Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that the United States had barred all of its personnel from engaging in cruel or inhumane interrogations of prisoners. Her statement appears to mark a significant shift in U.S. policy.
"As a matter of U.S. policy, the United States' obligations under the C.A.T. [U.N. Convention against Torture,] which prohibits cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment -- those obligations extend to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States," Rice said during a news conference with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.
My guess that the significant shift in policy may not be the obvious one. It has
previously been clarified that contractors are not considered United States personnel. I'm guessing that the real policy shift is that in certain cases, contractors are no longer going to be asked to agree to abide by military rules as a condition of their contract. We've already seen something similar...
More inside...
Government officials assigned to oversee a contract used to provide interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq all but abdicated their responsibility, leaving it to the private contractor to set terms for its work...
Rep. David Price's [D-NC4]
proposed legislation to
require some sort of accountability for outsource contractors in security positions is still in committee, basically leaving the administration with a free hand to farm out torture to pretty much any vendor that can get the work authorized by an allied host government.
In Egypt, the report said, the police and intelligence service stripped and blindfolded victims and doused them with cold water. Tunisia was accused of using sleep deprivation and submerging the head in water, a technique known as "water boarding" -- rumored to have been used in some detentions of terrorism suspects. Saudi Arabia was reported to have used sleep deprivation, along with beatings and whippings.
Libya, which has resumed diplomatic contacts with the United States, would chain prisoners to a wall for hours and threaten to attack them with dogs -- part of a menu of torture that included applying electric shock, pouring lemon juice on wounds, and breaking fingers and letting them heal without medical care.
We've been watching
Dick Cheney lobby hard for torture exemptions for months now. Is it possible that Rice's latest remarks are intended as a compromise position to appease Europe and get torture off the public's radar while still leaving Cheney room to work? She's clearly been addressing the issue with him as the administration's policy takes shape.
In recent months, Cheney has been the force against adding safeguards to the Defense Department's rules on treatment of military prisoners, putting him at odds with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon R. England. On a trip to Canada last month, Rice interrupted a packed itinerary to hold a secure video-teleconference with Cheney on detainee policy to make sure no decisions were made without her input.
Is Bush's White House on the hunt for an acceptable method of torturing people?
[Crossposted at Chaos Digest]