*Please click on the title of this post to read the post in its entirety.
I was stunned to learn that the United States government had authorized the torture of suspects captured during the War on Terror. I am not naïve. As a professional soldier, I know individuals captured by the US military have been abused in the past, but abuse usually occurs at the point of capture during or immediately after a fire-fight when tempers are hot and units have sustained casualties. Some prisoners were tortured, but this was an aberration not national policy. It is important that we ensure that the record of our involvement with torture is laid bare. That is the only way to ensure that we never again stride purposely and confidently down that dark path.
Our greatest presidents rejected torture and abuse. Washington refused to follow the British practice of torturing prisoners; he believed our new nation should be noted for its humanity. Lincoln believed that “military necessity shall not permit of cruelty.”
The Bush Administration abandoned our traditions and made a calculated decision to authorize torture as a matter of national policy. Immediately after 9/11, Vice President Cheney noted that we would have to go the “dark side” to counter the al-Qaeda threat. After 9/11, the administration “took the gloves off” and approved “harsh” interrogation techniques that individually and in combination amount to torture. Alberto Gonzales advised that Geneva Convention prohibitions against torturing and abusing prisoners did not apply to al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners.
The torture policy and its “legal” justification were developed in secret by a small group of attorneys closely associated with the Vice President. They simply assumed that “harsh” interrogations would be necessary to obtain actionable intelligence. There is nothing in the public record to indicate that anyone with actual knowledge of or experience in interrogation participated in making the decision. Service Judge Advocates were frozen out of the process because they were considered “unreliable.” When Alberto Mora, then General Counsel of the US Navy, learned the Department of Defense was about to approve harsh interrogation methods, he brought his concerns to DoD General Counsel William Haynes. After unsuccessfully trying to bring Mora on board, Haynes froze him out of the process. The torture policies were not subject to the normal interagency coordination process that is designed to weed out really bad ideas.
