[Mb-civic] Rogue Soldiers or Rogue President? Scapegoating Small-Fry By Ray McGovern

Sat Oct 1 09:46:37 PDT 2005

Rogue Soldiers or Rogue Preside
    By Ray McGovern

    Saturday 01 October 2005

    The news that yet another Army private,
Lynndie England, 22, of Fort Ashby, West
Virginia, has been convicted and sentenced for
posing for the infamous photos of torture at Abu
Ghraib, while her superiors duck responsibility,
is a sad commentary on the extent to which the
Bush administration has corrupted the US Army.

    The reminder of the photos of those
inexcusable activities was sickening enough, and
England deserves to be punished. But I am of the
old-Army school where officers took
responsibility for the actions of those under
their command. For anyone who cares to look,
there is abundant documentary evidence that the
Army brass and its civilian leadership are
responsible for the torture. They continue to
dance away from taking responsibility.

    They choose, instead, to stone the woman,
like the hypocrites of Bible fame, contending
that the photos inflamed the insurgency in Iraq.
It is the torture, not the photos, that inflames
the insurgency. And responsibility for the
torture reaches directly up the chain of command
to the commander-in-chief himself. Perhaps when
even more repulsive photos and videos of torture
at Abu Ghraib are released, as a federal judge
has now ordered, the American people finally will
be jarred awake.

    So far, the silent acquiescence with which
Americans - including our institutional churches
- have greeted President George W. Bush's open
assertion of a right to torture some prisoners
evokes memories of the unconscionable behavior of
"obedient Germans" of the 1930s and early 1940s.
Thankfully, despite the hate whipped up by
administration propagandists against people
branded "terrorists," polling conducted last year
showed that most Americans reject torturing
prisoners. Almost two-thirds held that torture is
never acceptable.

    Yet few speak out - perhaps because President
Bush says he too, is against torture, and our
domesticated media have successfully hidden from
most of us the fact that the president has added
a highly significant qualification. On February
7, 2002, the president issued an order
instructing our armed forces "to treat detainees
humanely and, to the extent appropriate and
consistent with military necessity, in a manner
consistent with the principles of Geneva"
(emphasis added). In the preceding paragraph, the
president determined that Taliban and al-Qaeda
detainees "do not qualify as prisoners of war."
Never mind that there is no provision in the
Geneva Conventions for such a unilateral
determination.

    Speedy Gonzales

    In taking this position, Bush had to overrule
then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, the only
one of his senior advisers with experience in
combat. On January 26, 2002, Powell sent to
then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales formal
comments on the latter's MEMORANDUM FOR THE
PRESIDENT: "DECISION RE APPLICATION OF THE GENEVA
CONVENTION ON PRISONERS OF WAR TO THE CONFLICT
WITH AL QAEDA AND THE TALIBAN."

    This is the Mafia-like memorandum in which
Gonzales not only branded some Geneva provisions
"quaint" and "obsolete," but also reassured the
president that he could probably escape domestic
criminal prosecution for violating the US War
Crimes Act of 1996 (18 USC 2441), as well. Here
is what Gonzales told the president on this key
point:
... it is difficult to predict the motives of
prosecutors and independent counsels who may in
the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges
based on Section 2441. Your determination would
create a reasonable basis in law that Section
2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid
defense to any future prosecution.

    Meanwhile, back at the State Department,
Powell apparently thought the memorandum was
still in draft. But Gonzales, who knew what the
president wanted, did not wait for Powell's
formal comments. Rather, on January 25, Gonzales
sent his final draft to the president, thereby
shielding him from dissonance like Powell's
written observation that exempting detainees from
Geneva protections "will reverse over a century
of US policy and practice in supporting the
Geneva conventions and undermine the protections
of the law of war for our troops."

    Gonzales was already aware of Powell's
opposition, and in his own memo the former White
House counsel and now attorney general was
dismissive of Powell's request that the president
reconsider the argument that al-Qaeda and Taliban
detainees are not prisoners of war under Geneva.
In a short paragraph tacked onto the bottom of a
list of "negatives," Gonzales took brief note of
Powell's objections. Gonzales's paragraph speaks
volumes in the light of subsequent abuses in Abu
Ghraib, Afghanistan, and GuantÃ¡namo:
A determination that the GPW [Geneva Convention
on Prisoners of War] does not apply to al-Qaeda
and the Taliban could undermine US military
culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest
standards of conduct in combat, and could
introduce an element of uncertainty in the status
of adversaries.

    Last week, over a dozen high ranking military
officers sent a letter to President Bush,
pointing out that "It is now apparent that the
abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, GuantÃ¡namo and
elsewhere took place in part because our men and
women in uniform were given ambiguous
instructions, which in some cases authorized
treatment that went beyond what was allowed by
the Army Field Manual."

    A pity that Colin Powell limited himself to
writing memos to the president's lawyer.

    The photos from Abu Ghraib, and the more
recent Human Rights Watch report describing
"routine" torture by the once highly professional
82nd Airborne Division, offer graphic evidence
that Powell's misgivings were well-founded. The
report relies heavily on the testimony of a West
Point graduate, an Army Captain who has had the
courage to speak out after 17 months of trying in
vain to go through Army channels.

    Human Rights Watch Director Tom Malinowski
has noted, "The administration demanded that
soldiers extract information from detainees
without telling them what was allowed and what
was forbidden. Yet when the abuses inevitably
followed, the leadership blamed the soldiers in
the field instead of taking responsibility." A
Pentagon spokesman has dismissed the report as
"another predictable report by an organization
trying to advance an agenda through the use of
distortion and errors of fact." Judge for
yourselves; the report can be found at
http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us0905/. Grim but
required reading.

    Pictures Worth a Thousand Words

    After seeing the photos from Abu Ghraib last
year, Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman John
Warner of Virginia took a strong rhetorical stand
against torture. But then he quickly succumbed to
White House pressure to postpone Senate hearings
on the subject until after the November 2004
election.

    In July, Warner joined two other Republican
Senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, in
attempts to introduce amendments against torture
to the defense authorization bill. The amendments
would require that US forces revert to the
standards set forth in Army Field Manual (FM
34-52) for interrogating detainees held by the
Defense Department. The manual prohibits the use
of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment. Another amendment that has been
discussed would require that all foreign
nationals "be registered with the International
Committee of the Red Cross." This would prohibit
sequestering unregistered "ghost detainees" at
prisons like Abu Ghraib and secret CIA
interrogation centers.

    Inured as I thought I had become to the gall
of top Bush administration officials, I found the
White House reaction shocking. On the evening of
July 21, Vice President Dick Cheney went to
Capitol Hill to dissuade the three Senators from
proceeding with the amendments. But the Senators
were not cowed - not then, at least. Four days
later on the floor of the Senate, John McCain -
who knows something of torture - made a poignant
appeal to his colleagues to hold our country to
humane standards in treating captives, "no matter
how evil or terrible" they may be. "This is not
about who they are. This is about who we are,"
said McCain.

    The following day Senate Majority Leader Bill
Frist pulled the Pentagon spending bill off the
floor, sparing Bush the political risk of vetoing
the much needed defense authorization bill simply
because it included amendments requiring the
protections for detainees - protections already
required not only by international law but also
by US criminal statute.

    Yesterday, the White House again warned
lawmakers not to add any amendments on the
treatment of detainees. It will be interesting to
see if, in the end, the Senators cave in to White
House pressure. For if they do, they will be
providing yet another congressional nihil obstat
for the general approach so succinctly voiced by
the president to then-terrorism czar Richard
Clarke and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in the
White House on the evening of 9/11. According to
Clarke, the president yelled, "I don't care what
the international lawyers say, we are going to
kick some ass."

    Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the
publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in Washington, DC. A former Army officer
and CIA analyst, he is now a member of the
Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/100105Y.shtml