there was Alberto Gonzales, counselor to the president and enabler in chief of the pro-torture lobby, interviewing on Capitol Hill yesterday for the post of attorney general …

Mr. Gonzales shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near that office. His judgments regarding the detention and treatment of prisoners rounded up in Iraq and the so-called war on terror have been both unsound and shameful. Some of the practices that evolved from his judgments were appalling, gruesome, medieval. …

The Bush administration and Mr. Gonzales are trying to sell the fiction that they’ve seen the light. In answer to a setup question at his Judiciary Committee hearing, Mr. Gonzales said he is against torture. And the Justice Department issued a legal opinion last week that said “torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and international norms.”

What took so long? Why were we ever — under any circumstances — torturing, maiming, sexually abusing and even killing prisoners? And where is the evidence that we’ve stopped?

The Bush administration hasn’t changed. This is an administration that believes it can do and say whatever it wants, and that attitude is changing the very nature of the United States. …

I see the administration’s pathological inability to accept responsibility creeping into the culture. Its “whatever I can get away with” delineation of right from wrong is leaking into attitudes everywhere I turn, seems like.

There are few things more dangerous than a mixture of power, arrogance and incompetence. In the Bush administration, that mixture has been explosive. …

I’ve just had a real live former Hitler-era Nazi — someone who turned his life around decades ago and is now the most delightful of people — tell me he’s chilled by the similarities he sees between what he fell for in 1930s Germany and what’s happening in the U.S. during the past 4 years. It’s looked similar to my intuition for a long time now; he says from first-hand experience it is similar. I’d rather us learn from the past, not repeat it, thankyouverymuch.

How any Christian sees anything godly in these people mystifies me. It’s just deception within and without. There is no “setting free the oppressed” going on, as Jesus cites as evidence of the liberating presence of the Spirit of the Lord. What we’re doing is imprisoning people, not proclaiming release to them; we’re oppressing people, not setting them free.

Americans have tended to view the U.S. as the guardian of the highest ideals of justice and fairness. But that is a belief that’s getting more and more difficult to sustain. If the Justice Department can be the fiefdom of John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzales, those in search of the highest standards of justice have no choice but to look elsewhere.

“Do justice”? Love kindness? Walk humbly? By Micah’s measure, we’re already three strikes and out: Injustice, cruelty, and arrogance define us in the eyes of the world. Clearly we’re not measuring up to what Micah says “the Lord requires of us.”

[via Armando]

2005-01-21 update:
Fallenmonk reminds me of MLK’s apropos words:

This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Michael Froomkin’s analysis of the “Torture Memo” — the one from the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that seeks to justify torture and put the POTUS above the law (link to its full text) — reminds me I chose well not to become a lawyer. Yet for all that Prof. Froomkin is quite clear, and as a result I’ll be thinking about this for some time to come.

The memo is about what limits on the use of force (“standards of permissible conduct”) for interrogations conducted “abroad” are found in the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Torture Convention) “as implemented” by 18 USC §§ 2340-2340A (the Torture statute). …

I do feel a need to point out just how far down the slippery slope this memo goes by page 45. It argues that otherwise criminal individual acts can be defended by invoking the nations’s not the individual’s right to self-defense … And this applies to suspected prospective attackers and their associates as well as soldiers in the field. How this differs from saying that if the US even suspects anyone of wanting to harm it, it can do anything it wants to them is not clear on first reading.

Ultimately, the best legal commentary on this memo may belong to Professor Jay Leno:

According to the “New York Times”, last year White House lawyers concluded that President Bush could legally order interrogators to torture and even kill people in the interest of national security — so if that’s legal, what the hell are we charging Saddam Hussein with?

Remember: the lawyers who wrote this memo were guilty of a lack of moral sense, and extreme tunnel vision fueled by a national panic. The people who asked them to write it, who read it, and especially any who may have acted on it — they’re people who really have the most to answer for.

The character shortcomings I’m most vividly aware of in this Administration’s players — and in many of the people who support them — are a lack of empathy and a lack of foresight. Lack of empathy is a symptom of an almost-dead spirit, I think, so that’s at least understandable. But lack of foresight to see the outcomes of their actions, actions like putting themselves (as nation and as POTUS) above the law, is just stupid, is it not?

Commenter jnagarya speaks to this lack of foresight at Daily Kos —

[Bush] co[n]tempt for the Geneva Conventions is equalled by his contempt for the US troops from whom he removed the Conventions’ protections.

That means one can support [Bush]. Or one can support the troops. But one cannot support both.

Bingo.

[via TAPPED]

Yikes. Josh at Talking Points Memo comments on today’s WSJ article that’s getting such wide blog coverage:

[Today’s Wall Street Journal] article describes a confidential Pentagon report providing legal rationales and interpretations by which US personnel could use torture and methods of near-torture in contravention of various international treaties and US laws. The bulk of the arguments rest on arguments of ‘necessity’ and the powers of the president as commander-in-chief. They also go into some depth about how people acting at the presidents order could avoid prosecution for demonstrably criminal acts. …

“To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a ‘presidential directive or other writing’ that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is ‘inherent in the president.’”

So the right to set aside law is “inherent in the president”. That claim alone should stop everyone in their tracks and prompt a serious consideration of the safety of the American republic under this president. It is the very definition of a constitutional monarchy, let alone a constitutional republic, that the law is superior to the executive, not the other way around. This is the essence of what the rule of law means — a government of laws, not men, and all that.

Krugman’s assertion in The Great Unraveling that the Bush cabal is a “revolutionary power” that “means to smash the existing framework” seems to me more and more truly on the mark. The social factor that enables its rise, that “nobody can quite bring themselves to believe that the revolutionary power really means to do what it claims,” describes how the mass of otherwise well-meaning German citizens in the 1930s allowed the Nazis’ rise to power, seems to me.

I keep being way too tolerant of this radical Republican thought-cancer, I think. I want it eradicated not just from the GOP I once admired, but from the Body of Christ (the church) and the U.S. Body Politic forever.

See also intelligent post and discussion at Billmon.

2004-06-14 update: Today jnagarya makes a great point at Daily Kos:

If the president is above the law — has it “inherent” in him to “set aside the law,” which of course includes the Constitution — then the Constitution would not provide for impeaching and removing his ass for committing crimes.

And yet the Constitution does provide for impeaching and removing his ass.