Bush to Veto Bill Outlawing CIA Waterboarding
2-27-08 Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime
George Bush is threatening to veto a bill passed by
the Senate which doesn’t allow the CIA to use waterboarding, limting it to interrogations
allowed in the U.S. Army Field Manual. CIA
Director Hayden’s admitted to Congress that government interrogators had used
waterboarding on three men detained in Guantanamo. Tapes of those interrogations were destroyed,
but it’s recently been revealed that there are thousands of more hours of tapes
of interrogations. Six of the detainees
will be tried in military commissions, where the government is asking for the
death penalty, and plans to allow no acquittals.
Will this president, or the next be stopped from using
torture? None of Bush’s likely
successors voted for the bill. “I will
not restrict the CIA to only the Army Field Manual,” McCain said before he
voted against it. Neither Senator Obama
or Clinton voted.
But remember, “The United States does not torture.” (George W. Bush, rpeatedly).
Is torture a settled issue in 2008? No. Kiefer
Sutherland, the star of the hit TV show ’24’, has been “invited by the US army to
discuss why it is wrong to torture prisoners. Sutherland plays agent Jack Bauer
in the series and agreed to talk to cadets at the West Point military academy
in New York State after army chiefs claimed that the show’s torture scenes were influencing
new recruits.”
Does it matter if the United States tortures in our name? The US Army field manual allows wide latitude
in so-called “psychological” methods of torture, which have been developed with
the help of members of the American Psychological Association, leading to a
battle inside the association over such participation.
The field many allows 19 approved interrogation techniques,
including “good cop/bad cop,” “false flag” – making
prisoners think they are in the custody of another country – and the separation
of a prisoner from other prisoners for up to 30 days at a time.
The manual prohibits military interrogators from hooding
prisoners or putting duct tape across their eyes. They may not be stripped
naked or forced to perform or mimic sexual acts. They may not be beaten,
electrocuted, burned or otherwise physically hurt. They may not be subjected to
hypothermia or mock executions. It does not allow food, water and medical
treatment to be withheld, and dogs may not be used in any aspect of
interrogation.
All of these
techniques were used in Abu Ghraib. The
whole world has seen the photos.