A Senate Report, the result of a two year study, says that President Bush got the torture ball rolling on Feb, 7, 2002, with his memorandum stating that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to al-Qaida or the Taliban.
The report says that after this memorandum, “Senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive (interrogation) techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”
Excerpts from an article in Salon by Mark Benjamin:
- On Thursday, as the incoming Obama administration is mulling whether or not it even should investigate torture under the Bush administration, the Senate Armed Services Committee released the executive summary of its own investigation of the treatment of U.S. detainees. (The full report is still being declassified.)
- In the spring of 2002 former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice asked then-CIA Director George Tenet to brief members of the National Security Council on the harsh interrogation program under development by the CIA, a program that has utilized waterboarding. Meetings ensued. “Members of the president’s cabinet and other senior officials attended meetings at the White House where specific interrogation techniques were discussed,” the report states. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was there.
- Rice also asked former Attorney General John Ashcroft to provide his stamp of approval, and he did. On Aug. 1, 2002, … after input from former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and former counsel to the Vice President David Addington.
- The CIA … spirited prisoners off the streets of Pakistan and into its network of secret prisons, or “black sites,” for interrogation. On Dec. 2, 2002, Rumsfeld joined the party, issuing a memo authorizing the use of tough techniques for detainees in military custody at Guantánamo, including stress positions, forced nudity, use of dogs and sensory deprivation. Legal memos from all three military branches had previously warned that the tactics might be illegal, but the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, put the kibosh on any further study.
The four Geneva Conventions and other rules of warfare do not grant protected status to Al Queda for at least the following reasons: a) It’s soldiers do no wear uniforms, b) Its soldiers do not bear arms openly, c) It does not itself follow the Law of Armed Conflict (which includes the Geneva Conventions).
Rick, thanks for providing these details about the Geneva Conventions. I’m sure that the Feb, 7, 2002 presidential memorandum, referred to in this article, was well researched by legal experts and that Bush felt, based on the advice of these experts, that he had sound legal reasons for denying the legal protections of the Geneva Conventions to al Queda. The three points you make must have been part of legal thinking that the president relied upon.
I imagine that there is there an argument that disputes Bush’s memorandum and supports the position that the Geneva Conventions do, in fact, apply to al Queda. You’ve inspired me to want to research this whole question.
But whether the Geneva Conventions apply or not, I’m wondering, if Bush specifically approved torture, did he violate US law, regardless if it is true that the Geneva Conventions do not apply? It can’t be legal for a president to order a non-US citizen to be tortured. Can it? Again, you’ve inspired me to want to research this whole question.
A bigger question, however, is, if Bush approved torture, didn’t he violate principles that are central to our national character?
We must be concerned about legal arguments saying we can torture new kinds of enemies, even if we can’t torture all kinds of enemies. Whether or not they wear uniforms or bear their arms openly seems to reflect our higher technology that they can not defeat in our kind of war. That’s a little like how the British Army thought it was unfair and unmanly for the Colonists to hide behind of trees, shoot at them and run away, instead of fighting the way European armies fought each other.
Wars happen for reasons of policy. Torture is bad because of the way it degrades the humanity of the person being tortured, the person doing the torturing, and the people who elect the government that is doing the torturing. Whether the torture is being done by Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda or our neighbors who happened to get stationed at Abu Ghirab, it makes the world a worse place and guarantees that others will keep doing it as well. People lost it a bit after 9/11 but we need to come to our senses. Ultimately we need to figure out ways to live together in peace without carrying the legacy of colonialism that seems to keep determining relations between the countries of the world.