Torture is the nightmare that won't go away. Not because there are people out there who hate America. Not because prisoners are making things up.
Torture won't go away because it's actually happening— in Cuba and Iraq and Afghanistan and wherever prisoners are rendered, to be tortured by our thuggish allies. Because George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld have issued orders (and winks and nods) that it continue. And because there is ample evidence, including the memos leading back to the White House and those photos from Abu Ghraib that are seared into everyone's memory.
But Bush seems to think that he can make torture disappear from everyone's memory—that he can change reality—by repeating, again and again, that any report of torture is "absurd." In his press conference on Tuesday, he said:
We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth.
Who knew that Bush was a deconstructionist? Who knew that he had deep thoughts about the disassembly of language? Who knew that he was a disciple of Derrida, a follower of Foucault?
I knew. I admit it. Come on, you knew it too. Nearly every time Bush tries to turn a thought into words, he disassembles whatever meaning he may have had in mind at the outset (he often dissembles, too, but that's another matter). He's disassembling the US Constitution. He's disassembling most of the government's regulatory structures. He's trying to disassemble Social Security and the United Nations and the social contract and the entire biosphere.
Look closely at his words: "We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees." Is that really what he meant? Who knows? There's so much disassembly going on. It is true that Bush hasn't pushed for investigations of many of the complaints against the soldiers or the CIA agents who interrogated the detainees. He hasn't investigated what orders were given, and by whom, in the chain of command that leads back up to Gonzales, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and himself. And when investigations have occurred, he has ignored their findings. That means not tell the truth.
Amnesty International, the impartial 1.8-million-member organization that Bush was so exercised about on Tuesday, regularly criticizes nations that fail to support human rights. It has often criticized Kim Il Sung and Saddam Hussein. It describes its mission in these words:
to undertake research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the context of its work to promote all human rights.
And this year AI reserved some of its most scathing criticism for the United States. In the foreword to the 2005 annual report, Irene Khan, AI secretary general, wrote :
In 1973 AI published its first report on torture. It found that: “torture thrives on secrecy and impunity. Torture rears its head when the legal barriers against it are barred. Torture feeds on discrimination and fear. Torture gains ground when official condemnation of it is less than absolute.” The pictures of detainees in US custody in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, show that what was true 30 years ago remains true today.
Despite the near-universal outrage generated by the photographs coming out of Abu Ghraib, and the evidence suggesting that such practices are being applied to other prisoners held by the USA in Afghanistan, Guantánamo and elsewhere, neither the US administration nor the US Congress has called for a full and independent investigation.
Instead, the US government has gone to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Conventions and to “re-define” torture. It has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the practice of holding “ghost detainees” (people in unacknowledged incommunicado detention) and the "rendering" or handing over of prisoners to third countries known to practise torture. The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law. Trials by military commissions have made a mockery of justice and due process.
The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide. When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity and audacity. From Israel to Uzbekistan, Egypt to Nepal, governments have openly defied human rights and international humanitarian law in the name of national security and “counter-terrorism”.
That sounds a lot like Jesus' parable of the steward in Luke 12, the moral of which is: "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more." Apparently Bush doesn't believe that part of the Bible. He said:
I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that is -- promotes freedom around the world. When there's accusations made about certain actions by our people, they're fully investigated in a transparent way. It's just an absurd allegation.
Bush did not provide any facts to contradict the report. Amnesty International issued a press release in response:
At Guantánamo, the US has operated an isolated prison camp in which people are confined arbitrarily, held virtually incommunicado, without charge, trial or access to due process. Not a single Guantánamo detainee has had the legality of their detention reviewed by a court, despite the Supreme Court ruling of last year.
"Guantánamo is only the visible part of the story. Evidence continues to mount that the US operates a network of detention centres where people are held in secret or outside any proper legal framework -– from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond," said Amnesty International.…
Amnesty International continues to call on the US administration to:
- end all secret and incommunicado detentions;
- grant the International Committee of the Red Cross full access to all detainees including those held in secret locations;
- ensure recourse to the law for all detainees;
- establish a full independent commission of inquiry into all allegations of torture, ill-treatment, arbitrary detentions and "disappearances";
- bring to justice anyone responsible for authorizing or committing human rights violation
What we know is the tip of the iceberg. Tens of thousands of people are held in dozens of locations around the world—without charges, without lawyers, and without hope.
All US prisons and concentration camps should be opened to
international inspections, beginning with Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, and
Bagram. This disassembly of civilization must be stopped.
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