As I’m sure most of you know, last week the Obama administration released some memos written by staff in the Justice Department during the Bush administration, memos written for the CIA to provide legal cover for the use of harsh interrogation techniques that many people regard as clear examples of torture. Here’s takes on the news story from The Australian, BBC News, The Guardian and The Washington Post. Here’s editorial opinion from the NYT, the Boston Globe, the Financial Times and the Toronto Star.
No time to write a full post, so I’ll leave you with these paragraphs from Glen Greenwald as a jump-off point:
The most criticism-worthy act that Obama engaged in yesterday was to affirm and perpetuate what is the single most-destructive premise in our political culture: namely, that when high government officials get caught committing serious crimes, the responsible and constructive thing to do is demand immunity for them, while only those who are vindictive and divisive want political leaders to be held accountable for their crimes.
…[Obama expresses exactly] the mindset that has destroyed the rule of law in the U.S. and spawned massive criminality in our elite class. Accountability for crimes committed by political leaders (as opposed to ordinary Americans) is scorned as “retribution” and “laying blame for the past.” Those who believe that the rule of law should be applied to the powerful as well as to ordinary citizens are demonized as the “forces that divide us.” The bottomless corruption of immunizing political elites for serious crimes is glorified in the most Orwellian terms as “a time for reflection,” “moving forward,” and “coming together on behalf of our common future.”
Others argue that Obama has walked a line where he makes both sides half-happy and half-unhappy by revealing the memos but barring prosecution of those involved operationally. Your thoughts?
If he pursued those involved operationally for prosecution, surely there would be a massive political backlash from the GOP (and probably some Dems as well). I’m sure Obama wants to achieve some of his proposed legislative reform agenda before the end of his term/s…
Politics.
I’ hoping that this is some sort of plan. Obama knowing he is politically cornered on this might be leaking this bit by bit until public outrage forces him to act.
Given the number of amoral atavists you could reasonably expect to show up in this comment thread defending torture – two at least – you can readily extrapolate that to the wider community. The Obama administration might be in the uncomfortable position of not being sure prosecution would result in a conviction. Which would be worse than not prosecuting at all if it set a precedent.
gilmae,
You are assuming that Obama will be all lily-white on this question throughout his presidency. To me, this is as much for self-interest as for any other reason. I believe he wants to keep his own options open to conduct operations that may be, in the cold light of day, illegal. If he prosecutes Bush for anything then he may well be open to similar actions from any subsequent president. Perhaps they will be better considered, and less blatently illegal and immoral actions than those prepetrated by the Bush White House (the action on Guantanamo gives me some hope in this area) but to me this clearly shows he wants to maintain some scope to act in illegal ways.
I assume nothing. Or at least if I assume anything it is that he isn’t lily-white on any question. That the issue at hand is beyond the pale and he at least seems to lean towards agreeing with me – why else override the CIA director and shine daylight onto these grubs, Bybee &c? – allows me to hope, though.
Fair enough. I should have said “…seem to be…”. We can all live in hope – but I tend to lean towards believeing that all power tends to corrupt. Given he was successful in Chicago politics we may have less cause for hope that we otherwise may.
Talking of Politics – Mandela supporting Zuma? Wow!
I’m still stunned by “insects placed in a confinement box”.
It’s at least possible that Obama remembers how vindictive the Rethuglicans were over the threat to impeach Nixon – that is, after all, why Pornographer in Chief Starr pursued Clinton so vigorously over the illicit blow-job.
Before the election, Obama promised that he would prosecute if there was clear evidence of torture. This made many of us skeptical he would ever prosecute Bush et ilk for their crimes, because there was already clear evidence. Now he says he won’t prosecute, so although he has technically broken his promise, I am in no way surprised. I do not hold out any prospect of Obama holding the previous administration to account. Instead, I hope Garzon in Spain has the guts to carry through with his intentions to prosecute Gonzales, Bybee, etc.
Yep, Obama says no-one will be prosecuted.
I’m just wondering why it has anything to do with him. Judiciary, executive, legislative – three powers, meant to be separate, yeah?
Say Obama’s nephew rolls out one day and caps someone. Or say just some random guy out in Boondocks, Idaho shoots his wife. Does Obama get to decide whether or not to prosecute?
So what’s the difference?
This is an old tradition. Nixon pardoned Lt Calley who murdered a couple of hundred people at My Lai, and Ford pardoned Nixon, remember; and they used roughly the same excuse, that prosecution would cause divisions.
But this is simply a precedent thing. Presidents don’t want to prosecute people who did the wrong thing under a Presidents’ watch, or else when you follow the blame up the chain of command, well…
This is all about the brass covering their arse.
I guess being Mr President he can make up the rules as he goes along. (?) But one would have thought that torture is torture and the guilty should be made to face up to their crimes.
I don’t really think the ’smokin’ ‘em outta their holes’ vengeance mentality that marked his predecessor is very much Obama’s style, not at all and he’s undoubtedly aware that the ensuing media frenzy surrounding trials or impeachments brought upon the previous Admin, would be so OTT as to overshadow just about everything else he might try to do. I’d suggest some judicious backroom guillotining of the most heinous offenders in the CIA. Bush Cheney & Rumsfield will suffer punishment enough by having to live with themselves for their remaining days.
I don’t think however the just ‘following orders’ defense is really very defensible–not morally anyway. Every solider who is trained specifically to commit legal murder, as they all are, should also be fully aware of what is legally and morally permissable under international law. If his ‘orders’ vary widely with such codes of behaviour than he should seek the advise of a lawyer or wear the consequences as an individual.
If Obama decides to prosecute these monsters he would be wise to stay away from Motorcades in open cars, book repositories and grassy knolls. Oh and ice machines.
Huggy.
As I understand it, Obama has announced that no CIA officers will be prosecuted who acted in accordance with specific legal opinions that their behaviour was lawful. This is vastly different from a situation where people obey instructions which they know, or suspect, to be unlawful, or are careless about their lawfulness or otherwise, but later plead the defence that they were only following orders.
To proceed with prosecutions in this instance would impose a de facto obligation on public servants to go and get their own legal advice about the lawfulness of any instructions they get that cause them concern. That seems to be a pretty heavy burden on public servants. I’m not suggesting necessarily that it can’t be justified but it does need to be considered carefully.
The more important issue is whether those issuing the advice acted in good faith or whether they knowingly concocted misleading documents to justify behaviour that they knew was unlawful. On my understanding. Obama has given no undertakings not to prosecute the latter kind of action.
Ken, I suppose there’s a question at what point you expect people down the chain to recognize that the “legal advice” they are being fed is nonsense.
It depends on their seniority, and the outrageousness of the legal advice.
Robert, I suspect the situation for these CIA interrogators is similar to what I was told when I first joined the Army.
A soldier is obliged to follow lawful commands, and is also obliged to refuse to carry out illegal orders. However, the onus is on said soldier to prove that the order was, in fact, illegal. And with a legal opinion which explicitly legitimises the order …
Caroline writes, “Every solider [...] should also be fully aware of what is legally and morally permissable under international law.”
Speaking from experience, soldiers don’t get detailed training in this stuff. There’s one afternoon with the chaplain where he shows you this old British Army movie about a war in Central Europe with Corporal “Oi you can’t do that” and Private War Criminal, outlining things like the use of the white flag, property and safety of civilians, property and safety of prisoners of war, and so on.
Then during training there’s the occasional comment about the rights and wrongs of this and that.
In general obviously illegal orders like “shoot that little old lady”, you’re expected to disobey, stating your reasons why. Less obviously illegal orders like “put this insect in that too small cell with that prisoner” you’re meant to obey, but… every soldier in a Commonwealth army has something called “right of redress”. That means, “do as you’re told this time, you can complain afterwards.”
So that someone who had moral or legal qualms would do the wrong thing just once, and then complain afterwards to a superior. It does happen that officers doing the wrong thing are relieved of their commands. If the wrong thing has the support of the superiors, then you might think they’d keep the soldier there forcing them to do these dodgy things, but in practice they transfer you immediately.
And that’s always been the practice in regular armies. Guerilla and terrorist groups kill people for refusing to obey obviously atrocious orders, regular armies just transfer you somewhere else. Even with the Nazis, no German soldier or SS member was executed for refusing to kill civilians or prisoners of war, and only two were ever imprisoned (one, Schimek, was executed for desertion but had previously refused to kill civilians). Some were demoted. They usually just said, “you’re a weakling!” and transferred him to the Eastern Front or if they really hated him to a desk somewhere. [see Kitterman, DH (1996) Those Who Said "No!" : German Resistors to Nazi Mass Murder]
Lt Albert Battel, for example, used his troops to block a bridge the SS were using to transfer Jews to Belzec death camp. He was reprimanded, but later promoted and fought in Russia.
If even the Nazis didn’t execute their soldiers for disobeying atrocity orders, I fail to see what Western soldiers need fear. In the US military, soldiers have been imprisoned for refusing to go to Iraq/Afghanistan, but nobody has been imprisoned for refusing to obey an order to commit some atrocity – whether we or the US President or your Auntie Jenny would consider it an atrocity or not.
“I was just obeying orders” says one of two things, either,
“The authorities know better than me” – this is simply fascism, we’re supposed to live in democracies – or
“I’m too scared to do what I think right” – cowardice is hardly something to be admired in the military, I should think.
Kiashu these were not soldiers but civilians responsible for gathering intelligence.
David and Robert the legal opinions in question weren’t just any old legal opinions either but short of going to the Supreme Court for an advisory, they were about the most authoritative opinions possible to get.
While torture is morally repugnant, we need to be careful to distinguish moral objections from legal ones. For all I know the laws of the USA (or Australia for that matter) permit all kinds of behaviour that I would find immoral, but that doesn’t mean the perpetrators should be prosecuted.
Hear hear Silkworm.
Indeed Caroline @ #12. The Nuremberg defence in fact, held not to be valid as a defence to war crimes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Defense
Obama is doing a Pontius Pilate. There is no other explanation. You can be sure that the German Reich also claimed legality for what they did, but in this case the argument that CIA were only following legal advice has to be considered in light of WHO was giving that advice. Minions of the Bush administration, no less.
And the CIA people who accepted that advice knew in their heart of hearts that what they were doing was wrong, is wrong in perpetuity: was in contravention of the Geneva Conventions. It was just so convenient for the CIA to be given carte blanche (so called) authority; a fig leaf of legal cover, to commit acts of utter bastardry. (Just like, BTW, Herr Howard’s legal advice received, that the Iraq war was legal.)
Note with the US advices it WASN’T true, independent legal advice, free of the constraints of preserving one’s job. It was advice from government employed people. People with a vested interest in keeping the “Decider” happy.
The UK Government has called an inquiry into how Britain got itself into the Iraq war. I am unsure what sort of inquiry, but any quasi-judicial assessment could prove interesting and in marked contrast to the Obama approach. What expectation that Kevin Rudd might call for a public review of how Australia joined the Coalition of the Willing?
Abu Ghraib and Guantamano were pivotal in the US experience as Peter Kemp points out. An interesting retrospective on the Bush years in Vanity Fair (Feb ‘09) details how Defence Secretary Rumsfeld knew of Abu Ghraib’s depravities – including photographs – four months before the issue broke in late April 2004. Yet all who were prosecuted were minor players. Obama should have let the chips fall where they will.
It is worth reading the memos and some of the commentary on them over at Salon by Glenn Greenwald, Specifically, one memo makes it clear hat the advice given is far from legally tight – it sounds very provisional indeed. paucity of relevant precedent. Another extract makes it clear that what the US would condemn as a matter of foreign policy (and no doubt call torture in these cases), it is more than happy to do itself. diplomatic relations and executive practice. Also Greenwald seems to be arguing that the choice about prosecution is not Obama’s.
This article is interesting too, indicating that the US is breaching its international obligationsJeff Sparrow’s piece in today’s Crikey is also worth a read.
Ken, presumably they were the most authoriative opinions possible because they came straight from the horses’ mouth, i.e, teh Commander in Chief (or at least someone with a devious mind close by–probably the Vice Commander in Chief) and given the dubious characters of these two individuals and their motives, anyone who was subject to carrying out these ‘legal opinions’, probably new better and should have challenged them. That they didn’t implies complicity and some sort of willingness. If Bush didn’t fully realise he couldn’t legally step outside international conventions on matters pertaining to war and torture without future consequences, then someone, anyone, in the CIA certainly should have. IMO it does comes down to individual choice. You choose not to participate in a gang rape because you know it to be wrong and if you choose to ignore your conscience and go along with it because everybody else ‘was’, then you suffer the consequences on your own, personally and socially for a very long time. CIA ‘operatives’ who carry out torture whilst not strictly regular army, cannot be considered to be anything remotely similar to the average public servant.
Just a sidenote, Kiashu @17 — what do you mean, people who refused to partake in Nazi atrocities weren’t punished? Being sent to the Eastern Front WAS a punishment any time after summer 1942!
Ken @ 18, your point about the authority of the opinion is precisely the one I was trying to make. I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear.
At Huffpo
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-shearer/the-torture-debate–its-a_b_188814.html
And the reason they persisted? Sadism possibly, power corrupts…. In any event this is an alleged crime which must be prosecuted. If there were thousands involved in this kind of thing, is that a reason for not prosecuting because of the scale and “it’s too divisive”? Would the American people tolerate such treatment of US prisoners? I can almost hear Hannity, BillO and Rush Limbaugh screaming in response: “We are the good guys and cannot do wrong. They did it for the protection of the USA, a sacred cause”
The US has to be put on notice that if they won’t prosecute, the rest of the world will, (minus of course quite a few despotic client states of the US.)
In a nutshell, US exceptionalism rears it’s ugly head, again, to protect the perpetrators–those above, and below who said:
(PS Breaking Godwin’s law is mandatory on this subject.)
Have woken up wondering if torture is immoral. My immediate reaction is to think of course it is. But I’m actually not sure. Maybe more correctly its ammoral. Although perhaps the morality of it is neither here nor there as most of us would agree that it is simply wrong and if we couldn’t agree that it was wrong then maybe we could agree that its illegal. But immoral? Not sure. Will have to go back to the dictionary.
Agree entirely with you about ‘US exceptionalism’ Peter.
From the story quoted by Kiashu at 11:
And the people who ordered them to do so? In every story I’ve seen on this, Obama has only exempted the ‘foot soldiers’ of the CIA. Yes Ken they are actually civilians. Most of us know that the ‘Nuremberg defence’ is in fact not a defence. I think though, that many Americans would lump field duty CIA officers in with their ever more revered “military”, making them political koala bears for the time being.
.
On the other hand and noting who’s not being expressly exempted from prosecution, I dare say there might be some fairly frantic phone calls being made ATM. After all, as has been said, there is United States legal precedent that waterboarding IS torture and a war crime, and the president ordered the release of those memos.
CIA, military, it comes to the same thing in that each has a certain role its members are well aware of, there are some things that are obviously illegal, others less obviously, and you can always just walk away, you don’t have to participate.
Chook, you may regard Germans being sent to the Eastern Front as punishment, but it was something regular soldiers and officers were expected to do. They had quite literally a couple of million soldiers fighting there – do you think all two million were in penal battalions, had all pissed off Hitler in some way? Soldiers who happily murdered civilians, or who never received orders to do it and never committed any atrocities at all, they all got sent to the Eastern Front. So you can hardly present being sent there as a punishment.
Anyway, fighting the enemy is the duty of a soldier. In early 1942 Hitler ordered that no-one who wished to be posted to the Eastern Front should be refused. So all those concentration camp guards could have walked away. Sure, they might have been killed defending their country, which they didn’t want. “Rather than risk my life defending my country, I would rather stay behind the lines and murder civilians. The lives of thousands of civilians are worth much less than my life, and if my country is overrun by the Red Army that’s not my problem.” So they were cowards and had treasonous tendencies.
Anyway lots who refused to murder civilians and the like got redeployed somewhere in Germany, not to the Eastern Front.
When you mistreat prisoners of war, it gives aid and comfort to the enemy. Their soldiers become less likely to surrender, and more likely to fight to the death – so because you got a laugh stacking some naked blokes in a human pyramid, more of your country’s soldiers die. It gives insurgents some propaganda and helps them recruit, making the war last longer and indeed increasing the chance you’ll lose. Atrocities are in this sense treasonous.
The point remains: not even the Nazis punished their soldiers and pseudo-soldiers like the Gestapo for refusing atrocities. So “but I HAD to follow orders!” is just an excuse for being a cowardly traitor. Giving the orders is more cowardly and treasonous still, of course. But so is following them.
Unless someone can direct me to something saying otherwise the one “torture” that I have trouble seeing as torture is sleep deprivation. I just can’t see how denying someone sleep can be seen as torture. Its not nice and so I would want it still restricted to certain offences and offenders but if I was introduced to someone who deprived a known AQ terrorist of sleep in order to try and find out where more AQ might be or to prevent an attack I would be able to shake their hand. Interested to hear contrary views however, if I am to get an informed contray view its likely to be here.
On the flip side and if you do see sleep deprivation as torture then I am open to claims of contradiction I do think Kaishu’s point about torture gives the enemy a propaganda victory and lengthens war’s is valid and I don’t think many on my side of the fence ( conservative) appreciate that enough. Abu Ghraib even if you argue wasn’t anywhere near as bad as what the previous gaolers were doing in the same location probably added a year to the insurgency. That’s tens of thousands needlessly dead.
Kingsley,
The Bradbury memo relied on the work of Prof James Horne in attempting to make the same argument against sleep deprivation as torture. Remember that torture victims were deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours straight, and were kept in positions that prevented them from lying down, typically with their hands chained above their heads to the ceiling.
As to how sleep deprivation in controlled laboratory conditions is different from those the detainees were exposed to, thus resulting in torture, I’ll allow the man himself, Prof James Horne to explain.
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/04/prof-james-horne-on-the-memos.html
Like Pinochet, Chimpo may not have much use for a passport from now on.
Kingsley, if you think sleep deprivation isn’t torture, try stopping your spouse from sleeping for several days and see what happens. Or go without yourself.
Or just consider: if they did it to our soldiers, would we call it torture? Funny how when the enemy does it we instantly condemn it, when our boys do it we start splitting fine semantic hairs about what’s “pain” and what’s “distress” and all this sort of rubbish.
Lack of sleep makes dealing with stress harder, it makes you flare up angrily at provocation, weep uncontrollably when afraid or in pain, lose concentration and not be fully aware of your surrounds and what you’re saying – and in the end you actually hallucinate, and of course hallucinations can be very distressing.
The sleep deprivation is also, remember, not combined with carpeted floors and fine food and internet or radio or interesting books to entertain you. It’s an empty cell with a blanket on the floor, you’re naked or just in underwear, the cell kept slightly cold (10-15C), the lights on brightly 24 hours a day, “white noise” (static) or the same song repeated for three days running, the toilet is a hole in the ground in the corner with no flush, the room smells of your sweat and piss and shit, you can’t bathe, there’s no clock and they feed you at random times so you’ve no way of knowing what time it is or even if it’s day or night or have two days passed or a week, and any time you’re seen dozing off, they come in and shove you against the cold wall and slap your around a bit, maybe toss a bucket of cold water on you to wake you up. Then leave you wet and cold, shivering.
And you’re locked up. There’s no escape. No lawyer is defending you. You don’t see other prisoners. You can’t see the sky, or smell the fresh air. Someone comes in and asks you questions. One guy asks you the same question again and again. “What’s your name?” “What’s your name?” “What’s your name?” The same for an hour or more. You doze off and they slap you awake again. “What’s your name?” Then it stops and they leave and the white noise starts again. They bring in a meal and when you’re halfway through it they take it away.
And it goes on and on. Day after day – or is it weeks? Months? How long will it go on? If you know it’ll end at some point, you can endure anything. But it just goes on and on. There’s no escape. SLAP! “Wake up!”
That’s torture. If they did it to our captured soldiers, we’d call it torture.
As for torture preventing terrorist acts, what you have to remember is that “enhanced interrogation” has always come after the person was imprisoned for a month or more. First they just talk to the guy normally, it’s only after that they torture him. By that time, the rest of his cell has either carried out the planned act, or they know he was captured so they changed their plans to account for whatever he might tell the authorities.
Plus, the Guantanamo inmates – most of them got released without charge after a few years. Over 800 men have been through Guantanamo, 245 remain. Those released spent an average of four years there. Only 20 have been charged, including Australia’s David Hicks. Let’s assume a 100% conviction rate for the 20 charged. That means around 780 of 800 Guantanamo inmates are innocent. We – I say “we” because Australia is very much complicit in this – have detained without charge or trial and tortured innocent men.
Some argue that torture would sometimes be necessary for the sake of “security”. But as I’ve noted, when you torture your enemy you help him in his recruitment and propaganda. So by trying to help your security, you’re actually destroying it.
We imprisoned without charge or trial and tortured innocent men.
Just to reinforce the point you’ve made, Kiashu, I reckon under torture any of us would say anything to make it stop.
I have no patience with dickheads like Kingsley.
That’s why, David, in the Malleus Maleficium, the 15th century guide on witch-hunting, it was said that if a person immediately confessed, they should be tortured anyway – since they might just be confessing to avoid torture.
If it’s alright to torture accused terrorists, then why not accused rapists, murderers, bank robbers and so on? Let’s waterboard the drunk drivers, that’ll sober them up! Why the exception for accused terrorists? “Because they might kill lots of people!” Okay then, what about accused Mafia assassins? Accused arsonists? Accused serial killers? How many is “lots”? How many lives must be threatened before it’s okay to start pulling fingernails? 100? 20? 10? 5? 1? None?
What it all comes down to is that we don’t care if accused terrorists are tortured because almost of all those we accuse have dark skin and are Moslems. They might even be making a dirty bomb! we’re always being told. The only case in the US where anyone has obtained materials with the aim of making a “dirty bomb” has occurred in Belfast, Maine… four months ago. Never heard of it? Not many have. More here, including links to the FBI report.
Why didn’t we hear about it? He was a rich conservative white Christian guy. Probably we wouldn’t be so comfortable with anyone waterboarding him.
I dunno, Kiashu. I’d be inclined to waterboard him because he’s a conservative Christian.
You know it’s right.
As a liberal Jew, I find it hard to disagree with you.
Tempting as it is, though, I’d still rather have rule of law. I’m kind of old-fashioned that way.
It’s not well-known, but a British government once fell over the issue of terrorism. After an Italian used a British gunsmith to make a bomb to try to kill the French Emperor in France, Palmerston’s first government tried to introduce the Conspiracy to Murder Bill, which would have made it a crime to conspire to kill someone abroad.
This bill which today would be considered not at all contentious, though it passed it did not make it into law, as the outcry from the public was huge, and Palmerston’s Cabinet resigned. The public said that England was the home of liberty, and the home of liberty must be a refuge for all – even, or especially, political assassins; they were particularly offended that Parliament seemed to be doing the bidding of the French Emperor.
Oh, for an Australian people with such patriotism, and a Parliament with such backbone. Hicks and Habib would have been home much sooner, Haneef would never have suffered as he did, and we would not be involved in this nonsense in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rule of law. It’s good stuff, and not to be tossed aside at the first whiff of Semtex. As I’ve written before about Haneef, we’re a cowardly bunch, that we would toss aside eight hundred years of liberties merely because of a few fanatics.
“To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.”
Nope, not even if they’re a dark-skinned Moslem who we think might want to blow us up.
Torture is always, always, always wrong.
Spain’s Attorney General has ruled that Spain will not prosecute the US Six. This coincides with Obama’s reversal on not prosecuting them. It may be that Obama has reversed his position because he was relying on Spain to prosecute them, or it may be that Obama has reversed his position because of pressure from all quarters. In any case, it seems strange to me that Obama has so quickly reversed his position. My faith in Obama has been restored, just a little, but I won’t be satisfied until prosecutions go ahead.
I second everything Kiashu has said.
I was particularly impressed by the observation about half-arsed military training in the rules of wars and the intellectually and moral deft cite of Malleus Maleficium.
Incidentally K. have you read “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union”? Fuck my rubber overshoes, it’s a good read. And evocatively whips up some of the points discussed on this thread.
Whatever happened to equal opportunity waterboarding for all theists?
Just kidding. Agree with Kiashu: rule of law, no exceptions even for limp Dick Cheney, Turdblossom Rove, John Howard, Bill O’Reilly, and…and…. unless of course, and it must be said, that if it was a waterboarding style of enema, which would allow their remains to be buried in matchboxes.
“With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws, and — and I don’t want to prejudge that. I think that there are a host of very complicated issues involved there.”
Nabakov writes,
“I was particularly impressed by the observation about half-arsed military training in the rules of wars”
I wish to emphasise that despite this half-arsed training, soldiers, sailors and airmen of the Commonwealth of Australia are very aware of what is and isn’t torture or ill-treatment. It’s common sense, really.
I mean, the laws of war have a few obscure things which aren’t common sense. Like it’s laid out that PWs will be paid five (I think five, I can’t recall) Swiss francs a day for any work they do, or soemthing like that. Guards are supposed to salute enemy PWs who are officers of superior rank. And when you loot – er, remove the property of dead enemy, you’re meant to put it in a little bag with their ID stuff and pass it on to the Red Cross. But let’s be serious: nobody is going to be up before the ICC at The Hague because he paid the PWs four Swiss francs to PWs, or gave enemy officers the One Finger Salute instead of a proper salute, or took some dead jundie’s imitation Rolex.
The things which you have any chance at all of being prosecuted for are all common sense things, like not shooting people who are trying to surrender, caring for all wounded under your control enemy or friendly, not kicking tied-up PWs in the groin, and so on. So even the half-arsed training in laws of war is enough – it’s enough to say, “look lads, there is some shit we do not do, so behave yourselves.”
Soldiers of all countries know broadly what’s right and wrong – not the finicky details, but the main and important stuff. But sometimes they choose to set aside that knowledge, either because they as individuals are nasty bastards, or because a superior told them to and they’re cowards.
A military unit is like any other workplace: anything can happen day-to-day, but if something is happening every day over weeks, months or years, it’s because whoever’s in charge wants it to happen.
So we’d be talking dozens, probably hundreds of people responsible for mistreatment of PWs and their deaths in custody. Note that the released memos make no mention of deaths in custody of people under “rendition”. Whatever you think of torture, you have got to have something to say about killing people in custody…
This rings true.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/66622.html
Sounds like the definition of madness doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. One thing though, Sonderlager Cheney has to be one evil bastard: he refused to accept that the ties between Sadaam’s regime and Al Q were non existent, but egged on by the likes of that charlatan and crook Chalabi, kept flogging the dead horse.
Which reminds me, where’s Gino?
Kiashu and Rachel – thanks for detailed responses/links. I must confess to some naivety. I guess I just assumed that in a sense after say 24 – 48 hours someone would have become a gibberish mess and useless to interrogator or yielded the information. I wonder at why someone would even persevere with depriving someone sleep for 180 hours? One might have thought they’d decide it was futile far earlier but if they are indeed doing it for 180 hours then I’ll willingly concede that crosses the line to torture.
This is why I come to this site, once in a while I learn something and yep have to reverse a position.
David Irving – your lack of “patience” has been noted I don’t need to say anymore.
Not just Chimpo. Heard on TV this morning they might be going after Condaleeza Rice because as NSA she approved water-boarding. Well, one might hope Chimpo, Rice, Cheney ands Rumself all get prosecuted for authorizing torture (and other war crimes for that matter – shit, throw in BVlair and Ratty Howard -) but I won’t hold my breath. I’d die.
If Ratty were to be prosecuted and found guilty of complicity in torture, perhaps his punishment could be mulching via Saddam’s dreaded human shredding machine.
If only this infernal engine could be found!
Rumour has it its buried in the gardens at Kirribilli House somewhere.