US War Crimes: torture and a call for Truth and Reconciliation

"Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause... for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country."
- General George Washington, letter to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775

The following documentation of US torture is from my brief, “War with Iraq and Afghanistan, Rhetoric for War with Iran.” Please share this information with all who declare themselves as competent citizens. 

 

Ethical treatment of prisoners is a legal requirement under US and International law. In the so-called “War on Terror,” the Bush Administration, with Democratic leadership agreement, invented the unique legal distinction of “unlawful enemy combatant.” An enemy combatant would not be covered by US or international law. From the passage of the 2006 Military Commissions Act (MCA), it is now legal for the government to declare anyone, including US citizens, as unlawful enemy combatants.[1] We know it’s the government’s intent to apply MCA to American citizens because they have declared American citizens as illegal enemy combatants without legal protection from US law or the US Constitution. For example, the Bush Administration, without complaint by Democratic leadership, argued for MCA application to American citizen Jose Padilla all the way to the Supreme Court. Unlawful enemy combatants can be detained forever, be denied legal representation and contact with family, have any testimony obtained from “harsh interrogation techniques” used against them if the government brings charges (“harsh interrogation” is the exact term used by the Nazis[2]), be denied the right to examine evidence against them for “national security” reasons but to only receive a summary of the evidence (for example, the government could claim they have video of you killing American children as an Al Qaeda terrorist, deny the court the right to see the video, but present a written summary of what’s on the video that the court would have to accept as valid evidence), and finally the same government that accused you would also appoint a three-person military tribunal to decide your verdict, which includes the death penalty.[3] Please do not believe me; look up the MCA for yourself. While a recent Supreme Court decision reestablished Habeas Corpus only to Guantanamo detainees, the rest of MCA has so far been upheld in Federal Courts.[4]

 

The US treatment of detainees has a deliberate history to circumvent previously established US and International Law.[5] The US has applied interrogation techniques to “enemy combatants” that previous case law found were torture (these have also been applied by our government to American citizens). For example, President Bush admitted to authorizing “waterboarding,” found by courts to be torture in all previous case law in the US and internationally.[6] This authorization was explicitly stated in memos from the White House.[7] When previous courts are unanimous in their findings, that means the legal definition of an act is absolutely certain. In this case, waterboarding, or more accurately termed “controlled drowning,” is torture. Curiously, despite this clear legal definition, former US Attorney General John Ashcroft testified to the House Judiciary Committee that waterboarding had been consistently defined as not torture. He did not present any case law history in his defense or elaborate.[8] However, other released documents suggest the legal opinion supporting these “harsh interrogation techniques” were based partly on the argument that it’s not torture if you don’t say it’s torture.[9]

 

John Yoo, the principle author of legal memos for the White House that supported torture, also testified to Congress. In apparent support of the strategy that it’s not torture unless you admit it, Yoo refused to answer the direct question whether the President could legally order detainees to be buried alive and have that not be considered torture.[10] Yoo’s legal memo said that interrogation only became torture if it was "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." Even then, for national security such pain and injury might be justified. Also, it’s only torture if causing severe pain and injury was the "specific intent" of the interrogator rather than obtaining information for the public good.[11] There also seems to be no restraint on applying these interrogation methods to children. Over 2,500 children have been declared as unlawful enemy combatants and detained without being charged with a crime.[12] Yoo testified that it would be legal to take a detainee’s male child and crush the boy’s testicles in front of the parent to obtain information from the detainee.[13] Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported that interrogators have raped children, and video-taped the rapes for their viewing pleasure.[14]

 

 

The testimony pointing to torture is mounting, despite a lack of comprehensive coverage in the mainstream media. For example, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, the military’s chief investigator and report author of the torture at Abu Ghraib reported in June, 2008:

"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 commander-in-chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture."[19]

 

 

 

 

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