Torture in the Bush Gulag: The costs mount

"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

I have genuinely mixed feeling about the ongoing torture scandal.  I'm very glad that it's finally getting more serious attention from the mainstream press and even the Congress.  But it is really a horrible thing to see the United States exposed to the world as a sponsor and practioner of torture.

 In the article I quoted in the previous post (American Debacle Los Angeles Times 10/09/05), Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote:

Compounding [the] political dilemmas [arising from the Iraq War] is the degradation of America's moral standing in the world. The country that has for decades stood tall in opposition to political repression, torture and other violations of human rights has been exposed as sanctioning practices that hardly qualify as respect for human dignity. Even more reprehensible is the fact that the shameful abuse and/or torture in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib was exposed not by an outraged administration but by the U.S. media. In response, the administration confined itself to punishing a few low-level perpetrators; none of the top civilian and military decision-makers in the Department of Defense and on the National Security Council who sanctioned "stress interrogations" (a.k.a. torture) were publicly disgraced, prosecuted or forced to resign. The administration's opposition to the International Criminal Court now seems quite self-serving. (my emphasis)

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern has long been outspoken against the torture policy: A Torturous Silence by Ray McGovern Antiwar.com 09/27/05.

Where do American religious leaders stand on torture? Their deafening silence evokes memories of the unconscionable behavior of German church leaders in the 1930s and early 1940s.

There's little chance that Chrisitan Right leaders like James Dobson who have the President's ear will be witnessing for Christ by telling Bush to end the torture policy.  They're too busy making sure teenagers don't hear a mention of contraception in high school sex-ed classes.

Despite the hate whipped up by administration propagandists against those it brands "terrorists," most Americans agree that torture should not be permitted. Few seem aware, though, that although President George W. Bush says he is against torture, he has openly declared that our military and other interrogators may engage in torture "consistent with military necessity."

For far too long, we have been acting like "obedient Germans." Shall we continue to avert our eyes – even as our mainstream media begin to expose the "routine" torture conducted by U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo? ...

I asked a Muslim friend recently what the Koran says about torture. After consulting an imam, she reported that the Koran does not address the subject because the Koran deals only "with human behavior." Do not we of the Judeo-Christian tradition also reject torture as inhuman and never morally permissible?

More recently, he has written on A Moral Compass for America by Ray McGovern Antiwar.com 09/27/05.

After the publication of the Abu Ghraib photos in 2004, the administration released a raft of documents claiming these documents showed that there was no policy allowing the abuse of prisoners. It was surreal; the documents showed just the opposite. It was as though the White House thought we couldn't read.

Most striking was a memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002, signed by President George W. Bush, on the treatment of al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees. That memorandum records the president's unilateral determination that the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war "does not apply to either al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees." This decision is of dubious validity because there is no provision in the Geneva conventions that would countenance a unilateral decision to exempt prisoners from Geneva protections.

"The primary goal of torture or the threat of torture is not to obtain convictions for crimes, but to engender and maintain fear." - Jimmy Carter, Our Endangered Values (2005)