Thursday, July 22, 2004

"Only" 94
(forgive me. this is an extra-long post...i haven't had much time to blog during the day b/c of work, and these opinings have been building up for a while.)

So the Army apparently released a 321-page report today, acknowledging that there were about "94 alleged abuses" that came to light as a result of Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek's investigation of the Iraq and Afghanistan prison-torture investigations. They released it on the same day that was dominated by coverage of the 9/11 Commission's 650-page and 20-month tome on the events, serious gaps and failures in intelligence, and other national security inadequacies that led up to one of greatest national tragedies since the JFK assasination, since Vietnam... A coincidence?

The Army did not post a copy of General Mikolashek's report in a prominent position on its Web site until early on Thursday afternoon, and even Army public affairs personnel said they had difficulty gaining access to it.

Among other (nonsurprising) things, the report concluded that no evidence of systemwide, systematic abuse was found. Think about it: "only" 94 out of 50,000 prisoners really ain't so bad..." (and then you stop and realise that we've actually incarcerated 50 thousand human souls -- many of whom are probably innocent). This conclusion, mind you, is in direct contrast to General Taguba's report of May this year (the one that along with the Seymour Hersh New Yorker article, thankfully broke the story to public consciousness) and the Red Cross's report from early Febuary 2003. Let's refresh our memories (emphases mine):

GENEVA - Intelligence officers of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq estimated that 70 percent to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake, the Red Cross said in a report that was disclosed Monday, and Red Cross observers witnessed U.S. officers mistreating Abu Ghraib prisoners by keeping them naked in total darkness in empty cells.

Abuse was, "in some cases, tantamount to torture," it said.

[...]

"These methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information and other forms of cooperation from persons who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an 'intelligence value.'"

And remember the furor over all those memos? The ones drafted by lawyers in Justice and presented to Bushie and Rumsey, that basically provided so-called legal arguments, based on the notion of executive priviledge, that would render the Geneva Conventions "quaint and obolete" and give thuh Preznit virtually unlimited power to do Anything He Wanted in his War on Terror? I read this great article by Anthony Lewis last week, which is a superb essay that elegantly and eloquently examines the trajectory of the "making torture legal memos" and provides context of what they mean for a free and open democratic society.

The issues raised by the Bush administration's legal assertions in its "war on terror" are so numerous and so troubling that one hardly knows where to begin discussing them. The torture and death of prisoners, the end result of cool legal abstractions, have a powerful claim on our national conscience. They are described in horrifying detail in a report published recently by Human Rights Watch, "The Road to Abu Ghraib." But equally disturbing, in its way, is the administration's constitutional argument that presidential power is unconstrained by law.

President Bush and his administration have used the September 11 attacks again and again as an argument for expanded executive power. A signal example is the claim that the President can designate any American citizen as an "enemy combatant" and have him or her imprisoned in soli-tary confinement, indefinitely, without trial or access to counsel. That is the claim now before the Supreme Court in the cases of José Padilla and Yasser Hamdi.

The assertion in the various legal memoranda that the President can order the torture of prisoners despite statutes and treaties forbidding it was another reach for presidential hegemony. The basic premise of the American constitutional system is that those who hold power are subject to the law. As John Adams first said, the United States is meant to be a government of laws, not men. For that Bush's lawyers seem ready to substitute something like the divine right of kings.

For those who wish to see a more condensed view, here's a handy NYTimes Torture Memo Timeline of just exactly when those documents were drafted/ presented -- with PDF hyperlinks, no less.

And for those who scoff at international treaties as just a lot of diplomatic posturing, Professor of Law Michael Froomkin, who's been blogging about the Iraq Atrocities extensively, reminds us of that little old document we've got stashed away in the National Archives somewhere:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

Not that the rule of law or anything like that has deterred this Administration so far...

posted by claudine |Added at 11:55 PM| | politics, torture, abu ghraib