The Ironic Rule of Law

With regard to the imminent release of 17 Uighurs from their indefinite detention at Guantanamo, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has demanded their repatriation, offering assurances that they would not subsequently be tortured, because China is a nation ruled by law and does not torture. Did they copy this from a US Justice Department press release? First they pirate our DVDs and now our legalistic dissembling? Pioneering torture-policy authors like John Yoo are apt to be pretty steamed.

The main concern for the US is that they be deported to a Muslim nation where no one speaks Uighur, as it would be unseemly to have accounts of their Gitmo imprisonment appear concurrently with China's pitching of itself as a human-rights friendly country.

The US task would seem to be an easy one if it weren't for the fact that Albania has to be crossed off the list, having accepted the previous group of Uighur detainees. I'm sure they are enjoying their greatly-improved living conditions in Tirana, but their comrades may have to settle for the Maldives. Or perhaps India will allow them sanctuary in the Nicobar Islands, which, though generally off-limits to outsiders, might open its gates if Washington sends New Delhi a nice little gift of fissionable materials.

clipped from voanews.com In 2006, U.S. authorities released five Uighurs from Guantanamo and sent them to Albania. Now, though, the Bush administration has been having a harder time finding a third country to accept the Chinese Muslims. The White House fears the detainees could be tortured if they are turned over to China. Qin Gang talks to reporters in Beijing Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said fears of persecution are not valid. Qin says people who worry that the Uighurs will be tortured if returned to China have a "biased mind." He says China is a country ruled by law, and that Chinese law forbids torture.

KSM- Tortured Enough?

The Pentagon has released some sanitized versions of what are purported to be Khalid Sheik Mohammed's confessions.

News sources are expressing skepticism over whether his many claims are to be trusted.

Ummm, why does anyone have any confidence in the statement itself? After the rendition, the secret prisons, the torture, and the supremely opaque camp x-ray, does this statement really have any credibility?

Well, it seems like the press has gobbled it up anyway. But really, how do we even know there is a Khalid Sheik Mohammed?

The final irony is that the immediate redaction by the military panel of KSM's allegations of torture at the hands of his CIA interrogators actually lends credence to the rest of his statement.

How To Win in Court Every Time

Why is it that torture is not usually allowed in coercing evidence from suspected criminals?

And why does the Bush Administration want to allow hearsay and testimony obtained by torture now in their prosecutions of prisoners of Guantanamo?

Simply put, they can't get convictions any other way. They cannot convict these men with normal evidence obtained through legal means, because they don't have enough of it.

That is why we have elevated to an art the practice of legal contortion. I'm referring to the pattern of creating means to violate legal precedent and moral principle. We've used language ("enemy combatant," "harsh tactics"), place (Guantanamo, off-shore CIA prisons), and now, we just wanna beat it out of 'em.

Torture: What Not to Say

The question of torture, an absurd discussion through most of the 20th century, has become a mainstream debate. The reason for this, like so many other reprehensible things, is that the morally hollow White House is framing the issue.

Everyone seems to accept this frame. When Bush says Common Article 3 of the Geneva Accords contains vague wording, no one points out that those words are a legal standard, and that they have never been challenged by anyone else in the world. Or maybe you've heard the "ticking time bomb argument," a hypothetical that's so full of fantasy and presumption that it wouldn't make the grade of a high school debate team.

The preferred argument against defining ourselves as torturers is one based on American self-centeredness: If we do it to others, others will do it to us. When the pundits talk of this angle, they often get even more parochial by pointing out that anti-torture White House-hopeful, John McCain was tortured himself as a POW in Vietnam. This bit of trivia diminishes McCain's opposition, as if it's just his personal peeve, something for which he must be indulged because of his status as a victim.

Completely absent in the discussion are two important elements. First one is that torture does not yield quality intelligence, according to military interrogators. Even the info beaten out of Al Qaeda figure, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi was untrue, and that coerced testimony became the centerpiece of Colin Powell's lies to the UN that ginned up the invasion of Iraq.

A second vital, but missing element is the presumption of innocence. To be innocent until proven guilty has been the bedrock of our justice system for centuries. But in this debate it's often said, 'these guys are terrorists, they aren't really human beings.' To say this is to ignore the fact that the vast majority of those held at Gitmo, rendered to and tortured at secret CIA prisons (and Abu Ghraib before that) are guilty of nothing.

Justice Is as Justice Does

Clearly the Bush Administration condones torture, and when they say they do not, they are lying. As Alberto Gonzales continues to convince congress to make Americans exempt from international law, (easy explainer here), it's clear that this is what they want to do. They think it is OK to do what the entire rest of the world has rejected, and has done so for 500 years.

Because it should be obvious to everyone, the moral argument against cruel and degrading treatment usually goes unstated. But in section 28 of his first encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI reminded us of something:

"The just ordering of society and the State is a central responsibility of politics. As Augustine once said, a State which is not governed according to justice would be just a bunch of thieves. … Justice is both the aim and the intrinsic criterion of all politics. "

No Blood, No Foul

Human Rights Watch recently issued a gory report about Camp Nama, the sequel to Abu Ghraib. The report is chocked full of firsthand accounts by the torturing soldiers. It's a disgusting page turner and perfect beach reading.

The story of Camp Nama, located at the Baghdad airport, was first reported by the New York Times on March 19, 2006, but the Charleston Gazette was the only other paper to run the story. It seems torture by the US is just not newsworthy even though the story proved that abuse continued after the images of Abu Ghraib were made public.

Where the new report differs from the NYT version in March is that the testimony of soldiers makes absolutely clear that torture was not the work of a few bad apples, but sanctioned Pentagon policy. But this too, seems not worth telling people about, as only one paper, the Washington Times, reported it.

PS - If you prefer your torture porn in magazine form, Esquire has the story.

Perverse Excpetionalism

The theory that Bush's claim to respect the Geneva Conventions is completely meaningless, is proven no less then 24 hour later by the White House itself, pursuing congressional measures to make subverting the Geneva Conventions "legal," as an order of the legislature.

As the NYTimes says, "The court left it to Congress to decide what kind of trials to set up for detainees and what protections they should be granted in interrogations and handling before trial."

So it seems the strategy of the Bush legal team is to use all means necessary to delay accountability while they carry on their illegal actions (syn: crimes).

It's not me saying they're acting illegally, it's the highest courts declaring this administration so illegal.

It is completely perverse that the right to be exempt from the law is not really argued as a legitimate position by the American Exceptionalists in the White House now. It is fought for through the system of partisan legislation rather than principles of law based on a version of morality.

Nothing is the Matter

It doesn't really matter that the Pentagon has decided to set a policy that article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to all prisoners held by the military. It also doesn't matter whether this is, or is not, a change in policy for the Bush Administration. (The White House says there is no policy change, even though Bush said in a February 2002 that “Common article III of Geneva does not apply to either al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees.”)

But none of this matters, just as the Supreme Court ruling on the Hamdan case doesn't matter, and the closing of prisons at Guantanamo won't matter either.

The reason these things matter not at all is the Bush White House lies. They lie about everything. They have lied about their torture from the very start, and at every turn. They lie about what they have done, and they lie about what they will do.

For example, they say Abu Ghraib was only a few bad apples, yet documents reveal the systemic nature of the torture, and the approval of the bad apples' behavior. They claim to not condone torture, but there are memos by Alberto Gonzales and Don Rumsfeld explicitly encouraging abuse.

So let's cut the pretense. Anybody fooled is a willing fool. None of what they say will ever matter.

But what will make them stop?

PS - Don't beleive me? Just ask if this new policy applies to the CIA and their secret prisons all over the world.

Role Reversal

When three prisoners of Guantanamo killed themselves last month, the commanding officer there accused the men of committing asymmetrical warfare on America by taking their own lives. He said the suiciders had no respect for human life.

The notion that these men coordinated their suicides is now referred to as a "plot". Basic rights, like attorney-client privilege, must now be suspended, as sealed envelopes are clearly the tool of terrorists.

And so the Army captors become the victims at Guantanamo - the victim of suicide attackers who take no life but their own. And basic civil rights, become the weapons of terrorists.

Self Doubt

What I can't figure out is why the US government is holding these men at Gitmo, when it seems so clear to everyone else that these interrogators, these prison guards, defense dept. torturers, they don't know what they are doing?

Bush talks in press conferences about these "darn bad" men but they don't get any convictions, or useful information out of what the are doing to these men.

So it's just talk, and I don't know any one who buys it. But I'm sure somewhere there are people who believe it, and those people may not know anyone who disagrees with them either.

So why do they still believe they know what they are doing?
Why does there seem to be no self doubt?

Self doubt is worth its weight in gold.

Another Drip

Tiny drops of horror. At what point do we decide we are just too wet, or that the constant drip is actually a problem?

Another story today of a man taken to a secret prison to be tortured by the CIA. Like so many others, he was released without charges after 16 months.

Why is this right?
Why is it OK?
Why does no one seem to care?

To care amounts to nothing much anyway. It's easy and required to care, but this is just a word, a claim, a descriptor of ourselves - I, Liberal.

Power lies in action. And what are the possibilities of action?

Suicide was all they could do in Guantanamo. With only limited control of their own bodies they denied their American torturers the final say so.

The prisoners of a CIA prison in Afghanistan used their memory to hold on to each others' phone numbers so they might stay in touch should they survive, or contact one another's families should they die. This is all they could do, to press their bodies into service to the cause of banding together whether on earth or in the afterlife.

What is it that we can do? And what is it that I, Liberal, actually does?