Top Bush Aides Pushed for Guantánamo Torture
Senior Officials Bypassed Army Chief to Introduce Interrogation Methods
By Richard Norton-Taylor
America’s most senior general was “hoodwinked” by top Bush administration
officials determined
to push through aggressive interrogation techniques of terror suspects
held at Guantánamo Bay,
leading to the US military abandoning its age-old ban on the cruel and
inhumane treatment of
prisoners, the Guardian reveals today.0419 01 1
General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001
to 2005, wrongly
believed that inmates at Guantánamo and other prisons were protected by
the Geneva conventions
and from abuse tantamount to torture.
The way he was duped by senior officials in Washington, who believed the
Geneva conventions and
other traditional safeguards were out of date, is disclosed in a
devastating account of their
role, extracts of which appear in today’s Guardian.
In his new book, Torture Team, Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at
University College London,
reveals that:
· Senior Bush administration figures pushed through previously
outlawed measures with the
aid of inexperienced military officials at Guantánamo.
· Myers believes he was a victim of “intrigue” by top lawyers at the
department of justice,
the office of vice-president Dick Cheney, and at Donald Rumsfeld’s defence
department.
· The Guantánamo lawyers charged with devising interrogation
techniques were inspired by
the exploits of Jack Bauer in the American TV series 24.
· Myers wrongly believed interrogation techniques had been taken from
the army’s field manual.
The lawyers, all political appointees, who pushed through the
interrogation techniques were
Alberto Gonzales, David Addington and William Haynes. Also involved were
Doug Feith, Rumsfeld’s
under-secretary for policy, and Jay Bybee and John Yoo, two assistant
attorney generals.
The revelations have sparked a fierce response in the US from those
familiar with the contents
of the book, and who are determined to establish accountability for the
way the Bush
administration violated international and domestic law by sanctioning
prisoner abuse and torture.
The Bush administration has tried to explain away the ill-treatment of
detainees at Guantánamo
Bay and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by blaming junior officials. Sands’ book
establishes that
pressure for aggressive and cruel treatment of detainees came from the top
and was sanctioned by
the most senior lawyers.
Myers was one top official who did not understand the implications of what
was being done.
Sands, who spent three hours with the former general, says he was
“confused” about the decisions
that were taken.
Myers mistakenly believed that new techniques recommended by Haynes and
authorised by Rumsfeld
in December 2002 for use by the military at Guantánamo had been taken from
the US army field
manual. They included hooding, sensory deprivation, and physical and
mental abuse.
“As we worked through the list of techniques, Myers became increasingly
hesitant and troubled,”
writes Sands. “Haynes and Rumsfeld had been able to run rings around him.”
Myers and his closest advisers were cut out of the decision-making
process. He did not know that
Bush administration officials were changing the rules allowing
interrogation techniques,
including the use of dogs, amounting to torture.
“We never authorised torture, we just didn’t, not what we would do,” Myers
said. Sands comments:
“He really had taken his eye off the ball … he didn’t ask too many
questions … and kept his
distance from the decision-making process.”
Larry Wilkerson, a former army officer and chief of staff to Colin Powell,
US secretary of state
at the time, told the Guardian: “I do know that Rumsfeld had neutralised
the chairman [Myers] in
many significant ways.
“The secretary did this by cutting [Myers] out of important
communications, meetings,
deliberations and plans.
“At the end of the day, however, Dick Myers was not a very powerful
chairman in the first place,
one reason Rumsfeld recommended him for the job”.
He added: “Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzalez and - at the apex -
Addington, should never
travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They
broke the law; they
violated their professional ethical code. In future, some government may
build the case
necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international
court.”
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/19/8392/
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Finally, the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 set Clausewitz on the path of
recognizing war as a
political phenomenon. Wars, as everyone knew, were fought for a purpose
that was political,
or at least always had political consequences. Not as readily apparent
was the implication
that followed. If war was meant to achieve a political purpose, everything
that entered into
war — social and economic preparation, strategic planning, the conduct of
operations, the
use of violence on all levels — should be determined by this purpose, or
at least accord
with it. Even though soldiers had to acquire special expertise, and
function in what in some
respects was a separate world, it would be a denial of reality to allow
them to carry on
their bloody work undisturbed until an armistice brought their political
employer back into
the equation. Just as war and its institutions reflected their social
environment, so every
aspect of fighting should be suffused by its political impulse, whether
this impulse was
intense or moderate. The appropriate relationship between politics and war
occupied
Clausewitz throughout his life, but even his earliest manuscripts and
letters show his
awareness of their interaction.
The ease with which this link — always acknowledged in the abstract —
can be forgotten in
specific cases, and Clausewitz’s insistence that it must never be
overlooked, are
illustrated by his polite rejection toward the end of his life of a
strategic problem set by
the chief of the Prussian General Staff, in which every military detail of
the opposing
sides was spelled out, but no mention made of their political purpose. To
a friend who had
sent him the problem for comment, Clausewitz replied that it was not
possible to draft a
sensible plan of operations without indicating the political condition of
the states
involved, and their relationship to each other: ‘War is not an independent
phenomenon, but
the continuation of politics by different means. Consequently, the main
lines of every major
strategic plan are largely political in nature, and their political
character increases the
more the plan applies to the entire campaign and to the whole state. A war
plan results
directly from the political conditions of the two warring states, as well
as from their
relations to third powers. A plan of campaign results from the war plan,
and frequently - if
there is only one theater of operations - may even be identical with it.
But the political
element even enters the separate components of a campaign; rarely will it
be without
influence on such major episodes of warfare as a battle, etc. According to
this point of
view, there can be no question of a purely military evaluation of a great
strategic issue,
nor of a purely military scheme to solve it.’
Everyman’s Library, 1993 ISBN: 0679420436 On war /by Clausewitz, Carl
von, 1780-1831.
Knopf, 1993. From the introduction by Peter Paret, Pg7
_____________________________________________________________________
The U-2 is a jet-powered reconnaissance aircraft specially designed to fly
at high altitudes
(i.e., above 70,000 ft [21 km]). It was used during the late 1950s to
overfly the Soviet
Union, China, the Middle East, and Cuba; flights over the Soviet Union,
the primary mission
for which the plane was designed, ended in 1960 when a U-2 flown by CIA
pilot Gary Powers
was shot down over the Soviet Union. This event was a major political
embarrassment for the U.S.
http://www.espionageinfo.com/Te-Uk/U-2-Spy-Plane.html
Soviet Prime Minister Khrushchev's reaction to the overflights which
were discovered
just before a summit conference in Paris with President Eisenhower: "It
was as though the
Americans had deliberately tried to place a time bomb under the meeting" .
. ."How could
they count on us to give them a helping hand if we allowed ourselves to be
spat upon without
so much as a murmur of protest?" The only solution was to demand a formal
public apology
from Eisenhower and a guarantee that no more overflights would take place
. . .
But the apology Khrushchev was looking for would not come. Despite
having trespassed
on the Soviet Union for the past four years with scores of flights by both
U-2's and heavy
bombers, the old general still could not say the words, it was just not in
him. . . A time
bomb had exploded, prematurely ending the summit conference. . .
Back in Washington, the mood was glum. The Senate Foreign Relations
Committee was
leaning toward holding a closed door investigation into the U-2 incident .
. . In public,
Eisenhower maintained a brave face. He "heartily approved" of the
congressional probe and
would 'of course fully cooperate,' he quickly told anyone who asked. But
in private he was
very troubled. For weeks he had tried to head off the investigation. His
major concern was
that his own personal involvement in the overflights would surface,
especially the May Day
disaster. Equally, he was very worried that details of the dangerous
bomber overflights
would leak out. The massed overflight may in fact, have been one of the
most dangerous
actions ever approved by a president.
pg. 51-55 ~Body of Secrets; Anatomy of the Ultra Secret National Security
Agency
James Bamford
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of
the progress of
human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims,
have been born of
earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating,
all-absorbing, and for the time
being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does
nothing. If there is
no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and
yet depreciate
agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want
rain without
thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its
many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may
be both moral and
physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and
it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and
you have found out the
exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and
these will continue
till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The
limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of
these ideas, Negroes
will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as
they submit to those
devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men
may not get all they
pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we
ever get free from
the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal.
We must do this by
labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the
lives of others."
http://www.buildingequality.us/Quotes/Frederick_Douglass.htm
Frederick Douglass, 1857
- - - - - -> More political discussion continues at
http://www.politicsusaweb.com/
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