"We Do Not Torture", Except When We Do

The Washington Post today has published a story where a senior Bush official has admitted to our country's torturing of a detainee at GITMO. It is important to remember that torture is against Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and is in fact a War Crime. I don't see how President Elect Barack Obama can now decline to have the Bush Administration investigated from head to toe. The evidence was already miles high that war crimes were committed on President Bush's watch and even perhaps at his direction. To now have confirmation of that fact should be the final straw. From the article:

This is part is excerpted out of order but I think its important to focus on because in all of the talking heads extolling the virtues of torture we need to remember why, even in a ticking bomb scenario, it hurts more than helps us when we engage in such reprehensible behavior.

In May 2008, Crawford ordered the war-crimes charges against Qahtani dropped but did not state publicly that the harsh interrogations were the reason. "It did shock me," Crawford said. "I was upset by it. I was embarrassed by it. If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it."

back in order

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition."

"We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.

Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.

Notice the third paragraph with her conservative bonafides. I guarantee you the wingnuts and Joe Scarborough will still try to paint her as a soft lefty librul.

Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani's health led to her conclusion. "The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge" to call it torture, she said.

What were some of those "combinations of things" you ask?

"For 160 days his only contact was with the interrogators," said Crawford, who personally reviewed Qahtani's interrogation records and other military documents. "Forty-eight of 54 consecutive days of 18-to-20-hour interrogations. Standing naked in front of a female agent. Subject to strip searches. And insults to his mother and sister."

At one point he was threatened with a military working dog named Zeus, according to a military report. Qahtani "was forced to wear a woman's bra and had a thong placed on his head during the course of his interrogation" and "was told that his mother and sister were whores." With a leash tied to his chains, he was led around the room "and forced to perform a series of dog tricks," the report shows.

The interrogation, portions of which have been previously described by other news organizations, including The Washington Post, was so intense that Qahtani had to be hospitalized twice at Guantanamo with bradycardia, a condition in which the heart rate falls below 60 beats a minute and which in extreme cases can lead to heart failure and death. At one point Qahtani's heart rate dropped to 35 beats per minute, the record shows.

But as usual Dick Cheney has different thoughts on the matter. See he thinks only liberals and left wing types think torture actually occured.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney have said that interrogations never involved torture. "The United States does not torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our values," Bush asserted on Sept. 6, 2006, when 14 high-value detainees were transferred to Guantanamo from secret CIA prisons. And in a interview last week with the Weekly Standard, Cheney said, "And I think on the left wing of the Democratic Party, there are some people who believe that we really tortured."

But what does he make of this statement from the imminently conservative card carrying Republican Judge Crawford?

"I sympathize with the intelligence gatherers in those days after 9/11, not knowing what was coming next and trying to gain information to keep us safe," said Crawford, a lifelong Republican. "But there still has to be a line that we should not cross. And unfortunately what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward."

Let there be no doubt about this, we HAVE tortured in the name of protecting this country and it DID come from the top down. We now have the Senate Arms Service report , a documentary on our torture from PBS, and the word of a conservative judge brought in to oversee the military tribunals to confirm this. Now again I know the wingnuts are going to try to move the goal posts and instead of denying torture they will now say it was necessary but what does that say about us as a country if we simply accept that. How do we regain our stature as a beacon of democracy if those who perpetrated these crimes are never held to account.

I personally believe that in the end Obama will in fact have the Justice Department do the investigation and that his rhetoric so far is just to keep himself at arms length so as to not look like he is politicizing the situation. But I will say this right here and right now. If President Elect Obama in fact does not investigate the Bush Administration for their crimes we should and must protest LOUDLY and often. I can't honestly say that I would vote for a Republican in 2012 behind this but I will say that he runs the risk of losing my vote four years from now if Bush & Co. are allowed to get away scott free. If we really are a nation of laws then no one should be above it, especially those who are expected to lead us.