The President gave a good speach last night and made a good policy directive. He also used one deception after another in making his points. Frankly I'm glad he ordered the military to stop Torture. Frankly I'm sure he has not stopped the CIA and our "partners" from doing torture. Moreover, he called on Congress to ratify his efforts to use Kangaroo Military Tribunals to try the detainees1. He wants to be able to use secret evidence, withhold that evidence from any challenge by defense lawyers, and convict those prisoners without the embarrassment of a public trial. In short he wants Congress to ratify his law-breaking by "legalizing it" unconstitutionally. He needs a 2/3 majority for a Constitutional Amendment but only a 51% majority to change the Supreme Court.
For those who are guilty the way the evidence was gained almost guarantees a corrupted outcome. For those who are innocent, secret evidence almost always proves inaccurate and dishonest evidence. This is the method of the lazy and perverse who would punish scapegoats instead of doing justice. In short this is tyranny. And it will almost certainly increase the terror threat to the United States to let him get away with it. People need to stop believing his bald-faced lies and impeach him. Unfortunately that may not end the terror threat either. The far Right in this country is getting increasingly violent and paranoid in their rhetoric (because they are afraid) and if they can't take the war to places like Iraq and Afghanistan they may start bombing abortion clinics and Murrah Buildings again. Might is right, and right now the Right is about might.
He retracted his recommendations to the Army from 2002, finally bowed to US law and international law and claimed that the "United States" doesn't do torture. The Army doesn't, from now on, and according to the definition of torture created by Alberto Gonzalez's team anything short of actual bodily harm qualified as torture. So the President, in his mind at least, never authorized torture heavy; just water-boarding, excruciating positions where the torture is "self inflicted" and other diabolical and mentally or physically excruciating methods that don't actually kill the detainee. And when people carried out those orders at Abu Gharaib and Guantamo, they were punished; but so far not their commanders or their commander in chief. (See 00480.html "They acted with Impunity")2.
But then again that memo was false from the beginning. The Republicans had passed a law banning torture outside the United States conducted by anyone, including US officials. Ashcroft tried to weasel out of applying that law by saying that US possessions are exempt from that law because they are technically in US territory:
'Now, the law against the torture applies. When the Congress enacted the torture statute, it enacted a law that said it applied everywhere outside the United States. But when the Congress defined the United States, it's not simple: It will sometimes include military bases, it will sometimes include consular offices, it will sometimes include the residences or embassy offices. And when the Congress of the United States makes these definitions, that's what I have to live by."
But then his memo justified violating the law within these territories like Gitmo on the grounds that they are "outside the United States" Jurisdiction. The memos tried to create an imaginary world where the property was both in United States Jurisdiction for the sake of one law and outside of it for the sake of the other law. Two opposit things cannot be true at the same time unless one is parsing or the definitions were intended to create such a 'third state.' Parsing is just a way to pretend to be legal while committing lies that one hopes can't be proven as perjury. The Supreme Court has ruled that it was BS. It was legal "GobbledyGook" designed to put a cover on illegal actions.
He also tried to exempt people on the grounds that they hadn't signed the convention; "the only people who are accorded the protections of the Geneva Convention are, number one, according to the convention itself, those nations that are high contracting parties to the convention." That the conventions don't apply to non-Combattants (actually the 1977 conventions do but the US still hasn't ratified those). However, the US did ratify the torture conventions and it applied them in country and outside country. see (http://www.amnestyusa.org/stoptorture/law.html
All of this was devious, and at the very least parsed. And he was obviously uncomfortable with the subject because he had the good sense to depart at the end of his term. He was replaced with Alberto Gonzales who signed the Torture memos and seems very comfortable parsing and dissembling.
So anyway now the administration has finally found a reason for publicly eschewing torture; bad publicity. But their credibility is, to put it mildly, non existent. For one thing, those memos have only been disowned because they were leaked, and the Administration is trying its very best to arrest and punish those who leak such memos in the future, so it can say one thing publicly and practice another. The Presidents instruction applied to the Military -- but the only thing he said about the CIA was that the Congress should ratify his effort to use Kangaroo courts and secret evidence to try those terrorists it detained four years ago and whom it is finally releasing from its secret prisons -- to Guantanamo.
Footnotes:
1. I normally don't call military trials Kangaroo trials. Normally a military trial is as good as any civilian trial. But in this case if the defendent is subject to secret evidence with no defense review, lax rules, and the admission of coerced evidence, hearsay, partisan judges, and unreliable witnesses, that is what they'd amount to. They would be at best show-trials, and at worst so secret all we'd hear about later was that they were convicted and executed. That would be fine except that it means that folks like "Bin Laden's chauffeur" will be treated as if they were "Bin Laden's number 2 man" and sheep herders from Tajik province may be mistaken for leaders of Al Qaeda.
2. If the Democrats do win in 2006 (we) they should not let their guard down. This effort to redefine US law and create a permanent Republican Hegemony is long term and devious. For example if the Democrats succeed in repealing these laws and raising taxes on the rich, the Republicans are counting on blowback in the elections in the form of rich campaign coffers and deceptive advertizing in 2008. Moreover, all the emphasis on "getting them over there so they won't attack at home" -- while running a defective criminal and diplomatic effort is designed to increase the real risk while maintaining that the Republicans are the saviors from that same risk. The Arabs are certain to attack again, and if the Democrats dominate Congress we can be certain that the propaganda machine will blame Democrats. The fear nearly guarantees a blowback in the election.
I'll put more about this point in my next post.
I would disagree that the people who carried out the orders were punished a few scape goats were offered up for every one's amusement and pacification. The whole show of those prosecutions had to seem absurd, but if you comlain that it's all charades then you're marginalized. Is it that the fascists have such a strangle hold on government that there is no oppisition, or is torture something they can just live with, if you ask me it's both. The real irony is the expert scumbags who do that sort of work will tell you torture dosen't even work. It's only ironic if you think they have some other goal other than hurting people, and I've long been wondering.
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The experts will tell you that torture doesn't work to get legitimate information. Then some of them will begin to tell you what does work. The CIA believes in the methods of Gletkin (the torturer in the book Darkness At Noon). They know that terror does work; not just on the tortured, but also on the populations that are part of the torture. It doesn't get very much good information maybe, but that is only a secondary benefit for them. It gives them a sense of control, fear to use against their targets, and fear to keep their potential critics in line.
The goal of fascists (left or right) is to make people afraid, to dehumanize and demonize enemies, and to get and maintain power. Its the same sad thing; torture someone and that should someone will emerge into the light of day broken and hurt. The man or woman tortured is not the only target; His friends and family will be afraid. They will guard what they say and fear what they do not know. Eventually they may even forget why they guard their tongues. For the people of Belgium and Spain this happened. The inquisition worked to so scare people that Sephardi Jews, who now live thousands of miles away still have customs that were born in abject fear.
In Argentina the disapeared never returned. Their bodies were hidden, eventually the records were destroyed in a deal to "restore" democracy. The torturers are still there living in quiet retirement, only their dreams disturbed by what they did. And the people are still either afraid to speak, or unspeakably angry about what happened to the point where the only place that Communism still has Cache is in Latin America.
The trouble is that you cannot damage the soul without creating demons. Fear may hold people down but it doesn't create friends. No human being can create anything but a hell with torture.
But Fascists don't want friends! Bin Laden and company are the best thing that's come along for the Republicans since the Berlin Wall came down. They don't want him to stop being a terrorist, and that is another reason for torturing people. I don't know if they are so cynical that they have made a deal with him or not, but such a revelation would not surprise me either. Musharriffe certainly did. I don't know if that deal will work for him. In Pakistan Bin Ladenism and Wahabism are becoming increasingly popular. Pakistan is only a bullet away from Shariah and Moslem extremist rule. That would delight folks like Bush and company on one level, and terrorize them on another because it would be a creation out of control. But that subject is for another post.
Posted by: chris at September 9, 2006 06:10 PM More and more I think Bin Laden is still on the CIA payroll. They can't find Bin Laden, yeah, I believe that. If the terrorists really are acting for the reasons they say, it seems to me they are completely justified in targeting the U.S. we've been screwing with them for a century, it's about time someone stood up. War and terrorism are stupid, but one side's right and one is wrong. The U.S. is not right in conducting this war and more wrong for giving up all lip service to it's ideals in doing so. You're not free, you never were free, I think more people are catching on than ever before.
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