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The Torture Tapes and the President
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
The Atlantic/Daily Dish blog - Dec 30, 2007
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/12/the-torture-t-2.html
The Torture Tapes and the President
by Andrew Sullivan
Today's NYT piece on the provenance of the CIA's tapes of the torturing
of various terror suspects raises lots of intriguing red flags. One one
level, it seems quite obvious that the tapes were made to ensure that
if Zubaydah died in interrogation - like many others tortured to death
under this commander-in-chief - the agents involved could prove they
were doing what they could to keep him alive. And I have no doubt this
is true. Zubaydah was seriously injured and of course Bush wanted him
alive: you can't get information out of a dead person. At the same
time, it seems obvious to me that the tapes were also made to record
key details of the interrogation - for subsequent viewing by the most
nuanced Arabic speakers and al Qaeda experts. The torturers in the room
could do with back-up. Small details can be missed when you are
inflicting severe mental or physical pain or suffering on a prisoner.
Notice also the presence of doctors, medical professionals, violating
their professional ethics by putting their medical expertise at the
service of torturers.
See: "Tapes by C.I.A. Lived and Died to Save Image," By SCOTT SHANE and
MARK MAZZETTI, The New York Times, Dec 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/washington/30intel.html
But of course, the tapes also definitively prove torture - worse than
most of the abuses at Abu Ghraib and obviously sanctioned, closely
monitored and dictated up the chain of command. And when you actually
see torture, it becomes harder to sustain the denial that Orwellianisms
such as "enhanced interrogation" are designed to foster. Remember how
Abu Ghraib only became a story once the photographs were viewed.
Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney all believed in and authorized the techniques
revealed at Abu Ghraib - but they only panicked once the images came
out. The president continues to use the repulsively deceptive term -
"ask questions" - to refer to torture. Visual evidence would remove any
doubt in most Americans' eyes that he is a bald-faced liar. The money
quote of today's piece is therefore obvious:
[Former CIA Deputy Director John] Gannon said he thought the tapes
became such an issue because they would have settled the legal debate
over the harsh methods. "To a spectator it would look like torture," he
said. "And torture is wrong."
It would look like torture because it is torture. And torture is a war
crime. And Bush and Cheney always knew this, which is why they went to
such great lengths to order his own OLC to reinvent the law to make
what is illegal legal. They knew from the start that they had crossed
the torture Rubicon, and that torture would be their prime weapon in
the war on terror. They may have done this with good intentions. But
they broke the law and knew it. Hence the increasingly dense cover-up.
Scott Horton has some useful insights into the political background to
the Shane-Mazzetti piece, especially the fact that, even as the
administration has imposed a gag-rule on any leaks on the matter, it
licenses one A.R. Kronberg to create the spin that all this was done by
independent CIA agents, with no relationship to the White House. Bush
and Cheney are trying to pull off the cover-up of Abu Ghraib yet again.
*
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