Ian BoyneIan Boyne
It all comes back to Bush, who made the decision to go to war in Iraq
US News and World Report, May 17 issue.
WHEN THE most conservative of the big three American weeklies could follow up that statement with this, then you know the tectonic impact of the Iraq Prisoner Abuse Scandal: "During Saddam Hussein's brutal reign, the dark cells and grim interrogation rooms at Abu Ghraib were notorious chambers of torture and murder. When United States' tanks rolled into Baghdad last April, long-suffering Iraqis had reason to believe such horrors would finally be over.
"But now, it turns out, in the same cells where Saddam's sadistic executioners once plied their trade, a new team of wardens spent much of the past year carrying out their own brand of torture and humiliation. And dealt yet another crippling blow to America's reputation around the world."
CONSEQUENCES
One Republican Senator said before U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, two weeks ago, that the scandal is the moral equivalent of Pearl Harbor and a senior White House official is quoted in the May 17 issue of Time magazine as saying, "We're going to live with the consequences of this for the next 40 years." Call that an exaggeration if you wish, but the toll to America's image as the bastion of freedom and the global champion of liberty, human rights and decency is incalculable.
The highly influential and respected Economist magazine of London, no liberal publication, screams on its cover of May 8-14 edition, before the crisis deepened, "Resign, Rumsfeld", reflecting an editorial of the same title. "You fight a war against Saddam Hussein at your own initiative, not his, and you say that it is a war about law, democracy freedom and honesty. All of that sets admirably high standards for the conduct of your forces as well as your Government itself," the magazine notes cynically.
RACIST, CRUEL
And the liberal Nation magazine. which has consistently been against the war, says in an article in the May 24 issue that not only are the abuse photographs "grotesque in themselves, they reinforce the pre-existing impression of Americans as racist, cruel and frivolous. Abroad, if not here at home, they underscore how stupid and wrong the invasion of Iraq was in the first place, how predictably the 'war of choice' that was going to be a cakewalk has become a brutal and corrupt occupation, justified by a doctrine of American exceptionalism that nobody but Americans believe."
THEY KNEW OF THE ABUSES
For those who are innocently and sincerely asking why all the attacks on the Bush administration after the President, the Defence Secretary have apologised unequivocally and the U.S. military had launched its own investigations, consider these facts. Even before the U.S. military launched its own investigations in January this year (the horrific acts were committed between October and December), the International Committee of the Red Cross had brought abuse allegations to the U.S. Government. Between March and November last year, the Red Cross inspected the facilities at Abu Ghraib and 10 detention facilities and found numerous violations.
According to an Associated Press report last week, the report was only a summary of the Red Cross' "repeated attempts in person and in writing from March and November 2003 to get U.S. officials to stop the abuses". The Red Cross noted that the British acted swiftly in halting abuses among its military, unlike the Americans. The written report of the Red Cross was given to coalition forces in February.
this year.
Though the Defence Secretary knew about allegations of human rights abuses and torture from January and knew of the existence of photographs, he took no interest in seeing them until the day before they appeared in the media.
A shocking revelation from the Red Cross report, too, is that up to 90 per cent of the people held in Iraq were arrested by mistake, according to coalition forces themselves. The abuse of Iraqi prisoners was not just isolated, says the Red Cross, known for its legendary impartiality: These abuses were widespread and routine. According to the leaked Red Cross report, "these methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain concessions and extract information and other forms of co-operation from persons who had been arrested."
Says the highly disturbing Red Cross report, leaked to the Wall Street Journal: "Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room... Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, the handicapped or sick people. Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles".
These things were widespread and routine, the Red Cross says. Not isolated.
HELD FOR WEEKS
In one operation, U.S. special operations troops detained nearly the entire male population of a desert village, including people in their eighties and others as young as 13, says the Associated Press, "To prevent terrorists from slipping across the border from Saudi Arabia. They were held for weeks without being charged".
Continues the Red Cross report: "Since June 2003 over 100 'high-value detainees' have been held for nearly 23 hours a day in strict military confinement in small concrete cells, devoid of daylight. Their continued internment several months after their arrest constituted a serious violation of the third and fourth Geneva Conventions".
General Taguba, who made the damning report of abuses given to Central Command in January, said in his testimony before the Senate on Tuesday that he agreed with the Red Cross report that the human rights violations were systematic and routine, and not irregular. Taguba even admitted that the authorities moved around prisoners from various facilities to avoid Red Cross inspections in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Taguba told the Senate very clearly that the leadership of the military had to be blamed for the scandal, not just seven officers.
PURPOSEFUL
One Senator wanted to hear it clearly: "It's not just oversight or negligence or neglect, or sloppiness but purposeful, wilful determination to use these techniques as part of an interrogation process? Would you include that in your definition of failure of leadership?" To which the General replied, "Yes sir, they were."
The dehumanisation and degradation to which the Iraqis were subjected were not the result of the actions of a few sadistic or sado-masochistic youth taking glee in subjugating the enemy. It is the result of an ethos developed by the Bush administration in its hysterical reaction to September 11, and the constant demonisation of Iraqi forces opposed to their illegal occupation.
RUMSFELD'S DISDAIN
Rumsfeld has publicly shown disdain for the Geneva Conventions and gives the impression that almost anything is justified in the 'war against terrorism'. Whatever can be done to 'soften' witnesses and to wring 'actionable intelligence' from suspects is acceptable in the war against terror.
"The Abu Ghraib outrages are not simply the product of a small group of sick and misguided soldiers. They are the predictable result of the Bush Administration's policy of permitting 'stress and duress' interrogation techniques", says the Washington Post in an article on Thursday. The Defence Department has actually adopted a 72-point matrix of the types of stress to which detainees can be subjected to extract information. "These include stripping detainees naked, depriving them of sleep, subjecting them to bright lights or blaring noise, hooding them, exposing them to heat and cold and binding them in uncomfortable positions. The more stressful techniques must be approved by senior commanders, but all are permitted," says the respected Washington Post, which brought down the Republican President Richard Nixon.
All of these methods, the Post reminds, are illegal and violate treaties signed by the very United States, which likes to lecture others about their obligations. "U.S. military manuals ban these 'stress and duress' techniques and federal law condemns them as war crimes, yet the Bush administration has authorised them," bemoans the Post. "But doesn't the extraordinary threat of terrorism demand this extraordinary response?" asks the Post. "No. The prohibition of torture, the cruel, inhuman and or degrading treatment is absolute and unconditional in peace and in war. This dehumanising practice is always wrong".
A BARBARIC ADMINISTRATION
No wonder this same Bush administration has failed to ratify the International Criminal Court and would go further to punish nations that seek to use the provisions of the court to sanction the illegal actions of U.S. military. The Bush administration knew the kinds of human rights abuses it intended to allow in its self-righteous war on terror, which has become the war of terror.
The U.S. has sunk to the level of some of the barbarians whom it is opposing. (I condemn all forms of terrorism, left or right)
In March of this year, a report of the well-known human rights organisation, Human Rights Watch, was released, and it was damning, too: It found systemic abuse of Afghan prisoners.
ALARMING
The report, which I read, is alarming. In its summary, the human rights organisation says that while the Americans went into Afghanistan to protect fundamental human rights and freedoms: "On Afghan soil, the United States is maintaining a system of arrests and detention as part of its ongoing military intelligence operations that violates international human rights law and international humanitarian law(the laws of war). In doing so the United States is endangering the lives of Afghan civilians, undermining efforts to restore the rule of law in Afghanistan and calling into question its commitment to upholding basic rights." Strong words.
"We warned U.S. officials repeatedly about these problems in 2003 and 2004", says a Human Rights Watch official. Just as the independent Red Cross warned them for many months about abuses in Iraq. But why should the world's only superpower, intoxicated with power and driven by arrogance, listen to anyone? If the powerful European allies could have been snubbed and the United Nations disregarded, who the hell are these civil society 'do-gooders' anyway?
The U.S. has lost its moral authority and legitimacy in the world. For Americans to regain their reputation and respect, they must boot George Bush and his bunch of outlaws from the White House this November. Bush's popularity has slipped badly according to recent polls and his failure to find the Weapons of Mass Destruction, which provided his justification for the war, plus any concrete link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida or Saddam's link with September 11 has been of profound embarrassment to him and his supporters.
SADISM
"The images of sadism symbolised all that is going wrong with the U.S. venture in Iraq", says Time in its May 17 edition. The Bush administration knows how to use raw power, intimidate and to bully but seemingly has no clue about what the Harvard Professor Joseph Nye calls 'soft power'. An empire needs that.
As Nye says in the May-June issue of the journal, Foreign Affairs ("The Decline of America's Soft Power"), "the recent decline of U.S. attractiveness should not be lightly dismissed". And this was written before CBS shocked the world with the prisoner abuse photos. Nancy Gibbs puts it well in an essay in this week's Time (May 17): "You could track the stages of grief because something precious had surely died: A hope that the world might come to see Americans as we see ourselves. Instead, we had to see ourselves as the world sees us."
Ian Boyne is a veteran
journalist. You can send your comments to ianboyne1@yahoo.com
