[Peace-discuss] Right on torture

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Another clear right-wing take on the criminality of the current
administration.  Applebaum wrote a book on the Soviet gulag last year,
arguing that the Soviet Union was evil... A bit de trop perhaps, but I
wish some soi-disant leftists were as clear on torture as she is,
especially while the liberals are justifying it.  --CGE]

	So Torture Is Legal? 
	By Anne Applebaum
	Washington Post

Wednesday, June 16, 2004 -- To understand the magnitude of what may have
gone on in America's secret prisons, you don't need special security
clearance or inside information. Anyone who wants to connect the dots can
do it. To see what I mean, review the content of a few items now easily
found on the Internet.

Item 1: The "torture memo." Written in August 2002 by the Justice
Department's Office of Legal Counsel, at the request of the CIA and then
the White House, this memo argues that it "may be justified" to torture al
Qaeda suspects. The memo, posted last weekend on The Post's Web site, also
speculates that international law, which categorically prohibits torture,
"may be unconstitutional."

Item 2: The "Rumsfeld memo." This document, unearthed by the Wall Street
Journal, was written in March 2003 by a Pentagon working group. It
declared not only that the American president has the power to evade
international law and torture foreign prisoners but that interrogators who
follow the president's commands can, in addition, be held immune from
prosecution.

Item 3: The Abu Ghraib photographs. Remember what they show: not just
torture but guards who appear absolutely certain of their legal and moral
right to torture, as well as a large number of unidentified personnel,
standing around and watching. [And Seymour Hersh says there's much worse
to come. --CGE]

Item 4: The "dog testimony." Two Army dog handlers assigned to Abu Ghraib
have submitted sworn statements, again obtained by The Post, asserting
that military intelligence officers told them to use dogs to frighten
prisoners. The Army had said that any use of dogs in interrogations would
have needed approval from the U.S. military commander in Iraq.

As I say, connect the dots: They lead from the White House to the Pentagon
to Abu Ghraib, and from Abu Ghraib back to military intelligence and thus
to the Pentagon and the White House. They don't, it is true, make a
complete picture. They don't actually reveal whether direct White House
and Pentagon orders set off a chain of events leading to the abuses at Abu
Ghraib, prisoner deaths in Afghanistan or other uses of torture we haven't
learned about yet.

But who will fill in the blanks? Here is the tragedy: Despite the easy
availability of evidence, almost nobody has an interest in pushing the
investigation as far as it should go.

Clearly the administration will not ever, of its own volition, tell us
what the White House knew and when the White House knew it: There's an
election coming up. As if to underline this point, the president ducked
and dodged last week when asked at a news conference about torture,
declaring that "the instructions went out to our people to adhere to the
law." But which law? The Geneva Conventions? Or the law as defined by
secret memos?

Unfortunately, Congress has no real motive to find the answer either.
After a bit of obligatory spluttering, the House has gone silent. On
Monday some Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee tried to call
on the Defense Department to hand over documents related to Abu Ghraib.
The Republican leadership quashed the move. Meanwhile, Sen. John Warner's
Armed Services Committee, conducting the only active investigation on
Capitol Hill, is moving at a leisurely pace. With only a few working days
left before the summer recess, it's hard to see how there will be much in
the way of a comprehensive report ready before the elections.

The military is conducting its own inquiries, of course. But without
political support, the military alone will be unable to push further, to
uncover who, exactly, gave the military its orders, and which political
decisions created the conditions that made abuse possible. The press is
hard at work too, at least that part of it that is not supporting the idea
that the Constitution somehow permits torture, and always has. But
articles, television reports and blogs are useful only insofar as they
move the public.

For in the end, it is public opinion that matters, and it is on public
opinion that the fate of any further investigations now depends. Voters
have some items of information available to them, as listed above. Voters
-- ultimately the most important source of pressure on democratic
politicians -- can petition their congressmen, their senators and their
president for more. If they don't, the elections will be held, the subject
will change. Without a real national debate, without congressional
approval, without much discussion of what torture actually means and why
it has so long been illegal at home and abroad, a few secret committees
will have changed the character of this country.

Indeed, if the voters can't move the politicians, and the politicians
aren't courageous enough to act alone, we may wake up one morning and
discover that torture has always been legal after all. Edmund Burke, a
conservative philosopher, wrote, "All that is necessary for the triumph of
evil is that good men do nothing." It looks as if he was right.

applebaumanne at washpost.com

© 2004 The Washington Post Company