Serious Talk About War Crimes Prosecutions?

Lest you think I only read pieces that bolster what I already know, see The Wall Street Journal’s editorial Tuesday, “The Torture Gambit”.  I think they are telling us something by their protesting too much!

Last week, the Supreme Court gave the Bush
regime a third defeat in their attempt to deny Guantanamo detainees
access to US courts.  The Center for Consitutional Rights and others
defending the detainees called it a surprising victory.  As I’ve noted
previously, the Mukasey Justice Department had to drop charges against
one of the Guantanamo detainees they had before the Military Tribunal
for trial, because the proceedings would certainly have revealed he was
tortured.

Yesterday, Physicians for Human Rights released a stunning series of reports called “Broken Laws, Broken Lives” detailing the medical effects of so-called “Enhanced Interrogation” techniques planned in the White House. 

Most extraordinary is that the preface to the
reports is written by Maj. General Antionio Taguba who led the US
Army’s official investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, and was later fired by Donald Rumsfeld. Taguba says, “There
is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has
committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered
torture will be held to account.” 

Scott Horton, in his blog “No Comment” tackles the question: Could officials of the Bush Administration face war crimes charges? “In The New Republic, I
examine that question and note that, far from this being an outlandish
suggestion, criminal cases are in fact being prepared. Which is why the
Bush Administration torture-team members need to think twice before
boarding an airplane that will take them beyond the sheltering confines
of the United States.” 

Philippe Sands, author of Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values  was interviewed today on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air.

Sands, an international lawyer, accuses former
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld of condoning sensory deprivation
and humiliation during interrogations at Guantanamo Bay.  And he has a
huge amount of evidence about the interrogation methods used.  He is
another who makes a compelling case for war crimes prosecutions.

The Senate Armed Services Committee is holdling
hearings this week onhow these interrogation methods were adopted in
2002.  Spencer Ackerman writes in The Washington Independent,
“Tuesday the Senate Armed Services Committee answered those questions.
In a marathon hearing spanning eight hours and three separate panels,
the committee revealed, in painstaking detail, how senior Pentagon
officials transformed a program for Special Forces troops to resist
torture — known as Survival Evasion Resistance Escape, or SERE — into
a blueprint for torturing terrorism detainees.” 

Democracy Now reports today, “The Senate
investigation confirmed the Pentagon sought the help of military
psychologists as early as 2002 to devise so-called aggressive
interrogation techniques. Dr. Steven Reisner is a psychoanalyst and a
leading critic of the American Psychological Association’s policy
governing the role of psychologists in interrogations. He is running
for president of the APA and has received more nominating votes than
any other candidate.”  Listen to Dr. Reisner.

56 members of Congress wrote Mukasey this week
asking for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the
torture, saying “This information indicates that the Bush
administration may have systematically implemented, from the top down,
detainee interrogation policies that constitute torture or otherwise
violate the law,”

And, at the top, a President who says he approved the interrogations.  “WE DO NOT TORTURE” is one of his biggest lies. 

Last night, David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org interviewed me on The People Speak Radio.  You can listen here.  Thanks for the kind comments, Mom and Dad!

Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime