Picture This

Those excruciating pictures of Abu Ghraib are responsible for a lot of things, but not for the humiliation of this country. That was accomplished by the creepy war criminals who tunneled through our system of laws and carefully realigned the executive branch to serve party politics rather than the country's best interests. The pictures of their degradation are not the problem, nor the solution.

We need publication of the scenery of our disgrace, no matter how distasteful it is. This is that thing called a 'learning experience' that comes into our lives unwelcome but leaves us better or destroys us if we can't bear up under it with some grace.

As Diane has said; Justice and our national honor require no less.

The torture of our victims has led to worse than bad information, and we need to face all that it did destroy. Relations with our allies, even to the point that they refused to share information with us, also suffered.

AT the height of the American-led war on terror, George W Bush began to encounter an unexpected problem. The use of harsh interrogation techniques on captured Al-Qaeda terrorists caused a damaging rift with leading US allies, among them Britain and Israel, according to a former State Department official.

Philip Zelikow, a senior adviser to Condoleezza Rice, then secretary of state, revealed last week that “some of Europe’s best allies found it increasingly difficult to assist us in counterterrorism, because they feared becoming complicit in a programme their governments abhorred”.

A member of Barack Obama’s presidential transition team also disclosed yesterday that during a series of secret briefings late last year at the CIA, aides to the then president-elect were told that several foreign intelligence services had refused to share information about the location of terrorism suspects for fear of becoming implicated in the use of torture during interrogations.

Evidence of allied resistance to US anti-terror tactics added yet another layer of controversy to an anguished debate about torture that has confounded Obama’s attempts to draw a curtain over the past and is threatening to overshadow his presidential record as he marks his 100th day in office on Wednesday.
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From The Sunday TimesApril 26, 2009

Allies split with US over tortureTony Allen-Mills in New York
AT the height of the American-led war on terror, George W Bush began to encounter an unexpected problem. The use of harsh interrogation techniques on captured Al-Qaeda terrorists caused a damaging rift with leading US allies, among them Britain and Israel, according to a former State Department official.

Philip Zelikow, a senior adviser to Condoleezza Rice, then secretary of state, revealed last week that “some of Europe’s best allies found it increasingly difficult to assist us in counterterrorism, because they feared becoming complicit in a programme their governments abhorred”.

A member of Barack Obama’s presidential transition team also disclosed yesterday that during a series of secret briefings late last year at the CIA, aides to the then president-elect were told that several foreign intelligence services had refused to share information about the location of terrorism suspects for fear of becoming implicated in the use of torture during interrogations.

Evidence of allied resistance to US anti-terror tactics added yet another layer of controversy to an anguished debate about torture that has confounded Obama’s attempts to draw a curtain over the past and is threatening to overshadow his presidential record as he marks his 100th day in office on Wednesday.

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After a week of ugly disclosures and furious recriminations, it was clear that far from laying the torture issue to rest, Obama has created a legal and political nightmare that may haunt his presidency.

A barrage of revelations about who knew what about torture and when will be followed this week by the release of hundreds of photographs depicting abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush administration.

Officials insist there is nothing in the photos as shocking as previously circulated pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib, the Baghdad prison. But they are certain to arouse Middle Eastern anger just when the US military is struggling to contain a renewed outbreak of suicide bombings that killed at least 159 people in Iraq last week.

Hillary Clinton, Rice’s successor as secretary of state, arrived in Baghdad for a surprise visit yesterday and sought to calm local alarm by describing the latest bombings as “a signal that rejectionists fear Iraq is going in the right direction”.

The Pentagon photographs, which are being released to avoid an embarrassing legal battle that was heading for the US Supreme Court, will also fan demands from many of Obama’s supporters for a formal commission of inquiry to consider prosecutions of officials who authorised or engaged in torture. The proposal has divided America, provoked consternation at the CIA and is causing serious strains within the president’s Democratic party.

Several former Bush aides and ex-CIA officials warned last week that what some described as a “witch-hunt” would have disastrous effects on US counterterrorist capabilities, crippling the CIA’s intelligence gathering and bolstering the morale of America’s enemies.

“We ask these [CIA agents] to do extremely dangerous things, things they’ve been ordered to do by legal authorities, with the understanding that they will get top cover if something goes wrong,” said Mark Lowenthal, a former CIA assistant director.

“They don’t believe they have that cover any more and [releasing the photographs] will make it much worse.”

There was also alarm at suggestions that the government should prosecute Bush administration lawyers who wrote widely criticised memos justifying the use of waterboarding (simulated drowning) and other extreme methods.

The quandary about what to do about crimes is specious at all levels. Under a rule of law, prosecution is the natural outgrowth of criminal behavior. Without that punishment phase, the term 'Rule of Law' is hollow sham.

The information we were denied might have assisted our intelligence community. The result of torture was bad information from the tortured and no intelligence from civilized nations.

We need to redeem our own intelligence community by putting it back on the right path, and renouncing the regrettable incidents we committed and caused.