Top Torture Tactics

The few bad apples the occupied White House claims generated the torture, seen at Abu Ghraib and known to occur at Guantanomo and other prisons, are not those small fry that have been prosecuted for it. While we all know that the torture memos had something to do with it, Phillipe Sands has tracked down and reported on the origins of the torture practice. Bill Moyers' Journal, always worth watching, featured the author on Friday.

The policy and practice of torture has made the U.S. occupation of Iraq more hated than it would have been simply for usurpation of their rights. Military strategists should study this putrefaction of our moral standing and forever guard against it ever happening again.

I was fascinated by a simple question. How could lawyers at the upper echelons of the administration, trained at Harvard Law School and other distinguished institutions, have approved torture? In what circumstances could that happen? I didn't understand how it happened. And it combined with a real sense of injustice that the truth of the story had not come out. Because what the administration said, and I was really catalyzed by a press conference I read in June, 2004, as the administration struggled to contain the disaster of Abu Ghraib. The administration spun a story. You're a press man. You know how governments work. I know how governments work. And the story was this: The desire for aggressive interrogation came from the bottom up. People on the front line, people at Guantanamo, elsewhere, told us they needed to move to new techniques. Who are we at the top, to say no? And in that context, we approved certain techniques. And that struck me--

BILL MOYERS:That's the official story?

PHILIPPE SANDS:That's the official story, that it came from the bottom up, and they were doing nothing more than what normal, prudent, sensible government would do. And that...

BILL MOYERS:This offended your sensibility? This--

PHILIPPE SANDS:Well, it didn't offend, I mean, it may have been true. I hope I went into my inquiries with an open mind. But it struck me as counterintuitive, because I know the American military. I've got a lot of friends in the American military. And they are deeply committed to the rules of the Geneva Conventions and other international rules, and don't go about the abandonment of President Lincoln's disposition. So what I decided to do was I took the famous memorandum by Donald Rumsfeld, signed in December 2002, where he writes on the bottom—why standing limited for four hours a day, I stand for eight hours a day--and I tracked back the entire decision making process, identified the 10 or 12 people I needed to meet. And one by one, tracked them down, went and found them, spoke to them and I'm truly grateful to them. Once I'd had my first conversation, which I think was with Diane Beaver who was the lawyer--

BILL MOYERS:Right.

PHILIPPE SANDS:--down at Guantanamo, I was then able to get right up to the very top.
(snip)
....by removing Geneva, that memo became possible. Why does it abandon American values? It abandons American values because this military in this country has a very fine tradition, as we've been discussing, of not doing cruelty. It's a proud tradition, and it's a tradition born on issues of principle, but also pragmatism. No country is more exposed internationally than the United States. I've listened, for example, to Justice Antonin Scalia saying, if the president wants to authorize torture, there's nothing in our constitution which stops it. Now, pause for a moment. That is such a foolish thing to say. If the United States president can do that, then why can't the Iranian president do that, or the British prime minister do that, or the Egyptian president do that? You open the door in that way, to all sorts of abuses, and you expose the American military to real dangers, which is why the backlash began with the U.S. Military.

The tracking down actually went up, to the top. It's suspected and hypothesized, because of the evils the top administration officials have done on the economic front, in war-making, in destruction of protections of the public, among other crimes against America, that torture came from the top. This man ran the policy down and got answers. Surprise, the DFHs are right.

The rot that has affected this war and our entire government comes from the very rotten apples at the top. This needs to be stressed, brought out, pounded in.

The election of war criminals happened because the press would not do its job and expose their lies and their criminal policies. It never can be allowed again.

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Dallas Morning News editorial promotes the adoption of a Project Innocence by the state of Texas, where so many convictions have proved erroneous.

A state innocence commission could recommend best practices in these areas:

• Eyewitness identification and testimony

• Photo lineups

• Suspect interrogation

• Preservation of biological evidence

• Forensic technology

• Defendant's access to case files

• The right to competent defense counsel

• Ethical and legal responsibilities of prosecutors

A very commendable plan.