Yes, he’s a big fat hypocrite, as well as a inverterate liar. However, there’s no room for schadenfreude in my heart today. Not when this is still going on (via Raw Story):
As the United States prepares a team of 30 to defend its record on torture before a U.N. committee, Amnesty International has made public a report blasting the United States for failing to take appropriate steps to eradicate use of torture at U.S. detention sites around the world, RAW STORY has learned.
U.S. compliance with the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment will be the topic of May 5 and 8 U.N. hearings in Geneva.
The United States last appeared before the Committee Against Torture in May, 2000. Amnesty claims that practices criticized by the Committee six years ago — such as the use of electro-shock weapons and excessively harsh conditions in “super-maximum” security prisons — have been used and exported by U.S. forces abroad.
That’s right. We not only practice torture (in violation of international conventions to which we are a signatory), we also export it. We seem to be in a race with regimes like Iran and Uzbekistan for the title of Chief Torturer on the Planet.
More after the break . . .
9/11 didn’t change everything. It didn’t change right from wrong for starters. Torture is both morally wrong and, under US and international law, ilegal. Yet, there is no great mass outcry in our country against it’s use, despite repeated disclosures that such ugly practices have now become Standard Operating Procedure for the Bush administration and the Pentagon:
In this report, Amnesty International focuses on another part of the equation, specifically its concerns about human rights abuses for which the US-led MNF [Note: MNF is an acronym for Multi-National Force] is directly responsible and those which are increasingly being committed by Iraqi security forces. The record of these forces, including US forces and their United Kingdom (UK) allies, is an unpalatable one. Despite the pre-war rhetoric and post-invasion justifications of US and UK political leaders, and their obligations under international law, from the outset the occupying forces attached insufficient weight to human rights considerations. […]
The Amnesty International report goes on to cite numerous examples of torture and abuse committed by US and UK forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the new wave of abuse practiced by the Iraqi government, abuses to which our command in Iraq has turned a blind eye, despite promises to stop such practices. Here’s an excerpt of some of what is ongoing, as we speak, in Iraqi prisons and torture chambers:
According to media reports, in both cases detainees alleged that they had been subjected to electric shocks and had their nails pulled out. (6) An Iraqi Human Rights Ministry official subsequently told Amnesty International that the Iraqi authorities had conducted medical examinations but that these had not confirmed the allegations. However, the official stated that several detainees had injuries caused by beating with plastic cables. Further, the official confirmed that abuses committed at other detention facilities under the control of Iraqi authorities over the past year included incidents of detainees having been subjected to electric shocks. (7)
Months earlier, Human Rights Watch had drawn attention to increasing reports of torture and ill-treatment of detainees by Iraqi government forces in a report published in January 2005. The report was based on interviews which Human Rights Watch had conducted with 90 detainees and former detainees between July and October 2004, 72 of whom disclosed that they had been tortured or ill-treated while in detention. […] Yet, despite the Human Rights Watch findings, little or no action appears to have been taken by either the Iraqi government or the MNF in the months following to address this pattern abuse, and to safeguard detainees from torture or ill-treatment.
… On 12 February 2005 three men, who were reportedly members of the Badr Organization,(9) a Shi’a militia, died in custody after being arrested by Iraqi police at a police checkpoint in the Zafaraniya district of Baghdad. The bodies of 39-year-old Majbal ‘Adnan Latif al-Alawi, his 35-year-old brother ‘Ali ‘Adnan Latif al-Alawi, and 30-year-old ‘Aidi Mahassin Lifteh were found three days later, bearing marks of torture. Autopsy reports found “that all three had bruises on their faces, arms, backs, and legs, apparently from being struck with a stick or long object”.(10)
After having been detained by a special police force of the Interior Ministry, the Wolf Brigade(11), a 46-year-old housewife from Mosul, Khalida Zakiya, was shown in February 2005 on the Iraqi TV channel al-‘Iraqiya alleging that she had supported an armed group. However, she later withdrew this confession and alleged that she had been coerced into making it. She was reportedly whipped with a cable by members of the Wolf Brigade and threatened with sexual abuse.(12)
In May 2005 four Palestinians who were long term residents of Iraq – , Faraj ‘Abdullah Mulhim, aged about 41, ‘Adnan ‘Abdullah Mulhim, aged about 31, Amir ‘Abdullah Mulhim, aged about 26, and Mas’ud Nur al-Din al-Mahdi, aged about 33 – were tortured and ill-treated after they were detained by members of the Wolf Brigade who took them from their homes in Baghdad. […] Members of the Wolf Brigade were said to have beaten the four men with rifle butts when they arrested them.
On 14 May 2005, the four men were shown on the Iraqi TV channel al-‘Iraqiyya admitting responsibility for the al-Jadida bomb attack but all showed visible signs of having been assaulted. […] Later, when the men gained access to a lawyer in July 2005 they repudiated their confessions and alleged that they had been systematically tortured for 27 days while being held by the Wolf Brigade in a Ministry of Interior building in the al-Ziyouna district of Baghdad. They stated that they had been beaten with cables and had electric shocks applied to their hands, wrists, fingers, ankles and feet. They also said they were burnt on the face with lighted cigarettes and were placed in a room with water on the floor while an electric current was passed through. They alleged too that a US military officer was present at one time in the room in which they were being interrogated.
This is not something of which our commanders in Iraq can claim ignorance. As Amnesty International documents, official reports by our own State Department make clear that that knowledge of the torture and abuse by the Iraqi government has been known since at least 2004. Indeed . . .
In a radio interview in December 2005, a former commander of special forces at the Interior Ministry, General Muntazar Jasim al-Samarra’i, identified several detention locations of the Interior Ministry where torture has allegedly been commonplace. He claimed: “The prison on al-Nasr Square, next to the TV-tower, it is the largest prison under the responsibility of the Interior Ministry. Members of the US forces visited this prison every day. The US troops knew everything about the torture”.(20)
Read that and weep. Our forces visited these dungeons detention facilities every day, and despite claims that we would act to stop these atrocities by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, little if anything has been done to put a stop to these abuses:
Pace said at a news conference Nov. 29 with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, “It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it.” Turning to Pace, Rumsfeld responded: “I don’t think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it’s to report it.”
“If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it,” Pace answered.
The Iraqi official familiar with the joint inspections said detainees who are not moved to other facilities are left vulnerable. “They tell us, ‘If you leave us here, they will kill us,’ ” said the Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because, he said, he and other Iraqis involved with inspections had received death threats.
The U.S. official involved in the inspections, who would not be identified by name, described in an e-mail the abuse found during some of the visits since the Nov. 13 raid: “Numerous bruises on the arms, legs and feet. A lot of the Iraqis had separated shoulders and problems with their hands and fingers too. You could also see strap marks on some of their backs.”
“I was not in charge of the team who went to the sites. If so, I would have taken them out,” the U.S. official wrote, referring to the detainees. “We set a precedent and we were given guidance” from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “but for some reason it is not being followed.”
“For some reason” General Pace’s “guidance” on the issue of removing prisoners from Iraqi prisons who are being abused is not being followed? Some reason?
I think we know the reason. And it isn’t just Bush or Rumsfeld who are to blame, though this is certainly the result of decisions made at the highest levels of our government. No, each and every one of us who do not protest this crime against humanity is equally to blame, for this is being done in our name. Torture and murder are being carried out for the express purpose of defending Americans from terrorism.
We are the ones who allow it to continue with our silence and our passivity in the face of mounting evidence that our country is in the hands of thugs and sadists who believe that our nation can and should do anything it wishes to achieve and maintain global hegemony. And the longer we stand by and allow it to continue, the greater the stain of immorality upon each of our souls.
I’d like to close with a poem I found on the web, which expresses far better than I ever could our mutual responsibility for these atrocities. It’s reproduced here with the permission of its author:
What did you expect?
The log on the fire needs tending;
the iron isn’t hot enough
to sear an eye completely shut.In the corner someone yanks a chain
and stretches arms beyond
the point at which they dislocate.Someone else is freezing cold
as he lies bare naked on
a concrete floor without any food,water to drink or pot in which to piss.
Thank God the cold sure helps
to keep the smell of runny feces down.I know, this isn’t what you meant
when you said that they
deserved whatever they might get.I know you couldn’t burn that eye
or punch that face,
or electrify testicles of those who crythey’re innocent. I know — but still
aren’t you the one who said
it’s all right, just go ahead and do it now?Copyright 2006 T. Birch
