The Torture Team All of these efforts reflect the same pattern:
cover-up and avoid legal proceedings in which
the CRIMINAL CONDUCT of Administration actors would come to light. BY Scott Horton
PUBLISHED March 28, 2008
On January 28, 2008, the Committee Against Torture adopted General Comment 2 (CAT/C/GC/2), an important and persuasive reaffirmation of basic values of the Convention Against Torture, starting with one that lies at its heart: the universality principle. The Committee’s work on this document is admirable. But the circumstances that made it necessary were distressing. The United States, a nation which played a vital role in advocating the Convention, and indeed much of the edifice of international human rights, adopted a series of policies that reflected persistent
gross breaches of the Convention—particularly with respect to the operation of a concentration camp in Guantánamo, and other prison operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as “black sites” maintained by U.S. intelligence operatives around the world. When called to account for its misconduct by the global community, the Bush Administration responded by making a series of grotesque arguments which were designed to convert the Convention into a trivial bagatelle with no obvious application or relevance. This assault was led by John Bellinger, the current legal adviser in the Department of State.
...............
That is about to change. A number of the details and connections are about to be illuminated. Next month, Palgrave Macmillan will bring out Philippe Sands’s new book,
The Torture Team, which will connect the dots and show how this group engaged in a joint enterprise for the purpose of introducing a regime of torture in American detention facilities. The first teaser for the Sands book will appear on the cover of the next issue of Vanity Fair. ...................
When photographs appeared in the spring of 2004, providing visual evidence of the new techniques, the Administration pursued a policy of conscious deception and cover-up. Its major thrust was to scapegoat the young M.P.s at Abu Ghraib, while obstructing any serious investigation of the conduct of contractors and M.I. personnel who introduced the abuses. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, his deputy, Dr. Stephen Cambone, and others in the Pentagon had direct involvement in the introduction of torture techniques in Abu Ghraib. Rumsfeld’s emissary, Major General Geoffrey Miller, was dispatched to Iraq, and Abu Ghraib, to insure that the torture techniques that Rumsfeld had previously approved were put into effect.
As the Department of Defense’s own internal review conceded, the use of these techniques in Iraq was a criminal act even under the positions taken by the Bush Administration. Strenuous efforts were therefore taken to cover-up what transpired. ..........
Note that even today, seven contractors involved in the most brutal and reprehensible conduct at Abu Ghraib, had their cases passed to the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia—the most politicized U.S. attorney’s office in the country—and now, four years later, nothing has happened.
The Justice Department continues to refuse to provide explanations for its inaction. Why? Might it be that a prosecution would disclose the complicity of key figures in the Justice Department in the underlying crimes? That is hardly a far-fetched scenario, since the role of senior Justice Department figures, including the current head of the criminal division, in crafting memoranda designed to authorize torture techniques is now well documented.
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much more at:
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002745
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