Above the Law: How Bush Became the Torture President

Thanks, Ted Rall
Bush pokes fun at the concept of international law in those instances in which he is in clear violation of it but supports it when it suits his own malevolent, imperial purposes. Bush was outraged recently when Iran took British sailors into custody. This is the same Bush who pokes fun at those laws that clearly apply to him.

“International law? I better call my lawyer.”

Who is the bigger hypocrite -Bush or his poodle, Tony Blair? Bush regards the UN Charter ban on aggressive war a "...goofy experiment". Multilateralism, he calls it. But Blair, who should have known better, bowed low to help Bush attack and invade Iraq. Blair knew that there were no WMD to be found. He knew that Bush was lying. Blair knew that the war against Iraq is and remains a war crime under Nuremberg, US Codes, and Geneva. So disdainful of any principle of justice that might apply to Der Führer, Bush insisted that the US Congress exempt him from US laws.

It is not only the war of aggression against Iraq that dogs Bush, it is US torture at Abu Ghraib, GITMO, and throughout the "secret" Eastern European archipelago.

Every single underpinning of law that restrains the conduct of the government in dealing with detainees, they are destroying. And what are they leaving in its place? Chaos. They're looking for a way to justify torture.

-Scott Horton, a New York City bar association expert

It's hard to tell just how long Bush has been trying to put himself above the law, to exempt himself and his evil henchmen from torture charges. The year 2004 -a geological age in this nightmare administration that simply will not end -the Bush cabal of gangsters, liars, crooks, henchman and toadies were before the nation's high court, trying to make the case that Bush was above the law, specifically, he could not be prosecuted for war crimes if he should order torture. Was he planning to? Had he, in fact, already done so and sought to cover his ass ex post facto?

At that hearing, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked:

Suppose the executive says, 'Mild torture we think will help get this information.' ... Some systems do that to get information."

The answer from government lawyer, Paul Clement, was most surely disingenuous: Declaring that Bush would not, he insisted that the US would stand by its international commitments. In other words, the known liars would have the high court believe them when they had lied so many times before. It had been over a year that Justice Department and Pentagon lawyers crafted, nay, conspired to get around the international prohibitions against torture. Bluntly, they conspired to put Bush above the law. George W. Bush, they said, could legally authorize torture.

In December 2005 the U.S. Congress passed the McCain amendment to the Detainee Treatment Act, a result of an admission by Alberto Gonzales that the Bush administration did not regard laws and treaties prohibiting cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment to be applicable to prisoners in U.S. custody outside the United States. Aside from the fact that the admission reeks of "loophole", it led to additional disclosures about a secret gulag archipelego of US torture and detentions centers. The McCain amendment was meant to close this loophole, explicitly stating that “no individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”

But, Bush made a preemptive move to pardon himself, issuing a "signing statement" indicating that interrogation restrictions could be waived ".. if the president, as commander-in-chief, thought the waiver would assist in preventing terrorist attacks." I submit that legalizing torture, placing a dictator wannabe above laws applicable to everyone else, guarantees that terrorism will increase. Throughout his incompetent and criminal administration, George W. Bush has handed terrorists a cause on a plate. Just as terrorism against the United States increased exponentially under Ronald Reagan, the final numbers will prove that, once again, terrorism has gotten worse under the GOP.

By September 2006, the Defense Department issued a new Army Field Manual that applied the Geneva Conventions to all detainees, not just those classified as prisoners of war. The new manual also banned specific interrogation techniques or other controversial methods, such as using dogs to threaten detainees, placing prisoners in solitary confinement for long periods, and waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning.

But the following month, Bush struck again. He signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006, granting immunity to any U.S. officials accused of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of detainees during the period prior to passage of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. That just happened to have been the period in which the very worst abuses took place. How bloody convenient that criminals and perverts can get the law changed to excuse them, after the fact, for knowingly committing crimes that were known to be crimes at the time they commit them.

And, as if to ensure that torture will continue, this draconian measure allows evidence obtained through coercion prior to 2005 to be be admitted into trial if a military judge finds it "reliable and serving the interests of justice". The words "justice" and "torture" in the same sentence makes this "law" bogus on its face. Besides -torture does not serve the interests of justice. It subverts them. My head swims.

What has America become? A rogue nation. A criminal enterprise. A poke in the eye to anyone who might, in these most horrible of times, revere the principles of justice. Bush has plunged the world into a new dark age of religious superstition, hate, torture, and endless war.

In any case, there is absolutely no credible evidence that torture works. None! Moreover, the most prominent practitioners of torture, Torquemada and Richard Topcliffe, were perverts whose methods were chosen for purposes of personal gratification. Torture opponents argue persuasively that throughout history torture has proven itself ineffective as a means by which reliable information is derived. The Nazi Gestapo discovered that tortured resistance fighters rarely gave accurate information under torture. Anyone who is tortured will simply tell his/her tormentor whatever they want to hear. Would you want to be convicted upon a tale exacted under such duress? Would Bush himself support torture if, under torture, Dick Cheney spilled the beans about 911?

Besides, even information obtained through torture must be verified. A time consuming task. What is gained but perverted gratification? The U.S. Army’s Field Manual notes:

Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.

Even the FBI favors a more effective technique, that of eliciting a suspect’s cooperation.

Critics have said that torture is a "...slippery slope" which opens the door to worse abuses. But, the issue here is greater even than torture. The methods by which torture has become the law of the land typify a lawless and illegitimate administration. At last, torture, in this context, is but one of many abuses when a regime runs amok, when the government rides roughshod over the rule of law. Bush has become a rogue "President", an illegitimate and unaccountable regime.

The Cowboy's Shared News Items

The Existentialist Cowboy

Torture
Constitution
War Crimes
Aggression
GOP Crime Syndicate
Iraq

Spread the word: