The Stomach-Turning Truth About Bush's Torture Programs
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In the space of a week, the torture debate in America has been suddenly transformed. The Bush administration left office resting its case on the claim it did not torture. The gruesome photographs from Abu Ghraib, it had said, were the product of “a few bad apples” and not of government policy. But the release of a series of grim documents has laid waste to this defense. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s report—adopted with the support of leading Republicans senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham—has demonstrated step by step how abuses on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan had their genesis in policy choices made at the pinnacle of the Bush administration. A set of four Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memoranda from the Bush era has provided a stomach-turning legal justification of the application of specific torture techniques, including waterboarding.
As public and Congressional calls for appointment of a prosecutor and the creation of a truth commission have proliferated, President Obama stepped in quickly to try to turn down the heat. A commission would not be helpful, he argues, and he has made plain his aversion to any form of criminal law accountability. Republicans, meanwhile, bristle with anger as they attempt to defend against the flood of new information. But, in the end, Obama’s assumption that the torture debate has run its course and that the country can now “move on,” as conservative pundit Peggy Noonan urged, may rest in some serious naïveté: Karl Rove and Dick Cheney have different ideas. They’re convinced that Bush-era torture policy is a promising political product for a party down on its luck. Its success on the political stage is just one more 9/11-style attack away.
The latest disclosures can best be grouped in terms of the destruction of a series of long-enduring myths and the emergence of some new truths.
The Broken Myths
The Emerging Reality
See more stories tagged with: politics, iraq, cia, torture, al qaeda, dick cheney, afghanistan, bush administration, karl rove, guantanamo, abu ghraib, george bush, barack obama, john mccain, wmd, donald rumsfeld, criminal, justice department, waterboarding, defense department, scott horton, john yoo, prosecutions, george w bush, jay bybee, sere, peggy noonan, office of legal counsel, torture memos, scott horton daily beast, jack goldsmith, alberto fujimori, john warner and lindsey g, myth and reality about to, torture prosecutions, justice department office, lord peter goldsmith, major paul burney
Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national security affairs for Harper's Magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.
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