Did the United
States government torture people?
·
Mark Danner has written several
articles and two books about the topic, and is the top expert.
·
A recent
Seymour Hersh article told the study of Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, and what
happened to him after he did his duty and wrote a report on mistreatment of
prisoners at abu Graib.
·
Jane Mayer has written about rendition,
torture
policies, and the legal problems with torturing a
prisoner to death.
·
Tim Golden wrote
an article, “The
Battle for Guantanamo,” describing the struggle among military and civilian
officials of the United States over treatment of the
people held there. (The NYT asks
you to pay for such articles. It
is also listed here.
)
·
Anthony Lewis
wrote an article that describes the evolution of policy, “Making
Torture Legal.” The NYRB asks
nonsubscribers to pay.
Primary documents relating to torture are available:
·
For those who do
not like this use of the word “torture,” it does not matter much in legal
terms. As you can see in these excerpts from
the US Code, Title 18 Part I chap. 118 §2441, and from Article 3 of the Geneva
Convention of 12 August 1949, US law
defines as a war crime violence against detained persons, cruel treatment,
and outrages on personal digmity, or humiliating and degrading treatment. Note: The Military
Commissions Act of 2006 contained some amendments to section 2441; the
prohibitions noted above still hold.
·
The GWU National Security Archives
has a collection on The
Interrogation Documents.
·
The Justice
Department’s Office of the Inspector General issued a report detailing the
objections of FBI agents to the harsh treatment of prisoners, and reactions to
their objections by members of the CIA and Justice Dept. officials. FBI agents saw what was happening,
believed war crimes occurred, and put their concerns in writing. The New York Times made the report available
on their website.
·
The ACLU
maintains a page
about the torture issue, which includes links to international agreements
about torture, and a separate page with primary documents. They also have a search page if
you are looking for particular items.
They have filed a brief in federal court seeking to hold former
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld responsible for the policies enacted under
his authority; the documents
in that case are here.
·
In a recent case,
a special Canadian government Commission
of Inquiry looked into the detention, rendition, and torture of one of its
citizens. They issued a 3-volume report. This case is the subject of the first
Jane Mayer article cited above.
·
The Friends
Committee on National Legislation (the Quakers) has a page on torture legislation.
The details of the use of torture by the United States Government are known to anyone who cared to find out. United States government officials behaved in ways that violated international treaties and our own laws. Once the secret practices were discovered and reported in the mass media, officials lied about them.
Mistreatment of prisoners is a war crime, and the leaders of the nations that committed the crimes are culpable. The Geneva Conventions clearly prohibit the practices—the harsh treatment and the renditions—that are have been a matter of United States policy and practice. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Attorney General Gonzalez, and probably several other top civilian and military officials, would, in a world governed by these laws and treaties, face trial for these crimes.
Some later additions:
George W. Bush said
this in his weekly radio address of March 8, 2008,
announcing his veto of a law that would have specifically prohibited
waterboarding:
“Congress
recently sent me an intelligence authorization bill that would diminish these
vital tools. So today, I vetoed it. And here is why: The bill Congress sent me
would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror -- the CIA
program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives. ….The
main reason this program has been effective is that it allows the CIA to use
specialized interrogation procedures to question a small number of the most
dangerous terrorists under careful supervision. The bill Congress sent me would
deprive the CIA of the authority to use these safe and lawful techniques.
Instead, it would restrict the CIA's range of acceptable interrogation methods
to those provided in the Army Field Manual.”
United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was interviewed by Leslie Stahl on the program “60 Minutes. In this clip from that interview, Stahl brings up the topic of torture. Scalia actually claimed there is no constitutional prohibition against it because torture is not punishment. “When he’s hurting you in order to get information from you, you don’t say that’s punishing you. What’s he punishing you for?” He simply dismisses the idea that the torturer is punishing the victim for not divulging the information the torturer believes should be forthcoming. When one of the top judicial officers of the United States displays such a blatant and cavalier defense of a violation of US and international law, he should apologize, resign, and hope that he is not among those charged with these crimes in the future.
The
Principles
of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal and in
the Judgment of the Tribunal contains the following:
“The fact that a person acted pursuant to
order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from
responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact
possible to him.” (Principle IV)
In addition, war crimes include the ill
treatment of prisoners. (Principle
VI)
During testimony before the House Judiciary Committee
in June of 2008, David S. Addington, who works for Vice President Cheney, was
asked if he would bear responsibility if a court found the CIA’s waterboarding
to be illegal. Addington, an active
member of the Bush administration group that generated the memos justifying the
interrogation techniques referred to on this page, replied: “No, I wouldn’t be responsible, is the answer to
your question. Legally or morally.”