"ROCKEFELLER" = "Final Answer" on Eric Holder & the Bush Torture Regime
Mort Zuckerman
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Subject: "ROCKEFELLER" = "Final Answer" on Eric Holder & the Bush
Torture Regime
Date: Apr 16, 2009 8:05 AM
"What do you suppose is holding Attorney General Eric Holder back from
appointing an independent prosecutor to investigate, with a view
toward rubbing out, once and for all, this shameful stain on our
collective conscience?"
Answer: John D. Rockefeller IV &
the Democrats who knew about it and
did nothing.
Kathleen M. Rockefeller Uncowardly Cousin.
http://www.actionlyme.org
http://www.relapsingfever.org
===============================
http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern04152009.html
April 15, 2009
Anatomy of Bush's Torture Paradigm
W, the Torture Decider
By RAY McGOVERN
The prose of the recently leaked report of the International Committee
of the Red Cross on torture seems colorless. It is at the same time
obscene — almost pornographic.
The 41-page ICRC report depicts scenes of prisoners forced to remain
naked for long periods, sometimes in the presence of women, often with
their hands shackled over their heads in "stress positions" as they
are left to soil themselves.
The report's images of sadism also include prisoners slammed against
walls, locked in tiny boxes, and strapped to a bench and subjected to
the drowning sensation of waterboarding.
How could it be that we Americans tolerate the kind of leaders who
would subject others to systematic torture — yes, that’s what the
official report of the international body charged with monitoring the
Geneva agreements on the treatment of prisoners concludes — torture.
Over the past week I have been asked to explain how this could have
happened; who authorized the torture in our name? The Red Cross report
lacks the earmarks of rogues or “rotten apples” at the bottom of some
barrel.
This is what I have been telling those who ask:
Rather than Harry Truman’s famous motto on his Oval Office desk, “The
Buck Stops Here,” this was a case of “The Buck Starts Here.” President
George W. Bush set the tone and created the framework, with strong
support from Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld.
The first hints of what was in store came from the President himself
in the White House bunker late on Sept. 11, 2001, at a meeting with
his closest national security advisers after his TV address to the
nation about the terrorist attacks that morning.
The vengeful bunker mentality prevailing at that meeting comes through
clearly in the report of one of the participants, Richard Clarke in
his book, Against All Enemies. Describing the President as confident,
determined, forceful, Clarke provides the following account of what
President Bush said:
“We are at war.… Nothing else matters. … Any barriers in your way,
they’re gone.”
When, later in the discussion, Secretary Rumsfeld noted that
international law allowed the use of force only to prevent future
attacks and not for retribution, Bush nearly bit his head off.
“No,” the President yelled in the narrow conference room, “I don’t
care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some
ass.”
‘Taking the Gloves Off’
In the weeks that followed, the air in Washington hung heavy with
demons of retribution. Afghanistan was invaded in October 2001, and
during a prisoner uprising on Nov. 25, a CIA officer was killed there.
A young American citizen, John Walker Lindh, was discovered among the
prisoners in the area. There was not the slightest evidence that Lindh
had anything to do with the killing.
But documents show that U.S. Joint Special Operations troops were told
that the office of the Defense Secretary’s counsel (William J. Haynes
II, was Pentagon general counsel at the time) had authorized an Army
intelligence officer “to take the gloves off and ask whatever he
wanted” of Lindh.
Despite urgent intervention by Justice Department ethics attorney
Jesselyn Radack, Lindh was not properly read his rights. Instead, the
FBI agent on the scene ad-libbed in an offhand way, “You have the
right to an attorney. But there are no attorneys here in Afghanistan.”
Lindh had been seriously wounded in the leg. Despite that, U.S. troops
put a hood over him, stripped him naked, duct-taped him to a stretcher
for days in an unheated and unlit shipping container, and threatened
him with death.
Parts of his humiliating ordeal were captured on film (a practice that
became tragically familiar with the photos of Abu Ghraib).
In her book, Canary in the Coalmine: Blowing the Whistle in the Case
of John Walker Lindh, attorney Radack comments that official documents
pertaining to this case provide “the earliest known evidence that the
Bush Administration was willing to push the envelope on how far it
could go to extract information from suspected terrorists.”
(Because she protested, Radack was fired as Justice Department legal
ethics advisor, put under criminal investigation, and even added to
the “no-fly” list.)
End-Run Around Geneva
But the Bush administration was just getting started.
On Jan. 18, 2002, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales advised the
President that the Justice Department had issued a formal legal
opinion concluding that the Geneva Convention III on the Treatment of
Prisoners of War (GPW) does not apply with respect to al Qaeda.
Gonzales added that he understood that Bush had “decided that GPW does
not apply and, accordingly, that al Qaeda and Taliban detainees are
not prisoners of war under the GPW.”
On Jan. 19, 2002, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld told combat commanders
that the President had “determined that al-Qaeda and Taliban
individuals under the control of the Department of Defense are not
entitled to prisoner of war status for purposes of the Geneva
Conventions of 1949.”
Secretary of State Colin Powell asked the President to reconsider his
decision and to conclude, instead, that the GPW does apply to both al
Qaeda and the Taliban. But Powell’s protest was couched in
bureaucratic politeness, rather than in anger and outrage. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “Cowardice in the Time of Torture.”]
The next step took the form of the fateful memorandum of Jan. 25,
2002, signed by Alberto Gonzales but drafted by counsel to the Vice
President David Addington. That memo outlined for the President “the
ramifications of your decision and the Secretary’s [Powell’s] request
for reconsideration.”
It described a “new paradigm” that, the writers claimed “renders
obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy
prisoners, and renders quaint some of its provisions.”
Gonzales and Addington urged the President to disregard Powell’s
misgivings and move ahead. But they cloaked their argument in lawyerly
language that obscured what was to come.
The lawyers argued that it was “appropriate” and “consistent with
military necessity” to waive Geneva regarding the treatment of al
Qaeda and Taliban detainees, but they inserted assurances that the
prisoners would be treated “humanely” and “in a manner consistent with
the principles of GPW.”
Powell Rebuffed
Brushing aside Powell’s objections, President Bush adopted the
Gonzales/Addington language and signed a memorandum to that effect on
Feb. 7, 2002. The memo went to Vice President Cheney, Secretary of
State Powell, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Attorney General John
Ashcroft, Chief of Staff to the President Andrew Card, Director of
Central Intelligence George Tenet, Assistant to the President for
National Security Affairs Condoleezza Rice, and Joint Chiefs Chairman
Gen. Richard Myers.
The memo amounted to an executive order, although it was not labeled
as such. In it, the President alludes fulsomely to Justice Department
opinions and recommendations, as well as “facts” supplied by the
Defense Department.
Bush then takes clear responsibility for the decision to spurn Geneva:
“I determine that common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either
al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. … I determine that Taliban detainees …
do not qualify as prisoners of war under Article 4 of Geneva … and
that al Qaeda detainees also do not qualify as prisoners of war.”
The Feb. 7, 2002, memo bears the Orwellian title “Humane Treatment of
al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees.” In it, Bush lifts verbatim the
language from the Gonzales/Addington memo of Jan. 25, 2002, and makes
it his own.
Bush claimed, for example, “the war against terrorism ushers in a new
paradigm [that] requires new thinking in the law of war.”
Bush then tries to square a circle, directing (twice in the two-page
memo) that “detainees be treated humanely and, to the extent
appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner
consistent with the principles of GPW.”
Smell Smoke?
The smoking-gun memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002, was released to the media,
together with other documents, by Gonzales on June 22, 2004, but it
did not receive the attention it deserved until recently.
On Dec. 11, 2008, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and Sen. John McCain, R-
Arizona, ranking members of the Senate Armed Services Committee,
released, without dissent, the summary of their committee’s report on
the abuse of detainees.
The report’s first subhead was: Presidential Order Opens Door to
Considering Aggressive Techniques, and the first words of the first
sentence of the first paragraph were, “On Feb. 7, 2002, President Bush
signed a memorandum stating…”
Referring to the “President’s order,” the first paragraph adds that
“the decision to replace well-established military doctrine, i.e.,
legal compliance with the Geneva Conventions, with a policy subject to
interpretation, impacted the treatment of detainees.”
“Conclusion Number One” of the Senate Armed Services Committee report
states: “Following the President’s determination [of Feb. 7, 2002],
techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions … were
authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody.”
Once Bush had opened the door with his Feb. 2, 2002, memo, other
actions followed to implement the President’s “new paradigm.”
White House lawyers worked with Deputy Assistant Attorney General John
Yoo of the Office of Legal Counsel to develop constitutional theories
about expansive presidential powers that effectively let Bush operate
beyond the law.
The OLC traditionally is the office that tells presidents the limits
of their constitutional authorities. However, in this case, Yoo
collaborated with Gonzales, Addington and other White House lawyers in
hammering out arguments that the administration could use to implement
harsh interrogations of al Qaeda suspects.
On Aug. 1, 2002, Yoo and his OLC superior, Assistant Attorney General
Jay Bybee, issued an opinion that so narrowly defined “torture” that
it cleared the way for a variety of “enhanced interrogation
techniques,” including waterboarding, which creates a near-drowning
experience.
Top-Down Torture
As the legal framework for Bush’s torture policies took shape, senior
officers and lower-level participants in the interrogations understood
that the basis for the newly permitted harsh tactics stemmed from a
presidential decision.
In a report on Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses, former Defense Secretary
James Schlesinger indicated that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top
commander in Iraq, instituted a “dozen interrogation methods beyond”
the Army’s standard practice under the Geneva Convention.
Sanchez said he based his decision on “the President's memorandum,”
which he said allowed for "additional, tougher measures" against
detainees, according to the Schlesinger report.
An FBI e-mail of May 22, 2004, from a senior FBI agent in Iraq stated
that President Bush had signed an Executive Order approving the use of
military dogs, sleep deprivation and other tactics to intimidate Iraqi
detainees.
The FBI official sought guidance in confronting an unwelcome dilemma.
He asked if FBI personnel in Iraq were required to report the U.S.
military’s harsh interrogation of detainees when such treatment
violated Bureau standards but fit within the guidelines of a
presidential Executive Order.
In sum, abundant evidence indicates that the torture techniques
applied in the jail cells and interrogation chambers — the
“alternative set of procedures” about which Bush boasted publicly on
Sept. 6, 2006 — resulted directly from Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, memo and
implementing actions by his administration.
Interrogators also were egged on by comments from Bush, Cheney and
Rumsfeld regarding the “tough” treatments they favored.
One fig leaf left covering the otherwise exposed role of Bush and his
top aides remains the clever inclusion of the word “humane” in the
memo that made possible what the International Committee of the Red
Cross condemned as “inhuman” treatment of terror suspects in U.S.
custody.
There’s also the-Justice-Department-told-me-it-was-legal excuse,
though the evidence is now clear that the Bush administration
essentially stage-managed the Yoo-Bybee opinions.
For instance, when the Yoo-Bybee opinions were withdrawn by Bybee’s
OLC successor, Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith, Addington
and other administration officials successfully pressured Goldsmith to
resign and then welcomed a new OLC chief, Steven Bradbury, who
reinstated the key opinions in May 2005.
And – as the evidence built of illegal torture in 2006 – the Bush
administration pushed the “Military Commissions Act” through the
Republican-controlled Congress with phrasing that granted a degree of
retroactive immunity.
The law states that “no person may invoke the Geneva Conventions or
any protocols thereto in any habeas corpus or other civil action or
proceeding to which the United States, or a current or former officer,
employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent of the United
States is a party as a source of rights in any court of the United
States or its States or territories.”
That provision was interpreted as a broad amnesty for U.S. officials,
including President Bush and other senior executives who may have
authorized torture, murder or other violations of human rights.
The law also granted Bush the authority “to interpret the meaning and
the application of the Geneva Conventions.” [
However, there remain legal questions about whether the law’s language
would prevent prosecutions under pre-existing anti-torture laws.
The sudden appearance of the damning report by the International
Committee of the Red Cross, initially given to the CIA’s acting
general counsel on Feb. 14, 2007, greatly complicates any rotten-
apples-at-the-bottom-of-the-barrel-type disingenuousness.
In a departure from the usual diplomatic parlance, the ICRC minces not
a word in referring to those who authorized torture. In the report
itself, the Red Cross calls on current U.S. authorities “to punish the
perpetrators, where appropriate, to prevent such abuses from happening
again.”
What do you suppose is holding Attorney General Eric Holder back from
appointing an independent prosecutor to investigate, with a view
toward rubbing out, once and for all, this shameful stain on our
collective conscience?
Ray McGovern was an Army officer and CIA analyst for almost 30 year.
He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity. He is a contributor to Imperial Crusades:
Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, edited by Alexander Cockburn and
Jeffrey St. Clair (Verso). He can be reached at: rrmcg...@aol.com
This article was originally posted on Consortiumnews.com.
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