Alberto Gonzales has asserted to the Senate committee weighing his nomination to be attorney general that there's a legal rationale for harsh treatment of foreign prisoners by U.S. forces.
In more than 200 pages of written responses to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who plan to vote Wednesday on his nomination, Gonzales told senators that laws and treaties prohibit torture by any U.S. agent without exception.
But he said the Convention Against Torture treaty, as ratified by the Senate, doesn't prohibit the use of "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" tactics on non-U.S. citizens who are captured abroad, in Iraq or elsewhere.
Furthermore,
He warned that any public discussion about interrogation tactics would help al-Qaida terrorists by giving them "a road map" of what to expect when captured.
Er, pardoning my ignorance, but, isn't that the point?
Essentially, Gonzales (and the Bush Administration at large) is arguing that "terrorists" (that is to say, any persons we choose to label as "terrorists") are sub-human, and therefore not deserving of human rights.
So, "Security Detainees" in Iraq (something on the order of 70% of whom are not guilty even of the "crime" of resisting the U.S. occupation) can be tortured at will -- so long as we define any person we plan to torture as a "terrorist" and so long as we define our activities as something other than "torture" (particularly easy to do when the Attorney General refuses "to be drawn into a discussion of tactics that might constitute torture").
Same goes for the Guantanamo detainees: they're terrorists, we don't engage in torture. Q.E.D..
This type of practice is more less the very definition of "barbarism". But what more could we expect from a country that could murder four million Indochinese for the sake of proving to the world its "credibility" as a world hegemon?
Nevertheless, one can't help wonder (again) just how, in this light, the Administration expects that captured Americans shall be treated?
Or, at a further remove, just how such practices (and the even more barbaric practice of high-altitude bombing, and the leveling of whole cities) are supposed to reduce the likelihood of "asymmetric" responses (by the weak) and the establishment of similar "doctrines" (by the powerful)?
As a practical matter, that is -- never minding (for the sake of argument) the hypocrisy and immorality of the "War On Terror" and its associated "battles".
Dack,
I'm just posting this here since, although you do regularly return email, it usually takes a little while.
A link suggestion:
NYT: "Warning Issued About Ethnic Conflict in Kirkuk After Elections"
Posted by: JD on January 26, 2005 08:54 PMChomsky's "Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies" restates this phenomenon over the past 50 odd years of US history except that past administrations engaged in the kabuki dance of disingenuous public discourse and this admininstration goes the final step and makes its declarations publicly.
I attended a recent military medicine conference where the vast majority of military physicians felt it just kosher to participate in the abuse, torture and interrogation of bound, helpless detainees. Furthermore, the psychiatrists rationalized their role in detainee interrogations and abuse, particularly the forensic psychiatrist, given their (get this) higher ethical duty to justice rather than to the Hippocratic Oath and the medial ethical concepts of benefiesance and non-malfeasance. Overall, military physicians at the meeting felt the presence of medical personnel at interrogations would limit episodes of abuse ignoring the reality of published accounts in the BMJ, Lancet, and the NEJM
of military medial personnel participation in detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo.
The whole friggin country is too far down the rabbit hole when medical personnel rationalize their particpation in this mayhem
Rich: For real? Jesus. I did appreciate the bit about "psychiatrists rationalizing their role in detainee interrogations and abuse..."
Posted by: dack on January 31, 2005 08:21 AMFor real? Yes, after 25 years in Navy Medicine, regrettfully so.
Posted by: rich on February 1, 2005 09:34 PM