Once upon a time, the US could speak with moral authority about things such as democracy, freedom, and human rights. The country wasn't perfect, and hypocrisy abounded in US foreign policy, but it seemed most of the world was willing to give us the benefit of the doubt.
Thanks to Bush and company, we have squandered all our moral capital.
The White House said on Tuesday it expected a full investigation of prisoner abuses in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after new FBI memos described detainees facing beatings and having lit cigarettes placed in their ears.
"If there is abuse that occurs, we expect it to be investigated fully and people to be held accountable, and measures taken to make sure that it doesn't happen again," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
He said the Defense Department was investigating "a number of allegations that have been made," and added: "We expect them to get to the bottom of it."
The White House was responding to newly released FBI e-mails that reported some military interrogators, posing as FBI agents to avoid being held accountable, used torture techniques. One told of an interrogation at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in which a detainee was wrapped in an Israeli flag and bombarded with loud music and strobe lights.
The e-mails also described detainees at Guantanamo being shackled hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor. They were kept in that position for 18 to 24 hours at a time and most had urinated or defecated on themselves.
On one occasion, an FBI agent reported having seen a detainee left in an unventilated, non-air conditioned room at temperatures probably well over 100 degrees. "The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night," the agent noted.
What kind of investigation can we really hope to see, when it looks that Bush himself
authorized the use of torture?
Repeated references in an internal FBI email suggest that the president issued a special order to permit some of the more objectionable torture techniques used at Abu Ghraib and other US-run prison facilities around Iraq. The email was among a new batch of FBI documents revealed by civil rights advocates on Monday. Other documents describe the initiation of investigations into alleged incidents of torture and rape at detention facilities in Iraq.
The email, which was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, represents the first hard evidence directly connecting the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and the White House. The author of the email, whose name is blanked out but whose title is described as "On Scene Commander -- Baghdad," contains ten explicit mentions of an "Executive Order" that the author said mandated US military personnel to engage in extraordinary interrogation tactics.
The wingnuts will argue that torture is justified in the pursuit of national security. But what have we gained from the torture? The war in Iraq spirals out of control with no respite in sight while the US loses international support for its campaign.
And the loss of moral leadership will be felt for years to come, as brutal regimes cite the US example to justify their own torture and abuses in the name of fighting domestic "terrorism". Meanwhile, US coalition building will be crippled for years to come as the American pariah becomes increasingly toxic to the rest of the world.
The neocons wanted to give the world a middle finger and prove it could carry out its international agenda on its own, with little international cooperation. The middle finger part worked splendidly, and continus to bear fruit. The "no international cooperation" part, well, has been a bit more problematic.
(Chris has more.)