The implication that the Bush administration has ushered in policy changes
like the USA Patriot Act and unlimited detentions of U.S. citizens without
trial that undermine what America should be finds itself well served this week
by the news that administration lawyers authored a policy brief in the spring
of 2003 detailing how federal anti-torture statutes and international treaties
banning the practice don't apply to the executive.
(translate-heads of government-higher ups-rich and powerful-etc.)
Ashcroft emphasized the distinction between memorandums that provided theoretical legal justifications
for torture and his assertion there had never been any directive that
actually authorized its use.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose Justice Department prepared
the memos -- one of them running to 50 pages and signed by Jay S. Bybee, then
head of the Office of Legal Counsel -- assured the Senate the other day that
the memos are of no consequence. They were only internal Justice Department
stuff, the scribblings of lawyers and -- most important -- the president has
not "directed or ordered" torture, Ashcroft said. In another administration,
such an assurance would be enough for me, but given this one's cavalier approach
to civil liberties, I have to note that "directed" or "ordered" is not the
same as condoned. That's what I wonder about.
I wonder, too, why the much-pressed Justice Department -- all those news releases to get out extolling Ashcroft -- went to all the trouble of coming up with definitions of torture that might be permissible under U.S. law when no one was supposedly considering torturing al Qaeda prisoners in the first place. A 50-page memo is not an hour's work. It's clear someone had torture in mind. The Defense Department and the CIA were looking for guidance.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., alleged the reported abuses of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison were the outcome of the administration's efforts to find ways to evade legal responsibility. Ok, lets just come right out and say it Ed, it seems the effort was to evade ANY KIND of responsiblilty.
The brief -- which builds on an earlier Justice Department memo from 2002 -- reportedly asserts the president's right to order torture for those captured outside the United States in the name of national security, going so far as to define what forms of torture are acceptable and when it crosses the line into the unacceptable.
For instance, when Sen. Edward Kennedy, asked Ashcroft if he would release the memos, the reply was, "No, I will not." Ashcroft said he could withhold the documents because they contained confidential legal advice. Furthermore, Ashcroft asserted, secrecy is justified because, "We are at war."
Democratic senator Joe Biden said Congress had a right to see the memos to ensure the Bush Administration was not breaching the American Constitution, or international treaties that forbid torture.
"There's a reason why we sign these treaties -- to protect my son in the military," Senator Biden growled at Mr Ashcroft. "That's why we have these treaties.
"So when Americans are captured, they are not tortured. That's the reason, in case anybody forgets it."
Earlier, Ashcroft clumsily ducked direct questions from Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, who asked if Bush had issued any order — any at all — regarding the interrogation of detainees or prisoners.
Ashcroft responded, "The president of the United States has not ordered any activity which would contradict the laws enacted by this Congress or previous Congresses or the Constitution of the United States."
Leahy responded: "Mr. Attorney General, that was not my question. Has there been any order directed from the president with respect to interrogation of detainees, prisoners or combatants, yes or no?"
"I'm not in a position to answer that question," Ascroft said.
Leahy pressed on: "Does that mean you don't know or you don't want to answer?"
"The answer to that question is yes," Ashcroft said.
Obfuscation, evasion and censorship are wholly improper responses to the grave and gathering questions about the president's policies on prisoners. America won't — and, moreover, can't — vanquish terrorism by trespassing on human rights. The Bush administration appears increasingly unable to grasp this fundamental, democratic truth.
The United States is off track, and one needs only to look at the fact that a Bush administration official with at least some input into the policymaking process would go as far as drafting a brief saying torture is OK.As a sign of the state of the policymaking process in the Bush administration, it does not engender respect.
The America many of us are taught about during elementary school civics classes is clearly a fallacy in many respects. We are not all equal, and the American democratic experiment, while highly successful, is not perfect. In fact, in a direct reflection of the people who make it up, it is decidedly imperfect.But one absolute, at least in theory, that the U.S. Constitution is meant to reflect, is a general respect for human rights and citizen protections from infringement by their government.
The basic moral concept that torture is wrong is generally accepted to drive U.S. government interactions with the citizens of other nations -- a fact that often falls by the wayside, but typically not as a matter of overt government policy.
When it has, it is typically the result of political expediency or perceived geostrategic need, such as the support once given Saddam Hussein's regime and the blind eye turned to his use of chemical weapons in the Reagan era.
Whether the actions of a few misguided souls (as many Republicans contend) or not, the pieces of the puzzle showing that the Bush administration sought to at least ensure torture would not be a commonplace thing in the war on terrorism or in Iraq have yet to surface. It seems that the opposite however, has surfaced. While the naïve idealist in most of us probably wants to believe that U.S. officials avoid such nasty doings, the reality is clearly not so.
The Bush administration constantly reminds us that there's a war on. That's wrong. There are two. One is being fought by soldiers in combat, and the other is being fought for the hearts and minds of people who are not yet our enemies. However badly the administration has botched the first war -- where, oh where, is Osama bin Laden? -- it has done even worse with the second. It has jutted its chin to the world, appeared pugnacious and unilateralist, permitted the abuse of POWs and others at Abu Ghraib, and now toyed in some fashion with torture and the truth. The Bush administration has shamed us all, reducing us to the level of those governments that also have wonderful laws forbidding torture, but condone it anyway.
Remember this in November when deciding --- your personal choice of the lesser of two evils.