When George W. Bush entered office after the 2000 presidential election, one of the biggest points in his campaign platform had been a promise to restore honor and integrity to the White House. Of course, the tarnished “honor” to which he alluded was the fact that the previous president, Bill Clinton had scored a hummer from Monika Lewinsky in the oval office, and the “integrity” was in reference to Clinton’s infamous “that depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is” statement.
So, that’s why many were surprised by Bush’s assertion this past week—if it’s still possible to be surprised by anything Bush says—that, “We do not torture.”
The comment came after a recent spike in ongoing media criticism of the U.S.’s treatment of prisoners of the war in Iraq and the global war on terrorism—ahem, excuse me—the global struggle against violent extremism and Capitol Hill rumblings that Bush plans to veto the an anti-torture bill that was approved by the Senate last month.
So, it would seem that like Clinton’s confusion, Bush’s statement depends on what your definition of “torture” is.
In a November 2 article in the Washington Post, Dana Priest reported that, “The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe.”
According to Priest, the facility is one of many covert prisons set up across the globe to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law.
“CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA’s approved ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,’ some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law,” Priest wrote.
The most publicized of these tactics has been “waterboarding”—or strapping of a prisoner down to a board that is then submerged in water until they nearly drown—an apparently effective way of intimidating prisoners into answering questions.
Vice President Dick Cheney recently met with several of his Republican brethren in the senate to address such practices—and defend them as a “military necessity.”
What you should be asking yourself at this point is if they’re not torture, what are they?
According to a November 14 article in The New Yorker, a leaked Justice Department memo in 2002 said that, “a coercive technique [is] torture only when it [induces] pain equivalent to what a person experiencing death or organ failure might suffer.”
Following that logic, Cheney is trying to push a Bush administration proposal—worded in the most vague, legalistic language possible—through the senate that would allow CIA operatives to use the same “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” tactics of interrogation against foreign prisoners outside the borders of the U.S. that the senate voted to ban.
As it turns out, since the CIA is not a part of the Department of Defense, they are pretty much immune to the pesky stipulations of U.S. military law—and not to mention the Geneva Conventions.
And what is their justification for allowing these practices to go on?
It is the Bush administration’s contention such treatment of prisoners is AOK if the “operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack.”
So basically, if you’re dubbed an “enemy combatant” by the U.S. and are taken into custody outside our borders, we can legally abuse you to the point of death—but don’t worry, because it won’t be torture.
So let’s take a moment to consider what we just covered—hidden prison camps, legalized torture, and the dubious legal parsing of language will be the lasting legacy of an administration whose mission it was to restore honor and integrity to the White House.
Mission accomplished indeed.
Cheers,
Christopher Ahearn
