Cheney and Rumsfeld Drove The Torture Policy

There were two prongs to the Bush Administration Official Policy of Torture. Torture by the CIA allegedly to obtain information from “high profile terrorists, driven by Dick Cheney. And the far more nebulous, wide spread and, as we are learning today, morally despicable, Program spread through military prisons run by Donald Rumsfeld.

These are the two men, the increasingly clear evidence shows, who actively encouraged the torture that George Bush signed off on.

Until their is a formal and comprehensive investigation by either the DOJ or Congress, all we have to go on is the published record to document these crimes. And the published record indicts them thoroughly. Any investigation that does not target the former Vice President and the former Secretary of Defense directly is  a sham and a whitewash.

If this was not a case muddled by politics, if this was not a case of Politics vs Justice, these two men would be the lead suspects in a very public probe and well publicized investigation, indictments and trials. The evidence is clear.

On the one hand we have Dick Cheney’s public admission that he authorized the torture of KSM and other “high profile terrorists:”

As well as numerous reports (Dating back to 2003!) that he pressured the CIA to use any means necessary to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Sadaam Hussein to justify the invasion of Iraq. Cheney’s full throated defense of torture in the press is also a full throated confession. And as Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse points out in her essay, Cheney’s Crumbling Torture Defense Cheney’s insistence that the programs he actively pushed and authorized were “legal” simply do not hold up to scrutiny.

The other high government official actively pushing a widespread Official Policy of Torture was Donald Rumsfeld. The proof of his active involvement comes from a far less subjective source. It comes directly from the recent Senate Armed Services Committee report: INQUIRY INTO THE TREATMENT OF DETAINEES IN U.S. CUSTODY (pdf)

Chairman Levin’s summary of the report can be found here. In it he clearly states that it was Rumsfeld’s authorization that spurred the abuse in at least six US Military Prisons around the world…

Impact of Secretary Rumsfeld’s Authorization on Interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan

The influence of Secretary Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002, authorization was not limited to interrogations at GTMO. Newly declassified excerpts from a January 11, 2003, legal review by a Special Mission Unit (SMU) Task Force lawyer in Afghanistan state that “SECDEF’s approval of these techniques provides us the most persuasive argument for use of ‘advanced techniques’ as we capture possible [high value targets] … the fact that SECDEF approved the use of the… techniques at GTMO, [which is] subject to the same laws, provides an analogy and basis for use of these techniques [in accordance with] international and U.S. law.”

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The Deputy SJA said: “the methodologies approved for GTMO… would appear to me to be legal interrogation processes. [The Secretary of Defense] had approved them. The General Counsel had approved them. .. I believe it is fair to say the procedures approved for Guantanamo were legal for Afghanistan.”

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Over the course of the investigation, the Committee obtained the statements and interviews of scores of military personnel at Abu Ghraib. These statements reveal that the interrogation techniques authorized by Secretary Rumsfeld in December 2002 for use at GTMO – including stress positions, forced nudity, and military working dogs – were used by military intelligence personnel responsible for interrogations.

   * The Interrogation Officer in Charge in Abu Ghraib in the fall of 2003 acknowledged that stress positions were used in interrogations at Abu Ghraib. (p. 212).

   * An Army dog handler at Abu Ghraib told military investigators in February 2004 that “someone from [military intelligence] gave me a list of cells, for me to go see, and pretty much have my dog bark at them… Having the dogs bark at detainees was psychologically breaking them down for interrogation purposes.” (p. 209).

   * An intelligence analyst at Abu Ghraib told military investigators in May 2004 that it was “common that the detainees on [military intelligence] hold in the hard site were initially kept naked and given clothing as an incentive to cooperate with us.” (p. 212).

   * An interrogator told military investigators in May 2004 that it was “common to see detainees in cells without clothes or naked” and says it was “one of our approaches.” (p. 213).

The investigation also revealed that interrogation policies authorizing aggressive techniques were approved months after the CJTF-7 policy was revised to exclude the techniques, and even after the investigation into detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib had already begun. For example, an interrogation policy approved in February 2004 in Iraq included techniques such as use of military working dogs and stress positions.

Of course, as the Bush Administration was so fond of saying….no one could have anticipated that casting aside the rules of war and the morals that define civilization in the middle of a war zone, in prisons where human beings were turned into “detainess” and soldiers were ordered to humiliate and torture them….

That it would lead to the rape and murder of “detainees.” Of human beings. Of men women and children. Men, women and children who had NOT been proven guilty, or even been given the opportunity to contest their imprisonment before being raped, tortured, and in some cases, tortured to death.

Short of a policy of genocide, there is no greater possible crime that humans can commit than encouraging and authorizing an organized, funded, consciously planned and deliberately spread official policy of torturing, raping, and murdering innocent (until proven guilty) men, women and children as an Official Policy of The State.

And these two men are directly responsible for that very crime.

Of course they deserve the Right that they denied their many, many victims….the Right to defend themselves against these charges in a Court of Law.

As soon as possible.

As soon as what must be considered…. in the light of the ultimate, unsurpassed, severity of their crimes…petty political considerations that currently are preventing their being brought to Justice can be overcome.

The petty political considerations that are currently being observed and enforced by our democratically elected officials, from the President on down to Congress and the DOJ. And that are being denied and thus enabled by the media and, according to polls, less than half of the American Public.

These two men, these two high government officials and all who conspired with them to torture, must be brought to Justice.