[Peace-discuss] Bush admin torture policy

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Maybe Gen. Taguba should be included in those honored on the 4th of July float. 
  Also, this might make a good flyer for the Saturday 5 July demonstration. --CGE]


	Published on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 by Physicians for Human Rights
	War Crimes Committed and Justice Denied
	by Major General Antonio Taguba, USA (Ret.)

The following is the preface written for the report, Broken Laws, Broken Lives, 
  released by Physicians For Human Rights:

This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees 
in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a 
systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is 
scrawled for the rest of these individuals’ lives on their bodies and minds. Our 
national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men 
received from their captors.The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none 
of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are 
tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. 
Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, 
we can see the full scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has 
inflicted-both on America’s institutions and our nation’s founding values, which 
the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to 
defend.

In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were 
subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva 
Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN 
Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing 
professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the 
willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and 
reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to 
whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question 
that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will 
be held to account.

The former detainees in this report, each of whom is fighting a lonely and 
difficult battle to rebuild his life, require reparations for what they endured, 
comprehensive psycho-social and medical assistance, and even an official apology 
from our government.

But most of all, these men deserve justice as required under the tenets of 
international law and the United States Constitution.

And so do the American people.

[Maj. General Taguba led the US Army’s official investigation into the Abu 
Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and testified before Congress on his findings in 
May, 2004.]