Torture is a crime, not a policy

["David Farber" <dave () farber net>]

_______________ Forward Header _______________
Subject:        Torture is a crime, not a policy
Author: "John S. Quarterman" <jsq () quarterman org>
Date:           4th November 2005 12:19:30 pm

Dave,

A newspaper grows a spine and says what needs to be said.

-jsq
John S. Quarterman <jsq () quarterman org>


http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051104/EDIT/511040330/1003

Torture is a crime, not a policy

President Bush insists the United States does not torture prisoners,
even as his aides draft memos on what kinds of torture are acceptable,
and even as he exempts the United States from international conventions
against torture and even as he opposes attempts by Congress to bar him
from approving the use of torture.

And now it turns out that the CIA has been operating, apparently immune
from any oversight, a network of secret prisons overseas, including with
dreadful symbolism one in a former Soviet prison camp.

Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said this week that
if such prisons existed they were being run "in a way that is consistent
with our principles and values." It is the all-purpose Bush administration
response: Trust us.

Would that we could.

In a welcome return to those "principles and values," the Senate,
brushing aside the threat of a Bush veto, voted 90 to 9 to outlaw the
cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody,
effectively restoring the Geneva Convention and prohibitions against
torture in the Army field manual.

When the veto threat failed, the White House tried to convince the Senate
to exempt the CIA from the torture ban, while quietly working with the
House to try to gut the ban or kill it altogether when the two bodies
meet in conference.

Then it was revealed that the White House was attempting to sidetrack
plans within the Defense department to incorporate language from the
Geneva Conventions barring the cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment
of prisoners into a Pentagon directive on interrogation and a new Army
manual on interrogations.

While the Bush administration insists it has nothing to hide, it
will still not let the chief U.N. official in charge of investigating
allegations of torture visit Guantanamo Bay and interview the detainees.

The House, normally pliant when it comes to White House direction, now
seems poised to endorse the Senate language against torture, making it
very likely it will become law. In its four-year war against terrorism,
the United States has strayed from the ideals that made us, as the late
President Reagan used to say, like a city shining on a hill.

It is time we get back to who we are as a people and we are not a people
who torture prisoners.

Publication date: 11-04-2005



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