[clammyc has just put a worthy post on torture up]
[note: this post originally had a title, which you can see in the "Torture a La Fox" section of the post, that disturbed some readers whose comments convinced me to tone it down - to maximize readership. My "quote" in the title is a substantially accurate version of the real, much more graphic, original.]
"The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience" - Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to reporters following Donald Rumsfeld's testimony, on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
This post, the fourth in a series [1, 2, 3] I've written on the Bush Administration and torture...
..., argues that rather than go after the Bush Administration for having committed war crimes (and the Administration probably has committed war crimes) it might be smarter to use legal methods that have proved effective at taking down organized crime rings because, for all practical purposes, the Bush Administration is a mafia operation. The RICO statutes would seem as applicable as prosecution for war crimes.
"Torture and abuse also took many other forms, all of them criminal. Federal government documents obtained by the ACLU through our Freedom of Information Act litigation and reports of the International Committee of the Red Cross documented torture or abuse against U.S.-held detainees, including acts such as: soaking a prisoner’s hand in alcohol and setting it on fire, administering electric shocks, subjecting prisoners to repeated sexual abuse and assault, including sodomy with a bottle, raping a juvenile prisoner, kicking and beating prisoners in the head and groin, putting lit cigarettes inside a prisoner’s ear, force-feeding a baseball to a prisoner, chaining a prisoner hands-to-feet in a fetal position for 24 hours without food or water or access to a toilet, and breaking a prisoner’s shoulders.
But unpunished crimes go even further, to include possible homicides..." [from ACLU Letter, linked below]
Last December, the American Civil Liberties Union issued a letter, which American citizens can send to their representatives in Congress and the Senate, which calls on Congress "to demand an independent prosecutor to investigate possible violations by the Bush administration of laws including the War Crimes Act, the federal Anti-Torture Act, and federal assault laws." [PDF of letter]. Today, Crooks and Liars has teamed up with the ACLU to push the issue. Digby's Hullaballoo has also been doing extensive and superb coverage of the torture issue.
Congress's passage of the Military Commissions Act may effectively immunize government officials from War Crimes Act violation but an independent prosecutor would be far from powerless. One possible legal line of attack not mentioned in the ACLU letter would be to bypass the issue of whether Bush Administration officials ordered war crimes and focus, rather, on the likelihood of a criminal conspiracy to commit war crimes...
The National Security "Badda Bing Club"
Last Wednesday, ABC broke the story of White House meetings during which highly specific details of torture were discussed by top Bush Administration officials including Dick Cheney, Condaleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, John Ashcroft and Colin Powell.
Then, on Friday, George W. Bush told ABC that he was aware of those meetings and "approved".
By many indications, the Bush Administration was highly aware that torture techniques discussed in numerous White House meetings, described in an ABC story that broke last Wednesday, would break both USA and also international laws prohibiting torture.
Last Thursday, on Countdown with Keith Olberman, George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley, noting the thuggish nature of the White House National Security Council "Principals" meetings on torture, described those as meetings of the "badda bing club" and some in the mainstream media have also noted similarities between the language top Bush Administration officials used to order their subordinates to implement torture and language typical used by leaders of organized crime when ordering assassinations ; the message gets through to subordinates well enough but the words themselves are sufficiently vague that they hinder attempts, by prosecutors, at establishing legal culpability.
The Bush Administration implemented torture techniques in a manner that obscured chain-of-command issues by implementing torture through both official doctrine, secret programs and the use of private contractors. Regardless, there is every indication that the White House "Principals" who discussed, according to ABC, graphic details of proposed torture methods knew quite well those violated US and international law, yet they ordered the torture anyway, and saw that it was carried out in a manner that would likely impede possible future criminal investigations.
"The unreleased images show American soldiers beating one prisoner almost to death, apparently raping a female prisoner, acting inappropriately with a dead body, and taping Iraqi guards raping young boys, according to NBC News." – The Boston Herald, May 8, 2004
The overall pattern is one reminiscent of organized crime and so, although legal prosecutors might be hard pressed to establish legal culpability beyond a shadow of a doubt, mundane charges of tax evasion brought down Al Capone and similar legal approaches, for combating organized crime, might prove useful against the Bush Administration.
More than the actuals crimes committed, whatever those may be, an investigation into what was apparently an organized effort to carry out those crimes, a possibly criminal conspiracy to implement illegal torture methods, could be the undoing of the Bush White House and, as with other mafia dons, it may not be at all necessary to demonstrate that George W. Bush was privy to the most specific level of detail about the proposed torture methods discussed in the National Security Council Bush headed ; mere approval of waterboarding, and we know Bush at least sanctioned and probably signed off on that, may be enough - especially if we can get access to other NSC documents, signed by Bush, giving wide authority on implementing torture to Don Rumsfeld and other White House members, and ordering them, in effect, to "make it so".
Torture, a La Fox
"The first year of Fox TV’s dramatic series 24 came to a conclusion in spring 2002, and the second year of the series began that fall. An inescapable message of the program is that torture works. "We saw it on cable," Beaver recalled. "People had already seen the first series. It was hugely popular." Jack Bauer had many friends at Guantánamo, Beaver added. "He gave people lots of ideas."
The brainstorming meetings inspired animated discussion. "Who has the glassy eyes?," Beaver asked herself as she surveyed the men around the room, 30 or more of them. She was invariably the only woman present—as she saw it, keeping control of the boys. The younger men would get particularly agitated, excited even. "You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas,"
[emphasis mine, quote from Philippe Sands' The Green Light, in the latest edition of Vanity fair
The Process
Other than what I have written in the last 3 days I have yet to find another report or analysis, whether in mainstream media or in the blogosphere, which acknowledges the basic bureaucratic reality of how George W. Bush was officially connected to the numerous White House National Security Council meetings on torture described by ABC : Bush is the head of the National Security Council and signs off on ALL major NSC decisions and resolutions.
It's critical to understand the basic process by which action memos on torture flowed up to the National Security, got tinkered with and turned into memos and resolutions that went up to George W. Bush's desk for his signature, then went back down to NSC members, Rumsfeld and the rest, to be implemented as policy and as presidential edict.
Due to the passage of the Military Commissions Act which "effectively insulated government officials from liability for many of the violations of the War Crimes Act they might have committed during the period prior to 2006" [source], it is far from clear that we'll see prosecution of White House officials for ordering interrogation techniques that were widely understood at the time, and still are, that amounted to torture.
That ugly reality, the get-out-of-war-crimes-prosecution provisions in the Military Commissions Act, approved by the US Congress, may in part explain George W. Bush's apparent lack of concern about the ABC stories that broke last week.
But by many accounts there was considerable concern, from federal agencies including the CIA and the FBI, about the White House plan to institute a regime of torture techniques that violated both the Geneva Conventions and US laws. These agencies were concerned that their personnel who implemented the White Houses' proposed torture regime might later be prosecuted for war crimes.
That's the sub-text of the entire torture saga - the federal bureaucracy balked at mere guarantees, from the Justice Department, that the proposed White House torture methods were legal. They communicated their concerns, that the methods amounted to war crimes, to the White House and they demanded a direct presidential order at least, a presidential sign-off on torture. And they got it.
In other words, there's a substantial evidentiary trail suggesting that top Bush Administration officials, and perhaps Bush himself, were involved in an extensive conspiracy, an intentional plot break multiple US and international laws.
As Philippe Sands discusses in the current issue of Vanity Fair, the torture techniques were discussed from very early on in the Bush Administration and a team of the top lawyers from the White House went down to Guantanamo Bay.
It was US government policy formation fed by pop-culture notions of torture from Fox broadcasts and as if written by Quention Tarantino ;
First, George W. Bush wrote a memo (an NSC memo, that is) declaring Guantanamo to be a Geneva Conventions free zone, then the experimentation into new and 'improved' torture began. After a bit, the legal goodfellas from the White House, Alberto Gonzales, Richard Addington, Jim Haynes and the CIA's John Rizzo go down to Gitmo on September 25, 2002 to view the results so far, and to tinker with the process. As Sands writes in Vanity Fair,
Not everyone at Guantánamo was enthusiastic. The F.B.I. and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service refused to be associated with aggressive interrogation. They opposed the techniques. One of the N.C.I.S. psychologists, Mike Gelles, knew about the brainstorming sessions but stayed away. He was dismissive of the administration’s contention that the techniques trickled up on their own from Guantánamo. "That’s not accurate," he said flatly. "This was not done by a bunch of people down in Gitmo—no way."
That view is buttressed by a key event that has received virtually no attention. On September 25, as the process of elaborating new interrogation techniques reached a critical point, a delegation of the administration’s most senior lawyers arrived at Guantánamo. The group included the president’s lawyer, Alberto Gonzales, who had by then received the Yoo-Bybee Memo; Vice President Cheney’s lawyer, David Addington, who had contributed to the writing of that memo; the C.I.A.’s John Rizzo, who had asked for a Justice Department sign-off on individual techniques, including waterboarding, and received the second (and still secret) Yoo-Bybee Memo; and Jim Haynes, Rumsfeld’s counsel
Background:
A Friday ABC interview confirms: Bush "approved" of the torture techniques ABC's Wednesday story detailed. But ABC fails to mention even more severe torture techniques that were implemented by Don Rumsfeld and Stephen Cambone - did George W. Bush give Rumsfeld the authority to implement what became known as "Copper Green" ?
Did George Bush sign an NSC document authorizing sexual torture methods, then delegate to Rumsfeld authority to implement those sex-torture methods ?
That's the real question, this new ABC story is only the prologue...
ABC news has developed a new component of the torture story almost in perfect sync with my Thursday post on torture which stressed that because Bush is head, as president, of the National Security Council, of course he would have known of the overall gist of the "NSC Principals" White House meetings on torture policy because, regardless of whether Bush sat in on all meetings or not, all major NSC decisions and policy formulations have go to Bush's desk for final approval, his signature. Bush is, indeed the "decider" [Read more from ABC: BUSH Says He APPROVED TORTURE. What About SEXUAL Torture?]
On Countdown Thursday night, George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley emphasized that there was a torture program and that it was authorized "AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL".
Turley said, about the "NSC Principals Committee" that discussed torture at a grotesquely specific level of detail, "this is like a meeting of the badda bing club".
Turley stated, bluntly,"This was a torture program... and it goes right to the President's desk."
But Turley went even further than that:
"Olberman: You said it goes to president Bush's desk here... Is it the smoking gun that president Bush authorized torture by the United States of America ?"
Turley: "We really don't have much of a question about the president's role here. He's never denied that he was fully informed of these measures. He in fact, early on in his presidency, he seemed to brag that they were using harsh and tough methods. And I don't think there's any doubt that he was aware of this. The only doubt is simply whether anybody cares enough to do something about it."
That's exactly what Valtin and buhdydharma ask.
RESOURCES:
In The Abu Ghraib Scandal and the U.S. Occupation of Iraq, by John Cox, details, with source citations, the scope and origin of torture and sexual abuse in Abu Ghraib and other US-run prisons in Iraq.
In Bush, Torture and American Values in Iraq, Frank Wallis gives overview and skewers the hypocrisy of US politicians who trumpet human rights at home while supporting massive human right abuses in Iraq.
In The Yoo Torture Memo: Break the Silence of the Lambs, "JURIST Guest Columnist Benjamin Davis of the University of Toledo College of Law says the recently released 2003 John Yoo memo on US military interrogation techniques opened up a path to torture and leaves a great number of persons potentially criminally liable for the acts that occurred pursuant to the memo, if only we break the "silence of the lambs" and speak out..."
In The Torture Democrats, Season 2, dKos member greensooner takes aim at specific Democrats who seems especially unwilling to take a principled stand against torture.
An extensive torture timeline, courtesy of the Cooperative Research Commons
A deep history of psychological torture techniques, courtesy of dKos member Valtin
Torture is wrong & it doesn't work, says interrogation expert
The Green Light Writing for Vanity Fair, Philippe Sands describes the evolution of the torture program.
[below: here's where the Bush Adm. torture program led, as described by Physicians For Human Rights]
The 135-page report, Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces , by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR),is the first comprehensive review of the use of psychological torture by US forces. The report also examines the devastating health consequences of psychological coercion and explains how a regime of psychological torture was put into place in the US "war on terror."
"What the now infamous images from Abu Ghraib do not show is that psychological torture has been at the center of treatment and interrogation of detainees," said Leonard Rubenstein, PHR's Executive Director. "The Bush Administration decided to 'take the gloves off' in interrogations and 'break' prisoners."
Techniques of psychological torture used have included sensory deprivation, isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, the use of military working dogs to instill fear, cultural and sexual humiliation, mock executions, and the threat of violence or death toward detainees or their loved ones. A source familiar with conditions at Guantánamo told PHR that deprivation of sensory stimulation and over-stimulation led to self-harm and suicide attempts.
Excerpt from Seymour Hersh's keynote speech July 8, 2004 to the ACLU
"Some of the worst things that happened that you don’t know about. OK? Videos. There are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at [Abu Ghraib], which is about 30 miles from Baghdad — 30 kilometers, maybe, just 20 miles, I'm not sure whether it's — anyway. The women were passing messages out saying please come and kill me because of what’s happened. And basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children, in cases that have been [video] recorded, the boys were sodomized, with the cameras rolling, and the worst above all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking. That your government has, and they’re in total terror it’s going to come out. It’s impossible to say to yourself, how did we get there, who are we, who are these people that sent us there.
When I did My Lai, I was very troubled, like anybody in his right mind would be about what happened, and I ended up in something I wrote saying, in the end, I said, the people that did the killing were as much victims as the people they killed, because of the scars they had.
I can tell you some of the personal stories of some of the people who were in these units who witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers. And so we’re dealing with an enormous, massive amount of criminal wrong-doing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher. And we have to get to it, and we will."
Writing for Historians Against The War, John Cox details [with source citations] numerous reported instances of the rape of Iraqi women and children in US run prisons in Iraq and gives a crisp overview of the ultimate agenda behind such human rights abuses:
[Seymour] Hersh reported that Donald Rumsfeld and Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary for Intelligence, went even further than Miller's proposals, importing into Iraq a "special-access program" employed in Afghanistan that expanded the range of techniques to include physical abuse and sexual humiliation. "The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists," Hersch concluded, "but in a decision approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld" to expand an operation into Iraq that "encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation" in order to "generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq
The White House acknowledged the images and video evidence but denied the existence of the program Hersh described:
"The abuse evidenced in the videos and photos, and any similar abuse that may come to light in any of the ongoing half dozen investigations into this matter, has no basis in any sanctioned program, training manual, instruction, or order in the Department of Defense.
"No responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses as witnessed in the recent photos and videos.
But, a December 20, 2004 ACLU press release seemed to contradict the White House denials -
NEW YORK -- A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as "torture" and a June 2004 "Urgent Report" to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up. . .
The two-page e-mail that references an Executive Order states that the President directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." The ACLU is urging the White House to confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release the order if it exists. The FBI e-mail, which was sent in May 2004 from "On Scene Commander--Baghdad" to a handful of senior FBI officials, notes that the FBI has prohibited its agents from employing the techniques that the President is said to have authorized.
Another e-mail, dated December 2003, describes an incident in which Defense Department interrogators at Guantánamo Bay impersonated FBI agents while using "torture techniques" against a detainee. The e-mail concludes "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done [sic] the 'FBI' interrogators. The FBI will [sic] left holding the bag before the public."
BELOW: My 2 part series of an interview with Reagan Adm. official and former Naval Intelligence member George E. Lowe, describing how the NSC process works and how the delegation of authority, to implement torture, would have been delegateed from the desk of George W. Bush on down.