It's amusing to watch the Bush apologists over at
NRO try to dodge the fact that torture is an official policy of the Bush administration. From pointless arguments about the mythical "ticking time bomb" scenario to idiotic strawmen accusing the left of wanting to coddle terrorists to the always reliable "at least we aren't as bad as the terrorists!" It's all a way of avoiding the real issue at hand, that the American government on a daily basis committs unspeakable acts of torture and gets away with it.
Many of the victims of this torture may in fact be innocent, as we have seen with Maher Arar and Khaled el-Masri. Several of them have died, like Dilawar and Manadel al-Jamadi.
But that does not stop the right from pretending that this issue is about whether or not we can place women's underpants on a proven terrorist's head. Even today, Rush Limbaugh still refers to the horrors at Abu Ghraib as "mere humiliation, not torture." Not a single word is uttered about the allegations of beatings and sodomy. In right-wing fantasy land, among the worst things that happened at Abu Ghraib were naked man-pyramids. A harmless fraternity prank, no more.
Now the right is trying to claim that the McCain amendment is not needed because "torture is already illegal."
American law is thus clear. Torture is absolutely banned, but the CID prohibitions in UNCAT created no new duties for the United States -- only duties that already existed under the Constitution. It is immaterial, as far as American law is concerned, that European and other nations may have ratified UNCAT without caveats. We didn't. And in the United States, international law -- regardless of how it is interpreted elsewhere -- applies only to the extent that the American people's representatives have made it part of American law.
And, third, since torture is already illegal the new anti-torture push strikes me as an attempt to ban necessary coercion regardless of the context.
But this debate is a little otherworldly because ... torture is already illegal. I think it should be and in all circumstances. The question is what constitutes torture, and what practices are short of torture, but are tough interrogation techniques consistent with our values? This is the debate that has some bearing on reality and what we do now. Incredibly, the anti-torture people, who pretend all of this is so morally easy, won't say. Congress is having a huge interrogation debate, and it won't say. McCain, so celebrated for his moral clarity and taking on tough issues, won't say...
What exactly is their point? Do they really think that Bush gives a shit about any current anti-torture law? Anyone can do a Google search for "extraordinary rendition" and see how the CIA is making all of Europe and Canada complicit in testical electrocution. But even if you believe that rendition for the purpose of torture is a leftist myth, you have to admit that something is very fishy about someone getting a three month prison sentence or less for murder.
Take the sadists who tormented the Afghan detainee known as "Dilawar", who was eventually found to be innocent.
For Mr. Dilawar, his fellow prisoners said, the most difficult thing seemed to be the black cloth hood that was pulled over his head. "He could not breathe," said a man called Parkhudin, who had been one of Mr. Dilawar's passengers. Mr. Dilawar was a frail man, standing only 5 feet 9 inches and weighing 122 pounds. But at Bagram, he was quickly labeled one of the "noncompliant" ones. When one of the First Platoon M.P.'s, Specialist Corey E. Jones, was sent to Mr. Dilawar's cell to give him some water, he said the prisoner spit in his face and started kicking him. Specialist Jones responded, he said, with a couple of knee strikes to the leg of the shackled man. "He screamed out, 'Allah! Allah! Allah!' and my first reaction was that he was crying out to his god," Specialist Jones said to investigators. "Everybody heard him cry out and thought it was funny."
Other Third Platoon M.P.'s later came by the detention center and stopped at the isolation cells to see for themselves, Specialist Jones said. It became a kind of running joke, and people kept showing up to give this detainee a common peroneal strike just to hear him scream out 'Allah,' " he said. "It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes." In a subsequent statement, Specialist Jones was vague about which M.P.'s had delivered the blows. His estimate was never confirmed, but other guards eventually admitted striking Mr. Dilawar repeatedly. Many M.P.'s would eventually deny that they had any idea of Mr. Dilawar's injuries, explaining that they never saw his legs beneath his jumpsuit. But Specialist Jones recalled that the drawstring pants of Mr. Dilawar's orange prison suit fell down again and again while he was shackled.
"I saw the bruise because his pants kept falling down while he was in standing restraints," the soldier told investigators. "Over a certain time period, I noticed it was the size of a fist." As Mr. Dilawar grew desperate, he began crying out more loudly to be released. But even the interpreters had trouble understanding his Pashto dialect; the annoyed guards heard only noise. "He had constantly been screaming, 'Release me; I don't want to be here,' and things like that," said the one linguist who could decipher his distress, Abdul Ahad Wardak.
Surely if torture is already illegal, then these war criminals will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, right? Wrong!
One soldier has been sentenced to two months in prison, another to three months. A third was demoted and given a letter of reprimand and a fine. A fourth was given a reduction in rank and pay.
Three months for sadistically beating to death an innocent man.
That's one twentieth the amount of time one would get for trafficking 5 grams of crack cocaine.
This is hardly the worst of it though. The men who murdered Dilawar would have gotten a much better deal if they were CIA agents or civilian contractors.
Consider the following cases:
http://www.newyorker.com/...
In a subsequent internal investigation, United States government authorities classified Jamadi's death as a "homicide," meaning that it resulted from unnatural causes. Swanner has not been charged with a crime and continues to work for the agency.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The largest CIA prison in Afghanistan was code-named the Salt Pit. It was also the CIA's substation and was first housed in an old brick factory outside Kabul. In November 2002, an inexperienced CIA case officer allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. He froze to death, according to four U.S. government officials. The CIA officer has not been charged in the death.
http://select.nytimes.com/...
Despite indications of C.I.A. involvement in the deaths of at least four prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, C.I.A. employees now appear likely to escape criminal charges in all but one of those incidents, according to current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
More than two months after a classified Army report found that two contract workers were implicated in the abuse of Iraqis at a prison outside Baghdad, the companies that employ them say that they have heard nothing from the Pentagon, and that they have not removed any employees from Iraq.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
Despite demands by human rights groups in the US that the two companies be barred from further contracts in Iraq - where CACI alone employed almost half of all interrogators and analysts at Abu Ghraib - CACI International has been awarded a $16 million renewal of its contract. Titan, meanwhile, has been awarded a new contract worth $164m.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
One civilian contractor was accused of raping a young male prisoner but has not been charged because military law has no jurisdiction over him.
So there you have it, the work of a "few bad apples" 100% tolerated by the American government. You can rape, beat, torture, and kill all you want and you won't even be fired. Hell you may even get a promotion!
If anyone else here could post some more links to news articles that show evidence of impunity for American torturers it would be greatly appreciated.
Also, as a side note I e-mailed these links to Andrew Sullivan to help him in his argument against Mark Levin and he posted them here. I disagree with Sullivan on most issues but felt the need to help him take on the rabid pro-torture wing of the conservative movement.