Ban Torture

In the news this week

Destroyed CIA tapes cause more problems

The government is fighting off several claims that it destroyed evidence when the CIA destroyed interrogation tapes of detainees.  (March 28)

President Bush refuses to withdraw Bradbury

The Senate is blocking key nominations and judgeships until President Bush withdraws the nomination of Steven Bradbury to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).  Bradbury has been serving as acting head of the OLC since June 2005.  He approved two still-secret legal memos in 2005 authorizing the use of waterboarding, and in February justified the CIA’s use of waterboarding.  Human Rights Watch opposes his nomination.

Habeas corpus cases look bleak

The Supreme Court heard arguments for two U.S. citizens being detained in Iraq, Mohammad Munaf and Shawqi Omar, but the arguments “turned a rather clear-cut case into a roller derby.”  Slate has a good article explaining why you should care (they have American families; Omar served in the Minnesota National Guard), and Scotusblog serves up the transcripts and blow-by-blow account.

The question is whether federal courts have jurisdiction to consider a habeas petition of a U.S. citizen detained by U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq pending a transfer to Iraqi authorities following a conviction in an Iraqi criminal court. The two men are Sunni Muslims, and both fear torture if they are transferred to Iraqi officials.

Psychological impact of torture

Dr. Richard Miller attacks Senator Lieberman’s support of waterboarding.  Lieberman said “It is not like putting burning coals on people’s bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological.”  Miller has been medical director of Khmer Health Advocates in West Hartford, Connecticut, for 25 years, and witnesses the psychological damage of torture firsthand.

If Sen. Lieberman minimizes the psychological impact of torture, what will he say to U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq who have post-traumatic stress and depression? Will he tell them that their suffering is “only psychological?”

Read his editorial, Torture’s Scars Run Deep.

Close Guantanamo

Five former U.S. secretaries of State said that the next president should move quickly to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  That single act would improve America’s dismal reputation in the world immediately, agreed Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell at a University of Georgia roundtable discussion.  (March 27)

How did I get Iraq wrong?

Andrew Sullivan reflected on his initial support of the Iraq War and wondered “How Did I Get Iraq Wrong?“  Here’s part of his Slate essay (March 21):

I certainly never believed that a war I supported for the sake of freedom would actually use as its central weapon the deepest antithesis of freedom—the destruction of human autonomy and dignity and will that is torture. To distort this by shredding the English language, by engaging in newspeak that I had long associated with totalitarian regimes, was a further insult.

Andrew wrote a powerful essay in 2005 which is the best argument I’ve found for opposing torture — unequivocally and absolutely.  It reminds me why I decided to dedicated time to this effort.  Please read The Abolition of Torture: Winning the War on Terrorism Without Sacrificing Freedom.

Don’t ask, don’t tell

The firestorm over Abu Ghraib subsided. Courts-martial were held, and no one higher than a sergeant was convicted. All the rest, the officers who knew what was happening at the prison and said nothing, or the higher-ups in the field and in Washington who suggested indifference, were not touched. In fact, the Bush administration’s position on torture was much like the military’s on gays — don’t ask, don’t tell.

The Ultimate Casualty by Richard Cohen, The Washington Post.