We-renounce-all-criticism-of-Dear-Leader-and-his-government

"I wouldn't join the International Criminal Court. It's a body based in The Hague where unaccountable judges and prosecutors can pull our troops or diplomats up for trial.

"And I wouldn't join it. And I understand that in certain capitals around the world that that wasn't a popular move. But it's the right move not to join a foreign court that could -- where our people could be prosecuted." - George W. Bush 09/30/04

"Men without conscience are capable of any cruelty the human mind can imagine." - Dick Cheney 01/26/05

What's next?  Televised show trials for journalists and editors?  Defendents denouncing themselves for being wreckers, spies, traitorous dogs, lackeys of The Terrorists and defamers of Bush the Magnificent?

Newsweek is backing off its story on American interrogators flushing pages of the Qur'ān down the toilet as part of interrogation tactics at Guantanamo: How a Fire Broke Out by Evan Thomas Newsweek online 05/23/05 issue, story accessed 05/15/05.

The spark [for anti-American demonstrations and riots in Muslim countries] was apparently lit at a press conference held on Friday, May 6, by Imran Khan, a Pakistani cricket legend and strident critic of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. Brandishing a copy of that week's NEWSWEEK (dated May 9), Khan read a report that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo prison had placed the Qur'an on toilet seats and even flushed one. "This is what the U.S. is doing," exclaimed Khan, "desecrating the Qur'an." His remarks, as well as the outraged comments of Muslim clerics and Pakistani government officials, were picked up on local radio and played throughout neighboring Afghanistan. Radical Islamic foes of the U.S.-friendly regime of Hamid Karzai quickly exploited local discontent with a poor economy and the continued presence of U.S. forces, and riots began breaking out last week.

Late last week Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita told NEWSWEEK that its original story was wrong. The brief PERISCOPE item ("SouthCom Showdown") had reported on the expected results of an upcoming U.S. Southern Command investigation into the abuse of prisoners at Gitmo. According to NEWSWEEK, SouthCom investigators found that Gitmo interrogators had flushed a Qur'an down a toilet in an attempt to rattle detainees. While various released detainees have made allegations about Qur'an desecration, the Pentagon has, according to DiRita, found no credible evidence to support them.

How did NEWSWEEK get its facts wrong? (my emphasis)

Now, I'm not going to try here to evaluate all the various reports for their levels of credibility.  But the story about desecrating the Qur'ān is not new; the previous Newsweek report only asserted that the charge was going to be included in a particular official investigative report.

What's important here is that Newsweek, to read their own account, is backing off a story that has lots of supportive evidence, based on little more than official Pentagon denials.  Anyone who thinks the Pentagon has earned the right for the press or any responsible American citizen to trust their public statements on their face just hasn't been paying attention.

Let's get real, folks.  The Bush adminstration and the Pentagon have set up specialized detentions centers like Guantanamo and Abu Ghuraib where systematic torture has been and is being carried out.  Those torture chambers are sheltered from normal legal procedures.

And like all institutions in all countries that carry out such tortures, the government officials in charge lie about it!  That doesn't mean that journalists should be careless.  But it does mean that if you are going to report on the torture scandal at all - which any press corps that is going to keep up the Potemkin farce of being a real press corps in a democratic country has to make some attempt at doing - you can't just take an official denial as being anything other than the same kind of official denial that officials in charge of torture in all countries always give.

In one sense, the fact that American torture practices in Guantanamo and elsewhere has set of a new round of hostility to the US all over the Muslim world does not depend on whether every jot and tittle of the particular Newsweek report that set it off is correct or not.  The Bush administration's torture practices are crimes that are a shame and a disgrace to the United States.  It shouldn't take riots in foreign countries to make this a daily front-page story until the the torture practices are ended, fully investigated and the perpetrators punished.

Any American that actually cares about the country and places any value on our democratic heritage doesn't like the think that American officials are doing what they are doing with the torture in the gulag.  But any American that cares about what is happening to the country should also get their head out of the sand and recognize that the US government is in the torture business big-time.  It's a real scandal, an international scandal, and it's not going away.  No matter how many patriotic slogans or accusation against the Liberal Press! Liberal Press! Liberal Press! the torture supporters try to hide it under.

And how responsible have the Pentagon and the Bush administration been on this issue?

Only America's most jaded and cynical critics could have foreseen what has occurred during the year since CBS News first exposed the terrible abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Since April 28, 2004, we have learned that the images captured inside the notorious military prison revealed only the initial clues to a grim investigation that has reached from Guantánamo Bay into Iraq, Afghanistan and several other countries. We have seen evidence proving that several hundred detainees in those places were subjected to brutal and illegal violence, and that dozens of them died under dubious circumstances. And the ultimate responsibility for many of those abuses can be traced to high-ranking military and civilian officials, notably including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

From the beginning, we were promised complete accountability by the nation's ranking authorities in the White House, the Pentagon and Congress. ... We were told, again and again, that the government's response to this scandal would demonstrate the resilience of our system -- and that the cynics at home and around the world were wrong to predict whitewash and coverup.

Now we can assess 12 months of investigation by duly constituted authorities, as well as human rights organizations and media outlets, and the results aren't uplifting. As if to mock those early vows of accountability on the scandal's anniversary, the Army's inspector general has just exonerated the brass, while punishment has been reserved for the grunts. Of all the ranking Army officers who might have been held to account, only Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who plausibly claims she has been singled out for her gender, was relieved of her command and reprimanded. (my emphasis) (Rogue officialdom by Joe Conason Salon 04/29/05)

A trail of documents showed that abusive interrogation techniques, such as the use of dogs and painful shackling, had been approved by senior military commanders and the secretary of defense. Even more extreme practices, such as simulated drowning and the withholding of pain medication, were authorized for the CIA at White House meetings presided over by President Bush's counsel.

All these facts are undisputed. Yet Pentagon officials have now made it known that the last of the official investigations of prisoner abuse, by the Army inspector general, has ended by exonerating all but one senior officer, a female reserve brigadier general who was not directly involved in the abuses and who received an administrative reprimand. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; former CIA director George J. Tenet; and Alberto R. Gonzales, the former White House counsel who is now attorney general, are excused: In fact, they were never directly investigated. The only people to suffer criminal prosecution from one of the most serious human rights scandals in U.S. history remain a handful of lower-ranking soldiers, including seven reservists implicated in those first photographs from Abu Ghraib. That the affair would end in this way is  even more disgraceful for the American political system than the abuses themselves. (my emphasis) (Impunity Washington Post editorial 04/26/05)

Army officials have defended their investigation into the humiliation and torture of the prisoners. But previous investigations detailed a virtual collapse of the command structure at Abu Ghraib. Is no one to be held accountable for that?

The only Army general officer recommended for punishment for the prison abuses is Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, who headed the 800th Military Police Brigade in Iraq. Her attorney has said that she will fight any charges because she's been unfairly cast as the "scapegoat for this entire situation.'' Given that the inspector general report exonerated Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez of any criminal misconduct even though Sanchez approved the use of severe interrogation practices that led indirectly to some of the abuses, Karpinski's claim certainly seems to have more than a ring of truth.

The Army is essentially closing the book on the Abu Ghraib scandal, but that won't make it go away. The photographs of prisoners in hoods, being threatened by attack dogs, are some of the indelible images of a "war on terror'' in which illegal actions, such as detaining prisoners without a hearing and authorizing torture, became standard operating procedure. (my emphasis) (No accountability for Abu Ghraib San Francisco Chronicle editorial 04/26/05)

But the Pentagon spokesman says Newsweek was wrong on that one report, and they meekly recant.  But neither Army whitewashes or journalists' public confessions of lack of fealty to the Bush administration will make the torture scandal go away, either.