Tortured Logic

A month ago, the Senate added a resolution banning torture to a defense spending bill. Led by Senator John McCain (R-Ariz), the Senate passed the resolution in a 90-9 vote. The Bush administration strongly opposed the bill, and President Bush threatened to exercise his veto powers against the majority Republican senate. On October 25, 2005, Vice-President Cheney met with John McCain and asked that CIA agents be exempt from the ban on torture. At the time, it was viewed as a purely ideological move, as the vast majority of detainees were held by the U.S. military. Cheney lobbied strongly for the exemption, but has been rebuffed by most Senators.

Then, on November 2, the Washington Post broke a story with the headline “CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons.” The Post reported that “the CIA has been hiding and interrogating … captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe.” The Post refused to report the country that hosted the CIA compound, but the organization Human Rights Watch issued a statement that it had information proving that CIA airplanes traveled from Afghanistan to Romania and Poland in 2003 and 2004. This information, coming a week after Cheney began his campaign to exempt CIA operatives, explains the administration’s zeal to keep torture legal.

The detainees interrogated were originally meant to be only the most dangerous and well-connected terrorists, but, according to senior officials and reported by the Post, “the CIA began apprehending more people whose intelligence value and links to terrorism were less certain.” One method being used in “interrogation” is “waterboarding” - the detainee is strapped down, dunked under water and made to believe that he might be drowned. There is no doubt that methods being used in these detention camps are against the Geneva Convention and U.S. military law.

It seems likely that the United States has used torture in Iraq and Afghanistan as well. Forty-four prisoners have died, and while that is definitely not an indication of torture, their autopsies are. Foreign affairs expert Fareed Zakaria commented in the Detroit Free Press that “The reports use words like ‘strangulation,’ ‘asphyxiation’ and ‘blunt force injuries.’ Even the ‘natural’ deaths were caused by ‘arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease’ — in other words, sudden heart attacks.”

On November 7, President Bush defended the administration by claming, “we do not torture”. How can our President claim that we do not torture when his Vice-President is lobbying to allow CIA agents to do exactly that?

Shortly after the Washington Post story broke, top Republican Congressmen called for an investigation into the leak. Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, wrote in a letter that “such an egregious disclosure could have long-term damaging consequences.” According to Frist, the main problem is that the detainee camps were made public. Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) commented on Frist’s letter: “Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. The real story is those jails.”

The campaign to keep torture legal for CIA operatives and the existence of detainee camps is not just another sad story about the Bush administration’s contempt for the Geneva Convention. While abuses in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay were perpetrated by those acting outside of the norm, the CIA prison camps were directly set up by the administration. No longer do opponents of torture need to claim that the Bush White House has allowed it to occur through their tacit approval - Cheney is lobbying for it explicitly!

Some of you may be asking, “Could torture be necessary?” Some proponents of torture claim that it may be necessary in order to extract information that could save American lives. Here’s the problem. Openly condoning torture of prisoners would not only lose us influence in the world, it would also become an unbeatable terrorist recruiting tool. Torturing detainees promotes violence against the United States. Furthermore, torture isn’t very effective, because all information must be viewed as unreliable; detainees will give false information simply to avoid pain. Without question, supporting torture causes more problems than it solves. Senator McCain has commented that even Israel, in constant danger from terrorist attacks, has outlawed torture.

The Bush administration has destroyed our reputation in respect to prisoner treatment. Now, it must take steps to restore not only America’s image, but our ideals as well. First, President Bush must come out and unequivocally say that torture is unacceptable. Second, the White House must publicly support the bill to ban torture and rescind its veto threat against the bill. Lastly, the clandestine sites for detainees must be closed and we must, at the very least, send the prisoners to Guantanamo. How can we expect the rest of the world to follow our lead if we do not practice what we preach? I’m begging you, President Bush, restore our dignity and honor. It is time to prove that we are indeed the greatest nation in the world.