Of Patriots and Torturers
I make it a point to never miss a piece of reporting from Jane Mayer -- and her just-published piece in the New Yorker is no disappointment.
Unless, of course, you mean a disappointment with human beings in general and, in this case, with some Bush administration officials who have instituted conscious policies of torture.
Mayer tells the must-read story of one Albert J. Mora, until a few weeks ago the U.S. Navy’s top lawyer; the conservative son of a couple who fled communist Hungary and Cuba; and an honest, humane man who did what he could –and failed—to halt the institutionalization of torture by the Bush administration.
Two years before the Abu Ghraib story broke open, Mora had learned of shocking abuse of prisoners being held at the U.S. base in Guantanamo. Much to his credit, and elevating him far above the moral gnomes who populate the upper echelons of the administration, Mora drew no distinction between plain cruel and sadistic treatment of prisoners and outright torture. On this subject, he wasn’t willing to split hairs (or for that matter to break shinbones, smash jaws or cause organ failure). Mora eventually laid out his concerns and his recommendations to halt these practices in a 22 page memo which you can see here.
Mora’s complaints worked themselves up into the office of Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes and he was told – essentially—that thanks to his diligent work, prisoner treatment policy was indeed going to be revised and clarified.
But Mora, and the rest of us, were straight out lied to. He, and we, were told one thing, while the administration went ahead and did another i.e. it authorized the use of torture on prisoners from Gitmo to Baghdad to Kabul.
I would do injustice to Mayer’s brilliant account if I tried to further summarize what she so much better lays out in exquisite sequential detail. So make sure you read the entire story. And if you’re a conservative and a defender of our “torture-lite†policy, I challenge you to ask yourself what moral and political attenuators separate you from a true patriot like Mora?
Liberal Kevin Drum , meanwhile, finds himself outraged by the way the administration openly deceived one of its own legal advisors, in this case Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora. And the way that the policies of abuse remain firmly in place:
"...It's stunning. Not only did the Bush administration keep Congress and the American public in the dark, but they even deliberately lied to their own chief legal advisors. (The administration provided Mayer with an official excuse for this behavior, of course, but it's laughably thin.) And the debate is still going on. Mora reports that "a few months ago" he sat in on a meeting to decide if it should be official Pentagon policy to treat detainees in accordance with Common Article Three of the Geneva conventions, which bars cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment. Despite the fact that virtually everyone at the meeting supported the proposal, and despite the fact that U.S. law already forbids the violation of Common Article Three, the proposal was scuttled because of Bush administration opposition..."Eric Umansky focuses on, yes, the inevitable, unbiquitous Cheney Connection to this entire sordid affair. Didn't you just know it?
February 21st, 2006 at 6:34 am
MORE (from sub-only “Times Select):
The Torturers Win
By BOB HERBERT/NYTs, 2/20/06
Justice? Surely you jest.
Terrible things were done to Maher Arar, and his extreme suffering was set in motion by the United States government. With the awful facts of his case carefully documented, he tried to sue for damages. But last week a federal judge waved the facts aside and told Mr. Arar, in effect, to get lost.
We’re in a new world now and the all-powerful U.S. government apparently has free rein to ruin innocent lives without even a nod in the direction of due process or fair play. Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen who, according to all evidence, has led an exemplary life, was seized and shackled by U.S. authorities at Kennedy Airport in 2002, and then shipped off to Syria, his native country, where he was held in a dungeon for the better part of a year. He was tormented physically and psychologically, and at times tortured.
The underground cell was tiny, about the size of a grave. According to court papers, “The cell was damp and cold, contained very little light and was infested with rats, which would enter the cell through a small aperture in the ceiling. Cats would urinate on Arar through the aperture, and sanitary facilities were nonexistent.”
Mr. Arar’s captors beat him savagely with an electrical cable. He was allowed to bathe in cold water once a week. He lost 40 pounds while in captivity.
This is a quintessential example of the reprehensible practice of extraordinary rendition, in which the U.S. government kidnaps individuals — presumably terror suspects — and sends them off to regimes that are skilled in the fine art of torture. In terms of vile behavior, rendition stands shoulder to shoulder with contract killing.
If the United States is going to torture people, we might as well do it ourselves. Outsourcing torture does not make it any more acceptable.
Mr. Arar’s case became a world-class embarrassment when even Syria’s torture professionals could elicit no evidence that he was in any way involved in terrorism. After 10 months, he was released. No charges were ever filed against him.
Mr. Arar is a 35-year-old software engineer who lives in Ottawa with his wife and their two young children. He’s never been in any kind of trouble. Commenting on the case in a local newspaper, a former Canadian official dryly observed that “accidents will happen” in the war on terror. The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York filed a lawsuit on Mr. Arar’s behalf, seeking damages from the U.S. government for his ordeal. The government said the case could not even be dealt with because the litigation would involve the revelation of state secrets.
In other words, it wouldn’t matter how hideously or egregiously Mr. Arar had been treated, or how illegally or disgustingly the government had behaved. The case would have to be dropped. Inquiries into this 21st-century Inquisition cannot be tolerated. Its activities must remain secret at all costs.
In a ruling that basically gave the green light to government barbarism, U.S. District Judge David Trager dismissed Mr. Arar’s lawsuit last Thursday. Judge Trager wrote in his opinion that “Arar’s claim that he faced a likelihood of torture in Syria is supported by U.S. State Department reports on Syria’s human rights practices.”
But in dismissing the suit, he said that the foreign policy and national security issues raised by the government were “compelling” and that such matters were the purview of the executive branch and Congress, not the courts.
He also said that “the need for secrecy can hardly be doubted.”
Under that reasoning, of course, the government could literally get away with murder. With its bad actions cloaked in court-sanctioned secrecy, no one would be the wiser.
As an example of the kind of foreign policy problems that might arise if Mr. Arar were given his day in court, Judge Trager wrote:
“One need not have much imagination to contemplate the negative effect on our relations with Canada if discovery were to proceed in this case and were it to turn out that certain high Canadian officials had, despite public denials, acquiesced in Arar’s removal to Syria.”
Oh yes, by all means, we need the federal courts to fully protect the right of public officials to lie to their constituents.
February 21st, 2006 at 8:44 am
Depending on a lot of things, torture could be the doorway to realistic impeachment possibilities.
Most things for which the left would love to impeach W basically enrage the right and send them into defensive mode; impeachment on any Iraq war grounds would tear the country apart. But this stuff is different, potentially.
But I’m still gonna dive into this again at some point and see what’s really there. I’m just so damn wary of moral outrage. It’s so seductive.
February 21st, 2006 at 9:23 am
Well you find the examples of egregious outrages and play them. Things being what they are, they can be easily found. Really though it’s an ad populum. The whole terror campaign will be rife with them. That seems to be the nature of the task: miss the real ones and capture the innocents. Exactly what will work is unclear.
February 21st, 2006 at 1:29 pm
The basic question is: are these cases mistakes as we grope our way toward something sad but arguably necessary; or are we headed in a fundamentally dark direction? Or both?
The dishonesty of the W crew is curcumstantial evidence pointing to the dark conclusion. But since I share their perspectives on some other questions, or at least understand them, I could also understand their belief that the press and the political opposition are unable to deal reflectively with questions like this.
That wouldn’t excuse the dishonesty; it’s just a possible other motivation for it: other than hiding something truly evil, i mean.
I am drawn in some way to what I suggested the other day: we should simply refuse to do anything remotely construable as torture, even things we’ve always done.
But then I remind myself who we’re dealing with – when you get to the level of the actual perps, the Mohammed Atttas and so on, who are truly evil men eager to kill all of us: and I think, it’s not so much that I’d be comfortable torturing them; it’s more that I know for sure that they would use, somehow, the certainty that any kind of “coercive techniques” won’t happen. They’re would not be impressed by our niceness. They’d laugh.
February 21st, 2006 at 1:34 pm
The Clinton administration engaged in rendition, too, right? Actual question.
February 21st, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Find an example of anything remotely like the Arar case under Clinton and I’ll buy you a Ken Starr autograph off of eBay…
Incidentally, if anybody wants a good laugh at the expense of “blogosphere” pretensions, go watch the “WMD Files” buffoonery over at Open Pajamas. Roger Simon’s unintentional self-parody as he interviews Woolsey gives a bad name to amateur journalism…and be sure to follow the trail to Byron York’s devastating take-down of the guy behind the Saddam Tapes feeding frenzy. This is a hoot. If any “MSM” reporters have been feeling insecure under the impending Sleepwear Juggernaut, after watching this silly sideshow they can rest easy.
February 21st, 2006 at 2:16 pm
This, incidentally, is the actual answer to the actual question…
http://tinyurl.com/mvawy
February 21st, 2006 at 2:27 pm
One difference is, Clinton didn’t face the same sense of urgency. But it seems people believe W came up with the concept of rendition. (I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more common than we know under Clinton.)
Also: note how Byron York and the NRO crew are capable of seeing problems with things that they’d to some extent be motivated to champion.
February 21st, 2006 at 2:32 pm
Didn’t see your article before my last post.
Are Tenet’s 70 pre-9-11 cases just Bush administration cases? Is he referring to the Clinton years too? It’s unclear to me. It’s also unclear exactly what’s meant by it being used “much more widely.”
February 21st, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Actually, one source in the article says that since 9-11, there have been 100-150 cases of rendition; that doesn’t seem to support the idea that it’s being used “much more widely” than before, given the ramped-up intensity of the situation. If the comparison is to 70. And given that I don’t know the timeframe of the 70.
February 21st, 2006 at 2:40 pm
(I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more common than we know under Clinton.)
I’m not surprised that you wouldn’t be surprised.
Oh yeah, Byron York is a peach. At least he’s got some sense of damage control. Unlike Inspector Simon.
February 21st, 2006 at 2:41 pm
There’s also this setnence:
“The officials said that most of the people subject to rendition were regarded by counterterrorism experts as less significant than people held under direct American control, including the estimated three dozen high ranking operatives of Al Qaeda who are confined at secret sites around the world.”
…which seems to support something I’ve pondered before: if it’s true that it’s the less serious suspects we’re renditioning, that doesn’t correspond to the notion that we’re renditioning them in order to have them tortured. Aren’t at least some of these cases where we’re turning suspects over to their home countries? What else are we supposed to do?
February 21st, 2006 at 2:41 pm
See subsequent posts.
February 21st, 2006 at 2:51 pm
The timeframe of the “70″ is, so far as I can read the article, “prior to September 11th”. Also, I’m always a bit amazed at people who think that given the first Trade Center bombing, the Embassy bombing in Africa and the Cole that, and the Hart-Rudman report, from the perspective of anyone who was involved in the question of stopping radical Islamic terrorism, “everything changed after 9/11.” I doubt that for, say, Richard Clarke “everything changed”. It mostly changed for opportunistic neo-cons who suddenly saw a handle for their Iraq invasion obssessions, but who obviously didn’t have their eye on the right ball when they entered this administration. And of course, what’s most amazing about their blindered-by-ideology worldview is how little it’s actually changed – 9/11 or no – even as reality increasingly has discredited it.
Check out Andrew Sullivan on Fukuyama and Fukuyama himself in last weekend’s Times Magazine for a taste of what it’s like to be chastened by events. When Byron York starts engaging at the same level of honesty about the big issues, I’ll take your characterization seriously.
February 21st, 2006 at 2:57 pm
Right – but Clinton era too? On the 70?
I think it’s a little odd to deny that within government, there was far less intensity about terrorism before 9-11. A few people were sounding the alarm. But look at the cases where Clinton refused – udnerstandably, you could argue – to commit to a strike against bin laden because of concerns over civilian damage and all.
The Hart-Rudman report isn’t evidence of pre 9-11 intensity; it was an attempted wake-up call.
February 21st, 2006 at 3:39 pm
Clinton passed on his concerns and data to Bush but they ignored it. I’ve not heard of any instance where he ordered rendition torturing.
February 21st, 2006 at 3:56 pm
Deductively, the 70 must largely cover the Clinton years. W ordering 70 in teh 8months before 9-11 doesn’t square with the much-accepted view that he was ignoring terrorism before 9-11.
February 21st, 2006 at 4:33 pm
WE LOVE YOU; WE LOVE YOU NOT
After 9/11 there was no shortage of disparaging words and comments against our enemies in the Middle East—we were told they were the axis of evil; all governments unequivocally had to support the U.S. policy– either you are with us or against us; and if you thought otherwise your patriotism was questionable.
This vilification lead to the WMD story and the subsequent invasion of Iraq—the long war against terrorism. The Bush administration coined the phrase ISLAMOFACISM.
Profiling of Semitic looking men and women subsequently lead to demanding random security checks; extra searches and body scans which are being done at airports across the U.S., presumably to deter a new round of terrorist attacks. On each flight, a handful of passengers are pulled aside and given additional scrutiny this is all condoned by our government as necessary to prevent terrorism.
Armed government agents rounded up thousands of men who had no connection with the 9/11 attacks. The men were taken from their jobs or businesses or rousted from their homes in the middle of the night. Their families, friends, and neighbors often didn’t know why the men had been taken away or where they were being held–like those “disappeared” by U.S.-backed regimes in Chile, El Salvador, and elsewhere. They were subjected to abuse and degradation while in custody. At least one man–Rafiq Butt, an immigrant from Pakistan–died in detention.
Government officials from Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gonzales are relentless in rooting out terrorists. The government claims that any arrested men are suspected of being active or potential terrorists. But not a single person arrested in the post-9/11 sweeps was ever charged with any actions remotely connected to the 9/11 attacks.
This ferocious onslaught is what allowed the heartless, vicious, and continuous torture of captives in the rendition program; Abu Ghraib and Gitmo.
The American public is repeatedly inundated with propaganda from MSM and the White House telling them why they need to fear the threat of ISLAMOFACISM0—anything to keep the war machines going. And now we can REALLY SEE what BS the WHITE HOUSE WEAVES.
Suddenly the public is accused of being ‘racist’ by ‘profiling’ certain Middle Eastern groups if we object to our major ports being controlled by Dubai.
IT WORKS LIKE THIS—OUR GOVERNMENT NEEDS THE WORKING-CLASS AND THE POOR TO FIGHT THEIR WARS AND SECURE IRAQ’S OIL—BUT BEHIND THE SCENES THE GLOBAL ELITES LIKE BUSH, CHENEY AND THEIR SAUDI FRIENDS ARE ALL KISSEY, KISSEY WHEN IT COMES TO COUNTING THEIR BLOOD DRENCHED SHEKELS!
February 21st, 2006 at 4:52 pm
I assume the 70 mostly covered the Clinton years, but weren’t a large chunk of those were renderings TO the US according to the article. I’m not denying that the intensity within the government understandably changed after 9/11, but I don’t think that for people who were charged with dealing with this issue over time that their sense of what was needed at the level of Presidential powers should have changed radically nor should they have acted as though “everything changed”. Emotionally for most Americans, 9/11 was justifiably traumatic and a “wake-up call”. But for people who were doing things like reading Presidential Briefings in, say, the summer of 2001, it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise and the ineffectiveness and backwardness of the FBI and immigration bureaucrats in flagging the hijackers was inexcusable. Trashing the Constitution isn’t the key to effective law enforcement. (And, yes Virginia, this IS an issue where our first and best defense against attack is in the arena of relatively conventional law enforcement and investigation at the international level, contrary to so much of the CW among the bloviating class, both amateur and pro.) If there’s another attack, are we going to act like “everything changed” all over again and give the President even greater extra-constitutional powers to do whatever he pleases as panacea for our paranoia or are we going to look at how we can effectively coordinate reasonable resources to fight these scumbags collaboratively – and critique what hasn’t worked and what isn’t likely to (like “re-shaping the Middle East” by American fiat).
I read this today at TPMCafe, from George Kennan’s 1946 “Long Telegram” from Moscow that first outlined extensively the liklihood of serious confrontation characterizing our post-war relationship with the USSR: “Finally we must have courage and self-confidence to cling to our own methods and conceptions of human society. After all, the greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.”
February 21st, 2006 at 5:39 pm
There is a real threat which Eleanore chooses to ignore and deflect. It is indeed inflated, but still real. These are real nuts that kill innocent people of all nationalities to score political points. Real armies like the ones irag had and Iran I would propose cannot stand up to much direct fighting. That’s why its an alley fight.
That said I don’t how adopting their tactics helps us. Securing the oil is a joke. It still isn’t secure. And has paid for nothing which I assume would be the case if we “got it.” Securing big government contracts for logistics is the real ripoff. Iraqis aren’t being ripped off, we are. This doesn’t square with all this imperialism nonsense.
February 21st, 2006 at 5:48 pm
As I understand it the real beef is that we planted our army on Saudi soil in 1990. That seems to be the the real lynch pin in this whole deal, along with Israel backing that set off bin Laden and his merry band of nuts.
February 21st, 2006 at 6:38 pm
“Iraqis aren’t being ripped off, we are. This doesn’t square with all this imperialism nonsense.
Mark,
Imperialism doesn’t benefit the working-class it benefits the war profiteers–billions of tax dollars that have been taken by Halliburton and friends. These Republicans believe in a real BIG government–it’s called socialism for the RICH. They are going to steal as much as they can before they split. That’s the interesting part about capitalism–it symbiotically works if the government regulates the PIGS and gives a few concessions or bones to the poor but when the super-rich get too greedy they parasitically destroy their own system–sort of what they are doing now. Have you looked at our deficit lately?
February 21st, 2006 at 7:50 pm
What would be sweetly ironic would be Maher Arar suing Syria under the Torture Victim’s Protection Act and calling the likes of Ashcroft and company as witnesses.
What makes it even more sweetly ironic is that the president’s father signed the TVPA into law.
February 21st, 2006 at 8:01 pm
Yes I have. That’s what I mean by being ripped off. What part of my statement isn’t clear? That doesn’t make it imperialism, especially when they’re getting the benefits of the ripoff. It would be imperialism if Bush were litterally taking from the Iraqis as you claim. He isn’t. He’s taking it from us. That’s bilking one country with the other as a stage, but they actually get something. What do we get? The bill.
February 22nd, 2006 at 5:41 pm
I say this with full sincerity, Bush, Cheney and the right-wing nationalist like them, are naturally more paranoid and “primitive†in their dealings with the world.
School yard bullies, who confuse “toughness†with obnoxious cruelty.
Bush and Cheney represent the Dale Gribbles and Eric Cartmens of America. By their nature, they believe torture and “being tough†is going to “win the dayâ€!
Guys who would burn the house down to go after cockroaches.
February 22nd, 2006 at 5:56 pm
What do you want? Marc you are being unrealistic to naive to simply dangerous in your assumptions about what we face.
We can certainly build some sort of super-Devil’s Island, and keep people for life so they don’t kill Americans. Or we can shoot them.
What is not politically sustainable (by the broad American public) is treating terrorists intent on killing lots of Americans as ordinary criminals. PC multi-culti dunderheadedness by either just releasing hardened terrorists or treating them like domestic criminals (a few years in jail and then they go free) is a recipe for political suicide by a fed-up America.
We ship people off to places like Syria because Congress will not allow either summary military trials and shooting them (or the spontaneous shooting of the SS guards at Dachau by US Troops when they captured that place, btw no charges were ever filed) nor a gigantic version of Guantanamo (which is a place filled with hardened terrorists under exceedingly gentle treatment).
We capture a lot of terrorists. They want to kill Americans. What do we do? Let them go? Let their host country torture or kill them? Euros make crocodile tears about “secret prisons” while eagerly looking the other way because the people in the prisons want to blow up innocent Paris commuters or London tube riders or Hamburg businessmen and housewives.
This is NOT Pinochet setting High School kids on fire or dropping them out of helicopters into the Pacific. This situation is the direct result of fanatical, religious frenzied killers intent on killing as many Westerners as they can to achieve holy murder and paradise, and the failure to come up with a solution to handle the thousands of them.
The BIG danger is namby-pamby PC multi-culti nonsense and “white guilt” leading to these guys being turned loose and some nuclear 9/11 or thereabouts. THEN the killing will be done on an industrial Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, and Hiroshima scale by a Western world simply pushed too far. I would submit this danger is so real that it’s time to make realistic decisions: shoot some and imprison the rest.
[The real story behind the WMD tapes ABC ran of Saddam is that even Saddam viewed a WMD attack was inevitable and he "warned the Americans and British" it was coming. Saddam was clued into the network so his warning should be taken VERY seriously.]
Reg — Able Danger found Atta and other hijackers. It was shut down by Clinton over fears of “spying” and Bush is covering it up because presumably it found extensive terror ties to his Saudi buddies. Just look at the leaking (by Bush) of Shaffer’s security file which is akin to Clinton leaking info on Monica’s phone buddy. FISC prevented NSA generated leads from going to the FBI, and indeed the Gorelick Wall as documented by the 9/11 Commission prevented the FBI Counter-terror folks from talking to their Law Enforcement counterparts and as the memo said, “someday many people will die and the American people won’t care about the explanations.” Ideological rigidity in the face of threats leads to tossing the baby out. I don’t see either Data mining or passing NSA leads to the FBI as shredding the Constitution.
Kennan style containment deterrence won’t work against a decentralized group of nations run by religious maniacs wanting holy murder and religious martyrdom to “win” against the West. Something else is needed because the Cartoon Jihad shows that Muslims are not the Soviet Union under Stalin. Decentralized and driven by religious absolutism and divine providence.
Derbyshire had a column spiked by National Review up on his website. His conclusion? “They hate us because we show their societies to be total failures.” Bernard Lewis has said essentially the same thing in more nicely turned phrases.
February 23rd, 2006 at 9:58 am
They hate us for westernizing the world. Most of the people they pick up don’t seem to be terrorists, so they have a problem capturing anyone worthwhile in the operations.
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